Why people leave church ?

By Valerie Tarico ~

If the Catholic Bishops, their Evangelical Protestant allies, and other Right-wing fundamentalists had the sole objective of decimating religious belief, they couldn't be doing a better job of it.

Testimonials at sites like ExChristian.net show that people leave religion for a number of reasons, many of which religious leaders have very little control over. Sometimes, for example, people take one too many science classes. Sometimes they find their faith shattered by the suffering in the world – either because of a devastating injury or loss in their own lives or because they experience the realities of another person's pain in a new way. Sometimes a believer gets intrigued by archaeology or symbology or the study of religion itself. Sometimes a believer simply picks up a copy of the Bible or Koran and discovers faith-shaking contradictions or immoralities there.

But if you read ExChristian testimonials you will notice that quite often church leaders or members do things that either trigger the deconversion process or help it along. They may turn a doubter into a skeptic or a quiet skeptic into an outspoken anti-theist, or as one former Christian calls himself, a de-vangelist.

Here are some top ways Christians push people out the Church door or shove secret skeptics out of the closet. Looking at the list, you can't help but wonder if the Catholic Bishops, Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachman and their fundamentalist allies are working for the devil.

Gay Baiting

Because of sheer demographics, most gay people are born into religious families, and in this country almost half are born into Bible-believing families who see homosexuality as an abomination. The condemnation (and self-condemnation) can be excruciating, as we all know from the suicide rate. Some emotionally battered gays spend their lives fighting or denying who they are, but many eventually find their way to open and affirming congregations or non-religious communities.

Between 1991 and 2011 the percent of women attending church in a typical week dropped by eleven points, from 55 to 44 percent.
Ignorant and mean-spirited attitudes about homosexuality don't drive just gays out of the Church, they are a huge deconversion issue for straight friends and family members. When Christians indulge in slurs, devout moms and dads who also love their gay kids find themselves less comfortable in their church home. Young people, many of whom think of the gay rights issue as a no-brainer, put anti-gay churches in the "archaic" category. Since most people Gen X and younger recognize equal rights for gays as a matter of common humanity, gay baiting is a wedge issue that wedges young people right out of the church. That makes Fred Phelps a far better evangelist for atheism than for his own gay-hating Westborough Baptist Church.

Prooftexting

People who think of the Bible as the literally perfect word of God love to quote excerpts to argue their points. They often start with a verse in 1 Timothy: All scripture is given by inspiration of God. (As if this circular argument would convince anyone but a true believer.) They then proceed to quote whatever authoritarian, anti-gay, or anti-woman verse makes their point, like, Whoever spares the rod hates their children . . . Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being. or Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. In doing so, they call into question biblical authority, because the Bible writers so obviously got these issues wrong. Literalists who prooftext are a tremendous asset to those who would like to see Bible worship fade away – because prooftexting on one side of an argument invites the same in return, and it is easy to find quotes from the Bible that are either scientifically absurd or morally repugnant.

Many liberal or modernist Christians see the Bible as a human document, an attempt by our spiritual ancestors to articulate their best understanding of God through the lens of imperfect human cultures and minds. Suppose such a Christian gets confronted with a verse that says, for example, Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man (Numbers 31:17-18), or No man who has any defect may come near [to God in the temple]: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no man with a crippled foot or hand, or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, . . . (Leviticus 21:17-23). He or she can simply shrug and say, "Yeah, that's ugly." A couple of years ago a group of liberal Christians even kicked off an internet competition to vote on the worst verse in the Bible. Their faith doesn't stand or fall with the perfection of the Bible. Biblical literalists, on the other hand give someone like me an excuse to talk about sexual slavery or bias against handicapped people in the Bible – in front of an audience who have been taught that the good book is uniformly good. For a wavering believer, the dissonance can be too much.

Misogyny

For psychological and social reasons females are more inclined toward religious belief than males. They are more likely to attend church services and to insist on raising their children in a faith community. They also appear more indifferent than males to rational critique of religion, like debates about theology or evolutionary biology. I was interested to notice recently that my YouTube channel, Life After Christianity, which focuses on the psychology of religion gets about eighty percent male viewers. Women are the Church's base constituency, but fortunately for atheists, this fact hasn't caused conservative Christians to back off of sexism that is justified by – you got it – prooftexting from the Old and New Testaments.

Evangelical minister, Jim Henderson, recently published a book, The Resignation of Eve, in which he urges his fellow Christians to take a hard look at the consequences of sexism in the church. According to Henderson, old school sexism has driven some women out of Christianity permanently, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. For those who stay, it means that many are less enthusiastic and engaged than they would be. Churches rely on women to volunteer in roles that range from secretary to director of Children's programs to missionaries. That takes a high level of confidence in Church doctrines and also a strong sense of belonging. Biblical sexism cultivates neither. Between 1991 and 2011 the percent of women attending church in a typical week dropped by eleven points, from 55 to 44 percent.

Hypocrisy

Christians are taught – and many believe—that thanks to the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit they are a moral beacon for society. The writer of Matthew told his audience, "You are the light of the world." That's a high bar, and yet decent believers (along with many other decent people) try earnestly to meet it. But the added pressure on those who call themselves "the righteous" means that believers also are prone to hiding, pretending, posing, and turning a blind eye to their own very human, very normal faults and flaws. People who desperately want to be sanctified and righteous, "cleansed by the blood of the lamb" – who need to believe that they now merit heaven but that other people's smallest transgressions merit eternal torture—have a lot of motivation to engage in self-deception and hypocrisy. High profile hypocrites like Ted Haggard or Rush Limbaugh may be loved by their acolytes, but for people who are teetering, they help to build a gut aversion to whatever they espouse. But often as not, the hypocrisies that pose a threat to faith are small and internal to a single Bible-study or youth group. Backbiting and social shunning are part of the church-lady stereotype for a reason. They also leave a bitter taste that makes some church members stop drinking the Kool-aid.

Disgusting and Immoral Behavior

The priest abuse scandal did more for the New Atheist movement than outspoken anti-theists like Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great), Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Sam Harris (The End of Faith) or Bill Maher (Religulous) ever could. To make matters worse—or better, depending on your point of view-- Bill Donohue of the Catholic League seems to be doing everything possible to fan those flames: On top of the abuse itself, followed by cover-ups, he is now insisting that the best defense of Church property is a good offense against the victims, and has vowed to fight them "one by one." The Freedom from Religion Foundation publishes a bi-monthly newspaper that includes a regular feature: The Black Collar Crime Blotter. It features fraud, drug abuse, sex crimes and more by Protestant as well as Catholic clergy. The obvious purpose is to move readers from Religion isn't true to Religion isn't benign to Religion is abhorrent and needs fighting. Moral outrage is a powerful emotion.

Science denial 

One of my former youth group friends had his faith done in by a conversation with a Bible study leader who explained that dinosaur skeletons actually are the bones of the giants described in early books of the Bible. Uh huh. Christians have come up with dozens of squishier, less falsifiable ways to explain the geological record: The 'days' in Genesis 1 were really 'ages.' Or God created the world with the fossils already in place to test our faith. Or the biblical creation story is really sacred metaphor. But young earth creationists who believe the world appeared in its present form 6- 10,000 years ago are stuck. And since almost half of the American public believes some version of this young earth story, there are ample opportunities for inquiring minds to trip across proto-scientific nonsense.

Like other factors I've mentioned, science denial doesn't just move believers to nonbelief. It also rallies opposition ranging from cantankerous bloggers to legal advocates. It provides fodder for comedians and critics: "If the world was created 6000 years ago, what's fueling your car?" It may produce some of the most far reaching opposition to religious belief, because science advocates argue that faith, even socially benign faith, is a fundamentally flawed way of knowing. The Catholic Church, perhaps still licking wounds about Galileo (they apologized finally in the 20^th Century), has managed to avoid embarrassing and easily disproven positions on evolutionary biology. But one could argue that their atheism-fostering positions on conception and contraception similarly rely on ignorance about or denial of biological science –in this case embryology and the basic fact that most embryos never become persons.

Political meddling

If you look at religion-bashing quote-quip-photo-clip-links that circulate Facebook and Twitter, most of them are prompted by church incursions into the political sphere. A spat between two atheists erupted on my home page yesterday. "Why can't ex-Christians just shut up about religion and get on with building a better world?" asked one. "Why can't we shut up?!" screeched the other. "Because of shit like this!" He posted a link about Kansas giving doctors permission to deny contraception and accurate medical information to patients.

I myself give George W. Bush credit for transforming me from a politically indifferent, digging-in-the-garden agnostic into a culture warrior. He casually implied that, when going to war, he didn't need to consult with his own father because he had consulted the big guy in the sky, and my evangelical relatives backed him up on that, and I thought, oh my God, the beliefs I was raised on are killing people. The Religious Right, and now the Catholic Bishops, have brought religion into politics in the ugliest possible way short of holy war, and people who care about the greater good have taken notice. Lists of ugly Bible verses, articles about the psychology of religion, investigative exposes about Christian machinations in D.C. or rampant proselytizing in the military and public schools –all of these are popular among political progressives because it is impossible to drive progressive change without confronting religious fundamentalism.

Intrusion

Australian comedian and atheist John Safran, flew to Salt Lake City for a round of door-to-door devangelism after Mormons rang his doorbell one too many times on Saturday morning. More serious intrusions, in deeply personal beginning- and end-of-life decisions, for example, generate reactive anti-theism in people who mostly just want to live and let live.

Catholic and Evangelical conservatives have made a high stakes gamble that they can regain authoritarian control over their flocks and hold onto the next generation of believers (and tithers) by asserting orthodox dogmas, making Christian belief an all or nothing proposition. Their goal is a level of theological purity that will produce another Great Awakening based largely on the same dogmas as the last one. They hope to cleanse their membership of theological diversity, and assert top down control of conscience questions, replenishing their membership with anti-feminist, pro-natalist policies and proselytizing in the Southern hemisphere. But the more they resort to strict authoritarianism, insularity and strict interpretation of Iron Age texts, the more people are wounded in the name of God and the more people are outraged. By making Christian belief an all-or-nothing proposition – they force at least some would-be believers to choose "nothing." Anti-theists are all too glad to help.

Becoming a person you Can't Be

By iwonder ~

I was born into a super-strict church. Outward appearances were the
most important things. Not only dress-wise, but attitude-wise also.
The church preached 2 works of grace: salvation, then holiness.

Holiness was huge. That was when you emptied yourself of yourself, and
were filled with the holy ghost.Proof of this was loss of any negative
emotions, the biggest of which was anger. The root of sin was removed,
and after receiving the baptism, people did not sin. I had THE WORST
time achieving this. Salvation could be lost, and there were so many
things that were sins that I couldn't stay saved long enough to
receive the holy spirit. I perceived myself as more sinful than most
(step over, apostle Paul!) because no one else in my church had the
trouble I did.

