People tell me abuse is horrible and it's not my fault ,the same people tell me god loves me and will protect me if I'm a good person but that didn't happen. So i was left with two choices either people lied to me or it really was my own fault. I choose not to take the blame. I started out a true believer, an alter boy .I feel guilty for losing my faith but when one of the main abusers was my priest i had no other choice .
@kodiac No need for guilt or shame, Kodi. Those monsters used thrir positions of power to traumatize you. They were evil. Their " god" will punish them. Karma will for sure. You just heal in your time. You have s lifetime. And you can believe in whatever you want to.
I’m completely different from how I started. I didn’t think about God at all when I was younger, even when my mom would take my sister and me to her Catholic church. We eventually stopped going, but my older sister got Saved in her teen years, and started going to church with our younger sisters. I was disturbed by it for a while, but eventually also got Saved. But I stopped going to church shortly after, and still never thought much about God.
Nowadays, the Lord is on my mind all the time, and I try to pray always for any and everything. I follow Him, and try to live my life as Jesus said to instead of leaning on my own understanding. I wish I’d started sooner.
I was raised catholic and have no real conplaints though i blame christianity for alot of things. Its that i decided to write my own religion and beliefs based on the one principle of catholicism ive ever agreed with. Ecumenical the consideration of all things to form a perspective. So with that principle in mind i wrote my own.
further to determine that answer you would have to read each of the three renditions for yourself. Its the only reasonable & (rational) thing to do (course of action).
@sree251 ive written my attempt multiple times. The first when the voice in my head said write this down was the Oath of Human Citizenship. I editted that for a year or two into a more concise version. Then i enrolled in a class about buddhism and it morphed into the the decree of buddhist rationalism. Then a few years later i was editting it for typos and consistency and decided Buddhist Rationalism was a better title. Now its the three combined and titled the Oath of Human Citizenship ( the decree of Buddhist Mentalism.) I had a version titled Oath of American Citizenship for a period of time too. My laptop got stolen. Sadly.
As an 8- or 10-year-old, I can remember my parents dragging me to the Southern Baptist Church every Wednesday evening and Sunday morning along with my siblings.
Then we switched to the nearby Presbyterian church until I was in my mid-teens and we moved to the suburbs. At that point they drug us to another church (can't recall the denomination), but I CERTAINLY remember Wednesday night teen bible study. It was like a scene taken directly from Bob Seger's song NIGHT MOVES. Every time that song plays on the radio the memories flood back...even though I long ago forgot her name.
And one of those memories is that she educated me about (among other things) religion and it's grip on society. I believe that was/is why today I find organized religion tolerable for others, but not my cup of tea. Simply put..... "Feel free to believe in what you will, but please don't force your beliefs on me."
@Threepio I hear you. And as I'm not much of a joiner I feel completely in line with your thoughts. But I wonder do you think any of your religion has impacted you as a person.
@Mellowgirl IDK that it has affected me (personally) at all. I do however, FIRMLY believe that more people have been persecuted/killed in the name of religion than for any other reason.
Call it strange (and many have) but I do believe there is a higher power, but I am one who believes that other life (aliens) exist in our universe and those are the higher power.
I still embrace religion now I didn't so much when younger (too busy playing footy) But yeh i follow it. I think as i got older i realised that a lot of people have misconstrued it. Get past that and you begin to understand its just a case of caring for others and the land you live
@robertsnj agreed I hope it doesn't turn sour. I'm just curious to know if people have joined, reconnected or abandoned their religion. If they have a little story it might be insightful.
@Mellowgirl My apologies I had to go to work when you posted a reply.
I put the thread where I rambled about being an atheist at the end of this post. However to abbreviate it it was a move from a faith based perception of reality to an evidence based perception of reality.
i also baffled when someone says they are spiritual but not religious. Even if that person has a 1x1 relationship with their God they base that peception of what that diety is based on an established faith.
For instance if they decide God is not anthropomorphic entity there are religions that person can and will lean on a religous idea that present the Universe as God or some other celestial idea.
In addition I think people will get upset on threads like this no matter how benign or netural you make it because their system of beliefs is emotion based and any questions asked about it automatically trigger an emotional reaction in them even if their a pacifists on their keyboard. For the record the word choice you was really non confrontationbut but the topic by contrast has an innate confrontational aspect to it.
my rambling atheist post below: https://similarworlds.com/random-subjects/question/4990871-What-made-you-stop-believing-in-God
@SW-User that's fair enough. It's not for everyone. I think there is a value in differing perspectives. We can all live in harmony and share this space.
SW-User
@Mellowgirl I find the aggressive born again American Fundamentalists difficult. Thankfully they usually block me. Some of the atheists are just as bad.
Raised and baptised methodist by an uber religious extremist church secretary mother, proud Atheist adult. Hint, don't abuse and berate your child for asking honest questions, and don't let your second spouse use them as a punching bag for refusing to participate, it only makes them rebel more and question the validity of religion.
