I was raised as an Evangelical Christian but became Agnostic & too anyone else I would like to here your reason

The digital age has fostered a reading culture often characterized by speed, skimming and superficial, fragmented, and, often, chaotic consumption.

The sacred reading style of Lectio Divina, with its emphasis on slow, meditative, contemplative reading approach, in which you allow a text to “speak” to you, offers a stark contrast to these trends.

Madeleine L’Engle has said that "[t]here is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation."

With this in mind, while traditionally associated with sacred texts, could the practice and application of the principles of Lectio Divina, with its focus on personal reflection, meditation, and deeper connection and meaning, be extended to all kinds of texts, regardless of the text's original content or intent?

This might include texts that originally might not have had any explicitly religious or spiritual focus, such as secular fiction, historical documents, fairy tales, political manifestos, prose, poems, or philosophical treatises.

If you have had an experience of trying to implement the sacred, contemplative reading approach in relation to "secular" texts, how did it go?

How might changing the way we approach and interpret all kinds of texts reveal deeper, hidden or even originally unintended layers of meaning and personal resonance that might be missed with a more conventional reading approach?

I have a very difficult time finding meaning without the belief in a god. I do feel inspired and motivated to do things but when I think of all the hard work I do and how painful things are it breaks my heart to think it all must be for nothing.

People try to give me advice but I don’t think they really understand what I feel. They tell me that if it is just nothing then at least you won’t know because you’ll be dead. They tell me that life does not inherently have meaning I have to make my own meaning.

I wish it was that simple but for me it’s really not. I want my life to have a greater impact. I want to have a legacy where people find I really helped them. But if I can only help them in this life and it doesn’t mean anything once we die I find it to be entirely pointless.

Anyone else been told this as an agnostic? I had a conversation with a neighbor and they said they’re in disbelief over how their church is celebrating the new president’s blasphemous ways. She said to understand human suffering and help is to be like God and yet many Christians act like Satan. I’ve had atheists friends say they often question Christian morality nowadays. Sometimes I want to revert back just to call out hypocrisy among them. Why do more atheists and agnostics seen more empathetic towards humanity than Christians?

It no longer surprises me when supposedly Christian people have no clue what is actually in the Bible--it happens far too frequently. For example, when the people of Israel demanded a king, their god warned them what the king would demand of them in return:

“Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights” (1 Samuel 8:9)

God goes on to tell them exactly what those rights will be:

-Conscription of their sons to serve in battle -The best of their crops -A tenth of their grain -Their cattle -A tenth of their flock -Their freedom: "...and you yourselves will become his slaves."

And in the end, when life under a king becomes unbearable, God cautions there won't be anyone to unseat him:

“When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day” (1 Samuel 8:18)

Not everything in the Bible is imaginary, untrue, useless or irrelevant. But somehow many Christians tend not to know those passages and parables as well as they know the ones that condemn people they don't like.

None of them. You're not talking to them when you're talking online. You're wasting your time, when you instead could be talking to them face to face.

They think any opposition to their views are all either bots or misinformation agents or indoctrinated sheeple. We have to treat it the same as they do, lowest common denominator style. Leave the online discussion areas as the pointless places they have abundantly proven to be.

We're not reaching them. They're not realizing what's going on. What should have been a slam dunk three times over has proven completely ineffective.

Look up Daryl Davis and active listening. Daryl deconverted several dozen kkk klansman from hate by listening to them, a physical real demonstration that he (a black musician in the south) was not the lies they'd been told.

We have to be the physical real demonstration we are not the lies they have been told.

We have to talk, face to face, and not be afraid tackle the tough subjects.

Lately I've been thinking about the concept of divine perfection present in some religions' gods. Why do you guys think that the people who came up with religions such as Christianity and Islam needed their god to be perfect?

We all know the argument "If god is perfect why does it make humans suffer?". What if there is a god but it isn't perfect according to our concept of perfection? Does a being powerful enough to create the universe really has to be perfect in order to make sense?

Greeks didn't have perfect gods. For example, they were unfaithful, wrathful, lustful, etc. They even used these flaws to explain some of the natural phenomena.

