Mostly trying to relate.
My parents didn’t think I was religious enough so I was forced to go to Catholic school. Thus became even more atheist. Also, religious people are the most hateful and dishonest people on the planet based on my experience.
The hypocrisy of the religious. Hands down the biggest reason.
The exclusivity, in the negative sense.
The constant premise that there is something wrong with you if you don’t conform or otherwise fit the mold, or bend a knee to those thought of as superiors. Dissent is not allowed.
Pray problems away instead of actually doing something about them. Like school shootings.
The toss in all the rest of the BS like fighting other religions, wars in god’s name, god gave me (the win, the victory, saved my life but it wasn’t the surgeons, spared my house in the tornado but not the neighbor’s, my Mercedes, whatever) but not you because you’re gay or support LGBTQ, liberal, atheist, etc.
There really is so much to despise about people who using religion as a shield for their shitty beliefs and actions.
I moved out on my own and started asking the questions that I had previously been told not to ask at church.
Turns out there’s a reason you’re not supposed to ask those.
First drop of doubt for me began at a Wednesday youth service. Not only was I such a strong believer that I went to church in the middle of the week, I drove myself because I was the only one in my family who wanted to go. The youth minister was giving a class on cults and the more he spoke the more it sounded like my entire life was being part of a cult. Following that thread led to me finally admitting to myself that I don’t believe anymore about 6 years later. It was a long road with lots of doubt and denial but that one sermon on how to identify a cult woke me tf up.
The first thing was how the catholic church handled the sex abuse allegations.
The second thing was how they taught that the Bible was “the literal word of God”, then changed church doctrine away from the Bible whenever it suited them.
The third thing was how, when my son died at 15, everyone was ok with that being “part of God’s plan”. What the fuck kind of God has a plan that requires 15 year olds to die?
By now, it all just seems like so much insanity.
That’s actually hilarious. By all accounts, religions are definitionally cults. Though colloquially we tend to define cults as ‘dangerous’, even though there are many cults which are arguably more tame than some ‘religions’.
I learned logic and stopped accepting cognitive dissonance.
