I didn’t grow up religious at all. I don’t know anyone who is religios. The closest thing are some people in my neighborhood who are in their 70s who used to he religious, because that’s how they scared children into behaving back then. They like to talk a lot and tell me about their grandchildren and how happy they are that they don’t have to go through being afraid of fire and brimstones growing up. When i see videos like that, i always have a hard time believing that these people are real and how it is to be in their brain. Donthey really actually believe all that or is it like buyers remorse, where they know it’s bullshit, but it’s too late now to admit so other people have to be miserable as well.
I have long suspected that your “buyer’s remorse” proposition is true for most believers. Given the breadth of the effect religious belief has on the business of living one’s life and the seeming competition for being more fervent than the next guy in the pew, I suppose it is to be expected to one degree or another.
The mental distress of coming to terms with the realization that you have wasted some part of the one most valuable commodity one has (days of life) has to be incredibly difficult to bear.
I can’t even imagine what it would be like not to be tortured by these ideas for at least some portion of my life. I probably have never known anyone who wasn’t… Where are you from?
When you tell a 4 year old child they will burn forever if they don’t do everything you say, that sticks with them.
I feel like you don’t appreciate how gullible children are or how deeply impacted they can be by their very first experiences in life. Just even hearing this shit is deeply traumatic for a child.
I find it really unlikely I’ll ever be religious again, but every now and then I worry I am wrong about it all.
I’m not saying I understand being religious. Not any part of my rational brain can accept those ideas. But we all have a more primitive part of our brain that deals with emotion, and it can be very powerful.
