I use to be religious. I think the most unappealing factor for me was its judgemental attitude towards worldly issues. Everything is always just black and white, right or wrong, never any grey areas. I was sick of being grouped with Christians who can preach tolerance and peace yet cause so much anger and intolerance towards others.
Basically, I was a severely tolerant Christian. I would practice my beliefs and was tolerant and accepting of those who were different to me. But then my religion encouraged me to look superiorly over them, feel the need to save them, identify myself as "different" to them.
Next was the idea of orbiting around a text. Whether or not it was 100% God breathed or not, the nature of reading causes problems. No matter what, you will always have different interpretations as a result of a text. Thou shall not kill means so many different things to people, and it is the most basic of the rules. And people are so willing to believe they are correct. I was sick of this attitude. Religion encourages the mentality of "you're wrong, I'm right".
If I had to believe in a God, he is more merciful than most religious people sort out to be. Its the people and their ignorance. It shades religious people from the more gruesome and more real things in life. So what if your belief makes you feel great inside even through suffering? So what if you find inner peace? Why shade yourself and believe in crap like fate and destiny when a baby will be born in Africa every few seconds and die straight away? Why is it so easy for you religious people to say that's fate as well and God planned it so? Life is so much more complex than that and you can just brush it off with something so insensitive as "God intended it".
I thinking the deciding factor, when I really really tore myself away was when I left my abusive parents. Ideas about fate and destiny really got to me, and I had so many people so freely assert their own opinions about me leaving my parents, whether it was a sin or not, or some crap. Really, if Christianity is truly the most tolerant religion, I have no interest in the rest.
And I think during this long transition of tearing away from religion and Christianity was through visiting this board. I had my opinions. I was able to admit there was no evidence to believe in God but other Christians would embarrass me by saying yes there is, and solid grounding ones too. Christians would come up and just laugh at atheists and say "ha, you're going to hell" as if that would scare atheists off. I hated the miseducation of some religious people, who would assume that those without religion are without morals, or that those without religion are more prone to becoming drug abusers, rapists, murders etc. I identified more with atheists when we work on the basis of logic and reasoning...
For now, I'm not sure. I'm still the searcher. I believe in God from time to time, but I don't let it blind me from the true grittiness of the world. I want to be informed, educated and aware. I don't want to blow it all onto "God intended it". I don't want to see a paralysed man walk again and not ask "how did this happen?" and just say God did it. I don't want to look lowly of others because my beliefs encourage it.
However, I do see value in religion. Quite a bit actually. I think where I stand when it comes to my spirituality is great, because I don't look lowly of anyone, and when I approach anything, any issue, any idea, I first inform myself of it as best as I can before I make an opinion. I make better decisions because I understand that not everything is all right or all wrong. I'm not saying that religion 100% clouds everyone. It clouds me and clouds most people. I like where I am, and if God exists, he'd understand why I choose to be where I am spiritually, as I feel that he'd understand why the intelligent atheist choose to be atheists.
please don't deconstruct my response. keep that to the "Does God Exist" thread... this was quite the personal post
