I realised i like guys too. That then slowly pushed me out of my quite right wing bubble.

Also critiquing the catholic church and leaving it with all the pedo alligations and how none actually christian they are yk

What made me do it was the unending stream of contradictions in the bible internally, between the Bible and reality, and between the Bible and what people say is in the bible in order to fix the other two.

It’s the old “nobody could show me why I should believe any of it”, including me. And the more I looked for answers, the more problems and contradictions I found.

I have plenty of contact with my family, my parents are both great people and it helps a lot that they’re not so much religious as that they think “its important”. My more extended family has made a few tries, I occasionally get into discussions with a few aunts, uncles and cousins, but they’re not exactly good at it. It’s just looping around the same old terrible arguments that quickly end when I ask them to show that it was Jahweh who created the universe, and not Bob.

The church made the biggest effort to get me back, but they have a financial incentive, unlike everyone else. It was an incredible pain in the ass to get removed from church rolls before GDPR.

I was raised Mormon.

I remember chilling in the computer lab at university when I came across someone’s Jehova’s Witness deconversion story online. It was so eerily similar to my experience that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Because it wasn’t my religion, I was able to see it the way an outsider might see my own.

It broke something inside me irreparably. Faith became a dirty word. All conservative values instantly vanished. I guess this conflict had been beneath the surface for some time but finding that story lit a match.

I mean what kind of religion needs to brainwash its members not to seek out material critical of itself? What kind of religion puts you in a room, alone, as a teenager, with a 50-year-old man who is asking you about your sexual habits? What kind of religion has billions of dollars of real estate investments? What kind of religion requires you to ring people’s doorbells and pester them about your religion? What kind of religion asks you to hate gay people?

Anyway, I just stopped having anything to do with the church after that. When it comes to integrity, I can’t pretend. I was able to hold my ground against all the creepy shit that happens when you leave a cult. And now, 20+ years later, I rarely even think about it.

I was baptized as a protestant Christian and also hat my confirmation when I was young, but I have been an atheist for long time.
I left as soon as I started to work, as I needed to pay more than 500€ church taxes per year. After I left, I didn’t have to pay that amount anymore, that’s about it.

Sudden realization it was all bullshit and I’d rather sleep in on Sundays. I was 7 or 8.

It did help very much that the biggest part of my sociale life was outside the church. In fact i was slowly drifting away

I left the religion I was born into only inside my mind. I still go through every “ritual” that comes with it mechanically but subconsciously I lack belief.

I get lots of support and positive emotions from my community. It’s not worth losing it.

It’s very interesting honestly. I swapped from Catholic to evangelicalism at 14 (just me not my family, tho they supported it) and stuck with it till I was 20. It was super about it. Youth group 2 days a week plus 3 hour mass on Sundays, God was ALWAYS on my mind, every decision, every action, every goal. Then my friends went to college, and I didn’t, I stuck around now forced to interact with the older crowd. They weren’t just hypocrites, they were cruel and controlling and pointlessly manipulative. It became clear that the church I was at wasn’t the place It was for me for years so one day I decided to just stop showing.

It was the first addiction I ever quit. The anxiety I felt was… Immense. It took two weeks for me to start thinking clearly about it, and it was wild how easily I recognized I was literally brainwashed. I no longer needed the mental gymnastics to justify myself.

My life didn’t improve or anything after that, and funnily enough I only ever saw one of my, off to college, friends again, many years later. He did try and get me back in but I was way past that stiff by that point. Surreal experience in hindsight

Went to Afghanistan. Saw mutilated kids, kids with no legs from landmines, burned alive, dead ones. No God is watching over anyone. We are all there is.

In the words of Bob:

“Most people think great God will come from the sky Take away ev’rything, and make ev’rybody feel high But if you know what life is worth You would look for yours on earth And now you see the light You stand up for your right”

Everyday, stand up for your right to live in a peaceful world, or be stood upon.

It was a fucking struggle to leave, let me tell you.

I suddenly suffered from a crippling disease (made worse because I was 10 and generally healthy before that, so it was mind boggling at the time), and no one in the church gave a hoot. You’d think a community of people who believed in a loving god would care that such a god would randomly punish a kid… so when everyone just told me to accept it I understandably grew pissed. That then blossomed into asking questions about others with diseases, famine, war, death, bla bla bla, and every answer was just stupid.

Buuut, I was in a super religious family, and went to a religious school, and was a part of a very community focused church, so it took until I left at the age of majority to really leave religion behind. I argued with every single dumb christian I could find for my teenage years, because I wanted to find someone who actually had a good argument. Humorously enough, the best argument ever made to me was by someone who didn’t even care about christianity except that he ‘was’ one by dint of other people being christians: maybe it was necessary for god to send people to hell and have a shitty life… except obviously that’s a shitty god that I wouldn’t care to worship, so finally in college I said good-fucking-bye to the entire mindset.

As for what happened, while I was still under the parents’ control and the school’s control, I was labeled as a troublemaker and generally ostracized. My mother would wail (reasonably) about the situation, but stopped making me go to church as I entered high school. The extended family that still cared about religion just chalked it up to attention seeking and ignored it, which was fine by both parties.

Pastor’s son. Almost became a pastor, too. “Led my first person Jesus” door-to-door around 5-6 years old. It was an adult man, I walked him through the “Romans Road” and the prayer for salvation.

It took mushrooms kicking my ass in Amsterdam to finally shake it all.

I read the Bible

I was raised mormon and steadily lost faith in it all through my 20s. I had a bunch of mental dissonance for awhile trying to reconcile the whole love your neighbor stuff with the LDS churches campaigns against gay marriage and disgust towards trans people.

What broke the camels back was ironically a philosophy or religion course at BYU. It tries to teach you how to justify all the religious paradoxes in a way that lets you keep your faith. One of the units explored an idea on if God was worth worshipping. And that question brought it all tumbling down. At the end of the day it didn’t matter if God exists because based on the world he wouldn’t be worth worshipping anyway.

Most of my family has distanced themselves from Mormonism so generally things have been good. My mom was a bit disappointed but we still get along just fine.

Raised Catholic and I took it quite seriously in high school. I even gave out communion after I was Confirmed. A couple of things and I can’t point to the strongest one. But here are a few. All these happened between last couple years of high school and being in my early 20s.

The movie Dogma

Sitting in a really opulent church while a collection basket was passed around. I actually started crying, because of the hypocrisy of it all. The way my dad rolled his eyes at me when I tried to explain my upset.

Leaning in to the questioning feelings id had for a long time but had pushed down because it was sinful and I really just wanted to be good. But once I explored those feelings, it got easier to let go.

It probably took me 5-6 years before I felt freedom from religion and I still have weird hangups that will stay with me forever i suspect, and I’m in my mid-40s.

I was a simple lad. Sleeping in on Sundays was a pretty compelling reason for me to listen to the alternative theological arguments.