Do you think god's perfection is also a way to explain some of the things we don't understand or is it a concept used in order to make a religion more powerful?

(First, disclaimer, I lost my faith years ago and have been searching ever since. This thought is assuming God is real but that I am having trouble assimilating mainstream opinions)

Lately, I've been ruminating on the Bible and have wondered, why would God create a perfect world on Earth?

God created us, His children, and had a happy, loving family. He was our perfect, heavenly Father, and we trusted and loved Him with all our hearts. But one day, we made a choice that broke the harmony. When we ate from the tree of knowledge then we became aware of our wrongdoing. Instead of genuinely turning to our Dad and saying "sorry", we hid from Him, ashamed. We doubted His love, forgiveness, and omniscience. We tried to cover up our sin.

No doubt He suffered when His children no longer trusted in Him, His love, nor in His promise to forgive. Though we turned away from Him, He still loved us. He cast us out of the garden, but He didn’t abandon us. He created a new world for us to live in.

But why would God create a world that is perfect? Heaven is already perfect, and it will always be. If the earth were perfect, would we ever long to return to Him? Would we even recognize the beauty and peace of Heaven? Would we be moved to repent and ask for His forgiveness?

Perhaps God allowed imperfections in this world not by accident, but by design. He created it this way because He wants us to find our way back home. He wants us to experience His love anew, so we can once again be a family—together forever.

Hello. I may pose this question in a few places, but thought this may be a good place to start. My wife and I grew up in religious homes. I went to Catholic school K-8th grade, she grew up with a militant southern baptist stepfather. This is greatly simplifying it, but in summary, both our experiences turned us off of religion. However, I am not anti-religion. I want our son to explore and believes what feels right to him. Regardless, we have him in a Catholic school, as the education they provide is head and shoulders above our public schools (manners, discipline, the education itself, close communication with any teacher at any time, etc.). However, he’s in second grade and this year they do first communion. He doesn’t quite understand why we’re not having him go through the whole process (lots of learning about it, preparation, ceremonies, etc.). I remember how it was: a big deal, rite of passage for the kids. Feels like you’re joining a club of “the big kids” once you do it. And yes, I know they intentionally push this on kids before they really know how to think for themselves. Anyways, I remember when I was in Catholic school some kids didn’t do communion because they weren’t Catholic. I’m just wondering if anyone here may have experienced that and had advice on what helped their young brains understand and be okay with being “left out.” Thanks!

Articles

New-Age Truths || AP Neem Candies

Acharya Prashant: Real spirituality is about rejecting the false. Real spirituality, therefore, is uncompromising, harsh, ruthless. Just reject the false—that's what real spirituality is about. But if you are living in an age, in an era, in a society, in an economic system that is dominated by forces of falseness, then it becomes imperative for them to invent a new kind of spirituality that engages, even endorses all falsenesses. So you have terms like, ‘don't judge me’ or ‘don't judge anybody’. Now, what does that mean? That means, don't call the false as false. Because if you start calling the false as false, how will the false sell itself? And how will the sellers of falsenesses profit from your pocket? Therefore, the new spiritual aphorism is: ‘don't judge’.

Similar to this is, belonging to the same family, ‘love unconditionally’. Where is discretion then? If everything is lovable, then the dirt within is also loveable; then what is the need to improve at all? If one’s dirty condition is lovable, is there a need to take a spiritual bath?

Similarly, there are more such aggregates floating in the spiritual places nowadays, and they have become so commonplace that they have almost gained acceptability as something scriptural. People are surprised when I tell them that no scripture ever talks of such things as looking at the true and the false in the same way; no scripture ever says that the false is as lovable and as respectable as the Truth.

