Just curious if there are some former charismatic Christians who are here now. I think I’ve been kind of in a reverent-leaning and hopeful agnosticism for a while but over the last few months I find myself not being able to reconcile compounded suffering and the idea of a good God anymore… I feel really alone and a lot of old beliefs are wreaking havoc on my nervous system as I approach even considering that I might just be atheist at this point. It was way less terrifying to accept myself and come out as queer tbh. I could really use some support from people who understand.

Edit: what I mean by “charismatic Christian” is a very particular subset. Like speaking in tongues, spiritual warfare, gifts of the spirit kind of deal. Close to Pentecostal or Church of God.

I see a lot of people say they are "spiritual but not religious." But when you press them, it's usually just astrology, crystals, or vague "universe energy" stuff.

If you're going to reject organized religion, commit to reality. You don't need to replace a man in the sky with a vague cosmic vibe to have a moral compass. You left the church because it was based on unproven claims, so why replace it with more unproven claims? You can be a good person without believing in ghosts, spirits, or the universe "manifesting" your desires. Reality is enough.

It’s very unusual where I live. I never thought it would happen but yep, here we are.

They seemed nice youn people, and they did have good manners. I did not, however, want to spend time on nonsense. So they made their opening by naming their beloved book, and I answered that I was an atheist. Have you always been, they asked. Yup, pretty much. And I added that God does not exist, which they probably didn’t buy. I also added that I get fear of death, but to live life an that there is no need to live on myths and legends.

They did not insist; like I said, they were good mannered. They maybe think they left something. I hope they brought the seed of something else, more valuable. The seed of freedom from religion.

That’s all. Just a few minutes worth of an interaction that I wanted to share with you all.

Have you ever had an argument with a person of faith and thought to yourself- “This person has a really shitty take”? Well I have, I was watching the titanic movie with my mother a few days ago, she said to me “I heard the creator of the RMS titanic (Thomas Andrews) had said that not even god could sink his ship and look what happened.”

So my first argument of course was to her that it was just a made up rumour and my second argument was, even if he DID say that, no reasonable god would go ahead and kill 1,500 innocent lives just to prove a point to one human. That would be a very arrogant god, and quite an evil one.

So she came up to the conclusion that god had no involvement, because of course nobody out of the 1,500 who died on the titanic had even prayed for a moment for help from god. She then said to me “okay but god saved 700 souls”. So I told her “you mean he saved 700 and let the rest 1,500 die?” So she got quiet again. Her final reply was “god works in mysterious ways.” So I just gave up.

My mother is not an unintelligent woman by any means, trust me. What caused this delusion was the fact that it was implanted into her brain at a young age, and she kept getting fed this idea of god
throughout her teenage years and up until now.

Let me explain. I was brought up in a very fundamentalist Christian household, but I became an atheist about five or six years ago. Because of my upbringing, I missed out on a lot of things that other people take for granted. I didn't grow up listening to the pop music my parents listened to, watching popular movies or TV shows, doing rebellious things, or going to parties. I wasn't even allowed to play sports because matches were often held on Sundays. I didn't really have an opinion of my own.

Now that I'm in my mid-twenties, I sometimes meet people who grew up non-religious or in less strict households, and I feel like they have a much stronger sense of who they are. They seem to have a more developed personality, a clearer idea of what they believe in, and a better understanding of themselves. Meanwhile, I feel like I'm still trying to figure out who I am and what I stand for, and honestly, I hate feeling like I'm so far behind. I feel like when I was younger, a huge part of my life was religion and that has fallen away and now I sometimes don't know who I am.

Of course, I know that figuring out who you are is a lifelong process and Im still learning and growing. But I can't help wondering whether my upbringing has something to do with how I feel.

Are there any other people who left Christianity and became atheists who have experienced something similar? Did it ever feel like you only really started living, growing, and going through a kind of "second puberty" after breaking free from religion? If so: is there a way of dealing with this the right way? What can I do to speedrun the time I lost?

