Skip Navigation
91 comments

  • I was raised Mormon.

    The first things that's very important to know about the Mormon church is that they believe that they are led by direct revelation from god, and that god will never allow the 'prophet' of the church to lead the church astray. The 'prophet' is the head of the whole church, and Mormons believe he (and the prophet is always a man, because women are always subordinate to men in the Mormon church) receives revelation for the entire church and world. As you go down the chain of authority, each person is supposed to be receiving revelation for the people that are under them. So it is believed that if your bishop--who is a local congregation leader, not at all like a Catholic bishop--asks you to do something in his capacity as bishop, then that's coming directly from god.

    The second thing that's critical to know about the Mormon church is that every member is very strongly encouraged to pray and ask god to confirm the truth of things. Members are told to read their scriptures (esp. the Book of Mormon) and study the words of Mormon 'prophets', and then pray about it. A warm, fuzzy feeling is believed to be the confirmation of the holy spirit that those things are correct; a lack of confirmation means that you need to pray harder, because those things are self evidently (

    </s>

    ) the word of god.

    Got it? Good, continuing on.

    I didn't particularly want to be a missionary, but it was expected that I would become one, so I did. I did not enjoy being a missionary; I absolutely hated it. The mission president--a man that presided over a specific geographical area and group of missionaries--largely did not believe in mental health, and told me to put on a happy face. I ended up having a nervous breakdown and became suicidal. I remember being told that "the light of the holy spirit has left your eyes", and that the reason that I was suicidal was because I had sinned an allowed Satan into my heart. The solution that was prescribed by religious leaders was to pray more, study my scriptures more, bear my testimony more often, etc., and that I would be fine.

    ...But I knew that I had not sinned. How could it be that my religious leaders, people that were supposed to have the power from god to receive revelation for me, people that I had been promised would never lead me wrong when they were acting in their religious capacity, would be insisting that I must have sinned? What sin did they think that I had committed? (Spoiler: I'm actually high-functioning autistic, and the lifestyle demanded of missionaries was extremely stressful. That stress was what led to the nervous breakdown.) I was eventually sent to the LDS Social Services, which is a counseling org in the Mormon church; the church as a whole is very skeptical of therapists because they take a science-based approach rather than a religion-centric approach. The therapist decided that I was too preoccupied with sexual matters (which, fucking duh, I was 20, and was cut off from social interactions with people of my preferred gender while I was a missionary), and also counseled repentance, etc., along with some aversion therapy to make me feel even more shame about all things sexual.

    Meanwhile, I had a psychiatrist for medication. The psychiatrist had a strictly science-based approach. He said that there wasn't any clear reason why some people would become suicidal and others wouldn't, but some medications might help.

    It all eventually got me thinking: I knew that I wasn't sinning, but my church leaders--the people that were supposed to be receiving revelation for me, on my behalf--were insisting that I must be. If I've been praying about the truth claims of the Mormon church, and had believed that the holy spirit has been told me that it's all true, but the people that I believe have the gift of prophecy are completely wrong, what does this mean?

    For me, the inescapable conclusion was that feelings were not a reliable indication of 'truth'.

    If feelings aren't a way to know truth, then what is? Once you start studying the history of the Mormon church, the whole enterprise starts looking like a very sketchy con, and is certainly not something you would take at face value. Moreover, it turns out that all religions are relying on feelings that the religions say are from god in order to confirm that their religion is the One True Religion. Not only is there nothing that's falsifiable about belief in Mormonism, there's nothing falsifiable in religion in general.

    Once you accept that, then the most reasonable answer is to say to say that either the existence of a god is unknowable with what we have right now, or that there is no god at all. I settled on the latter, although extraordinary evidence might be able to convince me.

  • I didn't quit the LDS church, I was unofficially excommunicated for being born intersex and having a puberty not consistent with my assigned gender.

    I have both sets of genitals. Both are small, deformed, and non-functional. The bishop at the time told my parents to keep it a secret and to raise me as a boy. Then puberty came along and I physically filled in as female.

