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What made you abandon Christianity?


jypsijemini

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rather than enter a long and detailed  response to this I would just  like to say tha t you have constructed ONE concept of what the garden might have been like and HOW humans might have responded.

I see the genesis story as a creation myth but one which makes a lot of sense of the human condition by people who lived without any scientific knowledge 

It also describes the effect of the change in human life from  a hunting gathering one which was close to nature, gods and spirits, to an agricultural/ pastoral one where physical knowledge an d skills were essential The writers would have noticed a falling awy in the spirituality of peole at the time relying on gods and a growing reliance on physical knowledge which led peole awy form belief ad reliance on nature spirits and gods  

THEY wouldn't have sen the life as boring. Indeed in a life of pain suffering, ealry death etc, where most women died in childbirth and most peole died of disease malnutrition or hard work, the concpet of such a paradise would have been very appealing 

One example. You cant assume the y would have over bred, They would not have had lust and desire as we know it, but a loving companionship The y were also very young and immature.

  The y had been in the garden a long time and never bred despite being allowed to do so

So the y might have spent a thousand years  before having their first child (inthe story) and then only had one or two  In the past humans had 14 to 20 children with only 2 or 3 surviving to maturity The population only began to explode once medicine and science stopped many of the deaths, Slowly humans reduced their rate of breeding until now it is about to dip below a replacement rate.

if all your children lived, there was no need to have 14, and indeed, today, most have 2.2 or less. If adam and eve had kept to that rate, even with immortality it would have take a long time to over populate the earth.  

 

 

 

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For me it was the inconsistencies mentioned by the OP and knowing that the bible is a 'pick and mix' affair cobbled together in the 400s AD.  Add to that the way I personally can’t see any logic in the belief of any god.  Just doesn’t sit well with me.  I find it hard to explain that part further. 

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I started to ask myself why our (christian) religion should be the true one opposed to all other religions past and present. In short I came to the conclusion that none are / were 'true', that we created religion, the gods etc. and not the other way around. The New testament is indeed as Susanc241 mentioned a 'pick and mix' affair cobbled together in the 400s AD and this probably in Alexandria Egypt as far as the gospels are concerned. Concerning the Old Testament: The Hebrews worshipped a triad untill they became monotheIstic around 700 BC and removed the 'mother godess' and 'daughter godess' (interesting how Christianity created a 'new triad'). All stories from before the babylonian exile are mostly creation and legitimation myths.

My need to understand in the end was bigger than my need to believe; but it was a gradual process that took years. I consider myself an atheïst now.

 

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True religion is the religion of the spirit. 

In order for true religion to be made real, it must be lived.

 

 

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31 minutes ago, Will Due said:

True religion is the religion of the spirit. 

Alcoholism.

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35 minutes ago, Rlyeh said:

Alcoholism.

 

Sometimes you have to fall in order to get up.

Yes you do. :D

 

 

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Not so sure I ever found it, but was baptized Lutheran.

Any religion that makes you fear something to believe it, is wrong.

To force someone to like, or believe something with the threat of bad things in the afterlife is wrong.

Sad that people do not see this, and do exactly this.

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For me it was the existence of pointless evil.

I could always grasp the concept of humans doing evil through free will, but the evil that comes from random things out of people's control: Disease, Mental Illness, tons of rare medical conditions, etc.

That ****. That is what eventually lead to the end of my faith in Christianity.

I just can't fathom how a being would exisit and cause such pointless suffering, that has nonething to do with free will or our choices.

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10 minutes ago, Sakari said:

Any religion that makes you fear something to believe it, is wrong.

To force someone to like, or believe something with the threat of bad things in the afterlife is wrong.

I couldn't agree with you more!!!

Precisely what I think too!

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In short, people that claim to be Christians yet really love that Old Testament God of Judgement and Punishment   The teachings of Jesus  don't come into it much except by name.  I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in Texas, until I was in High School.  I could hear about things in Sunday school and see just the opposite when the church service started.  My Sunday school teacher in junior high got dismissed and barred from teaching because he told us the devil might not be red with horns and a tail.  Some of the old people

were furious about that.  He was humiliated and we were told that he was absolutely wrong.  That is when I did not want anything more to do with that congregation.  I tried a couple more churches, but never felt better or closer to divinity in church than out.   After that, I sought my own path.

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I figured out about 10 years of age that it was all just so much BS. I was sitting in a sunday school class and they started talking about how wonderful it was that they were sending missionaries to convert some folks over in a other country to worship a different deity. I remember to this day thinking "how arrogant to try to push your religion on someone who already has one. What makes you think yours is so much better and what gives you the right to push your beliefs on someone else?" After that, I only attended when absolutely forced and usually cut out at the first opportunity. My parents didn't go to church but my mother probably thought it was part of a proper upbringing - my dad didn't care. I think forcing religion on children and young people who can't understand what is going on is pretty much akin to brain washing and child abuse. Allowing a 10 year old child to make the decision to be baptised is the height of ridiculous in my book - parents and preachers should not allow it. I think I remember when I was about 6 yrs old, I asked my father what happens when you die and he said they bury you in the ground and you rot - made sense then and still makes sense today. It's just too bad that a lot of people are too weak to accept it as fact and have to invent belief systems to make themselves feel better.