TL;DR: I come across people who did not grew up being religious and I feel like they have a much clearer idea of who they are because they could experience music, relationships, parties, movies, etc. That I couldn't. Did you feel like you only started to develop your own "true" personality after leaving religion and if so, how do you catch up with the time lost?

after-death, sleep, consciousness, purpose of life, now disturbs me a lot, i feel i have no backing, nobody to save and living life purposeless. honestly i hate that i thought logical upon everything.

I really want to know how do i become a theist once again bcs it genuinely was soo comforting back then.

Extra background to this story, 1st ever post: here

“I feel like no one understands me and that makes me want to 🪦 (vent)” post: here

I really recommend reading the first two posts to get the context of what is happening. Anyways…I (18f) told my sister I don’t believe in god yesterday…crazy. And it went like really bad at first, she was like saying really really hurtful stuff that broke my heart like that “it is wrong” and she “wants me to change” cause she “loves me”. She would cry every time she looked at me. I was starting to really regret telling her anything. I tried to explain myself, that I would rather not believe in a God that tortures people than believe in a God that does, and stuff like that. It was getting intense and I just didn’t wanna participate, because to me, being an atheist isn’t ground breaking or anything, but I told her I understood why it was to her. I tried to tell her that I love her (which I never do) I tried telling her that I just want her to support me. But then she started saying stuff like “I’m not in religious psychosis”, “I can’t accept that”, “I just wish you’d give god one more change”, “I wish you could feel god’s love”, “all of these problems can be fixed with God”, and the thing is I KNOW, I know me believing in god would fix all of my like familial problems, but I’m not gonna throw myself away. It’s weird, because usually she’d say stuff to make believe in myself and love myself but the second I mention god she’s telling me to tear myself down. She said one thing that really shattered me, after I told her I don’t believe in the devil, she later said “God won’t be able to help you, but the devil/people might” woah, I was like huh, she kinda meant that the devil is people, but doesn’t that mean god is also people???

Anyways, she was just breaking my heart so much, she eventually left and we were just in a ambiguous situation. During the whole argument I tried my best to comfort her, to love her the way she needed to be loved and comforted usually but she was just so mean, so hurtful, saying things she would never usually say, it wasn’t like a scream off though, it was thankfully just a sad conversation. I went to my mom and just hugged her cause I needed someone, even when everyone around me is still Christian, I just needed someone to hold. Eventually my sister came back up, but I just stayed holding my mom, crying, cause I wanted to kinda prove to her that I am capable of love and stuff idk. I eventually showered, cried, and came back out, held my mom, cried, I was just crying the entire time. Eventually before I slept, my sister came into my room. She hugs me, and told me that she’s sorry and that she loves me, she told me that she responded in only fear. She said that she doesn’t remember too much of what she said, so I told her, sobbing, and she started crying too…she told me that she loves me again and that she thinks the way I think is okay, that it must’ve been so hard for me and that I am a very good person. And then she tucked me into bed and that was it.

I don’t really know how to go about this situation lol, I’m struggling, some part of me wants to be less yk witchy, to make her feel better but I know I shouldn’t. I don’t really know how to go about it, because whenever I talked to my older sister/family, I would always just talk to them knowing I had a bunch of secrets I need to figure out on my own, but like now she’s kinda in the picture? I don’t know if I forgive her 100% because I’m still very hurt by her words and just the whole situation. I don’t know how to be more of myself with anyone.

Last night I was talking to my 8-year old boy about God and what he thinks about the whole thing.

His mom (my wife) is religious (Christian Orthodox) so he goes to church every now and then. He knows I'm an atheist and while I don't tell him what to believe, I plant seeds of doubt by simply asking questions and letting him reason. He loves science and we've read "The Magic of Reality" by Richard Dawkins together.

He told me that yeah, he currently believes in God and everything, but then he said something interesting...

