It has destroyed my life from childhood and now I'm nearly 35 and unable to render the past

The greatest sorrow I feel as an atheist is for the children born into religion who will have to spend their lives deconstructing it, or worse yet may never escape the thought trap.

You're not stupid for what happened. There is always a feeling of guilt or loss when one realizes an ideology they put their life into is wrong. I had a long period of re-adjustment, but it ultimately led to me gaining my life back, as I'm hoping it is currently doing for you.

Well said. I had a horrible religious upbringing which basically ruined my life.

Religion makes me sad and makes me fear

I was raised super religoius and even today i have so much relgiious trauma and i almost always have an identity crisis

Salvation is "Free" and then Comes the HUGE PRICE you have to Pay for it, Every Pain, Suffering, Betrayal, God ignoring your prayers, Betrayal and Hate inside the Church, your enemies winning over you, a God that has No Mercy on You, a God that Sees You Suffering and Crying tears but Just ignores You, a God who doesn't protect you from Any Evil Ever!!!, a God gives you more difficulty than Peace, and is ALL for his Glory.

Religion is pure poison. I wish I had the thousands and thousands of hours back that I invested in faith and prayer. What a total waste of time!

I can feel your pain, hate religion too.

I had a great life til religion came along....Recently got happy again...

Christianity cost me my mental and physical health, beaten almost to death by ex husbands (divorced twice ) i thought it was God's will for me to be perpetually beaten up,so i stayed with my husband at the time untill i just couldn't take it anymore, now im bed bound and partially disabled with health problems because of them,and the fear and anxiety that the bible has caused;especially about HELL FOREVER and lake of fire ,just shows GOD is sick cruel and evil.

I am raised christian, i was born very small and weak. I was anorexic and unable to walk or stand on myown. I prayed to god every day to cure me... "dear god, please cure me... i believe o divine heavenly father..." No answer. For years. I decided to take fate into myown hands. I started deadlifting. Just the bar. 45 lbs. Now, 6 years later, as an atheist, i doubled my bodyweight, and i can deadlift 315 lbs, as an atheist, and i can do parkour. prayer is worthless. God isnt real. Celebrate your freedom away from the CULT of religion.

A lot of people, even well into adulthood, 30s, 40s and beyond are are still trying to re-integrate the sense of religious teachings from years ago. It's hard.

I am a fundamentalist atheist. I question everything. You are a brave and honest mind. Bravo!

Religion breaks your thinker.

I got severely depressed everytime God has been mentioned in my life I need to cleanse my life of Jesus cause he is not God to me anymore I realized he’s what’s tormenting me 👎🏼

I love leaving christianity and religion myself

Im gay, i grew up in a catholic trumper household. Im sure i dont need to elaborate.

Religion can be super influential, and after 20+ yrs of being a Christian, I realized I had been bamboozled. I hate religion and Christianity today and hate that I wasted so many yrs of my life on all the b.s. it persuaded me to believe.

I have felt anger at the cultural indoctrination of religious teachings at my high school, for example the endless narrative of dealing with the problem of human evil and how distant these teachings are from how people relate to each other in the real world. Whether you remain a Christian or not it's good to practise being a good person. I think a lot of religious teachings don't apply so well to the modern world we live in.

Religion doesn't ruin people's lives. People do. You have to accept the abuses that religion doles out before they can harm you. Step one is to claim your own power and own it. It's true of everything, not just religion. There are owners and victims, and we choose which one we're going to be.

Santa Claus, the easter bunny, the tooth fairy, the great pumpkin and finally god after about 30 years. My life is so much better without all the indoctrination, grooming and grifting from early childhood by the church.

Einstein said that religiousness has three levels: the first is magic, you paint an animal on the wall to get lucky hunting the animal. The second level is the sociological, the congregation is more important than the individual. You have hierarchies, money is collected and so on. The third level is the individuals search for a faith, sometimes completely on his own, sometimes learning from a ”guru” of some sort. The damage he speaks about comes from the second level not the other two.

Would any of you be willing to talk to me about anybout this. I struggle with major depressive disorder and religious trauma and am trying like hell to learn to heal from it all.