~ Acharya Prashant

We all know that science and divinity are not really compatible, but on the other hand personally I believe I couldn't be a Christian or a believer in other any abrahamic religion based purely on principle and values, since I was little I always was very fearful, until during my more "edgy" years I chose not to be afraid of anything anymore, eventually I grew out of that way of thinking but at the same time I also became more selective on what I should and shouldn't fear. My faith was always doubtful, specially since I was raised on a very skeptical way of thinking in exception of god, of course I was also skeptical of that exception, after a few years and some key discussion with my grandparents and specially my mother I figured that I was afraid of eternal damnation and that it was that fear that kept me from fully turning away from Christianity, I cannot state that God isn't real or not, but I can say that i cannot believe in someone or something that punishes someone righteous out of sheer spite, this supposedly benevolent being is unable to look past its own greatness, so anyone that does not offer him submission should then suffer eternal torture no matter how virtuous or giving they were to their fellow man, that is a god I cannot respect much less believe in.

I refuse to submit to anyone or anything, specially something I cannot respect.

Do you find the approach of Jordan Peterson of emphasizing the evolutionary psychology present in the Bible insightful, and has it helped you enhance your understanding of the text of "the Biblical corpus" in any way?

so i’ve always labelled myself as agnostic, i’ve never doubted or shun out the idea of there being a God. i’d also always believed in the devil, and in heaven and hell - so i thought to myself, ‘how can i believe in those things but not Jesus Himself?’

after this, i acknowledged that i had faith in Christ, rather than just there being ‘something’ out there (if that makes sense), but i just left it as that. i never prayed, read the bible, or went to church - i just knew the faith was there in my heart and that felt enough

my boyfriend was a very strong atheist up until a few months ago. fast forward to now, he’s quite a strong Christian. he follows the religion closely and educated me on the teachings of Christ and urged me to do more so i’m not lukewarm

it made sense and i was happy to do so, i’ve been to church a few times and i’ve also prayed. we both read the bible together, but i can’t help find all of it so unbelievably boring. i dislike going to church as my mind wanders, and i can’t for the life of me understand what the bible even says. following this religion feels like a chore

i don’t agree with the bible, and i hate the idea of following rules til the day i die. i also believe the bible to be quite hateful and discriminatory. and as a woman, i don’t particularly want to follow a book that states i must submit to my husband and the other misogynistic things it says. it just all feels very structured and like i’m living the bible to a T

as i have all this knowledge now, and belief that some of the things i’ve read and heard are true, i’m terrified that i’m going to hell. i’m terrified that by turning away and being lukewarm, i’m going to be damned. but i don’t want to be Christian out of fear. i want to be Christian because i love God and i love religion, not because of what may happen when i pass. i feel pressured into this and i feel like i’ve betrayed Him, but i don’t want to live by organised religion when i know i won’t be happy

where does this leave me? does anyone feel the same way? i’m feeling very confused and conflicted and honestly, uncomfortable. part of me wishes i never found faith, being atheist seems so much easier and less of a head fuck

I don't know if anybody can relate but since last year I do beleive in a God. I was convinced mainly by Logic and Apologetics, Debates etc I also think there is a lot to learn from Jesus and the Bible. But with so many different different denominations and viewpoints within Christianity and Uncertainties (when it comes to things beyond the essentials), I think it makes sense for me to describe myself as a Christian Agnostic. Which means I am a Theist, I believe Christinity makes the most sense of the major religions and has had a lot of positive impact and there is a lot of wisdom and a lot to learn from Jesus and the Bible. But what God wants from us IN DETAIL, I am not sure.

Anybody else feel similar?

I can easily find a lot of Christians opposing believers being in relationships with non-believers, but I'm creating this thread to see positive stories of these kind of relationships. What do these relationships look like on a daily basis and in a bigger picture? What are the compromises made by both parties?

I was raised a Hindu I decided to become an agnostic because I can't relate to a lot of atheists or religious people I sometimes find both of them annoying but I am not an anti-atheist or anti-theist I just feel like people argue about this stuff too much

This may not be the perfect forum for this but I figured I might get better answers here than the general Christianity forum.

I grew up going to church. In my adult life, I became more “spiritual” rather than “religious”. I believe there is too much order and design for waves arms all of this to just have happened by chance. These days I tend to believe God/The Universe/deities of other religions are all rooted in the same source.