(I'm paraphrasing) I do think there is something weird. Why was Jesus a human? Humans weren't created (he understands evolution), so why would Jesus be a human? If hippos made religion, they would think Jesus was a hippo. God shouldn't be any animal, he should just be like an immortal entity.

And it hit me -- the whole Jesus thing only works if you assume God created humans in our current form. Why did Jesus have to be a 1st century human? In a million years, who know what our species will look like (if we haven't exterminated ourselves), and then Jesus will be some weird thing that doesn't look like us anymore.

Just thought it was an interesting thought, especially coming from an 8-year old.

When it comes to the problem of evil, God is like an incumbent politician, heading into an election cycle, trying to convince you that if you vote for him, he’ll finally have the means to solve your problems.
If he’s already in charge of everything and he’s all powerful, then he currently has the power to solve them & chooses not to.

I can understand a Christian voting for Trump because they've somehow concluded he's the lesser of two evils. You can disagree with that reasoning, of course, but it's different from actively celebrating him, defending his behavior, or portraying him as some kind of Messiah.

Trump is the complete opposite of Jesus' teaching: he shows no humility, forgiveness, does not love his enemies, does not welcome strangers, or cares for the poor.

I find it fascinating that so many Christians actively support such a person.

Whenever I talk to the people about their religion or god's bad aspect, they always get angry. I always wondered why?

It's actually not about their god or religion. It's about their identity. Their whole life they believe in something and suddenly that belief feels falling apart . That's why they panicked and always gets angry.i guess

Edit: please read the edit at the end. Thanks.

By the "objective morality" argument I mean the idea that atheists can't be moral because we don't have a God telling us what to do.

Obviously it's not a good argument and I know there's literally thousands of years worth of arguments against it. But I was quite surprised today I couldn't find an anthology on it. Ended up having to recommend Stanford Encyclopedia articles on Divine Command Theory and metaethical articles. However to be fair these aren't that accessible and I wonder if there is a good collection of historical/contemporary rebuttals related to this argument?

Just to be clear I'm in no doubt about that argument being a bad one, and I know a lot of arguments against it, I just wonder if there is a collected resource that's easy to share somewhere.

Edit (please read): to reiterate, I'm not looking for why you think the argument is bad, however decisive you think that argument is. I agree the argument is bad. I also know at least 7 different traditions or arguments against it just off the top of my head so trust me I don't need any persuasion and more individual arguments (including the morality is subjective argument which believe it or not is not the only argument out there). I just want to know if there's a collected resource such as an anthology, a companion book or maybe someone's doctoral thesis. Thanks!

A couple years ago I saw a post on here about a law firm that tracked child sexual abuse through public indictments. It broke it down by things like family members, teachers, religious leaders, lgbtq, cops, etc. I believe the firm was headed by a trans person and I think it was in San Francisco but maybe not. Does anyone remember this or know how to find the law firm? I can’t find it by googling. I wanted to show it to a family member who thinks trans people are pedophiles and priests are not. TIA.

For context, I grew up in the US in a Christian family. Desire this, I actually "found Jesus" on my own. Without any direct pressure or influence from my family, I became very devout and studied a lot. Since then, obviously, I've grown up and realized how wrong it is to take fairy tales as truth and forego critical thinking and logical consistency. So now I am very anti-religion. I think it is a plague on our collective consciousness, a tumor which makes us dumb and docile favoring comfort over scientific and rational approaches to life's problems.

Anyway, now I live in Vietnam which has a small christian presence. A guy who works for my landlord (handles the money and busy-work, like a property manager I suppose) texted me some bullshit Facebook copy/paste spam. I told him that where I come from, this is not some new revelation, and I don't appreciate his attempts to help save me.

Today he came by my apartment, he never had done that before. We did some contract and money work which was actually needed, but then he begins evangelizing. He speaks minimal English and I, minimal Vietnamese. Despite that I was able to communicate to him a few points. 1) that the bible has been written, edited, and changed by thousands of people over thousands of years 2) that the bible he's showing me on his phone isn't even the whole bible because many books have been deleted 3) most importantly, that I love the bible just like I love every other piece of literature - that they're all stories.

