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Family and politics turned me to atheism
9 years ago
rawr
First off, I understand and respect that some people who maintain and practice a religion. I have no problem with it whatsoever, it's your right as a human being. If you don't agree with my points here, I would advise turning away :P
I was born and raised in a Catholic family who values the belief that god watches over us and takes care of us. When I was young, admittedly it was a little comforting to think someone is watching over me, however I've always been different and hesitant on some of the beliefs my family tried to instill into me as a child because of the amount of hypocrisy that accompanies their beliefs vs the real world. My family, particularly my grandparents, are extremely old fashioned. As a child of 3 who was learning to write and spell, I wrote with my left hand, my grandmother not only just hit me for it, she constantly tried to force me to use my right hand, saying that me using my left hand is satanic and I will go to hell for it, a three year old! To no avail, I still today write with my left hand. This however was just a start.
Around age 5 I took an interest in science and how things work in the world. When I was 4 years old, I was in Los Angeles during the January 17, 1994 Northridge earthquake that killed 60 people. It's natural for someone to wonder why and how that happened. Me being a naive child asked my mother and father why it happened, their reason: "God wanted to kill bad people". Even at that age I thought that was sick, because not only did it kill 60, it injured thousands, because god wanted to kill people? That didn't sit right with me. As a native Californian, I felt motivated to learn about and cope with such things, so I studied it a lot in school and college. More reasonable explanations came from education than religious superstition. Since then I took an interest in, as you can tell, seismology and geology, as well as nuclear physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, etc. A few months ago on facebook I linked a video showing a zoom out from the earth all the way out to the observable universe. I for one always thought that sort of stuff was amazing but my family took it the wrong way and proceeded to lecture me on how that is all false and how god created us in 7 days and the earth is 6000 years old so the universe cant be 93 billion light years across, blah blah. All of which I just brushed off but it's still annoying.
Afterward and still today my judgmental family still goes about giving grief to people about the most minor things. sex, race, religious beliefs or lack thereof. Why does their god want this of them? Do they interpret it as such? Is that what the scriptures wanted? Is god really this corrupt diety who wants problems? None of it made sense to me, the most sense I was able to make of it was that Depeche Mode song called "Blasphemous Rumours" which I believe is just a narrative way of accepting that their god is sick and that pain and suffering on earth is his "sense of humour" as the song puts it.
My family has yet to find out about my sexual orientation and I'm reluctant on telling them because I do NOT want to hear them preaching to me about how god doesn't like it. My grandmother believes that gays should be killed or arrested. They hate that I support same-sex marriages, they hate my friend's wife who is now a man. They support Trump and Cruz because they claim "god guided them to run for president".
I for one am sick of it. Not just from my family but from everywhere, I didn't realize how crazy some religious nuts were. I saw a video from religious nut Eric Hovind talking about Robin Williams, beloved childhood actor and comedian of many of us, going on about how he committed suicide because he "didn't accept Jesus into his life". That right there pushed me over the edge.
If you can stomach watching it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4azjMYEVCm8 (atheists' reactions)
Why on FUCKING earth would you use the death of a celebrity as an excuse to make people turn to religion?! Oh right, money, marketing, Kent and Eric Hovind are among the most idiotic creationists I've ever seen in the media and my family supports them 100% because BIBLE!!!!! YEAH!!!! GOD MADE BANANAS TO FIT PERFECTLY IN OUR HAND!!! TAKE THAT ATHEISTS!!! as creationist Ray Comfort puts it. I know these guys are just loony creationists but they're another reason I gave up on religion among many others.
For a while I called myself agnostic because, hey, I don't know whats going on, I don't know if there's a diety but frankly, I don't care either. In a way I hope but it's such a small part of me that cares enough. Growing up the way I did, seeing family member after family member die, get killed, my baby brother was taken from us at 4 months old and I'm supposed to accept that "it was his time, god took him"? no! I will not accept that sick thought! Other things like us living in poverty, I more or less gave up on "god will save me" because guess what, no he won't, he hasn't and won't. I control my own life and the consequences of my own actions (not of god's) will bite me in the ass.
I've given up on god and religion and you know what? I feel a LOT better. I feel as though a huge burden has been lifted and I feel a lot happier that I'm not so oppressed about my actions, my lifestyle, my interests, my sexual desires, etc. I was originally reluctant on doing so but it worked out great for me. I don't personally endorse giving up religion because as I said, it's your right to believe/disbelieve what you want. This is just my personal experience. There's really a lot more but this is the tl;dr version hahaha
I was born and raised in a Catholic family who values the belief that god watches over us and takes care of us. When I was young, admittedly it was a little comforting to think someone is watching over me, however I've always been different and hesitant on some of the beliefs my family tried to instill into me as a child because of the amount of hypocrisy that accompanies their beliefs vs the real world. My family, particularly my grandparents, are extremely old fashioned. As a child of 3 who was learning to write and spell, I wrote with my left hand, my grandmother not only just hit me for it, she constantly tried to force me to use my right hand, saying that me using my left hand is satanic and I will go to hell for it, a three year old! To no avail, I still today write with my left hand. This however was just a start.
Around age 5 I took an interest in science and how things work in the world. When I was 4 years old, I was in Los Angeles during the January 17, 1994 Northridge earthquake that killed 60 people. It's natural for someone to wonder why and how that happened. Me being a naive child asked my mother and father why it happened, their reason: "God wanted to kill bad people". Even at that age I thought that was sick, because not only did it kill 60, it injured thousands, because god wanted to kill people? That didn't sit right with me. As a native Californian, I felt motivated to learn about and cope with such things, so I studied it a lot in school and college. More reasonable explanations came from education than religious superstition. Since then I took an interest in, as you can tell, seismology and geology, as well as nuclear physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, etc. A few months ago on facebook I linked a video showing a zoom out from the earth all the way out to the observable universe. I for one always thought that sort of stuff was amazing but my family took it the wrong way and proceeded to lecture me on how that is all false and how god created us in 7 days and the earth is 6000 years old so the universe cant be 93 billion light years across, blah blah. All of which I just brushed off but it's still annoying.
