I’m a preachers kid. By 25 I was a full atheist. A decade later I still am. I will have nothing to do with religious people. I’ve learned those people can’t be saved.

I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school until my parents got divorced in 2nd grade.

I remember being very young, probably around 6, and realizing what fiction was. A lot of things which did not make sense to me I just waived off as me being young and was told I would understand when I was older suddenly were revealed as just… Lies. I think Santa Claus waa the start, but within a couple of days I realized that the Easter Bunny and tooth fairy were lies too. The “government” is not some all-knowing benevolent entity that makes sure everyone is nice to each other. The claims companies make in TV commercials are lies. And there is no God.

The world suddenly got a lot scarier, but still felt more… Right. More real.

Aa I grew older and got more exposure to other religions, I realized that religion emerges from 2 aspects of human nature. First, we want to understand the world around us. We want to know where the ground beneath us came from, where we came from, why we exist, etc. Second, there are always people looking for opportunities, who are willing to lie (or otherwise hurt others) to get power and resources for themselves.

There are some good lessons to be learned from religion. Jesus overturning the tables of the moneylenders for example. This could be my own personal bias, but when I read the Tao Te Ching it seems to me like Lao Tzu was an autistic person who used “The Tao” as a way to solve the double-empathy problem.

But also a lot of religion is just old fiction. From the days before the internet and copyright laws. Imagine a Star Wars or Harry Potter fanfiction website, then imagine that those people can only communicate physically and in a world where most of them cannot read or write, and these communities persist for hundreds or thousands of years.

I really like going down the rabbit holes at the intersection of archeology and theology. There are plenty of books that did not make it into the Bible, and even the books that did make it in have different versions and translations across history and sects. A lot of what we think of as modern Christianity comes from Dante’s Inferno rather than the Bible.

So all this means that the messages tend to be inconsistent. Even when the actual text remains the same, the way those texts are interpreted and used in practice can vary significantly. So it’s really more about you interpreting and applying things for yourself than the actual texts, and this is something you can do just as well with any other piece of art.

I’ve always been an atheist and I still despise every form of religion. I avoid religious people like the plague. I’m 39 years old now.

The indoctrination of mental illness, mainly via child abuse (Gotta coerce em while they’re young and vulnerable to effectively suppress and corrupt their critical thought!) and terrorism (“if you don’t do/believe this you’ll suffer unspeakable horrors for eternity”).

At 25? Where I settled now.

• Religion can provide a loving, peaceful philosophical framework to live by. Some of the most wholesome, kind, generous people I’ve known are devout.

• People’s brains are all wired differently, and this works well for some.

• It’s cultural. You can’t just throw away that huge part of someone’s background

But.

• Some of the most unspeakable things in my personal life happened in the name of religion.

• Ive seen it ruin families, and kick rationality out of groups and instill hate in its place. Not in news feeds; with my own two eyes.

• What’s more, some religions reinforce idolization and “worship” of people, which is extremely dangerous.

So I’ve settled on this:

• …I respect other people’s faith, especially in people I respect in person. People do what they do, you know? They have their own perspective of the world, and I’m not going to presume to know better.

• And I keep in mind that religion is more philosophical for many. And that kind, devout people won’t push it on you.

• But I am under no obligation to share it. I’m sure as hell going to push back against idol worship, anti-science thinking, bigotry, political cultism and so on, but not cross the line to their belief in God or the afterlife or whatever.

• …And I have no interest in it myself. It doesn’t fit my brain.

This was a journey, though. For a long time I was an “apathetic Christian” because it felt like an obligation, even though Christianity made no sense to my systemic view of the world. I would have never dared admit I was agnostic or atheist when I was 18, not even to myself.

It’s a bullshit scam that preys on weak minded people. 43 now and it hasn’t changed.

I like religious art and spaces – in fact in undergrad I wrote my final thesis on Spanish depictions of religious visions in the 17th Century – but I don’t have any faith personally. I’m 33 now but at 25 I felt similarly. I suppose I’m technically a hard agnostic since I don’t think it is possible to prove or disprove the existence of God.

At 25 I was fervently anti-religion and was obnoxiously vocal about it.

Before then, I grew up in a politically conservative and very catholic house, and didn’t know anything outside of that. To me, that was normal. Turned 18, joined the military, and started seeing more of the world. That was an eye-opening time for me because for a while I was living and working in the deep south while also making friends who were very left leaning. What I saw was that Christianity seemed to mostly be home to the meatheads, racists, nationalists, and gun nuts.