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I don't think it's any one thing for anyone. The ideas are so firmly logged in culture that almost everyone will have that fairytale to deal with or not. I think it has more to do with a person's nature. The God idea is pretty silly really, some accept that, some dig their heels in.

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My main issue began with the Resurrection.

Watching friends, family, celebrities and every animal and plant die. 

"No one here gets out alive." As some American Poet once put it.

The main crux of the Jesus story had to do with him being killed and magically coming back to life.

I couldn't/can't get passed that being a true story.

Over time I found all of the supernatural claims in the bible to be without merit.

And without that suspension of belief towards things I couldn't fathom being possible, I started to consider it just another book.

I've read thousands of books. Fiction and nonfiction. It's not that difficult to know which category the bible falls into.

I thought about the massive amount of time people had to construct their beliefs before writing was even invented. How many times it was translated. How small of a section of society it was "given" to.

I think it's one reason the founding fathers of America chose to make the Constitution a living document. 

They saw how much trouble someone could cause by waving a book around saying, "But my book says!" 

If the document is unchangeable, then the rules in it aren't going to change much. 

It has no room to grow with society, which is ever changing. 

The ability to change the law of the land took away a lot friction between government and people. 

An old book that says a bunch of implausible and impossible things? No thanks. I'm not taking any one book as the totality of anything.

If you can't take all the decent stuff from the bible without the supernatural stuff, that's unfortunate to me.

But people wanting an afterlife seems to be a huge factor in accepting the supernatural part.

"There is a god. There is a heaven. I want to go there because people tell me it's great. God sent Jesus down so we can all get in. Just gotta follow the rules in this book."

But personally I can't believe in a bunch of fairy tale stuff.

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I was gobsmacked when I went for my first Reiki Energy Healing attunement to achieve my Level 1.

My Reiki Master asked me about my background. I mentioned Christianity.

She asked, "Have you ever had communion?" - Yes. "Were you ever baptised?" - Yes, I was 'double dipped', lol.

She believed that these were forms of religious black magic and had to perform a special healing over me. I wasn't entirely sure whether I believed what she was saying, but it actually makes a bit of sense. They're rituals.

I avoid churches as much as I can, but my brother has just completed four years at Lutheran Bible college and this weekend, he'll be ordained as a Lutheran Minister. I attended a few of his practice services while he was on placement (vicarage). His church was really old-school Lutheran. The garbs. The constant chanting. The baptisms and communion and all.

And I couldn't help but have this new frame of mind that - WOW - this is actually all really ritualistic and strange. I'd grown up with all of this! We were modern Baptists so our church was a little more updated and enjoyable - but these sorts of churches weren't at all uncommon for me back in the day. With an outside perspective now and a new frame of mind, it's amazing to see what everybody else sees looking in. It's mind-blowing.

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6 minutes ago, onlookerofmayhem said:

If you can't take all the decent stuff from the bible without the supernatural stuff, that's unfortunate to me.

That's what got me wondering whether something's just gone wrong over time - maybe in some way, shape or form, they had it right once. There's a lot of moral and ethical teachings that are absolutely spot on. It's one reason I'm actually grateful for my upbringing as a Christian. It instilled all those values deep within my heart. I still resonate with them to this day and can't help but constantly quote the verse about "Love is..."

But then when you consider history, it's hard not to wonder whether somebody, be it the Romans or someone else decided to create a religion out of it. In the years Jesus was said to have existed, Jerusalem was overrun by the Romans and the Jews really weren't happy about it. This was their "Promised Land"! They were revolting against their oppressors. They'd been promised this sort of Warrior Messiah who would come to free them.

And then hippy Jesus rocks up and tells them to "love one another" and to "give to Caesar what is Caesar's". He sounded nothing like the guy they were expecting. He goes against everything the Jewish religion was about. He scorned the leaders of the church and chose to hang out with the scum of their society. He touched lepers. He claimed he had the power to forgive. But ultimately, he was calling for submission and peace.

Was he a construct made by the Romans (hence the Roman Catholic Church) in a bid to use religious beliefs to quash the revolutionary Jews?

And who can ignore the alarmingly similar/identical traits that he shares with other Gods of the time? (Greek, Egyptian etc)

It sounds pretty reasonable to me that maybe, just maybe, the Romans created Jesus in order to suppress the angry, militant Jews and others throughout their empire in order to restore control and power.