Something that never made sense to me is why does God have to send people to hell? Why does He need humans to profess their love of him to be let in to Heaven? If He loves us so much why wouldn’t he just let us all in? It seems silly that an all powerful being needs humans to profess he is king, almost like it’s for his ego.

Secondly, if we’re going with the thought that one religion is right and the others are wrong, how are Christians so sure their God is the right one? What if the “God” of the Bible is a demon trying to trick them into worshipping him?

Looking forward to your thoughts.

I don't mean it in a depressive way, but actually the opposite. Like you suddenly realize that you are alive and conscious, for a second you think that there is no way all of this is just the act of randomness, and I don't mean to necessarily imply God as of Jehova, Allah, or whatever, but more like that there has to be something big going on for us to be here, something to which we don't have any track of on earth, certainly nothing that could be explained by human religions here on earth. I think this is why I lean more to being an agnostic theist.

Hi there.

I’m the only person in my family who is agnostic. The others either are very religious Christian’s or like to call themselves that. In the last 5-10 years or so I’ve noticed my big sister and I drifting apart because she and her husband got back into church and when I say back into church I mean VERY into it. I can tell they’re judgmental of me because I’m not and I’m bisexual and have had a same sex partner.

Obviously things are contentious right now politically especially with evangelical“Christian’s” in the south…I’m sure my entire family is voting for the “pro life” candidate. Truly everything that they do and believe in is what drove me away from religion to begin with - it’s the opposite of Christlike. Totally hypocritical.

Well I logged onto Facebook today which I don’t do often and saw 1.) that they posted a picture with their “I voted” stickers 🙄 and 2.) that their oldest son, my oldest nephew who is 13 has decided to be baptized on Sunday (yes this Sunday) and they said to let them know if you wanted to come.

It does bother me that their kids are being indoctrinated because my sister did say once that she wanted them to grow up and make their own decisions about their beliefs and instead it’s felt like my sister and brother in law forced it upon them.

You’d think that my sister and brother in law would want their kids aunt (me) to be there for the baptism. Is a big thing in their religion, obviously. But they’re just so judgmental. I don’t think they really care for me to be there and I am pretty sure they think I’m living in sin and going to hell.

Should I pretend I didn’t see they put it on Facebook and just not go? Technically I wasn’t invited…also I should note that I left the church because of religious trauma and I’m not sure how I’ll feel being in this environment again.

I've been a Christian basically all my life, but now I'm 17 and starting to question my beliefs. It has been like 4 or 5 months since I started questioning, and seeing how some things didn't made sense or were absurd to me.

And as I tried to know if I actually believed or not I just saw more and more things who made me go to the atheist side, like realizing I was believing out of fear of going to hell. It's not like I don't like going to church, the one I go is a really good one, but I never really had an actual interest on the bible, I always think of the bible and Christianism to be really but really boring. My parents are not happy about how I am so uninterested on it, and how i can't remember what was talked about at church, or me not wanting to sing because I don't like gospel. Its getting really tiring for me having to lie because I don't have the courage to be honest, and it's really stressing since we always end making debates ans I lose my patience.

The only people of my family who actually know I'm agnostic are two of my cousins and my aunt(It's my grandmother but I call her aunt since she's my Step-father mom but anyway) and they were supe comprehensive and didn't cared about that, but I know my parents will react badly.

Ps: Just warning, my parents are really chill, the only problem is when it comes to church, besides church, I don't really have any problems with them!

I'm in this boat, but sometimes struggle to put it into words

Hi,

I’m going to share my response to the question and I would love to see others.

After deliberating for about 3 months I’ve finally accepted my agnostic identity. I’m not sure there is a God but if there is one I don’t believe He is of any religion as they’ve been advertised.

The 2022/2023 academic year was a struggle for me, I was in my last year of sixth form (y13) and was about to do exams that would determine whether I would get into medical school- to put a long story short I had no faith or confidence in my ability to prepare for exams and my home life was such a mess that I had no real support in my endeavours.

So, I put my faith in God - that was all that I had. When I finally got my grades I saw it as confirmation that God was real (I think this derived from my low self esteem).