Since then I’ve had an on-again-off-again relationship with religion, but at 55 I’ve more or less decided that it’s not for me and it never really was. I don’t care what other people practice anymore, I avoid discussions about it, and I walk away when anyone starts preaching to me. Whenever the door-to-door preachers come to my house (yeah we get those in my neighborhood) I just politely tell them that I’m very comfortable with my spirituality and thank them for stopping by and saying hello.

Growing up, several winters a church we didn’t even go to provided us our home heating oil. As well as the food pantry we used being run by a nice catholic lady. That gave me an initial positive view of church in general. I did a bit of church at a young age then none until I was in my early 20s. When you find a church of any kind that is run by benevolent people, it’s a nice thing to be a part of. The social/networking aspect can be pretty helpful. The former for your mental health, the latter for your overall life. Whether you completely buy into the religious aspect is less relevant than the time/opportunities you’ll get with the people. Again, this heavily depends on finding the “right” church for you. Right means different things to different people. For me, I liked the “all are welcome” accompanied by the pride and trans pride flag at mine. That gave me the confidence to walk into my first service. Everyone is/was kind and really just getting through life together. Granted, I still only attend a few times a year. Usually when I’m feeling particulary down. I’m 31.

I grew up hanging onto the words of religious people in my life and never really questioning their actions.

At 25, and even a bit before then, I started to realize that these people’s words don’t matter no matter how they try to pretty them up for worship services. Their actions matter more.

And I realized that the actions of these people almost never matched what they preached on a Sunday.

So yeah, I’ve been cautious of religious people since then.

I’m an atheist and a member of the Universalist Unitarian church. If you have one near you, I recommend checking it out. I like to call it the church of social justice. The sermons are akin to TED talks, the money goes to all kinds of charities (often local), the music (at my church) is live and fun.

I was raised Jehovah’s Witness so I’m very familiar with the brainwashing and scams. I understand why so many people in places like this are disdainful of all religion. I also see churches as a potentially valuable third space and action hub when done right.

Raised with little religious zeal in a liberal catholic church. It was just a sort of background thing I ignored most of my life.

At 25 I was at the height of studying comparative religion and evolutionary biology. I saw it all as an integral part of how we have operated as a species, and then I pivoted out of academia and dug clams for half a decade.

I like the good religion can do. But it’s like the state: bridges are neat, but the police patrolling it can really ruin it for everyone.

I thought it was a grift and the priests only congregated with the “well to do” after mass, not the local poor.

I’ve found that once I began to view religion through the lens of reason no aspect of it provided any comfort whatsoever. The architecture, the serenity… all laid bare as a ruse. Religious artifacts, the physical, tangible aspects of a belief system all shown to be hollow and barren, and therefore stripped of any quality of serenity or comfort and serve only as an example of the capacity of mankind to be willing to accept what amounts to the suppression of other men over ourselves.

the same as my thoughts on religion as a teenager, and now. My focus is mostly on the various christiandoms since thats where most my personal experience has been, having been raised in it.

Its self centered narcissism masquerading as holier than thou goodness.

What happens when someone gets sick? They pray.

What happens when they die? Oh it was just gods plan all along.

Okay, so if god has a plan that you’re prayers cant change… Then isnt it incredibly self centered and arrogant to keep praying to him, begging him to change it for you, because you are gods special little angel and of course he’d do it for you?

and that special little entitled angel attitude tends to permeate all aspects of their life, and interactions with others. Some are better at hiding it than others, and some just ride the lightning unabashedly with their moral superiority, but all of them have some aspect of that special arrogance that only comes along when a christian does something “altruistic”, because is it really altruistic if you use ot to prosletyze at others and brag to everyone about how you’re doing your good godly duty serving the wretches?

And lets not forget the most confrontational types. the ones that never read their holy books and just use their religion and its book as nothing more than a cudgel to try to shame and force others into compliance with their (almost always) myopic world view/bigotry/etc.

and, also, not to forget the rampant fucking child molestation, rape and general physical and psychological abuse that occurs with all too frightening regularity to the point you could label Christianity a child sex/abuse trafficking organization.

Religion had a place, When the nights were dark and full of terror and people needed an explanation for the goings on in the world to have some comfort. But we understand the night now, we can generally explain most of the workings in the world, and what we cant immediately explain, we at least have enough cursory understanding to know its not some supernatural devil magic, we don’t need an ego inflating mythology to anchor us and hold us back anymore. Which is why religion in most parts of the world is on the downfall.