This is a true “miscellaneous/personal stuff to share,” nothing important, just venting and a heart-dump. I’m sure there are many other Dopers who went the same path, nothing unique:
It took me 30 years (embarrassing how I could go so long without seeing things right in front of my eyes) but I finally realized that nearly every single reason I had, or could have, for continuing in Christianity was incredibly hollow.
I was originally going to write a long story but decided not to; I’ll just bullet-point it:
I came to realize that Christianity was never something I chose for myself, it had been assigned to me by my parents and those around me. I had no more enthusiasm for defending Christianity than a high school student has to “defend” a topic he’s been assigned to defend in a debate (i.e., “defend the Confederacy.”)
I came to realize that a universe that has God looks awfully no different than…a universe that doesn’t have God. Nearly everything can be explained as random chance or natural cause and effect.
On top of that, it sure seemed suspicious that the extravagant miracles of the Old Testament - the whole planet being flooded, 186,000 Assyrians killed by an angel in one night, the splitting of the Red Sea, etc. - conveniently happened to come to an end around the time that the scientific method of evidence-observation came into being; around 100 AD or so. Why did the miracles of the Old Testament have an unmistakable supernatural nature, such as fire coming down from heaven to burn up entire cities, but you don’t see any news headlines today like “San Francisco destroyed by fire and sulfur from Heaven” or “English Channel divided in two and people walk from UK to France on dry land?”
I realized that everyone would break up with their partner or spouse if they treated them the way God treats us. Imagine if you sent 1,000 texts or emails to your girlfriend or boyfriend, over the course of years, and they never once replied. And you also gave them 10% of your income - again, no reply. They never once showed up to talk in person either. Everyone in the world would break up or divorce at that point.
The sliding-scale. I started out believing Christianity was 90% true and good, and only 10% false and bad. Then, as years went on, it gradually became 80-20%. Then, 70-30%. Then, 50-50%. Eventually, it got to the point where the scale flipped entirely and I came to the view that Christianity was 10% good and 90% bad.
I couldn’t ignore the fact that Christians didn’t behave according to their own theology. Take Hell for instance. If Hell were really a place of horrific torment for all eternity, then it would be 1,000,000,000,000x worse than being trapped in the World Trade Center on 9/11. You’d think that Christians would be frantically scrambling about like mad to save people’s souls. One atheist had commented that if he were a Christian and really believed in Hell, he’d be willing to crawl ten miles on his knees on broken glass just to save one soul. But the average Christian spends less than 1 hour per year in evangelism.
Finally, I came to realize that - as mentioned above - the only way I could go on believing in Christianity would be if I deliberately held it to a much looser, much lower standard of evidence than I held everything else. I would never believe, for instance, a car salesman who told me “This Toyota Camry can get 200 miles per gallon.” I’d demand tremendous proof of such a claim before I’d believe it. Yet I was regularly told, and expected, to believe similar or even more far-fetched claims in Christianity - and when such claims or prophecies didn’t pan out, I was told to “forget and move on, and just keep believing the next time.” I couldn’t keep up that double standard indefinitely.
Those of you who are familiar with my posting history may find the following comments surprising but:
What about the community aspect? There are substantial sub-optimal (to put it mildly) aspects to founding a community organisation on a purported bedrock of religion but I think that belonging to some form of community is good for one’s own mental health, and for the community as a whole, and church often provides that. Will you miss that? Or perhaps you weren’t churchgoing anyway.
Edited: sorry this wasn’t supposed to be a reply to dtilque in particular. It was supposed to be a reply to the OP. Not sure how to change that now, however.
That’s about where I wound up after having been raised United Church of Christ.
I simply can’t believe one thing on Wednesday and another on Sunday. And I certainly can’t believe that my ideas about how the physical world came to be have anything to do with how moral I am.
That’s definitely big. The church has been the vast majority of my social life. So it’s kind of hard to think of what could replace it. I’ve even considered…staying as an undercover Christian - which is kind of what I’m still doing.
And one problem with backing out would be that - I’m not some unknown figure, I’m a very well-known member of the congregation because I frequently play piano for worship on stage, have to lead many Bible studies and various activities, people had suggested that I be tapped as the next leader of some organization, etc. If I backed out, I’d definitely face a barrage of inquiries or whatnot about why I’m not there. I haven’t quite figured out what to do about that.
Another, possibly even tougher issue, is that my girlfriend is a very devout Christian. Still trying to see what the best course of action about that would be too.
Eh, speaking as a lifelong atheist who spent nearly a decade very happily participating in an Episcopal church choir, I don’t feel there’s any requirement to be rigidly puritanical, so to speak, about avoiding faith-based activities.
My fellow choristers knew that I didn’t identify as Christian, and I didn’t take communion or recite the official Creed affirmations of faith. Other than that, we didn’t get into theology, and there wasn’t a problem. I was able to appreciate the things I enjoyed, like the music and the occasional ethical or spiritual insight, while just ignoring doctrinal matters I didn’t agree with. If from time to time a really inquisitive person actively pressed me for details of my religious identity and then asked why I was an atheist, I just smiled and replied “It’s the way God made me.”
Of course, singing anthems isn’t quite the same thing as leading Bible studies. Maybe you could concentrate more on the piano playing and other aspects where you aren’t expected to be explicitly promoting theological positions, and de-emphasize the other activities?