The 2023/24 academic year was my first year at uni (currently in 2nd yr) and this academic year is what really challenged my faith. I had a friend (basically the most devout Christian I knew) that revealed to me she was a prophet and God was telling her a bunch of shit. Telling me to delete some of my old friend’s numbers and it was an “urgent message”. She also gave me advice “led by the Holy Spirit”. Following her advice and messages from God left me feeling alone, isolated, confused etc etc. (please note I am HEAVILY summarising). This all took place from like Sept 2023 till like Jan 2024 - all the “advice” and “messages”.

Fast forward into like March/April-ish 2024 I started to wonder what the purpose of the messages were. If I deleted my friends’ numbers I would still be able to contact them, they’d still be able to contact me etc. So the message, made no sense - I confronted her with this fact and she had no response. In fact, I confronted her with many logical fallacies to which she would not respond or would tell me that I couldn’t understand.

Also, my old pastor gave a “prophecy” to a member of the congregation telling her that her husband will be saved. He then told me that if this particular prophecy did not come to pass that doesn’t mean it was false which was a direct contradiction of what it states in the Bible.

I know that humans aren’t perfect, but this really had me questioning - what is my faith based on?

Many people online give testimonies with the purpose of increasing others’ faith in God but how can I trust what anybody says?

What authority does the Bible have? People say it was Holy Spirit inspired but so many people throw around the name of the Holy Spirit to give their words significance (e.g the pastors’ “prophecy” and the advice my friend gave me) that that phrase means nothing to me. Why doesn’t the Qur’an have authority? Or the Hadiths?

All of my beliefs were based on what I’d been told, not what I’d experienced. I believe that God helped me pass my exams, but what it it was me studying that helped me pass my exams?

Why won’t God grow missing limbs? Is it because he can’t? That doesn’t align with his proclaimed character. So if he can, why doesn’t he?

There are just so many questions about God that nobody but God has the authority to answer. For example, if as it states in scripture that God wants nobody to go to hell, why would he create us in the first place knowing it’s inevitable for people to go to hell?

Why would he tell Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil knowing that that’s the only thing they’ll be thinking of (like when people tell you not to think of a dancing elephant, that’s what you think of - which is how God created us to think) why would he condemn them from disobeying him if they had no knowledge of good and evil yet?

Some people may blame me for believing my friend or my old pastor but what about the story of Doubting Thomas? Or the fact that faith is basically based on fear (hell being the penalty) - I used to blame myself for believing them but with more perspective I realise that’s what I’d been conditioned to do.

Anybody got interesting stories that wanna share?

Also, just a side note listening to the advise of my friend and church doctrine really damaged by ability to make friends in Leeds so if anyone around here is going through anything similar hmu, maybe we can share stories thoughts etc. and learn and grow together.

So... I've been with my husband for 8 years (married for 2) so we know eachother super well, have always clicked. But all of a sudden, he is going to bible studies, and curious about the religion he was raised to be. There is NO problem with wanting to explore what you may believe in but I'm scared how this might affect our relationship.. might affect different views that we have always agreed on.. I don't want to be pushed into the Christian religion. It's one of my least favorite things about the religion. (People forcing it down your throats, I respect it as it's own thing important to others) I'd be the only agnostic person in the family if he goes Christian.. he spends less time with me to go to these studies that we used to make fun of together.. should I even talk to him about this? I'm scared I'll come off as a bitch, or judgemental.. I just don't want a specific one religion in my life. It's not who I am.. and I'm scared how this change in my husband will affect us.

As an experiment, I looked at the English language and took some words out of it with religious or spiritual significance. Specifically, "evil" "live" and "love".

I decided to replace each letter I with the number 1. I then decided to replace each letter O with 0.

I chose the message, "Evil, Live, Love, Live" because that lined up the 1's and 0's to convert to 11 as an integer and made a coherent statement.

Evil = 1
Live = 1
Love = 0
Live = 1

1101 in binary converts to the number 11, a prime number. I got one for the number 13, as well.