All I wanted in the world was for god to love me, and for me to be
holy. Beginning in my very early teens, I got serious about my soul,
but I could not quit sinning. The church had an altar where praying
was done, and I was there all. the. time. People began to take notice.
It was a very small church; they couldn't help but notice. I was told
that my struggles were a result of my unwillingness to die to myself.
I began to plead for god to break my will.

I began praying and fasting everyday, and in fact, made myself sick. I
thought if I were miserable enough, god would see how much I wanted to
be good enough for him to love and fill me. I was miserably unhappy
all through my teen years. I thought that was what I deserved.

The church advised me to "pray clear through". When I did that, and my
will was broken, I'd know that I'd achieved holiness.

In 6th grade, my sibs and I began attending the church school, and now
I was receiving a double whammy of my unworthiness. I was being
preached at there about my sinful heading-to -hell-self, then hearing
it at church.

Nothing I did worked, and by the time I was a Senior in high school,
I'd just about given up. I had high grades, though, that earned me a
scholarship to the church bible college. I thought maybe being
surrounded by holy people 24/7 could only help me die to myself. It
didn't. It only made me see my badness more starkly. At the end of my
first semester, I had my first suicide attempt. I mean, what did I
have to live for? I was never going to be good enough for god. I could
never be as holy as the church said I should be.

I hung in for 3 years. Then, the depression and the desperation to be
good enough became too much. I left school, and gradually the church.

In the years since then, I have also slowly let go of my belief in
god. I've come to love myself, and realize that dying to myself was
just moronic. Ironically, the more I've let go of god, the more peace
and joy I have. I never thought I'd experience these wonderful things!

This is a scary journey I'm on, I'll admit. It's also exciting. I have
more freedom now than I ever did before. Not freedom to live
hedonistically, as the church told me I would, but freedom to love and
be loved. Freedom to accept friends that the church never would have
allowed me.

It wasn't easy leaving the community the church afforded me, but I'm
finding that I belong to a much bigger (and better!) one: humanity.

I don't know where on this journey I'll be tomorrow, but I'm just so
glad I am indeed on it.

Before Life or After Life ?

By BP ~

Here's one for the critical thinkers. I swear I'll tie in religion at the end.

Dead=Not Alive; Therefore, Afterlife=Beforelife.

Soap bubble
Soap bubble (Photo credit: Raphael Quinet)
In words now: I was not alive before I was alive and I'll be not alive
after my death. So how can before life and after life be any
different?

See I don't remember the before life b/c I did not have a brain then.
I could not carry around this collection of data that we call memories
in life. Nor would I have any need for them. They do not apply. How
long was I not alive before I was alive? An hour, a day, an eternity?
As far as I can remember it was an instant and an eternity all in one.
There is no use for time when one is not alive. It is being alive that
confines us to this space time continuum. A little like being trapped
I guess. Separated from the truth that perhaps we once knew. When we
were not alive.

I like to think of being alive as not too much unlike a bubble. All
the necessary ingredients for the bubble were always there. However it
takes some sort of outside input for the bubble to exist. The
ingredients have to be combined in just the right way. Our body is
like the shell that makes the bubble visible. Allows the bubble to
exist. The way we understand it. The inside of the bubble would be
like the soul I guess, or whatever it is that life is made of. Once
the bubble is gone all the ingredients still remain. Maybe to be used
in another bubble; maybe to be used on something completely different.
I don't know. No one does. There is no proof for any theory. What I do
know is that it's putting something out of place that makes the
bubble. Think of air in water. The bubble fighting to get to the top.
Think of a soap bubble just floating around ever so delicate. Much
more wanting to pop than to remain a bubble. Everything is trying to
reach equilibrium again. That's why the bubble pops and that's why we
die. Being alive is not our natural state of being.

Well if that is true, and I can honestly say now that being NOT alive
was not so bad, then what's so scary about being not alive again? Only
the the physical act of dying? If one can accept that then there is
nothing else to do, but to see our current state (being alive) as
something like a journey. A vacation of sorts. A vacation from being
not alive. So enjoy. We all know vacations don't last very long and
for some reason when we are on them all we can think of is how we will
eventually have to go back home.

Religions make us comfortable with this eventually having to go back
thing. But you don't need 'em. It's like going to the beach on
vacation just to see a psychologist for a week to try to deal with the
thought of going back to work. It just doesn't make any sense. Enjoy
life! Accept not knowing!

2000 years of torturing by Christianity

By Carl S ~

We are NOT going away. We have tolerated 2000+ years of being
silenced, suppressed, persecuted, tortured and killed, simply because
we disagree with religious beliefs. Don't expect us to back down. Over
the span of 2000+ years, you STILL have NO evidence to verify your
claims. And with every new piece of scientific evidence to back up
natural explanations formerly attributed to invisible "supernatural"
forces, your god melts like the Wicked Witch of the West. Don't expect
us to not keep reminding you of this as long as you arrogantly try to
force your will on the rest of society as "the laws of God." You have
no more legitimacy than any of the other thousands of religions.

So, get used to our voices. Adjust to opinions and beliefs other than
your own: beliefs in the rights of humans over themselves, in the
inherent goodness of mankind, and the destructiveness which is caused
through blind, unthinking obedience to dogmas.

If you didn't want us to get so pissed off, you shouldn't have treated
us, and continue to treat us, with such indifference, contempt, and
prejudice. We are sick of being belittled. We are also sick of the
arrogance and domination of your spokesmen, the televangelist
millionaires, with your support and quiet compliance eating up monies
in their houses of worship, while our fellow human beings die like
flies from preventable causes, starvation, and religious sectarian
wars. We are sick of watching hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness
masquerading as virtue.

We will not be denigrated because we "lack" superstitions, a.k.a.
"beliefs," and do not accept invisible, supernatural, ghost-forces in
control of Nature.

We will CONTINUE to promote reason, curiosity, and skepticism, despite
your efforts to thwart such thinking and reasoning. We shall fight for
our right to free expression. If your religious beliefs were truly
right, you would never have had to resort to the slayings you formerly
engaged in as a matter of policy; such methods are the hallmark of
someone in the wrong. Without them and without fear tactics, you would
not have been able to last this long. (Remember- the ancient Egyptian
gods were in existence longer than your god.)

Without your former controlling mechanisms, you are revealed as the
manipulating man behind the curtain, and we will continue to pull that
curtain back. Without those methods, you are left to be apologists,
and you are looking pretty unreasonable and often silly with those
explanations, when not downright cold regarding human suffering and
needs.

We realize, as African-Americans, homosexuals, and all others who
suffered prejudice have found out, that we also have rights you don't
want to recognize, and that we too, must fight like hell to get them.
We do not appreciate, for example, being left out as citizens, as you
demand your sectarian prayers at public functions. None of us will put
up with further bullying. You wouldn't, if a Moslem or Hindu took over
beginning a public meeting with his/her prayers, so you understand
where we're coming from. The tyranny of the majority is un-American,
and un- Constitutional.

If what you believe and maintain is so ultra-powerful and ultra-real,
why have you done everything possible to keep yourselves frightened
lest you hear any different interpretation of reality than your own?
After 2000+ years, the best you can come up with is to tell people to
"believe." That's it? What other system except the most repressive,
asks that of humans?

We are tired of boring sermons, hearing about a "Jesus", of whom no
proof is offered that he ever existed. We do not want any more
intransigent inflexibility from any quarter. Life is too short to
tolerate these things. No one in the 21st century should be asked to
believe without evidence anything claimed to be all-important. In the
past thousands of years we have learned and want to pass on to our
children and all children what has been discovered and confirmed in
that span of time. It would be morally unfair to teach them to return
to times of ignorance as if they were founts of wisdom. We will not
allow them to be mired in dark, cruel, immoral, scriptural mindsets,
and will oppose your efforts to promulgate them. If, for instance, you
cannot accept the fact of evolution, stand aside, because your
children CAN. Do not teach them that nature is wrong because it
doesn't agree with your scriptures. Please.

Our time has come. It is long overdue that we are allowed out in the
open, speaking out and known. You have had yours, and have seized it
with force, fear, threats, killings, indoctrination, and coercion. The
world is going away from those methods. We are not "getting even," we
are allowing the free flow of ideas and the quiet voice of reason to
speak. Step aside. And listen.

The greatest suffering of all

Some idiots thought that if you believe in God, you died, you go to
heaven. If you don't believe, you burn in hell for eternity.

But just like heaven, hell is on earth.

The greatest suffering of human kind are not natural disaster, disease
or poverty, it is regret.

Regret for thing you should have done.

Regret for thing you should not done.

Don't go to church because God is not there, only confusing and lost people.

No need give your money to the church because it cannot clear your sin.

No need to beg God for mercy because God already asked you to do the
right thing so many times.

Those are all appearance thing only.

Walk the narrow path, be humble.

All you need is humility.

Fear and Loathing

By John ~

HEBREWS 6: 4-6

4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have
tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy
Ghost, 5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the
world to come, 6 If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto
repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh,
and put him to an open shame.


The first time I read those words I became convinced it was speaking
about me, and I was terrified.

It happened about 3 years ago, during a time I could only explain as
my brief sojourn from sanity, into the world of uncertainty, doubt,
fear, and misery that I now associate with religious belief.

I've always been slightly obsessive: a mixture of the passion to
understand things and my high intelligence. It's both a blessing and a
curse.

I first heard about Jesus when I was 6 years old from a babysitter at
the prompting of my mother, concerned over my eternal well-being. She
sat myself and my sister on the edge of my sister's bed and told us
about how we were sinners and needed a Savior, and I accepted Jesus
then and there.

Up until that point, I was a happy little kid atheist. Not by choice
mind you, but by default. I had no concern over 'spiritual matters'
and when I first heard about these things unseen my mind and emotions
began their lifelong plummet into the world of uncertainty and fear.

For some unknown reason, the babysitter, I still remember her name:
Thina, added as a suffix to our initial indoctrination the grave
warning: 'if you challenge the devil, you will explode.'

I remember the next day or two of my weekend was ruined, as I sat on a
bench in the park near my house ruminating over the possibility,
afraid to death that if my resilience broke for even one moment and I
said those words it would mean the end of my life.

Torture.

I quickly moved on, being the child I was, and forgot about it.

My young life was not very devout: my mother being a Christian and my
father being a devout unbeliever we rarely went to church. When I was
ten years old we moved to a new city for my father's new job.

At 13 and a new high school student, I remember vividly sitting on my
bed reading the bible at night when that thought came back into my
mind: 'if you challenge the devil you will explode.' Once more I was
plunged into the vague world of religious uncertainty and doubt,
ruminating day and night over the possibility I might at any moment
lose my resolve and be forever shorn into millions of pieces of
teenager-kibble. For weeks and months I prayed to God for strength, I
used bible verses to 'send Satan away' such as: 'If God be for us, who
can be against us' and 'All things are possible through Christ who
strengthens us.' Little did I know the solution to my problems was to
get rid of the religious thinking altogether. At the time, however, I
could not risk my eternal soul at the utter joy of being safe from
explosion over a religious loophole.

