Respectfully, why did you leave religion?

Religion is a wonderful thing because it gives you something to believe and provide comfort. However, when people start using it for war, discrimination etc, then it becomes a horrible thing.

I am open to anyone of any religion unless they start to disrespect me, in which then I will get annoyed.

 

I was raised religious, but since I had some exposure to different beliefs from a young age I began to question why I needed to believe in a certain god at all. If god was just, then I shouldn't be punished for doing the right thing whether I believed in god or not. If not, then I didn't really care for that god.

My views have matured a lot since then but I still don't really worry about which god exists, if any. I feel like I can't ever know the answer to that, and even if I did I'd still want to follow my own morals.

 

Religion is a cult.

 

Well when I was about 14 I had a small struggle with the fact that I wasn't straight and I was left at a crossroads. Deny my sexuality for Jesus, or leave religion behind. The way I was raised those were the only two options, there wasn't a "Love Jesus and dick" option out there for me. I must have been a pretty smart kid because I chose to leave Jesus behind and accept my sexuality.

The decision was reinforced with everything that happened between me and my dad, and for awhile I was bitter against all the Christian BS.

As I got older though my worldview become less internalized and more focused on everything around me, and as I looked out over the world in a more objective manner I found that religion just didn't click with me.

I saw a lot of chaos, a lot of contridiction, and a lot of false prophets leading people to war and hatred. I didn't like it, and that further encouraged me to avoid religion and even at times to push back against it.

The one common trend I've found with religion is that your god just so happens to line up perfectly with your own personal views, or to the views of your parents who raised you on that religion.

I guess we're all just super lucky and happen to already agree with our own personal god. weird how that works.

 

I can't "respectfully" describe my feelings for religion so I'll just say it never was a part of my life. I grew up with an atheist dad and a non-theist mom, who gave me the option of going to church if I wanted but left me to form my own beliefs about religion as any decent parent should, so I'm very glad about that.

 

To be blunt, it was when I found out about fundamentalism. I just never wanted to be associated with the any religion that has something as ridiculous and offensive as fundamentalism, which just so happened to be all religion. I can happily say I can live a free life not being tied down to anyone's religious social norms, such as heterosexuality or marriage!

 

I never really left religion. It just never came to me.

The moment I stopped trying to bank on some deity to help me, is the moment my life started to show signs of improvement. I know many folks pray daily and give thanks to, say, God, but that never worked for me. So either I'm just not important or I'm meant to be kept away from, at least, the western faiths.

 

I stopped following god, long before I stopped attending church. I know it could be a surprise to some people, to know that I can go into a church, without the church suddenly going on fire lol.

I read a lot of books and reached my own conclusion. To make a long story short; god isn't right for me and I'm happier without religion.

 

I felt that I didn't need to have a religion to feel spiritual. While, I do feel as if there is something greater than us out there and all that jazz. I just didn't feel like I could properly express that with some religion looming over my head, much happier now .

 

Because it's massively flawed. I was never a super religious person but I grew up as Christian I guess.. Now I'm pretty sure I'm nothing in religion.. I believe in my own things. I am more spiritual then religious I have a set of tarot cards and I like anything related to spirituality!

 

There's so many holes in religion, when I finally grew a brain for myself I found out how ridiculous it is.

 

I left Christianity because I couldn't love a deity who commits mass genocide for his own glory, or tortures people indefinitely.

 

It wasn't what I believed in. It wasn't who I was.

 

I left catholicism because it told me my sexuality and gender identity were wrong and I was going to burn in a pit of fire forever. It forced me to repress my identity until I couldn't handle myself anymore and attempted suicide.


Now, I have found a spiritual path where I can be myself, and not go to hell for it.

Yay for Heathenry and Celtic Reconstructionism!!

Granted there are still a bunch of racist homophobic heathens, but nobody pays attention to them, they suck.

 

Though I did go to a religious pre-school, other than that exposure and the occasional funeral, my parents never made me go to church. They were both raised religious and for whatever reason, they decided not to put me through the same path. I don't know if that is right or wrong.

However, I can say that I would not have been religious either way. I have pretty strong internal logic and I have a good intuition when people tell people other things just to manipulate them. I can certainly see the appeal of religion though and I think it is possible that it could make you live longer or have less stress since you can justify things that are not possible to be justified. That is, you have "faith". In either case, I would not say I believe in any particular religion.

But I do believe in the idea of being positive. That is, if you project positive "energy" (no, we're not talking about a voodoo session or something, just the concept), positive energy will come back to you. This might be the same as karma, but it's just what I've empirically noticed in the world. I'm sure it has my subjective flavor laid on top of it, but that's going to be the case for any of my beliefs anyways.

 

The most respectful thing I can say about religions is that they should have never been invented. :rolle:

 

It didn't work for me and it didn't make sense to me. That's all I'm going to say for the sake of staying respectful (*hug*)

 

I was very fortunate, I never had to leave religion because it was never coerced into me in the first place. Although my mother exposed me to a religion as a child I never picked it up. I do strongly feel that children must be protected from religious indoctrination. When they're 18 let them decide for themselves whether they want/need a religion.

 

I had a sunday school. (A hindu one) and I despised it.
I respect religion, but the teacher I had was infuriating.
A lesson on saying everybody is equal:
He said, yeah everybody is equal, but this religion is better than the others.
The irony...
And then, I doubted everything they said. I just didn't believe it. I sort of drifted away and don't want to go back to it.
Religious texts and mythology are to be deeply thought about and well interpreted. But they took it literally and it was annoying.

My parents removed me from it because they understood it annoyed me, and also because the teacher hated me because I fucking swore at him.