Christianity (especially the form it took throughout the Dark and Middle Ages) was overwhelmingly state-and-church controlled. The Kings of England and the like were chosen by God. The leaders of the church were the only ones holy enough to read the scriptures and their congregations relied on them to impart all their knowledge upon them through word-of-mouth. They convinced people for centuries that they could 'buy their way into Heaven'. They burnt "pagans" at the stake for blasphemy, witchcraft and supposed demon-possession. They slaughtered millions of innocent people in the Name of God.

Christianity was just another way of controlling the masses by keeping them fearful and dependent.

To me, it was one of the most effective and widespread hoaxes in all of history. It still has its hold on people today. Many Christians are brainwashed right from childhood and they're too fearful of eternal damnation to even consider thinking for themselves and the possibility they might have been lied to. Others find Christianity because their lives were so dark and painful that Christianity stood out as this saving grace that offered a better life. They craved the idea that someone else could reach out and pull them out of their darkness. They needed someone to take control and tell them how to live their lives better. Who better to do that than a supernatural being who has a lot of rules and requirements... SO many ex-Satanists turn to Christianity because it's in line with what they already believed but it's just the other side of the coin. They can still believe in Satan and demons, but they're on the good side now.

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On 12/1/2019 at 9:04 AM, jypsijemini said:

Creation and Perfection

 

What would perfection have looked like had Adam and Eve never "sinned"?

 

Perfection removes all need for improvement or addition. All needs are met, eradicating the existence of want. Everything is perfect. The food you eat. Nakedness. The weather. Sensations. Feelings. Language. Socialisation. Everything.So what purpose does life have when one lives in a state of timeless perfection? What was God thinking?!

You created your prejudices about perfection and were disappointed in them because these are fictions of your mind.

For example, God is perfect but does he stop his work in the universe and is he the same in his creations of people, animals and plants in nature? Is God exhaustive in his feelings and treats everyone the same? Not. God is One in Diversity.

Perfection is what all living things go to, which means all living things strive towards God in evolution. Perfection is not boring and not the same; it is a diverse life in knowledge and bliss where there is no boredom and idleness. God creates universes constantly so no one will be bored and there is nothing for a person to hang around the earth for all eternity because the whole universe will become his home. Only this will happen when a person could become divine and now he would bring evil to others, so for now he needs to clean up the earth and eliminate his ignorance, ego, transcend the earthly mind and restore immortality of the body again.

Quote

 

The Old Testament God vs. New Testament Jesus

It's almost impossible not to admit that the God of the Old Testament bares very little resemblance to Jesus and the God described in the New Testament.

OT God is one scary, omnipotent being. He's racist. He's vengeful. He's jealous. He's brutal. He loves to be worshipped.

How are we to make sense of this incredible contrast between these two 'halves' of the Bible? One depicts a God of power and wrath, the other, a God of forgiveness and mercy and love. It's almost impossible to believe that they're meant to be one and the same.

 

The God of the Old Testament is one of the small gods, the caretaker of the Garden of Eden who pretended to be a true God and wanted Adam and Eve to obey only him and remain limited to animal-like happy creatures. And the Serpent is the principle of evolution that wanted creatures to develop further therefore he offered Adam and Eve knowledge that would transform them into gods but the small gods did not want this because a person would become higher than them, their creators and moulders.

But the mind that Adam and Eve received immediately found their duality because where there is truth and falsehood, where joy and suffering are there, they immediately fell into poor living conditions. Since they surpassed the animal and carefree life and could not grasp the divine mind, they therefore got a dual earthly mind that cannot create a harmonious life on earth, therefore, a person must be drawn to God to manifest a divine mind that will lead to a divine angelic life on earth.Angels obey God, therefore they live in a happy world.
Man acquired this very mind because it is the first of the intelligent shells thanks to which a person can acquire knowledge and strive for God.
 
Quote

 

God really loves the world - after all, He gave His Son. But salvation's only meant for anyone who believes in Him: they will have eternal life. He didn't send Jesus in order to condemn us - He just wanted to save us. So whoever believes that won't be condemned! BUT anyone who doesn't believe WILL be condembed because... they don't believe in Me.

 

Whoever reaches for the eternal God ultimately gets the eternal and no matter what religion he is and whoever wants the material and the transient will lose it because it is temporary possession during this life. So God just shows what needs to be done without any explanation, he clearly expresses that who will receive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On 12/1/2019 at 12:43 AM, Mr Walker said:

rather than enter a long and detailed  response to this I would just  like to say tha t you have constructed ONE concept of what the garden might have been like and HOW humans might have responded.