This might seem stupid to people, but understand I was a child when I
first heard about this. This unknown realm of religious possibility
was a mental reality for me since the age of 6, and it was impossible
for me at the time to get out of it.

It took me about 18 months to get over it. One day after months and
months of torture, I finally decided to face my fear and I finally
challenged the devil out loud and...nothing happened. Cathartic. A
temporary relief from the agony of obsession that I had been in the
grips of for at least a year and a half, day and night, nonstop, 24
hours a day.

But that relief was short-lived. My mind soon found new religious
things to obsess over. Demonic possession.

If I stopped believing, I was no longer saved and was at the risk of
being possessed. So even though I knew certain things must be true
about our reality, I held firm onto the notion that Christ died and
was raised and that I was saved. That's all that mattered.

A growing pornography addiction and experimentation with marijuana
grew at ages 16 and 17 and culminated in my true religious experience
at the age of 17. After watching the 'Jesus' film and seeing this man
nailed to a cross and for the first time realizing he 'died for ME' I
broke down in shame over my problems as a human being, my lying and
stealing and pornography and marijuana use, and asked him to forgive
me. A rush of peace loving and forgiving spiritual water (only way I
can describe it) flowed through me, and I became a Christian, again.

Shortly after I was baptized and when I went under the water something
inside my heart 'leapt' at the recognition that this was me being
saved, I was very happy for a time and I still have that feeling
sometimes. The best way to describe it is a 'holy fire' in my heart. I
don't know what it is, but that 'feeling' is probably the thing I have
the most difficulty reconciling with my new found agnosticism or
atheism.

Something kept me from going 'deep' into Christianity. I only ever put
my toes in, because of this deep underlying fear at all things
religious. I thought they were all very mystical and to be honest,
extremely scary, and so I sort of kept my distance at becoming too
indoctrinated into it. I don't think I could do it even if I wanted
to. It's just too weird for me, and always was.

So having been saved and having that part of my life handled I went on
to accomplish things in my life and did so for 10 years, constantly
battling pornography addiction, trying to be clean in a relationship
with my girlfriends and often denying them sex because of fear,
battling my ongoing obsession with the potential for me to be
possessed by constantly reinforcing that I was a child of God and such
things were impossible as long as I had the holy spirit inside me.

That is, until about 3 years ago when I came across that verse.
Terrified at having been a nominal christian for all these years and
that I had 'fallen away, never to return' I began to research just
what salvation really was. Much to my chagrin, I found 7 different
interpretations of that verse and 2 Peter 2 from 7 different
theologians, all saying different things. Some said I was never really
saved. Some said I had lost my salvation. Some said I was still saved
but 'backslidden.' Why wasn't there an answer? I ruminated in mental
torture, watching YouTube videos from different pastors on salvation.
I cried out to God for months, every night and day, in pure agony over
the state of my eternal being.


not

really

there

at allAnd I received no answer.

The Christian counselor I saw thought I had some kind of demonic
influence from the drugs I had taken as a teenager that was making me
question my salvation. I stopped seeing him after he gave me a
handbook on how to get rid of that. I never understood how drugs like
anti-depressants and aspirin were OK for Christians to take but
natural drugs like marijuana were not. Even though I didn't smoke
marijuana and hadn't in almost a decade, I could not reconcile this.
It just doesn't make sense.

I thought I had finally gotten an answer from God, at the pinnacle of
my mental fury he had shown me that God did all the work and that all
I needed to do was have faith and I was saved. But how did I know my
faith was enough? I heard different pastors saying that God gave YOU
the faith to believe, and I felt like I didn't really believe it,
otherwise I would have developed more 'fruits' over the past years.
Was I never really saved in the first place? Was I in danger?

And to be honest this is very hard for me to write. That know of
complete terror rises once again inside my heart as I force myself to
tell my story here.

How did Jesus' death save us at all? One pastor on youtube said it was
god's wrath poured out on him instead of us that saved us. So then,
why need him to die that way at all? One said it was his death. Well,
how does one day of torture forgive someone who tortured someone else
for 20 years, like the father who kept his daughter in the basement as
a slave? How does Jesus' resurrection mean anything at all? It just
didn't make sense.

Desperate for an answer I cried out to God, and received nothing. And
after a long time I was forced to admit the possibility that he was

not

really

there

at all.

I began to delve into atheist literature, and every bit of it made
intellectual sense to me. Evolution is actually true. It's not
possible to reconcile the evolution of man with mankind's fall in the
bible, because evolution is dependent on selection pressures, and
those include being tougher, smarter, more logical, and in human
beings' case: more social and more moral for success. Mankind was not
created perfect and chose to fall (the whole fall in Genesis is a
confidence trick anyway), mankind evolved these things. He could not
have been successful if he didn't.

I still bounce between atheism and agnosticism. I still have bursts of
religiosity and bursts of fear and terror over religious thoughts. I
know there are a lot of Christians in the same boat as me. It truly is
horrifying stuff.

I began to see most religious people very ignorant of reality in order
to hold on to beliefs, either because they must hold on to those
beliefs being true because they are afraid, or holding on to those
beliefs because they desperately want them to be true.

And to be honest, part of me wishes they were true as well. The
thought of a loving God and me being together forever and me living
forever is a nice thought. The gospel story is still an amazingly
beautiful one.

But so is Santa Claus.

12 steps recovery from Christianity Mind Poisoning

By an Alabamian ~

I admit that I am powerless to change the fact that I have been
Christian for a good part of my life.

I realize that I have within me the power to free myself from the
harmful part of my Christian past and that I am no longer bound by
promises or covenants which I was induced to make based on the false
promises of Christianity.

I make to myself a firm promise to listen in the future only to
reason, rationality, and factual evidence in making decisions about
how I should live my life, rejecting all emotional appeals,
guilt-inducing threats, myths, pretty stories, promises of castles in
the air, and superstition.

I make a searching and fearless moral and intellectual inventory of
myself with the purpose of recognizing in myself those weaknesses
which induced me to remain Christian for so long.

I am able to list the specific reasons why I can no longer be Christian.

I make the decision to do what is right, and to accept whatever the
consequences may be for acknowledging the lies and living accordingly.

I begin working through each of my Christianity-related problems of
mind, body, and relationships.

I make a list of those for whom it would be important to know of my
decision and the changes I am making in my life, and prepare myself
emotionally to discuss my decision with them all, realizing that many
may react with hurt, anger, emotional outbursts, or other
unpleasantness.

I discuss my decision with them (except in those cases where I think
it would cause greater harm to do so than not) in a calm, friendly and
loving way, without argument.

I continue to take personal inventory, and where I find artifacts of
Christianity, I carefully consider whether they should continue to be
a part of my life, or whether I should discard them.

I seek out truth wherever I can find it.

Having had an awakening and renewal as the result of these steps, I
try to be helpful to other recovering or doubting Christians, and to
practice these principles in all of my affairs.

how religion poisoned my life

By RickRay ~

Some would say I was exaggerating things with my title, "How Religion
Poisoned My Life". I've read a lot of stories from ex-Christian.net
and most of them come from people in the U.S. Those stories really
have shown how religion poisons people's lives. So, my story could be
quite insignificant to a lot of people compared to some of those
horror stories. As a Canadian I never thought people in my country
were quite as crazy religious as fundamentalists in America.

I grew up around French Catholics who weren't much on church going,
except for my grandmother who was probably the most religious of the
bunch. My mom didn't have much use for the Catholic educational system
and its religion as I remember her telling me horror stories about how
the nuns treated her in school. She sent me to go to a public school
system so I wouldn't be exposed to that kind of abuse. Glad she did! I
remember my grandmother taking me to church a few times, but since it
was all in French and mom sent me to an English school, I didn't
really know what was going on, nor did I care. Granny had me say
prayers whenever I stayed over at her place but it was more like
memory work that had no real meaning to it. I said them just to please
her because she was a wonderful lady who loved me and was there for
me. My mom and step-dad were always fighting and I remember leaving in
the middle of the night walking down the street playing my harmonica
on my way to stay over at my grandmother's house, it was sanctuary for
me.

As I got older religion didn't play a serious part of my life. I
remember having been baptized and going for my communion and
foolishness like that. My grandmother was the one who suggested I
become a teacher after I graduated high school and I thought that was
a good idea since I did like children. I married my first wife at age
25, she was atheist and things were great. I worked tremendously hard
to try and make her happy and create a good life for us. But, you know
how things go, she just wasn't happy! I was very much in love with her
and tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of pills but I guess
it wasn't my time, or I just fucked up and was looking for attention.
You know, the old self-pity story.

Along comes the second wife who was a single mother with a little boy
who was 5 years old. He was really spoiled and I tried to get him to
behave better, but you know mothers, their children can do no wrong.
Funny, I also came from a single mother and the same attitude
prevailed in that situation. I was bilingual but was more English than
French whereas she was really French. Somehow, French culture and
English culture worldviews just don't mix. She had never really shown
any interest in religion, even though her mother was super religious.
It wasn't til about 7 or 8 years into the marriage that she started
showing interest in going to church and following the Catholic
religion. I played along thinking that she'd get it out of her system
after awhile. Wrong! She was on her way to some holy spirited life.
She was getting kind of psychotic and nothing I ever did was good
enough for her. I told her if she wanted to go to college and
university to become a teacher I would pay for it and support her
through it.

The summer she graduated from a French Teacher's College, she told me
to get lost. At the time we had her son who I had adopted and given my
name to who was now 16, and my younger biological son who was 8. She
decided that spring that she, her sister, our kids and her sisters 2
kids would go for a trip out east and be back in 3 weeks. She told me
she wanted me out of the house when she got back. Go figure, after
everything I did for her!

When they returned from the trip I had found an apartment a block away
from the house so I could be close to the kids and maybe she would
have thought about getting back together. She told me she had planned
this and didn't want me around. I'm sure her sister helped make that
decision.

She wanted a divorce and didn't want to go to counseling that I had
suggested. She just kept putting me down and saying nasty things.
Anyway, not long after I moved to a place of my own I discovered she
was having all kinds of mental problems. She was ripe for the picking!
Along came the evangelicals. They snagged her, hook, line and sinker,
and that's where she's at today, 17 years later.