13 is "Live, Love, Evil, Live".

I just thought this was interesting. Does anyone know any other things like this? As an agnostic that is open to something "out there", I see significance in this. But then again, it could all be just like another Cydonia.

I’m a PhD student researching the relationship between religiosity and “adulting” behaviors among Gen Z emerging adults for my dissertation.

If you are 18-29 years old, whether you consider yourself religious or non-religious, please take this brief, completely confidential survey.

https://s.surveyplanet.com/l8wker4e

The idea that the universe is fine tuned for us is proof of God because of the precisely small amount of chance of it ever occurring is a bit strange to me simply because of the fact that

a. the universe is infinite and can potentially have gone through these trillions of cycles on end without fine tune-ing

b. If it weren't fine tuned we simply wouldn't exist as we do and when we do *happen* to exist it is 100% guaranteed always to be in the one that is fine-tuned for us..

Thus, we are guaranteed to land in this argument when we exist and otherwise, we would not exist to debate this.

What do you all think?

I've always been curious as to why those who follow a religion are so certain they are right? From my understanding there is no proof. Maybe I am a little jealous that they can have blind faith like that and i cannot. Where it use to scare me not having faith i find an odd comfort in it now.

I am an agnostic who was raised as a Hindu and explored other traditions such as Buddhism and Christianity. I also did a degree in genetics and have been a science nerd all my life.

By agnostic I really mean that I think we are at somewhat of an infancy in terms of understanding the universe and the nature of reality.

This is not to say that I rule out there could be some sort of a Supreme Being and I could even conceive that it could be natural that we mortals would have some sort of connection to that being engrained in us.

At the same time I think it’s equally plausible that religion is something we manufactured just to survive. Learning about cargo cults is one example of how this may be the case.

When I did believe in God though I found the religious practices in Hinduism favoured detachment. For me that was never a great fit because I suffered from considerable childhood trauma and a lack of secure attachment. I am still working through those issues today.

So one thing that has often appealed to me in Christianity is the sense of community in church. I attended a baptism on the weekend and the songs were uplifting, you could see members of the congregation formed deep bonds with each other, cared for and supported each other.

I could see how the calls to accept Jesus as my Lord and Saviour could be a path to secure attachment. A part of me wished I could do that. But I am in my heart an agnostic and I know it would be disingenuous.

Yet I do long for the aspects of secure attachment to the community church seems to provide. And it seems to easily accessible as well, ie: I could probably try to find special interest groups and what not that could offer a sense of community but they often have felt pretty transient and hit or miss.

I once tried the freemasons as well but it was far too much of a socially conservative organization for me.

So, I am wondering if there are other church like communities that agnostics may be drawn toward and I would be interested in learning about them. One possibility that has come up for me is the unitarian church, however, it would be a bit of a trek for me to go there.

This is a long one. But maybe an important one for people undecided.

I’d like to begin with my backstory. I grew up in South Carolina surrounded by Christianity, particularly southern baptists christianity. Southern baptists are very good at getting you to drink the fool aid cool aid through inconspicuous means. Over time I developed a sense of what god could be and I wasn’t adverse to it. Everyone at church was friendly, I made friends in my neighborhood who I played with often. And by this point in my childhood the indoctrination had already done its work, I presupposed god in all aspects of my life. I woke up everyday believing he existed.

At about 8 years old things began to change. People at church put more pressure on to have a strict life of christian morals and ethics. That sin was bad. It was unfamiliar to me but it was too late. At 9 the full might of the wrath of god was made clear to me, I was a disgusting little sinner, no longer an innocent child. I was destined for damnation and hell, I was no longer jesus’s little friend. And there was nothing I could do as the newborn degenerate in the eyes of god, to try and make something of my life without him. I had two choices. Conform and have heaven, or live an honest life without Christ and have hell, forever. Both of these options were disgusting and terrifying to a child. I could either be stuck at gods feet forever subservient and maybe not even be myself anymore, or suffer an eternity of torture and anguish.

As the years passed and the hooks dug deeper I tried to reject it all. I was angry. But I lost the battle quickly and conceded that I had no choice but to defend my beliefs out of fear and I had to hope god would understand.