    It scared the ward members, it scared the bishop (different bishop than before), ajd it scared me. I didn't know what was happening, nor did anyone else in the church. From their POV, a boy just physically changed into a girl.

    The common sense thing to do was to consult a qualified and competent doctor about this, yet no one in the church did that. Not even my parents. The bishop gave my parents an ultimatum. Choose between God or your child abomination.

    They chose God and my parents disowned & kicked me out. The church quietly turned their backs on me. They all wanted me to just go away.

    I'm older now, wiser, and in a far more stable life. I'm even an ordained Satanic minister now, and I am happy. Our congregation welcomes those who are cast out. Words and deeds are more important than your physical appearance or what's in your pants.

    Edit: And before any LDS members respond with attempts to get me to rejoin, don't bother. I no longer believe in gods, afterlives, and magic. Plus I will never rejoin the religion that cast me out for the crime of existing.

  • I thought doubting God was a sin and I'd go to hell if I died with doubt in my heart, so I avoided atheist material out of fear that it was Satan working through them to tempt me to doubt.

    But eventually I just couldn't resist, and figured the atheist arguments would clearly be false, and God's truth or whatever would show through and then I could always refer to that event to shake any doubts.

    The first video I watched was a debate between a pastor and Christopher Hitchens.

    Absolutely shook my faith to the core. For a couple days afterward, no matter how I tried to twist it, I couldn't find the fault in Hitchens arguments.

    After that, I began to research the history of Christianity with a more open mind, and it became clear what a shit show the whole thing was. I became agnostic, and I suppose in a way I still am a bit, in the sense that the existence of reality itself is quite puzzling, but I can say with certainty that no religion on earth has any answers toward that end.

  • Raised Christian. Christian is supposed to be about love and acceptance, but after all the transphobia and homophobia I saw, it was kind of over for me (sapphic)

    A lot of Christians claim that there is only one God and that you will burn in Hell for not believing in their religion, which just sounds discriminatory regardless of “I’m just trying to lead sinners on the right path”. It isn’t the right path if you have to fearmonger to lead people on it.

    They also claim they’re trying to gently let people into God’s way or something but don’t seem so gentle when they spam “YOUR DELUSIONAL WOMEN (sic)” on trans men’s social media, or ”DELUSIONAL MEN (sic)” on trans women’s.

    I believe all religions are the “true religion” and I’m polytheist.

  • Spending time away from it. I was raised as an evangelical Christian and I was fully bought into it. I'd had doubts but was always able to explain them away or suppress them. All it took was not going to church every Sunday for me to finally stop believing.

    Because I was raised in such an extreme "all or nothing" way, I wasn't able to fall into a sort of half belief like what I imagine most Christians in America believe who only go to Church on Christmas and Easter. But I think younger people are starting to identify as agnostic or atheist in those scenarios.

    There are more specific steps to it, but that's the majority of it was just getting away.

    I'll never forget the relief when I finally came to believe that the category of things that were sins but not otherwise morally wrong were things I didn't need to worry about anymore.

  • I never believed, I was told I had to be christian or I would go to hell.

  • I grew up as a Christian. When I was around 15, someone asked me "if I hadn't been born a Christian, would I be a Christian?" Considering it, I opened my Bible and immediately a verse popped out (in classic God fashion) saying "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have"

    So then I felt called even more to really explore, based on that:

      1. I couldn't currently defend my faith reasonably
      1. If God was actually real, he wouldn't be scared of people exploring arguments against Christianity, because the faith would be based on something ultimately true.
      1. By exploring other faiths, arguments, etc, if I returned as a Christian, I would have a much stronger faith.

    The more I explored these arguments, as well as gaining a better understanding of what the Bible actually is (in a historical and literature sense), more and more of the belief system unraveled, eventually to the point I didn't call myself a Christian anymore.