I became very bitter and just wanted my biological son with me who
eventually came to live with me when he started high school. She kind
of lost it after that and would pop over to my place every once in
awhile proselytizing and telling me god was the most important thing
in her life. I asked why the kids were not the most important thing in
her life. But, she kept on blabbing about how god would take care of
everything. On one hand she would say she missed going to the cottage
and on the other hand turn around and tell me she was going to go
after my pension but it would cost her $15000 to get out of our
divorce agreement. She was definitely going through a rough time but
couldn't bring herself around to asking me if I wanted to get back
with her. I wouldn't have anyway, because she had already persuaded me
one summer to go and live with my brother for a couple months so she
could have some alone time. That should have been a signal to me back
then.

I did manage to get back into a relationship with my adopted son, but
he had decided to go back to taking her last name. I always wondered
what kind of horrible things she must have told him to make him want
to do that. Weird, but that's exactly what my mother did to me with my
step-dad. Gave me his name then when I was 16 she changed my name back
to hers! Weird, coincidental , or what? I know my mother was a mental
case from the way she treated my step-dad with disrespect and disdain
but I knew she loved me and wanted the best for me, but at least she
stuck it out with him, although I don't know how he did it. They both
died about 4 months apart from each other from lung cancer as they
were both heavy smokers. Somehow age 59 and 62 don't seem to be very
old. But I digress.

My younger son got married to a wonderful Canadian Sikh girl whose a
teacher and they're both moving to Australia for awhile. By the way,
they're both freethinkers. My adopted son is still closer to his mom
and is somewhat religious but not extreme like his mother. I'm 63,
living alone with my cat, belong to a Humanist group and have a
freethinking, humanist, atheist best friend. I've been retired from
teaching for 10 years and I'm at a point in my life where I don't
think I can live with anyone as we tend to get set in our ways. As
long as we have special friends who accept you for who you are and
share most of the same worldview, then life isn't so bad. The biggest
regret is the effect that divorce has on children and the long term
effects. With a 40% to 50% divorce rate I could not stand having to go
through that kind of pain and monetary suffering ever again Perhaps
some of us are destined to live alone. With all the atheist blogs and
documentaries that show the damage religion does to society and what
it's done in the past, it still boggles my mind that people don't take
the time to scrutinize the religion they believe in. I say, "Question
everything." "Accept nothing without evidence." "Use every atom of
critical thinking skills you have to disprove ancient dogmas" and be
the best person you can by simply following "The Golden Rule".

The Prey

By Lillian ~

This weekend, I got in my car and made the 5-hour trip to see a friend
that I have had since college. Our lives have diverged a great deal.
Anna has had a hard life, failed marriages, money problems, alcohol
and drugs...but she is my friend, nonetheless.

A brother is all that remains of her family. When I arrived at her
house she was drunk. We talked as we usually do and I heard the same
things I have been hearing for years. This time she spoke of her
'Pastor'. "What pastor?" I asked. "You're Jewish!"

Ans so began her story of her being accepted into a Church and being
baptized. She told me we needed to worry about the afterlife and the
prophecies of the Bible.

Armed with my new Ex-Christian strength, I asked her why was she doing
this. And she said, "I want a family. I want a eulogy when I die. I
have a lot to offer a Church". I didn't know what to say. She is so
very alone and this Church is 'taking her in'.

Who am I to judge her? I did my best to warn her. I wish she could
have found a family with AA rather than this.

taking action

By Jaded Rogue ~

Like many here I was also raised in a fundamentalist evangelical
household with strict adherence to a literal interpretation of the
Bible. After finishing seminary and pastoring a local congregation for
a couple of years, my father decided to become a missionary. When I
was about 8 years old we, my mother and my younger sister and two
brothers, moved to Japan to fulfill this "calling". Here we lived for
a decade while my father went to language school and established a
church. I attended public school until the tenth grade after which I
attended an international Christian high school.

Around the age of 15 I began to deeply question the reason and
validity of the very tenets that I had been heavily indoctrinated with
throughout my life. Occasionally I would question my father about
particular philosophical notions and the unwieldy contradictions that
the Bible posed. Furthermore, about life in general. The responses
were always Bible verses with a circular rhetoric that never answered
my questions and left me feeling emotionally detached from my father.
Consequently, also due to being an adolescent who neither felt like an
American and certainly wasn't Japanese, a rebellious stage ensued.

After a few contentious confrontational years, at the age of 18 I
walked out of my home and onto the streets as I could take it no
longer. With no family or other options for support (all the people I
knew were from the church), I lived on the streets until I was
arrested for squatting in an empty hut at a remote temple. Suffice to
say there is much I am leaving unsaid as the whole story would fill a
volume, however, for all intents and purposes I will continue in
short. At this point my father concurred with the elders of the home
church citing Titus 1:6. "An elder must be blameless, the husband but
of one wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the
charge of being wild and disobedient." As a result, having no visa or
other options to stay on in Japan on my own accord, our family moved
back to the U.S. After that I was left to fend for myself, making my
own way with the skills (or lack thereof) I had gleaned over this
time. Now I am 36. After being thoroughly disheartened with the lack
of education, petty politics, and the pitiful prospects offered by
American universities, I have fallen back on a life of unemployment,
depression and addiction.

I am writing this because I want to find a course of action. Although
I have spent some time surfing the internet looking I can't seem to
find what I'm looking for. What I tend to find are articles like Dr.
Marlene Winell's "Its Hard to Get Help." While very informative, there
does not seem to be a course of action described. What is being done
to amend the educational system to include psychiatric training to
assist those affected by Religious Trauma Syndrome? What is being done
to assist those missionary kids, pastors kids, or any other people who
have been raised under the cloak of misguided religious fervor? Are
there "halfway houses" to give hope and a base from which to form a
reasonable life for those who are outcast by family and church? Are
there funds, non-profits that assist in the education of those same
people who want to fight back through the system?

I want to know. I want to find a way to contribute.

10 years journey out of christianity

by TexasOtaku
 
This story of my long, 10 year deconversion from Christianity to
agnostic atheism (2000-2010) has been a long time coming. It has been
very painful to write this, but my story needs to be told: A tale of
southern old-time religion deceiving a gullible teenage boy;
implantation of distrust, homophobia and misogyny; an emotional
tailspin; changing religions; being sucked in by a cult; to finally
leaving religion and spirituality and accepting myself as a human
being.

I went through three distinct stages of religiosity before coming to
rest at agnostic atheism: fanatical believer who wanted to be saved
(Christianity), fanatical believer who believed he was saved but
needed to improve (Noachism), to fanatical believer who believed that
he wasn't worthy of saving (a cult).

In all three cases, my very identity was attacked and I was
essentially coerced into not being my true self, which is one of the
most distinctive features of organized religion. I was told to give up
what made me who I am in order to achieve: favor from bible god,
salvation, happiness and enlightenment, among other things. I ended up
betraying myself multiple times before I figured out that I had to
stop doing that shit.

There are themes that run through my deconversion story:

1.) Being scared of sex
2.) Suppression of sexuality
3.) Suppression of my true self
4.) Intellectual traps
5.) Searching for an imaginary standard
6.) The seeds of hatred being planted
7.) Mind control through the most evil psychological traps

Although Christianity is only one of three pieces of the puzzle, I
must include my time as a Bnei Noach (see below) and my time as a cult
member, in order to highlight one of the greatest acts of negligence
in Western religion: It does not give you real emotional coping
mechanisms to deal with the toughest times in your life.

I was born in mid 1981 and my story begins just like all the others
born in different years; I went to an Assembly of God church every
Sunday morning as a kid, but I never liked getting up on Sunday
mornings. If I ever did get up on a Sunday morning, it was because I
wanted to play Nintendo. That was all that was relevant to me, along
with cartoons and comic books. I never liked getting up and having to
put on formal clothes (a thing which I am still fairly reluctant to
do, even today).

The adults at Sunday school knew what the kids were into, and would
try to indoctrinate us by leading us away from what we liked as kids.
I vividly remember a puppet show I saw in Sunday school when I was
around 12. Even the pink butterfly puppet looked sad to be in Sunday
school, with its frowning face and sad eyes. It went something like
this:

Sunday School Director: "So, what's the most important thing in life?"

Puppet: "Nintendo" (You should have heard the voice, it sounded pathetic)

Sunday School Director: "No, Jesus Christ is!"

So, the church tried to hook us at a young age. Some fell prey to the
threat of hell and "gave themselves to Jesus" at a young age. The
church had almost got me as a kid, but I was saved from that nightmare
with a specific twist (strangely enough, it was a nightmare that ended
up turning into a good dream). I remember being around 9 years old and
dreaming about judgment day. I was is the store with my family when
suddenly everyone got raptured away except for me. I remember
everything starting to set on fire and the temperature started to
rise, as if the world itself was turning into hell. I remember the
devil appearing in front of me and telling me that I was damned, but
then I remember grabbing him by the tail and smashing him against the
wall until he was nothing but dust and vapor. Then Jay-bus appeared
and told me that since I had defeated the devil, everyone was saved
from hell, and then I went to heaven.

Despite having a very well-admired extended family that valued
education, there were fundie elements in it that permeated down to its
very core; everything was taken seriously and I mean seriously. As a
young pre-teen at age 11, I played The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the
Past and absorbed everything about it. I loved its storyline and would
quote lines from it all the time. I also had a poster of the Master
Sword that I proudly showed to family members and I described it by a
line used in the game: "The Sword of Evil's Bane." An older member of
the family (whom I miss dearly) told me "There's something that really
is evil's bane, and it's called the Holy Spirit." I remember feeling
confused and asking myself "What does church have to do with this
game?" Since I wasn't under the spell of the Jeebus cult yet, I
scratched my head and went about being a kid.

Another instance of this happened when I turned 14, I bought Final
Fantasy 3 (or 6, depending on your point of view) on my 14th birthday
and loved the colorful world of the game and how the characters used
magic. Again, I become absorbed in everything about the game. I was
also an aspiring creative fiction author who wrote and told stories
(incorporating elements from the game into them). I would often join
my great great aunt as she walked up and down our little private
neighborhood road and tell her these stories, but whenever I got
around my great grandmother, she would hear nothing about magic, as it
was "the devil's works." Part of me was still a child, and I was still
really confused as to why magic was considered evil as just a
storytelling element in a work of fiction. Video games fueled my
imagination, and I could never consider living life without hearing
amazing stories outside the bible. For the next 14 years, religion
would try it's hardest to rid me of outside influence (but would
ultimately fail).

NOTE: Don't misunderstand me, I do not hate or blame my family for
being like it is/was. My great grandmother was very religious, yes,
but she was also one of the kindest people I have ever known. She was
well-respected in the community and was someone that was truly dear to
me, even after I quit being Christian. The other elderly members of my
family that I have mentioned, along with my great grandmother, grew up
in a time when there were no computers or video games, and access to
outside information (i.e.- fantasy stories, etc.) was severely limited
or controlled. The most elderly members of my family have passed away
without ever knowing about my abandonment of Christianity. My parents
saw how the world was changing and they did their best to protect me
from the "old-time religion" and its backwardness.