Religion cost me my wife. She joined mormonism, instantly became racist because of their hateful beliefs, and i broke up with her.

Because I loved, respected and wanted to please my parents, who were both religious, I lost at least 90% of my childhood Sundays with the most boring 2 hours of the week. Then, my Dad died suddenly with a volent heart attack, at 46 years old, when I was just 16. My mum lived a long enough life, but died very unhappy and in great pain. My parents gave me LIFE and I will forever love and thank them for this. But 'God' took my Dad away from my when he was still young and when I neeed him most, and I cried for several years for the loss of my Mum.... who, on her penultimate day of life said "God has abandoned me". either he does not exist at all, which is the most likely scenario, or , if by some chance he did, then he is slack and useless, doing nothing to intervene with great wrongs and atrocities carried out by mahy people against many others.... then we move onto disease, famine and a planet under threat of burning up. I am 65 now. I still resent all those lost Sundays, I will continue to miss my Dad to my dying day.... and grieve for my Mum who suffered too long and too lonely... i have nothing to thank any 'god' for.... anyone who beleves in a god is sadly deluded, more likely extremely brainwashed..... I would only think about taking up religion if I had a direct 'sign'... not from any human, but of a divine nature. Still waiting for such....

There is a "religion" which does not need deconstruction: Life is miraculous, and is neither meaningless nor pointless.

Where ignorance is bliss religion thrives - Shytot-1

Thanks to religious fanaticism from my own biological mother, my childhood was kinda fucked up, hell even my teenage years going into my young adult phase, i deconstructed and converted from 20-22, im about to be 23 on this month and I've escaped from my mother's fanaticism and set boundaries for me, but still, im trying to forget the fact that my own mother would rather put her horrendous religion over her own son's psychological needs and many other things... religion is like a drug sometimes... addictive to some people, destructive at worst... i trust that no other person has to go through the same religious fanaticism as me or anybody else here... if they do... then crap...

Religion ruined my relationship with my fam, my gf, everything. I just want to be happy but religion forbid it. Hilarious

I had a problem with Religion Harm , and the many crimes those with the Bribe money commented !

It was a Benny Hinn crusade that made me question. That was over 20 years ago and I am thankful I have been free of superstition, because of it. They were passing around huge white buckets for people to put their money into. I went home and decided to study that KJV and read the entire book. I critically examined the history of the bible and of religion. I went to Catholic school, but later was non-denominational. Religion and superstition is a waste of life and time. I read what our forefathers had written about the subject, since many were Deists. Age of Reason by Thomas Paine was excellent. Dan Barker's book Losing Faith in Faith was one of the first books, but I ended up with quite a library. C. Dennis McKinsey had excellent information. I loved Robert G. Ingersoll's works! There were so many great resources. Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett are great. Even if a person just wants to critically examine religion there is The Thinking Atheist and others on social media.

Wish you all the best, mate!

A lot of people say they left Christianity and were never in Christianity in the first place, and have no idea how to go about being a part of it. I repented, was baptized by immersion in water, according to Acts 2:38, and was filled with the Holy Ghost speaking in unknown tongue just like they did in the tenth chapter of Acts. I received the revelation that Jesus Christ was God Almighty in the flesh the only supreme God there is or ever will be. Jesus said, in John 5:39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. Some finally figure out that they were duped.

Tired of spiritual journeys i let them go by themselves finding themselves for themselves

Me watching documentaries about America made me feel that religion is bull cow

Jesu Said; I Am the way, the truth and the life; he that endurance until the end shall be saved. Wheather you want to believe or not those words that's up to you, but I'll tell you somenthing people - when you lay on your bed in your last days thats when shit hits the fan, and reality sinks in... at that moment even the atheists tremble and call upon God at the last breath, because of the unknown they're about to face.

so let me get this straight ... you don't believe in what God's word says.. because it annoys you?.. or because you cannot make all the stories and words.. to fit logically?.. perhaps if you spent more time.. searching the scripture ... you would get the answers you need and it would not seem as boring to you... I read and study scripture everyday.. and I have never found it boring..

So you adopted some ideas, then changed your mind. How exactly was your life ruined? I see no link to a part 2. Kinda silly dude.