He said the bible is the only story which has prophecies which come true, and not only that but they come 100% true. He had some bullshit bible app he was using to argue for him. The app, and the argument he chose to make, was that the bible prophesied something like:

The earth is suspended in space under northern skies suspended above nothing

I told him that's not even true. Space isn't empty - there is no nothing that earth is suspended in. There is no northern sky - the universe is expanding and cardinal directions don't apply beyond relation to the Earth's poles. So if this was his idea for prophecy coming 100% true, that's terrible because it's not even remotely true. Then he told me to check with NASA, not him. He's no expert in the universe after all.

If he is no expert, how can he know it's 100% true, to base his entire worldview off of it? If he thinks the bible has 100% accuracy, why would the first example he randomly chose be such a weak one? How could you possibly get someone to think outside of their deluded circular reasoning?

When I first left the church, I realized all the gimmicks and games involved in religion. I asked myself, if I wanted to make a religion - or a belief system at all - which was completely impenetrable from outside arguments, how would it look? Honestly, Christianity did an amazing job. It checks all the boxes for deluding people, and keeping them deluded within their cyclical reasoning. It's such a damn shame.

I hope someday we'll evolve past this cancer. Thanks for reading.

me (18f) and my bf (18m) have been together for 10 months. our bond is really intense, we told each other our deepest traumas, shared both good and bad times together and even after nasty arguments chose to stick together. he’s the first person i have genuinely liked and be in a relationship with him while i am also his first girlfriend. we also lost our virginity to each other and our first kiss.

although we are the same ethnicity we come from different countries. i’m an atheist while he is buddhist. he loves his dad a lot, and his dad demands a buddhist girl from the same country as him to get married too. his dad also caught us together once in public and implied to him that if we decide to get married, his dad won’t approve of me. for my bf, his dad’s approval is very important.

so my bf told me his future has two options, he either becomes a monk (his dream job) or he marries the girl his dad chooses (because he doesn’t want to be alone with no kids) both options would result in him leaving me and he has told me explicitly to my face that i am not in his future. i feel appalled that he would marry another girl after me or not fight his dad for us to get married, it’s as if our time together means nothing to him. but at the same time, he has decided to stay with me until the day comes where he has to make a choice between an arranged marriage and being a monk. he cannot make a decision right now because he is unsure about what his future self would want. i feel really angry that religion is coming in the way like a nuisance. i don’t know what i should do because i genuinely love him.

My muslim ex (M25) dumped me (F24) 4 months ago, for starters we've been together for 4 years, and I've known him 2 years prior to that, what started as a casual fwb situation blossomed into the best human connection I've ever had with anyone, he was literally my ride or die, we did everything together, he treated me with utmost love and respect and spoiled me rotten, last June, he randomly sat me down and told me that he can't do this anymore, that he's been feeling so much guilt over the past years, he said he can't afford going to hell just to keep what we have, and the only solution would be for us to get married and even then it'd still be a pseudo-haram marriage because I'm an atheist and he's not allowed to marry me, i was honestly dumbfounded, and i started trying to reason with him, I've made it clear since the beginning that i don't want to get married, or have kids, I've always told him that I'm not meant to be anyone's wife, and at first he tried to talk me into it but then he just stopped and i thought he came to respect my choice, so the fact that he put me in a situation where i have to either marry him or leave him filled me with so much rage, anger got the best of me and i started yelling at him, he got all worked up too and although he didn't scream back, he still expressed what he was feeling and i couldn't do anything but cry at that point because i didn't know he was holding all that guilt and shame and bitterness inside of him, i felt like i was making him miserable, and that i ruined his life, he kept asking why the idea of marrying him grosses me out this much, and he even teared up too, which actually killed me inside, he wouldn't even let me console him, he then told me if i ever changed my mind i know where to find him, and i haven't heard for him ever since, i don't know if I'm making the right call, idk if my own convictions are worth losing the one connection i thought I'll have forever.