I didn't fall under the spell until the teenage years. Like all other
human beings, my hormones kicked in and I started thinking about women
(and sometimes men, but 99% of the time I fantasize about women.) I
didn't know at the time that it was perfectly normal for many
predominantly straight people to occasionally fantasize about the same
sex, according to what I read from Alfred Kinsey years later. I
remember feeling so guilty as a Christian when I had my first
homosexual fantasy at age 15. I felt so distressed and felt like I was
going to hell. I was under so much stress that I never realized that
there was actually a pattern to my homosexual fantasies! Religion
keeps people in so much of an emotionally distressed state that one
has no way of objectively observing oneself!

In a related topic, I was scared into not exploring intimate sexuality
from the sex-ed programs in the South, showing graphic pictures of
STDs (or STIs, as they call them now) and advocating abstinence. I
became abstinent on the spot, vowing never to have sex until I married
a Christian girl because SURELY Christian women would never do
anything immoral. And she would OBEY, as well (an element of
misogyny). Since I was abstinent, my only option left was
masturbation, but of course, I would be "impure," according to the
church. Many of us religious people in my backwoods hometown were also
"conditioned" to assume that all gays had HIV/AIDS.

What made me start to question Christianity - years before college -
was the one unforgivable sin mentioned in Matthew, Mark and Luke:

Matthew 12:31-32:
"Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men,
but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. "And whoever
shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him;
but whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be
forgiven him, either in this world, or in the world to come."

Mark 3:28-30
"Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and
whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the
Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin"
because they were saying, "He has an unclean spirit."

Luke 12:10
"And everyone who will speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall
be forgiven him; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it
shall not be forgiven him."

Verses taken from http://preacherstudy.com/blasph.html

With changes in my brain that occurred concurrently with the physical
changes that hormones brought, my OCD began to kick in my teenage
years at around age 14. It fixated on those above lines and my mind
kept saying the impious line "Fuck the Holy Spirit" over and over (I
know there are more formulaic and traditional ways to blaspheme, but
this is what my mind chose). I stuttered often and stopped speaking
mid-sentence if any word I planned to utter sounded like any word in
the phrase "Fuck the Holy Spirit." That made for many an awkward
conversation.

One day, my mother was picking me up from school and I started having
another "Fuck the Holy Spirit" attack. I was so distressed that I
started talking to bible god while my mother was distracted. I prayed
to bible god to "Protect me" in a very broken voice, pressing my
agonizing face against the glass of the family truck. "Protect you
from what?" my mother asked me. I turned and said "Nothing" and leaned
my face back up against the window. I spent hours and hours fighting
these obsessive thoughts, and I often had to wait to feel better after
begging bible god to help me and "protect me" from evil thoughts. He
never answered and those waiting times for happiness to come often
lasted for hours. These "Fuck the Holy Spirit" attacks. I remember
sitting in my room when I was 14, listening to the birds outside my
window, hoping for bible god to answer my prayers. I kept trying to
reassure myself that I hadn't blasphemed the Holy Spirit, but would it
have bothered bible god to have immediately cared for me. On Christmas
Eve in 1996, I was baptized in the Baptist church down the road from
my house, but I still didn't feel saved. As I talked with my family in
the cold night air, I felt a severe uneasiness.

When I first started obsessing with blasphemy of the Holy Spirit at
age 14, I asked my mother about it. She was shocked, as my uncle had
asked her the same question at the same age in the very same manner
that I had, with the exact same words (my mother practically raised my
uncle while my grandparents worked their jobs). She told me that as
long as I didn't say what was in my mind (i.e. - "Fuck the Holy
Spirit") with all my heart, then I would be okay. This didn't satisfy
me for some reason, and I continued wondering why that was the only
unforgivable sin.

The "Fuck the Holy Spirit" attacks also paired up with my immense fear
of hell. One night I saw the ending of the movie Ghost and had my
stomach knot up. After the movie ended with the main character Sam
going to heaven (shouldn't he have gone to hell, as well, for playing
a part in the death of two people, even though they were assholes?), I
went into my closet to "pray to the Lord in secret" and cried, praying
that I would be cured of my OCD and not go to hell. This was typical
of my late middle school years and early high school years which were
wrought with formulaic prayer such as "Let me go to heaven" and other
fluffy cookie-cutter Christian American Dream stuff like "Help me go
to a good college." "Help me have a (Christian) wife and children,"
etc. Now, with bible god opting not to show himself, as bible god is
wont to do, life was getting ready to punch me in the figurative face
repeatedly. It wasn't bad enough that I was already bullied in East
Texas schools, I was also being bullied by this evil psychological
system: "If you cross the line (i.e. - blaspheme the Holy Spirit) it's
hell for you." I'm amazed that I am a sane person today.

Not only that, but my very religious great-grandmother, despite being
a very well-meaning person, gave me a fundamentalist book explaining
every way that the human being is evil. That fundie book used science
and bastardized it to try and make it look like bible god had created
everything in a certain way. For example it claimed that bible god
created the water molecule with three atoms (representing the trinity)
and also made it to be life-giving, just like the trinity of bible
god! It made so much fucking sense! With an underdeveloped critical
thinking mechanism, I, being an impressionable 15 year-old teenager in
early 1997, I swallowed it hook, line and sinker. This was bad for me,
because before religion had interfered in my personal life for the
first time, I had just gotten into Japanese animation (or anime). It's
full of nudity and extreme violence sometimes, and after I got that
book from my great-grandmother, I started destroying the collection I
had worked a full summer mowing lawns to buy. Fortunately, my parents
caught me in the act and took away the book after making me explain
why I was destroying my hard-earned stuff. They took the book away and
told me that I should just forget everything I had read in it. It was
the quick action of my parents that kept most of my anime collection
intact. One anime, Project A-Ko (the one that got me into anime, along
with AKIRA), was the victim of this purging and another one while I
was in a cult, several years later (see below).

I was so lucky to have progressive-minded parents (who overlooked all
the nudity and extreme violence in anime). By the time I was a
teenager, we had stopped going to church as a family on Sunday
mornings. My dad needed to work to support our family and get us ahead
in life. My mom had been insulted at church by bible thumpers that
kept asking her why my dad had stopped going to church on Sundays, so
she stopped going as well. By this time, I went to church of my own
accord with my "friends" on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. I
thought I would really bond with fellow churchgoers, but there was
always this underlying impression that I would never fit in. I
suppressed that feeling, since I was very much afraid of hellfire.
We'd have sessions when we'd walk around the church, shaking each
others' hands and singing hymns, but all there was was the false
smiles, shallow lifestyle and lack of interest in life outside the
church.

Another thing about Christianity interfering in my anime fanhood was
that I saw everything through "Christian-colored glasses." There was
one title where a character was equivalent of the messiah and died in
a church, with all the Christian symbolism (I think it was called
Kasshan: Robot Hunter). Project A-Ko: Part 4 had a poorly drawn
Jay-bus on a crucifix and those caused me a lot of personal distress
to see Christianity so blatantly "insulted" as I interpreted it. By
the time I was in college, I had been able to shake this off and watch
stuff like Neon Genesis Evangelion, which is chock full of Christian
symbolism.

Christianity permeated into many aspects of my life. I took my bible
to school all the time, despite the many warnings of my parents not to
do so. My high school class ring had Christian themes engraved on it.
I read the bible in my free time instead of playing video games. As a
matter of fact, sometimes I had to force myself to read my bible,
which is completely unnatural! I used to say "Lord be with you" all
the time to people when leaving their presence, but most of all it not
only made me feel bad about my occasional homosexual fantasy, but it
tried to attack my heterosexuality. I was always told to avert my eyes
when I saw lustful images by the fundies, and one time, there was an
incident in which my dad snapped at me for not looking at women in
bikinis on a TV show we were watching. He said "Son, I'm worried about
you, " and was really concerned that I was gay (my dad, though
progressive and not a homophobe, sometimes worried about me being gay
when I was a teenager, as I suspect many dads are).

I very soon got over that after both my parents found out I was at
least watching anime with lots of female nudity. They also told me
that it was okay for me to watch dirty shows on channels like HBO and
Showtime at night, and that they trusted me to do the right thing when
it came to sexuality (they had talked to me about sexuality in
addition to the sex ed I got in high school). I have the freaking
coolest parents ever. Posted Image

I tried my hardest to be a progressive "cool" Christian like the very
few I have encountered in my life. I tried to keep the best principles
like "Love thy neighbor" and be progressive in the manner of "Sex is
okay and natural," but... Okay, here I make a very nerdy sci-fi
comparison here. If any of you have read (or watched the film
adaptations of) 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: Odyssey Two, you will
know exactly what I'm talking about. HAL 9000, the computer that
controls the spaceship Discovery in these two books/films receives two
conflicting sets of orders.

From the HAL 9000 Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000

"The novel explains that HAL is unable to resolve a conflict between
his general mission to relay information accurately and orders
specific to the mission requiring that he withhold from Bowman and
Poole the true purpose of the mission. With the crew dead, he reasons,
he would not need to be lying to them. He fabricates the failure of
the AE-35 unit so that their deaths would appear accidental."

From the 2010: Odyssey Two Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia....10:_Odyssey_Two

"The crew are worried that HAL will have the same neuroses on
discovering that he will be abandoned yet again..."

"Neuroses" is a fitting word for what was happening to me when I had
the conflicting orders of progressive Christianity, which gave me the
right to cherry pick the good stuff out of Christianity and what I
heard from fundie Christianity, which told me that I had to follow the
bible to the letter or risk hellfire. The fundie part would have won
had my parents not stepped in and found me destroying my anime.

I could also never understand the people that walked away from
Christianity while I was a "devout Christian" while I was struggling
with my "neuroses" of fighting between what my parents told me about
sexuality and what fundie Christianity was instilling in me about it.
One day, I was trying to "spread the gospel" and was talking with a
girl who seemed of "loose morals." She told me that she was Christian
at one point, but the she broke loose and now had sex as much as she
wanted, as was now "wild as a buck ." I remember literally cringing
from fear in her presence, as if I were about to burst into flame.

Christianity has a way of singling a lot of people out who try not to
be hypocrites. After I took a personal vow of abstinence for bible god
(after being scared away from sex with those grotesque pictures of
STDs) and dreaming of that one day I would find a good Christian girl
to consummate a Christian marriage, I found out that my best friend
and a local church girl were dating and having sex all the time. I was
like "WTF? Why do they get to have sex? They're hypocrites!" My best
friend abandoned me for a while, just to hang out with his
"girlfriend" in the mornings. I remember being so lonely while
watching couples hang out and people snickering at me for being a
Christian who waited to have sex. I felt like there was a spotlight on
me sometimes that screamed "HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE'S A CHRISTIAN
VIRGIN!" It seemed like everyone in East Texas was living a double
standard, and I was right. They pretended to be righteous to save face
in public! It was okay as long as they were Christian! No wonder
people from East Texas are so twisted (in a bad way)! That word
"neuroses" comes to mind again.