It´s all of this about "inviting God and Jesus into once life". Well i did, i had my door open for all of it and really whole heartedly. From this perspective, from mine then and as truthfully as this individual then can tell about it and in so many words; what did it mean for me? That i have a stellar health overall, is that it? I search within to find something solid to tell about but no it´s hard to do, did i miss something, what then. I have never lacked material fundings, good health, but spiritually no. I have to come up with that myself then but maybe that´s how it should be? I can´t exaclty put my finger on it as i don´t want to give anyone the wrong idea about it all and with that i´ll leave it. I just urge you all to be as truthful about this as possible and don´t blame Jesus or God for any eventual own shortcomings, the truth is what we want, no blame games is of any use.

me too but I still believe in God. I grew up Catholic but it caused severe depression. I understand. It doesn't allow birth control for women and as a kid all they talked about was going to hell. It ruined my sex life in highschool

I am not religious, but do you give credit for your orthodox religion reforming and organizing your culture? We know it's better than what ever preceded it. A Christian nation will be more civilized and have better hospitals than a non Christian one. A humanist society still has sins to punish, but in a humanist society, you will never be forgiven.

You’re mad at God but He isn’t mad at you… His heart is just broken that you don’t see how much He loves you. Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and if you can repent and put your faith in HIM (not a religion), He will grant you the free gift of everlasting life!

All religions are men-made with gorgeous enticing doctrines, dogmas, creeds, teachings, rules, rituals, traditions, mannerisms and gestures - with deceiving and self-deceiving - and love of power to control people.. Each one better to make one's own religion to serve one's own God - other than God of the Bible, God of religions, God Jesus, etc.

I grew up in atheistic family 😂how did it ruin your life then

I follow Jesus and find Christianity every bit as reasonable as atheism/agnosticism. For me, it's always been a thinking faith. You seem like a thoughtful guy. I know of some Christian groups that don't like questions - and it sounds like that may be where you were - but the ones I hang with love the arts, exploring quandaries and questions, digging into science, and the life of the mind.

I grew up in 7th Day Adventism... the God doesn't give life to just anyone eho believes in him. You have to follow everything the Bible says too... strictly!

It almost ruined mine. I almost married this chick i was lusting for. That would have been a disaster. I wasted a lot of time but i see it as now I'm much wiser. I approached religion with logic and turned my fellowships upside-down. One of them even called me Judas. 😂 I was being real about it. Now i know the truth about all religions. It doesn't matter what be believe. If it did matter we would all believe what we would be expected to believe.

Well said brotha👍🏼

Religion impedes your ability to be spiritual. God is way to categorized and is misunderstood. By the rules of religion, any and all human interpretation if blasphemy.. So it's self contradicting. Bibles teach morals but spirituality can't be learned.

Jesus didn't enforce his teachings on others. An unmatched freedom that nations missed.

I feel your pain man but blaming religion for ruining your life? that's ridiculous. you allowed religion to ruin your life. it's not religions fault. all religion sucks and is based on bullshit. I gave thousands of dollars to the only time I was really involved with the church but I did not blame the church and I did not blame religion. I blame myself. I haven't watched your second video yet I'm getting ready to do that. so far I don't see how you could blame religion though.