You're all such dirty lil sinners. Irredeemable. However I really don't want to send you to the torture chamber I created. It's ok though because I've found a way. I've found the only way I can forgive you Is if you all get together and torture and kill my only son. Sounds cool right? The great thing is that once you've killed my son I can continue to love you again and anything you all do from now on you're all good. If you're a rapist a murderer or whatever you can avoid my torture chamber because you killed my son. All you have to do is believe me. What do you say?

i’m an atheist, i do not believe in god. i want that to be very clear. i don’t know if this is the proper subreddit for this but i am losing my mind and i don’t have the courage to share this to my loved ones or get help because they’re religious and i just sound ridiculous and it’s not making sense.

ok, it started off when i was journaling about how miserable i am and i wrote about the lack of meaning in life and about how i feel like a machine and not a person, and then i just out of nowhere began writing about god, and how he must be controlling me or punishing me, except he cannot control me due to free will (and the fact he’s not real) and so he must be punishing me. and then within an hour i had fully spiralled and genuinely was ready to commit to christianity and surrender my life to god in a frenzy. thankfully, the next day i was a bit more rational. but this was 3-4 days ago. since then i have had so many thoughts on the topic, but i can also realise this could be due to mental health, except now i’m having these internal battles inside my mind that look similar to:

“i am being punished or tortured by something, the most rational thing would be for god to be controlling me, but i have free will, so i must be getting punished, but god loves me and he just wants me to repent, buti don't believe in god, and i don't know why i'm even thinking this, i must be going mad, but how can i be sure?? i may be going mad due to the absence of god in my life! oh i am so tainted and full of sin, but that is exactly what the devil would say! am i being possessed by demons??? i must repent now but i cannot! i am so evil, why can't i believe in god?? the devil is holding me back. i have to save my soul, i will burn in eternal darkness”.... and so on.

i do not believe in god, yet i am having these thoughts or whatever it is non stop. i’ve resorted to attempting to pray, reading the gospel, what not. just to stop these thoughts and i feel like i’m going MAD. genuinely wtf am i meant to say? “i’m having thoughts of god calling me to repent and trying to save me so i don’t burn in hell” no one’s going to take this seriously. i sound ridiculous, foolish, and stupid. and my thoughts are very contradictory. i cannot logic with this. i am going mad, truly going mad.

I have recently lost some people in my life while coming to terms with the fact that I am Agnostic. Essentially I believe that when a sentient living being dies they do not have a soul that exists beyond their valenced mental experiences. Who they were as an individual will never exist again. Maybe there's an extremely off-chance that someone's conscious self could mentally reincarnate in some way and there would be a mind-blowing scientific explanation for it, but as for now I highly doubt it.

I'm guessing that death is a pretty major topic being Atheist/Agnostic, as it is a strong instinct for any animal pretty much lol. I'm curious about other people's thoughts, opinions and experiences with death and grief. What does it mean to you? What is death to you metaphorically/literally? What meaning have you taken out of life?

For me I don't think I would feel this much loss compared to when I believed in a divine god and an afterlife. This fleeting existence has made every living thing and object that exists extraordinary to me. While sad it's kind of interesting and cool to grow this way.

As some may know, a priest in Ecuador was killed by a giant crucifix that fell from a wall onto his head, which was broadcast livestream. Very sad indeed. It would seem to me that such an event happening in a church, and involving the church's most important symbol/idol -- cross with a statue of crucified dead Jesus -- would cause a Christian to pause and reconsider the fairytale they believe in. But judging from comments online, it seems that religious folks just use this as a sort of twisted affirmation of their beliefs. If any of you were ever religious, was there an event such as this that changed your mind about the sky-daddy wizard tale, and if so, what was it?