My hometown was full of fundie ideas from everywhere. There's a
pentecostal church that believes that it's the only group going to
heaven. My Christian friends in high school came from all
denominations; one of them was in another pentecostal church that
believed blasphemy of the Holy Spirit was as simple as saying "It's
simple for the Holy Spirit to do." (O_O) I can't even begin to
describe how many fundies per capita were in my hometown. With high
school graduation, I left most of those people.

When I started going to college, I immediately joined the Christian
organizations there and tried to find someone to date, but to no
avail. I had a crush on this one girl that was so intense, but she
never returned my feelings. Then later, I realized that most of the
Christian girls I wanted to date were either all taken, or so shallow.
They never wanted to get serious with me. It all seemed like they were
going through the motions of college and living their cookie-cutter
Christian lives.

By the end of my first year in college, I was an emotional wreck due
to the constant intrusive thoughts of "Fuck the Holy Spirit." I
constantly worried about ending up in hell. I wondered ¨How can Jesus
forgive all, if there's just one unforgivable sin that's so easy to
commit?" I kept wondering why that one thing was unforgivable, while
everything else was okay to be forgiven for. What was so special about
the Holy Spirit that blaspheming it was unforgivable? Why did Jesus
never give a reason for it?

Finally, on the morning of July 1, 2000, I woke up around 5:15 and my
OCD almost immediately began to fixate: "Fuck the Holy Spirit" "Fuck
the Holy Spirit" "Fuck the Holy Spirit" "Fuck the Holy Spirit" "Fuck
the Holy Spirit" my mind kept going on and on as I bit my tongue.
Then, at 5:30, I had decided that enough was enough: If I was
condemned and bible-god was not going to help me, no matter how grave
my suffering was, then I would check out the non-Christian world and
take my chances, damnation or not. If I was to be damned with no help
from bible god, I might as well enjoy life before I went to hell.

What had transpired was the first set of weights, shackles and binding
elements of religion falling away. It would take another 10 years for
the rest to fall off.

I wandered the Internet and started reading about other religions at
around 6:30 AM. Shortly after I dropped Christianity. I became an
apostate just around a month short of my 19th birthday; lo and behold,
"Fuck the Holy Spirit" went away almost immediately. I became a "Bnei
Noach," which is Hebrew for "Child of Noah," followers of the seven
laws of Noah:

From the Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Noahide_laws

1. Prohibition of Idolatry
2. Prohibition of Murder
3. Prohibition of Theft
4. Prohibition of Sexual immorality
5. Prohibition of Blasphemy
6. Prohibition of eating flesh taken from an animal while it is still alive
7. Establishment of courts of law.

Bnei Noach are basically worshipers of the Abrahamic bible god in a
heavily modified form of Judaism for non-Jews. The opinions and
commentary on the "sinful nature" of masturbation seemed to have
changed since I last was a Bnei Noach in 2003, but certain Bnei Noach
believed that masturbation is evil and counted as a sin under the
fourth law. As of now, rule 4 only applies to incest, adultery, and
homosexuality (HA! Like homosexuality is a sin!). I leaned toward the
other side of Noachide opinion and let my lustful side out, since I
was free of Christianity. My passions poured forth unbridled. I had 6
months of guilt-free masturbation and thought I would work my way into
a relationship until February 2001, when a personal nightmare of mine
began to unfold which I won't talk about, since that would greatly
extend the length and make my testimony into a book.

Noachism, as it's called (along with many other names), brought with
it its own set of rules. It was a lot less strict than Christianity.
To worship g-d (I wrote bible god's name like the Jews do to prevent
his name from being defiled) was the number one priority. I had wished
to talk to the local rabbi about what exactly constituted idol
worship, but the secretary who took calls for the rabbi said she had
heard of the Bnei Noach but told me not to bother with speaking to the
rabbi. It was among the most devastating things I had encountered as a
Bnei Noach, and it hurt so badly. My fundie Chrisitan programming
began to take over again, but this time it had rewritten itself into
my Noachism.

One day, I couldn't bear to keep the secret from my parents. I left a
letter where I knew my mother would find it while I went out to have
fun. It bothered me thinking what my parents would do once they found
out I was no longer in "the flock." I came home at night to my mother
waiting for me. She hugged me and told me she would love me no matter
what I was, and that she didn't believe that I was going to hell. My
dad still loved me unconditionally when my mother told him. Again, I
have the most awesome parents, ever. Posted Image

Unfortunately for me, despite having the best parents in the world,
three things combined in the above-mentioned nightmare to keep me in a
religious stupor for nearly another decade:

1.) My critical thinking skills were not fully developed.
2.) Being sheltered in religion, I had not learned real emotional
coping skills for dealing with hardships.
3.) I had (and still have) a vivid imagination which could calculate
endless scenarios, which led to a mental and emotional downfall.
Fortunately, I now have it under control.

These factors, combined with the real world, were about to
sucker-punch me so hard that the emotional damage was nearly
irreparable.

Beginning in February 2001 and continuing through December 2001, my
nightmare grew from a tiny event to a full-on emotional crisis. My
wild imagination spun out of control from a series of personal events
and left me in an even worse emotional state than Christianity had
left me. Being a Bnei Noach, I asked "Why does god let bad things
happen to good people? I did everything right and I'm his loyal
servant. What did I do wrong?" I would get so upset for the bad
situation I was in that I wrote in my journal and begged bible god to
answer me. I don't have my old journals with me at this time, but I
wrote something along the lines of:

"Don't you even care what's happening, g-d?" "Sometimes I think g-d
doesn't care about me."

I prayed and begged to be delivered, but no answer came. I read about
the story of Job and all his trials and tribulations, but it still
gave me no comfort. I wanted to ask the rabbi so many questions, but
her secretary was rude to me and never told me when she was available.
I also felt that if I walked in on a Sabbath day that I would really
be bothering people. I was also keeping my Noachism a secret from
parents at the time, so I couldn't make up an excuse to leave.

The questions kept building up. "If God is to make me suffer for an
unspecified period of time, how long would I have to wait?" It seemed
really cruel of bible god to repay loyalty that way. Poor Job had a
lot of pain inflicted on him on a fucking bet! Pain and suffering
inflicted by Satan! With the permission of god! What the fuck kind of
sadist is bible god? Did he get pleasure in watching me suffer after I
followed him and helped to protect his people? Mind you, these
questions are rhetorical, as I no longer believe in bible god. I had
just one question: "If bible god allows suffering in order to teach us
a lesson in order for us to grow, how does he expect us to grow if all
of us don't see the context or don't even know that we need to grow?"
Think about that for a while.

I lived in Austin for a while during part of the time I was a Bnei
Noach. I wanted to get an Associate's Degree in Japanese from Austin
Community College (so I could get into UT Austin's Asian language
program), but my depression was just too great. I was jobless in
Austin and looked for work to sustain myself there for around 9
months, as I tried to please bible god by doing anything I could to
regain his favor. My fundie programming struck again. One day, I
decided that I should "give up my idols" and surrender myself to bible
god's will, devoting myself only to him. I took 75% of my anime DVD
collection and almost half my manga collection to a used bookstore and
sold them. I thought to myself at that moment "Now bible god will pay
attention to me and I can finally get a job and continue my language
studies here." That was to never be, I ended up finding a job, but it
was only temporary and I hand to end up moving back to my hometown in
late 2003. I felt like a failure, even though I had quit believing in
bible god by the time I made the decision to move back. I was an
emotional wreck yet again, because I had still not learned any
emotional coping mechanisms.

By mid 2003, I stopped believing in the Abrahamic bible god
altogether. Had the secretary not been so cruel to me, would I have
remained a Bnei Noach? Probably for much longer than 2 years and 9
months.

NOTE: I hold nothing against the Jews and do not blame them for my
falling away from Noachism and I do not blame them for the second
"purging". It was my Christian roots that blackened my time as a Bnei
Noach.

Again, I wandered through religions, and since I had my wild
imagination and strong emotions (along with the fact that I still had
no real emotional coping mechanisms), I was vulnerable and set up for
an even more dangerous position: being in a new age cult.

You see, in February 2004 my religious/spiritual curiosity got the
better of me again. I was interested in astral projection and other
spiritual topics. As a consequence, I got hooked into a new age cult
(which I won't name) which basically said all religions have a hidden
path to salvation. Basically, it was the same rigamarole that
Christianity put me through, only that they took advantage of my more
developed logic and were very sneaky, withholding knowledge from me
that they knew about human sexuality. They preached that lust was the
root of all evil, and that to end this endless loop of suffering, a
human being had to bring his or her sexual urges under control. It
used mainly Buddhist principles and terms, saying that I had to detach
myself from this material world and threw a bit of elements from other
mainstream religions into the mix. It was at this time that I learned
real Buddhist-type coping mechanisms in the form of mindfulness
exercises and I started to slowly climb out of the emotional rut I had
been stuck in since February 2001.

When they found out that I was a very lustful person, they used that
to their advantage, saying that I had to suppress my sexuality and
re-channel it for "divine purposes". They even said things like like
the Mormons do, stating that masturbation leads to homosexuality, even
if your fantasies start out being about women (akin to what I read
about the Mormon kid in the article here at ex-C:
http://new.exchristi...of-tyranny.html). And since I had (and still
have) the occasional homosexual fantasy, I took this as a revelation
that their "spiritual path" was the true path to salvation. This was
the catalyst for me to get fully suckered into the cult for 6 years.
Later, I read about Dr. Alfred Kinsey's research on human sexuality
and how it's normal for quite a few predominantly straight people to
be gay every once in a while (to varying degrees). This cult I was in
said that once one reaches a certain degree of homosexuality, he or
she can never obtain salvation in that "karmic cycle," and that one
would have to suffer in hell before being reincarnated in order to try
and reach salvation again. Their description of the spiritual "point
of no return" made me paranoid about my own behavior. Not only that,
the cult began to dominate every aspect of my life. They took over far
worse than Christianity ever did, but it was a slow process.

After buying the cult literature in mid 2004, I remember reading about
having to embark on a long "path to enlightenment" which entailed
having to give up all my material attachments to the world in order to
attain peace. "Detach yourself from the material world!" it cried as a
constant theme. I remember after having read that "ultimatum" that I
cried in my bed for what seemed a long time. But after having read
about lust and recalling how out of control it was in the first
several months after I had converted to Noachism, I reasoned that it
was my lust that had caused that personal nightmare and "punishment"
to befall me, along with my addiction to anime. Though, something
never felt right. I could never put my finger on it, but I was walking
into that trap from those logical loopholes, ready to be duped a third
time.