God is the embodiment of everything in nature. That is why we can say God (nature) was there, is there, and will always be there. You cannot use science or theology to show the beginning of the beginning or the first God. To create an Omnipotent God, you need a more complex Omnipotent God. It goes on and on and on. Who is the first God is an unanswerable question. In nature anything and everything has to have a simple beginning and then evolve to be complex. The universe starting simple and expanding and evolving to be more complex is intellectually acceptable than an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, benevolent Creator Being, pulling strings from the beginning. One who tries to argue and prove that the God in his book created everything, pitifully lacks understanding? Since God is the embodiment of everything in nature, ask yourself “Can God give books to humans?” Different contradicting books to different tribes. These different books sometimes contradict violently. All books are written by people and are based on their narrow understanding of the contemporary world. They had no idea of Galaxies or microbes. They believed that their God created a Geocentric Universe and the Sun orbits around the Earth. They believed that plagues are divine punishments. Take anything from nature. Can electricity, gravity or magnetism give you a book? No, but you investigate and learn about natural phenomena, and you write books about them. Does the electric motor work differently for followers of xyz religion? Does Penicillin work differently for followers of pqr religion? When giant Tsunami waves came, they swept away the whole kindergarten full of children belonging to all kind of religions. This is the way of God (nature). I am more comfortable with the Buddhist belief of Dependant Origination (cause and effect). The Law of Causation states that whatever is, must have a cause. Suggesting also that, if there is a thing or an event, then there will be an effect that will inevitably follow from that thing or event. Unwholesome actions will lead to unwholesome results and wholesome actions lead to wholesome results. We create our own Karma, as reflected in our destiny. It is vital that we respect rational, secular, humanist values. It really does not matter, which religion you follow, or which book you read. If you are good, you are good. By being good, what I mean, is living without causing any harm or pain, physical or mental, to any beings sensitive to pain. If there is a place called heaven where all good people destined to go, you will go there regardless of your denomination or religious label. This theory eliminates the need to argue and prove the unprovable, while we are on earth. The only requirement to reach the heaven is to be good. It is futile trying to prove if heaven and hell exist or whether there is life after death, which God in which book is the right one. Isn’t this a very beautiful belief? Though, I cannot prove to you the veracity of this belief, just like you cannot prove the veracity of your religious belief to me, I accept this as the most plausible. Kalama Sutra: Do not accept things just because they are being repeated, or come from tradition, scriptures, rumor, guesswork, incorrect reasoning, and a bias towards the subject, clever oration or mere respect for the teacher or speaker. When you know for yourself that something leads to harm and sorrow and is not welcomed by the wise, then abandon it. The same text, said the Buddha, must be applied to his own teachings. Thanks for reading. Lal Fernando Lal.fernando@gmail.com

God the Father loves everyone for His mercy endureth forever

Sects and cults do great damage - but I don't think you can just write off 'religion' because of them. They're not exactly good role models for God...

Most of what I have heard here seems to arise from a misunderstanding of Christian doctrine and a lack of grasping what genre of Biblical literature one is reading. If you read Genesis assuming you are reading a scientific treatise on origins instead of an answer to The Great Questions (who am I? what am I to do? what is the origin of evil etc), yes, you will be confused and disappointed. One should be aware of the genre of literature you are reading whether it be history (I II Kings), law (Leviticus), poetry (Psalms) mourning (Lamentations) racism (Jonah) etc, etc, The Bible has had the greatest influence for good the world has known. Can religious thought be misused? Of course. So can atheism (much more so). I grieve for the unhappiness this man has suffered but it does not need to be so.

Agree with every comment below.

I didn't realize I needed Jesus. Sorry Jesus for rejecting you

I like the concept of god, however it is an idea based on ignorance

This post is about how atheism ruined my life. It denied the only true Kking of Kings Jesus Christ and suppressed the truth and tried to hide the True Light. It made a already sad life look even more hopeless until I found salvation in Jesus Christ. Darkness cannot extinguish the Light. I love to pray to God in the name of Jesus and get up and go to work and tell people of hope in Jesus! God is good!

Me to i still believe in Jesus

The problem is people base a walk with Christ with others and their actions. Do your own reading of the Bible. Remember the only way the devil can hurt God is by hurting you. Our forefathers choose to create and participate in evil. Because they choose to be disobedient to God. God said don't put our hand in the fire because it will permanently hurt you. And we choose to do it anyway. However God does not do any of these bad things to you. It is people who choose this. In the Bible God says that the world is fallen and that there will be trails and tribulations. But as long as you truly make Jesus your Lord. You truly have faith in Him. You truly read His word and talk to Him(prayer) that you will be with Him in eternal and everlasting life. Never to go through another bad thing again. Stop basing a walk with Christ on people and their actions just because they claim to be something or claim to know something and lead you the wrong way. Base it off of God's word and what He does for you specifically. He loves you. He wants you. And He is waiting for you. Please just give it some thought. Religion and organization usually ruins a lot of people's lives because it is tainted with human judgement and management. Government fails us all the time. God however does not fail. If anyone has a question I would love to answer. I just want you all to be my brothers and sisters and get this peace I have to