At the beginning of college about 4 years ago, I finally got access to the full brunt of the vast information network of the world. Everything changed and all these emotions resurged and I felt like maybe I had a chance to get answers. I began to look into what the world had to offer. I saw that there were many religions, that believed different things. The more I looked at them the more shattered my consciousness became. I decided I had to face the dragon of revelation. For the first time in my life I faced the fear of reading the Bible cover to cover.

I was disgusted….. I saw death, the slaughter of the Amalekites and canaanites. Slavery, justified. Not only how to acquire them but how to make slaves of your own people. I saw women be worth “somewhere between a house and a horse”, the selling of daughters and the raping of women and the consequence 50 shilling. The acquisition of sex slaves forced to marry, or be stoned to death if not a virgin. The dashing of babies on rocks if born from heathens. I read the destruction of tribes with god smiling at death. That he is a jealous god ready to enact vengeance. A god that relishes sacrifice and power. A god, that upon the rediscovery of the most precious laws known to man, killed all that saw them and all that inhabited the area for miles. A god that allowed 42 children to be mauled to death by bears. At least once he killed you in the old testament you were dead.

I studied the historicity of the Bible and became enthralled with Bart ehrman and other various biblical scholars. Learning that hell developed over time was crippling to me. I had been lied to for so long. I saw through study how dualism came from Zoroastrianism and other cultures subsumed by Jewish philosophy. I learned that plato created the idea of the immortal soul, and I saw its implementation into the religion. I saw the apocalypse of Peter written based off surrounding religions and a human made concept, torture, I learned that torture is something that humans do, we made the rules of torture and implemented them. I learned about how many churches decided on the anonymous gospels and made a canon and rejected others. That Augustine of hippo finalized the canon and added ideas from the divine comedy and Dante’s informing inspired by the apocalypse of Peter. My world was shattered.

But this was not the end. I learned about ethics and morality and how we make our own morals. It’s not from god. That over hundreds of thousands of years we created a social contract conducive to survival and wellbeing, and we created an intricate system over time of good and bad actions that can be flexible but also necessary. That we can take basic ideas such as

1.) life is preferred to death 2.) health is preferable to sickness 3.) happiness is preferable to sadness

We can take simple ideas like these and create a flexible system of morality that can be used to create cultures. This allowed me to discover why there are so many denominations of Christianity. Because there are fundamental ideas that we hold that contend with ideas in Christianity and people decide not to believe them, it’s “cherrypicking”. I also compared religions. Why is the Hindu moral system better than the christian one, why is the Shinto system better than the Buddhist one, why is Islam better than the Sikh system, etc…… it turns out all of these were developed based off of ideas we already had before the religion was created. Morality predates religion.

I also learned that free will is a fickle thing. And that individual decision making seems to be debatable. But outside of ourselves nothing is willed by us. We don’t decide our parents or where we are born (but our birthplace decides our religion and culture). We don’t decide if we’re born in an area with clean water or not. Or if there will be plenty of food and resources.

I am not convinced the christian god or any god exists. And I await the day that evidence is presented. But I’m not counting on it. I hope more people begin to wake up. I hope more people see the destruction and savagery that religion brings with it. Whether it be in the background pulling strings or on the forefront of war. Eventually it needs to fade away, the abrahamic religions most of all. We can already see the benefits of secular society in Europe. We see that life flourishes and people are happier and more prosperous. There are more opportunities for people to find what they enjoy in life without economic distress or the prospect of theocracy in the near future. A theocracy that actively challenges bodily autonomy and what information should be in the science, history, and ethics classroom. I will be at the door to stop them. I believe in people and I hope that secularism will win. And once the religious extreme sizzle out, the world will be a better place.

It offers no knowledge and gives nothing to believe in. I guess it reflects lately how I feel about the whole thing. Even though I've been agnostic most my life, I've never looked at it this negatively.

The one thing that I have pulled from my whole experience is that the meaning of life is to live life, and it is with that purpose that I carry on.