    Then over the next decade I went back and forth exploring alternative denominations in Christianity, as well as other religions (Daoism, Buddhism, Judaism), especially as I still felt a "spiritual pull" / intuition in a lot of situations. So it took me a really long time to separate that intuitive sense of direction from the belief system around the Holy Spirit specifically, and learn where trusting that intuition is effective, and where it can be misleading. That's been the most complex part of all of this.

    I still enjoy exploring other belief systems, components of Christianity, and connecting with whatever that intuition is occasionally, as I do think there is a lot there for human psychological and emotional health that Western modernity sorely lacks. (I suspect this hole in our culture is why a lot of fundamental US Evangelism has flourished btw)

    But that's how I lost my faith - God gave me the push I needed :P

  • I was raised Catholic but rejected it pretty much immediately when I reached the age of reason (~13 or so).

    So all I have to do is listen to and obey everything my parents, teachers, and religious leaders tell me and I'll go to heaven, but, if I had been born into a Muslim family in one of the countries we were bombing, doing that would get me sent to Hell and I need to reject everything I was taught, get on a plane, randomly walk into the right church, and believe everything they tell me. Oh, and if I was like some random Chinese farmer a thousand years before planes were invented, I guess I'm just fucked. Yeah somehow I don't believe that an all-good perfectly-just god would have every soul play fucking roulette to determine what their chances in life will be of getting into heaven.

    It wasn't until much later that I learned about the history of this contradiction, which goes back to a 400's debate between Augustine and Pelagius regarding original sin. Pelagius argued that it was theoretically possible, but incredibly difficult, to live a life free of sin and therefore not need Jesus' forgiveness. He was also critical of the way Christians were integrating with the Roman empire, with all the same practices but now the social climbers called themselves Christian to win the emperor's favor while otherwise doing all the same shit they would otherwise. Augustine rejected this, arguing that the Father would not sacrifice the Son unless it was strictly necessary, furthermore, Pelagius' arguments would undermine the authority of the church (this was stated explicitly). Augustine invented the concept of original sin as something passed down through generations (despite this making zero sense), cited a mistranslated passage from scripture to support it, and used that to explain how even someone who lived a perfectly innocent life deserved to go to hell. This included, of course, fetuses. It was the Church's position for a very long time that if you have an abortion, or even a miscarriage, then your baby's soul is burning in hell.

    What's particularly funny to me about this is that, after Pelagius was denounced as a heretic for saying people needed to actually live virtuously instead of just relying on Jesus to forgive them, he became so reviled that people were often accused of "semi-Pelagianism." All through the Reformation, everyone was accusing each other of being "semi-Pelagians" and trying to position themselves as the true inheritors of the Augustinian tradition. It wasn't until relatively recently that anyone started saying, "Hey, maybe the Augustinian position is actually kinda fucked up."

  • Many experiences over many years. My own curiosity and love of learning really helped save me. But for me it was all made to finally click together by psilocybin.

  • I never really was into spirituality much and then over time I noticed Buddhism kept bumping into me and kept explaining things in more and more straightforward ways over the years so eventually I caved in and looked into it more closely and decided to practice Tibetan Buddhism because it felt more closely related to my own personal experiences and interests...it can be tricky to understand at first until you understand how all the symbolism works and then a whole world of information was opened up to me and I feel better than ever.

    Those early Tibetan Buddhists really got a lot of things right from the start and still today I see science research come out suggesting the same things they figured out long ago.

    From what I can tell spirituality serves an important purpose in our lives and it is to keep us mentally healthy by whatever means we wish, the caveat here is that you don't misinterpret messages and fall into bad negative paths.

  • In college we had to take a certain number of bible classes. Senior year took one on the history of the old testament or something like that. Course compared the texts to older texts from nearby regions and it's all basically plagiarized. This was somehow supposed to bring us closer to god, but for me it did the obvious and was the straw that broke that particular camel's back.

  • I just gave it up 1 day. No life changing event, no bad experience, just a shift in perspective happened, and I basically realised that I did not really need a god. I still practice some things which were part of my religious activities (donating, or serving others), but that is more of general good citizen thing rather than being religious

91 comments