As for the situation with your girlfriend, maybe start out by just occasionally talking about the importance of religious toleration and diversity of beliefs in general, and see if she is accepting of that as a general principle. If she thinks it’s okay for other people not to be very devout Christians like herself, and if she can accept her boyfriend having different beliefs, then what does it matter if she believes some things you no longer believe? (Unless you’re going to be one of those evangelical-zealot atheists who feel it’s their duty to “save” other people from the errors of theism, or at least can’t stand being personally close to anybody who doesn’t agree with them about the errors of theism. Which I don’t recommend: neither the zealot atheists nor the theists who’ve been lectured by them really seem to be getting any enlightenment or serenity out of their self-imposed mission.)
But if a non-Christian boyfriend is a dealbreaker for your girlfriend, then that probably means a parting of the ways. It’s one thing to keep the details of your personal doctrinal viewpoint more or less on the down-low with the congregation as a whole, so you can continue having some part in a community that you value. But it’s another thing to be outright lying to your girlfriend about whether you share her religious beliefs.
Get to a point in your communication where you can be tactful, tolerant, but honest about your convictions, and the relationship will either survive it or not.
My parents took me to church and I stayed until I was fifteen.
Then (having thought about it and read the Bible) I asked my Sunday School teacher if there was any proof of God. He was a decent, honest chap, so replied “No - it’s all about faith.”
I didn’t have any.
So now I’m a well-behave atheist.
I can see the benefits of a non-fanatical religion on a local level (singing in a choir and having coffee mornings.)
But it depresses me to see terrible acts committed only because someone believed a God wanted them to.
One example of this is having to build walls to separate Protestant Christians from Catholic Christians.
One thing I wish more Christians could understand is that lack of faith, or lack of belief, isn’t a willful choice. They often consider it to be an act of deliberate rebellion against God. It’s not do much that I don’t want to believe as it is that I can’t make myself do so, or manufacture a real belief where it doesn’t exist.
May I ask what a very devout Christian like her thinks and behaves like? I infer from what you write that you have not yet talked to her about this deconstruction, so I wonder whether you are in for a surprise regarding her views: how do you know what you think you know about her?
This is a good question - from the description of your activities within the church, I would have pegged you as ‘quite devout’ (being a step or two below “very”).
Of course, even if she actually has doubts, if she isn’t as far along the journey as you are she may react poorly/defensively to your acknowledgement of loss of faith/belief.
Good on you for making the decision that makes sense for you. It sounds like you’ve been stepping away for awhile and, personally, I think it makes a lot more sense that way.
I was raised Catholic but realized in high school that I was agnostic. I couldn’t imagine how one belief system could be considered more true than another - especially when they were all based purely on faith. I realized that I did believe in a higher power but I had no interest in codifying it. Over the years I’ve met Christians that have vilified me for my non-belief, and others who have welcomed me with open arms. I actually taught at a Parents’ Day Out through a church that knew my religious stance and never tried to convert me: they just lived me for who I was. I still go to several events they have a year because the community is one I love being part of. I just don’t attend services. I hope that you can find the same kind of adjacent community.
It depends on one’s definition of “Christianity”. Christianity as Christ modeled it is amazingly simple. He had one commandment that he mandated, “Love one another.” He modeled love, patience, tolerance, commitment, and personal sacrifice. I believe in that model and would remain dedicated to it even if it was proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Christ was simply 100% human and zero percent divine.
Everything else mandated as “Christianity” by organized religion is MAN MADE, so the fact that much of it is hypocritical and even antithetical to the true spirit of Christianity is not surprising to me.
Humans tend to soil and spoil things, so to blame Christianity for being soiled and spoiled and to blame Christianity because many humans have perverted it is childish. We have free will, and WE are responsible for OUR behavior no matter what creed, if any at all, we profess to believe.
The flip side of this is, what would this say about God? If he’s constructed a world where billions of people are going to wind up in an afterlife of perpetual torment, and he supposedly loves everyone enough to die for us - nope, these two things don’t go together. Just end this business of more people being born, so that nobody else winds up in Hell. Seriously.
Yeah, most atheists and agnostics who didn’t grow up in an actively Christian family are more “who is this God person anyway?” (to quote Oolon Colluphid ) than rebelling against anything.
I became a Christian at age 32, coming from an upbringing as devoid of every aspect of any kind of religion as it is possible to have in the US. My path is quite unusual, indeed I know no one personally who has had parallel experience.
It isn’t surprising to me that so many people raised in a Christian faith hold it up to their modern understanding of how the world works and find it laughable. But it seems to me that they miss the entire heart of faith and attack the endless silly trappings that surround it. 5000 year old stories taken as incontravertable fact, fatuous interpretations, pompous self-righteous moral rules … it’s a long long list. But to me none of it is particularly relevant to my own spiritual practice.
I watch this common process with some wistfulness. So little lost and so little gained.
I’m not sure those are exactly the words you meant to type but I like what I think the sentiment was.
My comment: …
Humanity as a whole is vastly better educated than X thousand years ago. And so on average humans are somewhat better educated as well. They’re no more inclined to insight nor to charity than when they were wearing animal skins or first learning to herd proto-sheep.
For me I find the concept of “faith” to be utterly foreign.
When speaking to nice churchly folks I liken it to color-blindness: whatever they’re seeing, I’m just not. I know the words “red” and “green”, but not the reality of those colors and never will. When speaking to ignorant religionists my take is much less charitable. I live in a land of synthaesthetes filled with imaginary connections between things that do not exist and things that do. Despite their massed rantings the A above middle C is not green, nor is it prickly.
As a far greater mind than my own put it (roughly)
We aren’t made in god’s image; he’s/it’s made in ours. And we get the gods we deserve.
) than rebelling against anything.