I see the genesis story as a creation myth but one which makes a lot of sense of the human condition by people who lived without any scientific knowledge 

It also describes the effect of the change in human life from  a hunting gathering one which was close to nature, gods and spirits, to an agricultural/ pastoral one where physical knowledge an d skills were essential The writers would have noticed a falling awy in the spirituality of peole at the time relying on gods and a growing reliance on physical knowledge which led peole awy form belief ad reliance on nature spirits and gods  

THEY wouldn't have sen the life as boring. Indeed in a life of pain suffering, ealry death etc, where most women died in childbirth and most peole died of disease malnutrition or hard work, the concpet of such a paradise would have been very appealing 

One example. You cant assume the y would have over bred, They would not have had lust and desire as we know it, but a loving companionship The y were also very young and immature.

  The y had been in the garden a long time and never bred despite being allowed to do so

So the y might have spent a thousand years  before having their first child (inthe story) and then only had one or two  In the past humans had 14 to 20 children with only 2 or 3 surviving to maturity The population only began to explode once medicine and science stopped many of the deaths, Slowly humans reduced their rate of breeding until now it is about to dip below a replacement rate.

if all your children lived, there was no need to have 14, and indeed, today, most have 2.2 or less. If adam and eve had kept to that rate, even with immortality it would have take a long time to over populate the earth.  

 

 

 

Did that answer her question?  How did you come to abandon christianity?  That is the subject, not how you interpret Genesis.

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My family was on again, off again church goers but the relatives were severe southern baptists (fire and brimston.  My mother's family, my dad was not raised with religion.  He went to a baptist church as a teenager to get close to some girl he wanted to date but my mother's family guilted him in to taking us to church until the minister ran off with the church secretary, taking every penny the church had collected for a new building and all the tithes, and leaving his wife and four kids destitute.  I was 3 then but I remember the anger my dad had. 

Later, going to church with my cousins when we visited was strange and irritating as no one ever quoted the bible correctly.  I would look up the "quotes" and find them to be either fragments of sentences or just wrong.  By the time I was 12 I had enough of religion, but not god.  My dad did take us to a presbyterian church when I was a teenager and I really enjoyed that because we were taught to actually read the bible and discuss what it meant.  But even so, the minister seemed to completely miss some aspects of being human, chastising even himself for it.  I do have to say that his kids, unlike the baptist ministers kids (multiple ministers) that I had known were normal and well behaved, kind kids with the same kinds of mischief that the rest of us enjoyed but never over the edge like the baptist kids.  (can't speak for all baptist minister's kids, just the ones I knew)

I have come to the conclusion that any idea of the judaic god (including christian and muslim as they are sects of the original judaic religion) is incorrect, not just the religion but the idea of a benevolent or judgemental or meddling deity just makes no sense. 

That is not to say I don't believe we are not eternal beings, but that all religions that insist we bow down and worship some omnipotent being have nothing to do with the reality of spiritual development or even our purpose experiencing being human on planet earth (lowly humans, no, we are not so lowly as we are expected to believe).

Bottom line is that I found too many people proclaim idiotic things are true because they are in the bible, and looking at the verses they "quoted" found they did not say what the person proclaimed was true.

 

Edited by Desertrat56
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One's quintessential humanity can be a thorn in the side religious aspirations and visa versa, as I experienced during my apostasy. Disillusioned by the idiotic demands of illusive perfection, I chucked the whole mess and indulged, freely, in my favorite sins. Don't we all have them? I became a Secular Humanist and sampled Zen Buddhist and instead of being driven further from Christianity, found myself being drawn back to it with a new enlightenment and fresh understanding. Secular Humanism, often described erroneously as a religion without a God, is nevertheless, from a moral standpoint, derivative of religion, exalting it's moral code secularly. Zen taught me there was much more to learn from questions than there is from prebaked answers. So, figuratively speaking, this prodigal son returned to the ecclesiastical halls of his Fathers and began questioning everything. I sifted the scriptures for what I could find of the Prophet of Galilee's original philosophy, unadulterated by Pauline Christianity and centuries of interpolations. There was no Hell in it, no punishment, just a blueprint for living a good life in fellowship and kindness with one's friends and relatives and assurance that death, however sad and dreaded an experience was not an end, but a new beginning. This is Christianity as first taught; you won't win many new converts preaching fire and brimstone, hell and damnation. That came much later after the Church was well established and the Patriarchy became entrenched and hierarchal rot set in. What is the truth of it all? I won't know 'till I die. In one of the Apocryphal Gospels, Christ is quoted as saying: If spirit begat flesh, then that is a miracle, but if flesh begat spirit, then that is a miracle of miracles! 

Edited by Hammerclaw
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9 minutes ago, HSlim said:

Realizing that Christianity is basically the Chex Mix of all other previous religions combined. 

All of civilization's organized religions, from the very beginning, were and are "Chex Mixes" from the ritual perspective.

Edited by Hammerclaw
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5 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

All of civilization's organized religions, from the very beginning, were and are "Chex Mixes" from the ritual perspective.

True, and I don't follow them either. 

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