Basically, I had to try and say goodbye to anime and manga (again).
This time, however, it wasn't because it was just an evil influence on
me, like Christianity tried to convince me, or because I was trying to
gain favor of bible god (like the fundie programming that continued to
run in the background of my Noachism) but now it was because I was
attached to something, and that kept me from being one with divinity
and having inner peace. Every time I went over to a friend's house and
watched anime, I couldn't detach myself from it. Every time I heard
there was a new series coming out, I was able to not watch a new one
only half the time, but the other half of the time I had to watch it.
I thought I could go cold turkey, but I kept coming back. As the
cult's grip tightened on me, I watched less and less anime, but I
still couldn't stop watching it completely.

And using the flawed thinking that homosexuality was abnormal, the
cult told me to look for any abnormal behaviors; for example, a man
having feminine mannerisms. Any fantasizing about the same sex was an
indicator that I was on my way to being attracted to the same sex in
the way I started out being attracted to the opposite sex. To act in
any way like a woman would be an indicator that a man had passed the
spiritual point of no return. I froze my shoulders and arms when I
walked in order to see if my hips were swaying, and my parents
noticed. I didn't tell them what the cult had told me, because I
feared that they would take the cult's materials and block my path to
spiritual enlightenment. I would lie to them and say something like
"My back hurts." They bought me a lot of orthopedic stuff to help my
back, and part of me felt bad for making them spend money like that.
Whenever I went to class and my classmates and professors would
notice, I told them the same excuse. It took me while, but finally got
this behavior under control. In order to prove to myself that I wasn't
becoming "gay to the point of no return," I bought lots of nude art
books with photographed models of nude women and I read manga by one
of my favorite authors, Ken Akamatsu, who is quite the pervert Posted
Image .

The cult always had to tell everyone that it wasn't a cult, that there
would be visible results of the "path to enlightenment." Later, after
leaving the cult and analyzing religion, I found that Christianity
claims visible results, as well, such as the power to speak in
tongues, etc. I tried my hardest to meet the cult's demands for
"spiritual enlightenment," but I could never measure up to this divine
standard (I don't want to really talk about the cult's specifics about
divinity). The cult claimed it never wanted to control people, either,
just like Christianity claims, as well.

It was during early 2006 that this was happening and I found myself at
one of the strangest crossroads of my life. The cult was telling me to
stop looking at lustful materials in order to keep myself from
"turning gay," but I couldn't stop looking at the feminine form in
order to prove that I wasn't gay (even though there's nothing wrong
with that). Subconsciously, part of me was saying that this was all
wrong, and that I should continue trying to be myself. I did exactly
that, reading a manga called Love Hina, by Ken Akamatsu. It is a story
about a young man who becomes the manager of an all-women's dormitory
and redeems himself in society (by getting into Tokyo University)
while having all these fun adventures with the women. Looking back on
it now, I can see that reading manga and watching anime gave me far
more comfort than the cult's promise and idea of salvation. I remember
one particular day in February 2006, reading Love Hina while rain hit
against the window of my cold room. I was happy to know that I was in
the same position as the main character was: in the process of
redeeming myself in society (I was still 2 years away from my
bachelor's degree). The comfort was in me being human. I was doing
what any ordinary person was doing: reading in the comfort of my own
room while eating warm chicken strips on a cold winter's day: nothing
could beat that! Posted Image

But unfortunately, the cult's grip was getting stronger on me. The
leaders presented me with rules such as not drinking alcohol and
dietary rules. I had to assert these to my parents without being too
aggressive, lest they found out the workings of the cult's framework.
I had to keep them in the dark in order to begin "detaching myself"
from the material world. The cult also had a disciplinary system in
which if you stepped out of line, there was no salvation for you.
Sound familiar? It was just like blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.
Christianity and religious cults have a "no salvation for you if you
break this simple rule" policy. It is one of the two most evil forms
of religious mind control, along with suppression of sexuality.

I began to obsess over whether or not I broke these disciplinary rules
in the cult. I was also struggling with the guilt over sexuality and
kept finding that I couldn't fully suppress it, despite giving their
so-called "techniques" to control the urge. I found myself
masturbating again and again, never getting free of the "temptation"
to masturbate. The longest I went without ever having an orgasm was
about 6 weeks, and that period of time ended in a wet dream. My lack
of masturbation also caused me health problems in my reproductive
system: the veins around my groin and my testicles began to hurt due
to the sudden lack of use. They had begun to swell and it made me have
to wear a jockstrap for a while, to ease the pain. When I went to the
doctor's office about the pain, he was baffled as to how this
condition could appear.

I had also just gotten into buying anime at that point again, and my
collection of DVDs, graphic novels, wall scrolls and figurines was
again subject to a "purging," just like when I was a Christian! So
there I went again, repeating the same thing, under the guise of a
different "religion," but I justified this destruction of something
that makes up part of my identity for a totally different reason!
Fortunately, my conscience was just strong enough this time to keep me
from purging my collection to the extent I did the first time, so my
parents didn't notice. I also scratched and destroyed my anime DVDs
and then finally got rid of them. Whenever my friends would ask me to
borrow them I would say another friend had them, and I kept everyone
fooled.

Let me tell you about a day of purging in late 2008. My parents had
gone to Louisiana to see my sister and left me to watch the house. I
had begun putting my anime figure collection in a closet of mine a
couple of years earlier as part of my "As a man, I put away childish
things" part of my quest to rid myself of anime once and for all. I
had replaced the posters and wall scrolls with flags of my favorite
countries; a shell of the personality that had been slowly gutted by
religion over the past few years. My walls would have not even had
those, had part of my conscience not screamed loud enough: "This isn't
right! Your parents will notice if everything disappears at once!"

I gathered many of my graphic novels by my favorite manga authors,
most of my wall scrolls and my figurines and put them on the burn
pile. Then, I did the most heart-wrenching thing ever; I took the gas
can out of my father's lawnmower shed and poured gasoline all over
them. There was no turning back now. I lit a piece of paper and threw
it on the pile, watching everything explode in a huge fireball. As the
flames grew calmer, I watched as one of my favorite anime characters,
Nodoka Miyazaki's (from Negima! Magister Negi Magi), smiling face be
burned away on the front cover of a graphic novel (here's a pic of the
volume http://homepage.mac....ina/negima4.jpg, she's the purple haired
girl on the right). I watched as the pages of Love Hina, that
beautiful story of human redemption and life, turned to ash and fly up
into the sky. My figures burned completely and the wall scrolls
disintegrated instantly. I stifled my conscience, telling myself that
I was "free from temptation." Nothing could have been further from the
truth, as there was no temptation to begin with.

After that bonfire, part of me felt like I had murdered my best
friends with my own hands. If you could have looked at me afterwards
and projected a figurative phenomena on me in the form of a physical
one, I would have been covered in blood. Ever since I was a kid, I had
several big things in my life: my loving immediate family, my best
friends, video games and the characters from cartoons and anime. My
family and friends were my real-life comforters while cartoon and
anime characters were like sacred, close friends to me; who were
always there for me at the drop of a hat, whenever my family and
friends were too busy. They still are somewhat, despite the fact that
I'm almost 31. I am grounded in reality and can interact with real
people, but many people in society still judge me as immature, just
because I like animation. When you consider the fact that I was
bullied and hardly had any real friends as a kid, it's no wonder that
I saw cartoon and anime characters as my friends. I am fully capable
of interacting with real people now, after being out of my poisonous
home area for so long, but I still really love anime and it gives me
comfort after all these years. I hope you find me crazy or judge me as
abnormal, anime was my only defense from the poison.

The cult tried to break the bond I had with my friends (and it
succeeded with some of them). I stopped seeing my friends who watched
pornography. There were two friends I had with whom we discussed what
we had watched (like single guys do Posted Image ), and one of these
people was someone I had been friends with since second grade. The
other one was someone I had met in college and we had really hit it
off, as he liked anime as much as I did. I completely cut off
communications with them by early 2008, and I regret having done that.
I really wish that I could sit down with them and explain what had
happened, though I think they suspected it around the time I stopped
talking to them. I felt so righteous having had to lie to them in
order to protect myself on the "path to enlightenment." I feel like
such an idiot for having swallowed that bullcrap. The cult was never
able to break the bonds I had with my family, and I'm glad it never
succeeded in that venture.

By early 2009, I was torn between two worlds. I kept getting hounded
by the cult members who kept saying "You cannot serve two masters" (a
favorite line from the bible). I was hurting on the inside. Every time
I watched anime, I felt so alive and happy, but the cult said that
euphoria and happy feelings would lead to another downfall like I had
in 2001. I had worked so hard to climb out of the initial depression,
so I was afraid of another downfall. Despite my best efforts, I kept
having occasional bouts of depression, brought on by several elements.
The cult had fed me bullcrap that the older days (ancient times all
the way though the medieval period) were better, and I longed in vain
to live like people did in the "purer days." The cult also had a date
set for the apocalypse, and as each day and year ticked away, I felt
like I had not progressed and I felt like I was going to get left
behind (I don't want to talk about the specifics of their "end of the
world" shit). In late 2009, I finally moved away from my poisonous
hometown and started a steep road to recovery, albeit with the cult's
long arm of influence extending to my new city (and I think up my ass,
as well). I noticed that I felt more hope and I really started to
watch anime again.

I have one thing to say to the religious crowd that made me feel
miserable all of these years: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me
twice, STILL shame on you! Fool me a third time, then there's still
shame on you all the same."

One nagging thing that always sat in the back of my mind as a cult
member was "What if I never reach enlightenment?" and in early 2010, I
started to question even my cult's beliefs because of that. Then
finally, in November 2010, I broke free of that cult at the age of 29.
The religious stupor was no more...

My spiritual curiosity began to fade as I questioned everything. I
started to masturbate on a regular basis again, and the pain in my
groin and testicles has mostly gone. And guess what? I still have
fantasies mostly about women, and I've figured out that I have
homosexual fantasies at most, three times per month. How can I be so
sure of and secure in my heterosexuality despite my door swinging the
other way around two to three times per month? Because whenever I
picture myself living with someone in whom I can confide and be
intimate with, it's always a woman. The rest is just bicuriousity.

Even though my spiritual curiosity slowly began to fade, I still read
books by Buddhists until I saw basically the same language that the
cult used. "Detach yourself from the material world!" the book cried.
I then said "Fuck it all," put the books on spirituality away and
decided this:

"There may or may not be an afterlife, so I need to live my life like
it's the only one I've got and do as much good as I can because people
would want to be treated well."

Now I look upon Western and Eastern religions - even organized
spirituality - with suspicion. I have been too burned by all sides.
"Sacrifice your own wants before God?" No thanks! "Detach yourself
from the material world?" No thanks! As far as I know, the material
world is my only point of reference! How can I detach myself from it?
To detach yourself from the material world is to make yourself a
boring-ass douchebag with whom no one wants to interact! How about
this advice instead all that religious, self-righteous, dehumanizing
horse shit above?

