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.

Hypocrites, draconian believes and the fact that I never felt the so called “presence of God” or of the Holly spirit or anything really

For me, it was always the gap between what I read (the gospel) and what the people around me in church believed. I don’t know what book they read, but we never were reading about the same guy. The dude I read about would have never been okay with bulldozing the homeless, siccing the cops on people, conflating wealth with righteousness, and the government denying people basic rights. Jesus never would have been cool with a theocracy; following Christianity was always and only ever meant to be a personal choice between you and God. What broke me was when the SCOTUS ruled that gay people could get married, every church we visited was screaming about how they were being oppressed. I gave up on going to church, and, over time, re-examined my beliefs. Today, I identify as a Buddhist. Not a very good one, mind you, but it is something I find helpful for framing my worldly existence.

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.

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 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.

The church’s overall support for trump and anti-vax/anti-mask positions were a strong counter to the doctrine of sanctification, especially as support tended to increase among older populations. Sanctification is central enough to Christianity to be one of the pillars that either proves or disproves it.

Hypocrisy, politicization, hellfire, and lack of community I guess.

If religion is supposed to be the opium of the masses, it should at least leave me feeling better after church. The rising ideology was naive and attracted narcissists, and there was less and less space to hold on to the original beliefs. It started looking less like a refuge from the world and more of the world. It wasn’t perfect before but there was more flexibility and grace at least.

I used to attend church with a small following (50-60 members). The pastor seemed very kind at the time and still does some charitable things… But when my grandfather was dying in the hospital, he suggested that suffering brings you closer to God and any kind of hospice or pain-relief was a sin.

The next Sunday I attended, the pastor starting mocking the medical staff during a sermon, basically airing my family business and likened my family to Judas. I walked out and never came back.

Some of my family still attends his church. I saw the pastor a few years ago and extended my hand for a handshake and he walked away.

My mom and I talk about this whole situation sometimes (she attends a different church). “If you hear something at church you don’t agree with, don’t bring it home with you.” That was her way of saying that the pastor is just a person, too. Take what you can from a lesson and apply it for good in your life.

I was a nerd, so I tried really really hard to prove logically that my religion was the correct one… and failed.

If I’m really honest it was just because I’m a bit of a weird guy and just didn’t fit in.

I mean if all church girls loved me I would’ve probably just ignored the illogical nature of it all, at least for a while.

I was always kinda skeptical but the event that triggered my way out was when I asked my mom how can God expect people, who were raised with other religions, to believe in him instead when they simply have no idea. She said they know about God and it’s their own fault for not believing in him. And that for me was not logical because I knew from my own experience that I only believed in God because that’s all I knew.

But it took a while for me to completely stop believing in any deity or whatever supernatural power because I kept looking for reasons why we exist. Now I don’t care for that. Sure the Big Bang is mysterious and we might never solve it but there is no sense in making things up either. Everything else can be explained by science so let’s just go with that.

If the Christian God wants me to believe in him, he should stop being so vague and contradicting. Turn the moon into cheese. Pluck a mountain out of the ground and float it in the sky. Whatever, he is almighty, he should do almighty things.

It was not answering the questions that science could answer

I worked as a researcher and started applying the scientific method to the bible and faith, and it fell apart. before i tried to “disable” critical thinking on many issues in the bible and push those issues away. Also, I realized that my faith kept me from accepting responsibility for my actions and kept me externalizing responsibility to god and/or the devil and other people.

What do you mean “ex-believer”? I still use Linux every day.