Afterward and still today my judgmental family still goes about giving grief to people about the most minor things. sex, race, religious beliefs or lack thereof. Why does their god want this of them? Do they interpret it as such? Is that what the scriptures wanted? Is god really this corrupt diety who wants problems? None of it made sense to me, the most sense I was able to make of it was that Depeche Mode song called "Blasphemous Rumours" which I believe is just a narrative way of accepting that their god is sick and that pain and suffering on earth is his "sense of humour" as the song puts it.
My family has yet to find out about my sexual orientation and I'm reluctant on telling them because I do NOT want to hear them preaching to me about how god doesn't like it. My grandmother believes that gays should be killed or arrested. They hate that I support same-sex marriages, they hate my friend's wife who is now a man. They support Trump and Cruz because they claim "god guided them to run for president".
I for one am sick of it. Not just from my family but from everywhere, I didn't realize how crazy some religious nuts were. I saw a video from religious nut Eric Hovind talking about Robin Williams, beloved childhood actor and comedian of many of us, going on about how he committed suicide because he "didn't accept Jesus into his life". That right there pushed me over the edge.
If you can stomach watching it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4azjMYEVCm8 (atheists' reactions)
Why on FUCKING earth would you use the death of a celebrity as an excuse to make people turn to religion?! Oh right, money, marketing, Kent and Eric Hovind are among the most idiotic creationists I've ever seen in the media and my family supports them 100% because BIBLE!!!!! YEAH!!!! GOD MADE BANANAS TO FIT PERFECTLY IN OUR HAND!!! TAKE THAT ATHEISTS!!! as creationist Ray Comfort puts it. I know these guys are just loony creationists but they're another reason I gave up on religion among many others.
For a while I called myself agnostic because, hey, I don't know whats going on, I don't know if there's a diety but frankly, I don't care either. In a way I hope but it's such a small part of me that cares enough. Growing up the way I did, seeing family member after family member die, get killed, my baby brother was taken from us at 4 months old and I'm supposed to accept that "it was his time, god took him"? no! I will not accept that sick thought! Other things like us living in poverty, I more or less gave up on "god will save me" because guess what, no he won't, he hasn't and won't. I control my own life and the consequences of my own actions (not of god's) will bite me in the ass.
I've given up on god and religion and you know what? I feel a LOT better. I feel as though a huge burden has been lifted and I feel a lot happier that I'm not so oppressed about my actions, my lifestyle, my interests, my sexual desires, etc. I was originally reluctant on doing so but it worked out great for me. I don't personally endorse giving up religion because as I said, it's your right to believe/disbelieve what you want. This is just my personal experience. There's really a lot more but this is the tl;dr version hahaha
*gawdmuzclehug*
How on earth does that make sense?
And Christians are the moral ones. Totally. Getting pleasure out of someone suffering for all eternity? TOTALLY normal.
I think in my case, growing up in Mexico, surprisingly enough although raised catholic, I grew up with a good balance between religion and science. Pretty much because in school, in social science, they taught us about different religions, and pretty much I grew up with the knowledge of them being beliefs of people, and that everyone could believe in what thy wanted. I never got mixed religion with science at school and both subjects were pretty well kept away from each other.
Also, incredibly enough, I'm left handed too, never faced any criticism of it because my father is also left handed and being honest with you, I had no idea how demonizing religion was about this until recently. As for homosexuality, in middle school we had a sort of counselor, who pretty much made the subject that it was pretty normal any sexual orientation, also it helped a lot my Mom started to talk to me about sexuality around my early teens, my father left us when I was 10, so I believe she tried to be both figures by doing this and teach me to be responsible about my sexuality. Knowledge was limited growing up without a father figure, there why I think I learned slow, still, it was some good effort my Mom did.
Everything was in balance... until my grandmother decided to join this group of... studies. I do believe she's the one who started drifting not only me, but most of my family away religion. It became that "everyone must do a prayer in group" every night, didn't matter I had a lot of homework to do, or whatever I was doing, the prayer must be done. So although everyone supported her at the beginning, we all started drifting away slowly. Up to today, you can't have a decent conversation without her bringing the subject of her studies to the table. She banned certain music I liked, Pokemon and funny enough, and any show with non human characters. This is why I skipped Pokemon Gen 3 originally. But oh well, that's one thing.
Then, I moved to the States. And I see how everyone can claim stupid shit and say it's their religious belief and everyone believes it. People in here are more obsessed and all that hate hiding under "religious liberty" I can't cope with. In a project I had back in 2007, there was this religious guy who instead of doing his job, he would just try to convert everyone into christianity. He overheard at the time a conversation when I mentioned a coworker that I got tickets to see the Spice Girls in their reunion tour, he came to me claiming "The spice Girls are beacons of the devil! Get rid of those tickets and give the money to the church! Turn to Jesus! blah blah blah" Never spoke with him again, actually reported him, and due continuous reports and he actually not working, he got fired.
Then seeing everyone quoting the Bible as the law of the land, I was like "Isn't that the Constitution, or just when is convenient?" I do believe that if a book was to be so "sacred", why are there so many versions? And why every religion has it's own book? There you go! That's when I broke free. So yeah, eventually after seeing idiots like Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz and more, that's when I gave up religion. I want to believe there's some "entity" up there, I refrain to call any names or to practice any religion now. But that's me, hopefully I didn't bore you to death with my stories X3