"Get what you want out of life without being overly greedy and
trampling over other people in the process."

In other words, "Be yourself and don't be an asshole."

Let me offer a version of the Atheist's Wager
(http://en.wikipedia....ist's_Wager) in my own words: "What if
this is the only life you have? I'm not saying it is, but would you
rather waste your life pursuing the unrealistically high standards of
a god or chasing enlightenment instead of making life as comfortable
and/or right for yourself and others?"

Think about it. Many have pursued such things without seeing a lot of
fruit from it in their lives. Sure, there were some great people like
Gandhi and Mother Teresa who lived very fulfilling lives with little
material possessions; but for the majority of us, it's not necessary
to be a saint or martyr or give up the entirety of who we are to feel
good or fulfilled in life. I have read heart-breaking stories of
members of my former cult dying - sometimes in abject poverty and
misery - without having ever "attained enlightenment" in a
substantial, tangible manner after all the time and money they poured
into trying to obtain "divine favor". I will never follow another
religious or spiritual doctrine like I did in the cult ever again,
even if it's from a mainstream Eastern religion. I don't want my life
to be wasted like that, as it's bad enough that I wasted my 20s with
the cult.

After so much reflection I ask this series of questions: How many
lives and talents have been squandered because of religion and cults?
How many lives have been wasted under those searching for hope of
salvation from bible god and jay-zus or seeking enlightenment through
a cultic group? How many lives, like mine, have been partially
squandered by seeking answers in places where there are either none or
where they are so obscurely placed that a lifetime of effort would be
barely worth it - if there are any? How many talents have been
considered "against god" (from scientific minds) or "impure" (from
artistic minds).

Just a bit of loving kindness towards a stranger can go a long way.
There's no need to give up everything in your life or detach yourself
from your identity or the material world to a large extent to be a
good person.

There's too much room for abuse in religion: Eastern and Western. Even
with the much more relaxed attitude in Eastern religions such as
Buddhism, the simple line "Detach yourself from the material world"
has so much potential for abuse. People like the members of the cult I
was in and even some potentially fanatical practitioners of Eastern
religions can take this too far and commit the same crime as many
denominations of Christianity does: suppressing sexuality. I advise
anyone who's studying and practicing Eastern religions to be careful
and never let them get to your sexuality. To control human sexuality
is to control the human being and is the one of the two worst kinds of
religious mind control, along with unforgivable sin. My attitude is
much more tolerant of Eastern religions, but I am very weary of those
who say they must detach themselves from everything. I run in the
other direction every time I hear something like that, because I have
been scarred too many times to take that kind of bait again.

There is a tiny bit of spirituality left in me, but it's rooted in the
death of a friend in early 2011. That is the only spark of spiritual
curiosity I have left in me; it's so personal and what happened during
the events surrounding my friend's death (the span of a week) gave me
much more comfort and spiritual richness than all those years with me
as a religious person combined. As of late 2010/early 2011, I will no
longer lend a serious ear to any religious authority, because if you
give any religious authority an inch, they'll take a mile! Religion
and spirituality (at least at any massively organized, impersonal
level) is a poison for logical human beings, making them ashamed and
afraid of their own human nature.

It really pains me to write this, but the worst tragedy of all is that
here I am, nearly 31 years old; still scared of sex and still a
virgin, all thanks to Christianity and spirituality in general. I am
so afraid to start or have a relationship with anyone because I'm
still scared of STDs, even though I want to have a relationship and
have sex! The graphic images of genital warts, herpes, and syphilis
are still burned into my mind, nearly 17 years later. I fucking hate
that! The South Park episode entitled "Proper Condom Use" sums up how
sex ed is today! The fundies really try to stick the STD shit to you!
I will never forgive Christianity (or religion) for that! They used
STDs to make me scared of sex just like Pavlov's dog! It's going to
take a long time to get that out of my psyche. FUCK YOU, CHRISTIANS!
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOU!

Second, the religious life I led kept me from having real-world
experience in every department except religion! I was, during my
teenage years, told that if I followed religion, that bible god and
jay-bus would hand everything to me (and maybe go through a little
"test" here and there). Thanks to that, I missed out on living my life
as a teenager and as a twenty-something.

The only good thing that has happened is that the homophobia is almost
entirely gone. I have gay friends and I am also secure in my adulthood
identity as a heterosexual, but I still feel a lot of shame when I
have an occasional homosexual fantasy. But at least I have learned not
to fight it when those moments do come. The cult I was in was the
worst with its homophobic rambling. I'm so glad that I had emotionally
matured enough by the time I was in the cult to not take their
homophobic rantings at face value. I could never fully believe that
gay people were evil and deserved the kind of treatment they received.
I became like one of those cherry-picking Christians who pick and
choose elements from the bible (like the rejection of Leviticus' lines
against homosexuality, yet following other basic good Christian
principles like "Love thy neighbor"). I ignored the worst homophobic
teachings of the cult and felt progressive yet "phony" at the same
time. One time, my gay friend was outed by his fundie parents, and he
called me, asking for my help to move him out. I immediately obliged.
Later on, he told me hid fundie parents spouted bible verses at him
all the time. When my fundie family caught wind of this, they cheered
his fundie parents on. My mother also related this story on a forum.
It turned out that one of the admins was gay and he sent my mother a
moving email, asking her to "Tell your son that he is a beautiful
person." After hearing that I felt so good to have protected someone
in need, but bad that I had to hide the homophobic elements of the
cult from my gay friend. It was among the worst feelings I have
experienced in my life.

The misogyny is entirely gone, as well. I have long since rejected the
notion that wives should be obedient and stay at home. I can now only
hope that I can find someone who is just as intelligent as I am (if I
can get the reflex fear of STDs out of me).

I am probably one of the few (or several, or many? Correct me if I'm
wrong) ex-Christians that is fortunate enough to still have the
support of their parents. My immediate family knows and is keeping my
irreligious status from my grandparents and my bible-thumping aunts
and uncles, the latter would probably quit speaking to me ever again
if they found out. It really wouldn't matter to me if my aunts and
uncles cut me off. I will try my hardest to hide this secret from the
fundie members of my family until my grandparents are gone. I have to
tell religious people who aren't in the know that I go to church in my
university town, which keeps them at bay and off my back.

Thinking back on my uncle, I wonder how he would have turned out had
the Internet existed back in the 80s? If he had had access to the same
information as I did, would he have become an ex-Christian as I did? A
lot of fundies (like these folks on Conservapedia
http://www.conservap...line_of_atheism) like to state that godlessness
is on the decline, but I beg to differ. With the Internet, many people
have a lot of information and can more easily cut through the web of
lies and deceit. Sometimes, I'm curious to ask my uncle about how he
got through his ordeal of blasphemy of the Holy Ghost without the
benefit of the Internet, but I'm afraid that it might blow my cover. I
probably won't risk it until my grandparents are gone. I love them too
much to blatantly or even accidentally risk blowing my cover to put
them through the pain I know they would go though if they found out
that I am an agnostic atheist.

And also unfortunately, I think that Christianity might have damaged
my life in yet another way after leaving the cult. My best friend whom
I've known since third grade deconverted last year shortly after I
left the cult. I remember that one of the last words that he said to
me before he cut off communication with me was him talking about the
no masturbation policy of the cult that I had told him about. Shortly
thereafter, he quit talking to me, and part of me fears that he might
have joined the cult (or a very similar group). I was so busy after I
had left the cult that I hardly had time to tell him about leaving it
and how liberated I felt. In a very small way, Christianity is
probably very responsible for this. I hope that I can see him again
someday and find out the answer to this mystery.

But despite the fact that I can talk with many ex-Christians now, I
see myself as alone in the world, despite the fact I still have the
support of the people who matter most to me. I live hundreds of miles
from them, with no one to come home to. The situation I find myself in
now reminds me of the lyrics from a Green Day song:

"I walk a lonely road… I walk alone."

The only things that keep me sane are my hobbies (anime and
photography). I will never let anyone tell me that I myself am
inherently evil or that anime is an evil corrupting influence on me
ever again. Without the coping mechanism of bible god or any other
imaginary being, all I really have left is myself and what makes me
who I am. The beauty of art (in the form of anime and other styles,
such as classical Greek and Roman paintings) gives me far more comfort
than the mythology of religion. I like Renaissance painters, as well,
but because Christianity had a huge influence on them and their works,
it kind of takes a tiny part of the "cool factor" out of them.

So, let's recap the three main stages of my religious life:

I was born into a Christian family with very progressive parents
(thank goodness), but I was beset on all sides with fundie family
members and in a fundie church, topped with being surrounded by even
more fundie churches. They almost got me as a kid, but didn't succeed
in ensnaring me until I was 14. Christianity made me feel bad about my
perfectly healthy heterosexuality (and the very rare homosexual
fantasy) and almost destroyed a part of my identity with a fundie
publication that tried to bastardize science by combining it with
Christian dogma to prove the existence of bible god and that also
tried to make the case that I was inherently evil, along with the rest
of the human race. Christianity also kept me in a mentally unstable
state with its blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, and I suspect that this
was put into Christianity to keep people in line. It is one of the
worst forms of psychological torture and religious mind control out
there, keeping people constantly worried that one day they might cross
over the line. Little did the authors of the bible know that the more
you try to hold grains of sand, the more that escape from that tight
grasp; I was one of those grains. If Jay-bus had explained why
blasphemy of the Holy Spirit was unforgivable, maybe I would have
stuck with Christianity, but I highly doubt that, as I questioned
everything.

Next, I became a Bnei Noach. Under Noachism, I felt much better about
myself and I felt liberated for the next several months until early
2001, when personal misfortune befell me. I then began to question the
whole nature of bible god and kept wondering why he allowed suffering
even when his servants were loyal. I also wanted to talk to the rabbi
at the local synagogue in order to ask her questions about bible god
and suffering, etc., so I could find peace, but the secretary there
kept me from meeting up with the local rabbi and learning more about
being a Bnei Noach, so I never really got and real, in person support
while I was one. Then in early 2003 I left Abrahamic religion
altogether, thinking bible god to be absurd; but not after getting rid
of my "idols" in another religious purging hoping to gain favor from
bible god to make the pain go away, but to no avail. This was the
shortest stage in my religious life, cut short by my fundie
programming, which caused me to sell out my anime again.

In the third stage of my religious life, thanks to Western religion
not providing me with the proper emotional coping mechanisms, I fell
prey to the worst kind of religious group: the new age cult. By the
time I had left Abrahamic religion, I was still open to the concept of
there being divinity. I wandered through so many religious ideologies
and learned about new stuff like astral projection, etc. and when I
finally came upon the ideology of the cult, I was so desperate to
belong and try to become at peace with the divine. I got suckered in
with their very deceptive logical loopholes based on the subtleties of
human sexuality.