God never promised this life would be easy he dosent save the flesh he saves the spiritual man

Sir you don't give your name....You say you were naive and that you are now embarrassed as a result. I want to say at the outset I agree with you that religion is at times devastating; and I find it…. I won’t say offensive necessarily, but I will say divisive. You have clearly been able to enter into an experience journey through and emerge….and you are here with something to say about the experience something to offer others in order that they may by your caution avoid traveling the same road. There should not be any embarrassment in that. What after all is life but a journey from one experience to the other? I suspect most of those who have commented and perhaps you as well are atheists. For the sake of transparency I will say at the beginning I am a Christian. I have spent time looking into various…. lets call them sects…..SDA, JW, Mormonism, Catholicism, I could go on the list is extensive even within the pale of orthodoxy. I however do not find that any of these groups or religious positions are capable of expounding on scripture, at least in a consistent and satisfactory scene. There may be a certain number of adherents within some of these groups that I would call Christian, currently searching that will in time leave these organisations but none of the organizations themselves are what I would call the church. They are counterfeits, but even if there are a thousand false gospels that cannot invalidate the one true gospel, it just makes it much more difficult to find. I watched part 1 and 2. I looked for 3 and didn’t find it. You don’t ultimately claim your conclusion is there is no God nor do you say Yeshua is not the Messiah. You don’t actually seem to draw any conclusions and you are not specific in terms of the damages you suffered. I will say that I did not have any problem with the question you posed out of Genesis. I would be happy to spend what time is necessary to answer you and would enjoy engaging you in conversation that has no other goal on my part than to help you find some of the clarity you said you went looking for. I don’t represent any organized religion. I have been involved with a few and experienced many of the same frustrations you point out. I always reframed from ponying up as it were. Not that I wasn’t willing to support the work of God but wanted to be sure that was in fact what I would be doing and honestly in the end never felt that would have been the case. So here I am on line doing what I can to dispel the misconceptions of many as to what Christianity is and what it is not. The first point I would make is that if God is real as any professing Christian would claim and powerful and interested in His children as we are identified as such the most reasonable assumption anyone could draw from that is experimentally He should be obvious…. My sheep know My voice; plainly ….A Christian, any Christian, every Christian, hears Him speak and I would say that many who would not claim to be Christian do hear Him perhaps without realizing it, and many that attend churches small c and identify as Christian don’t hear Him and would think to do so really unimaginable. So many that are called do not say I am Christian and many that are not are in church every Sunday but never saved. The second point I would make is that Biblical Christianity is the only kind there is. If an organization has added to scripture or taken away from it they are not Christian….All the groups I mentioned earlier do exactly that. So it is not about my opinion or yours or theirs. God either is or is not and scripture is the source of the claim….it can either defend itself or not and must absolutely be the only arbiter, only defining source. Just as Islam must be fully reliant on the Quran, Buddhism on the noble teachings. A person can take all of these and mix them about together forming something they ultimately find more satisfying but it will then be none of them. So if you ask a question I will give an answer from scripture or not at all. That said the third and final point I would make is that there are certain scholars that would present a picture of scripture as less than fully reliable and I would agree. Not that we don’t have the inerrant word of God but that that word is not necessarily found in a KJ version. So the scriptural sources I may draw on might have to go back to the original Greek, they might be based on the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic. I will though always give you my source and how to find it yourself. I am willing to present a reasoned case I am not willing to banter argue or put up with childish comments.

“I have Regret regarding my stupidity for being indoctrinated.“ • It just seems your heart was already hardened and you also didn’t have a good teacher. • Your arrogance of sin and negligence for the Love and faith of Christ is evident imo. • Praying for you

Pray to god, the scripture is indoctrination.... God isn't religion lololol

Faith does not mean "Belief without evidence". That is the wrong definition of faith. For me, faith is like trusting, obeying and relying on God no matter what, even if you do not understand His ways and His plans, even if His plans and His ways do not seem to make sense to you, even if you do not understand God. Let me us this illustration: Imagine if you had a father who is a professional driver, and He is very good at driving cars. One day, you needed to move to a new school. So your father decided to drive you to school. You do not know the way to your new school, you do not know how a car works, you do not know how to drive a car, you do not know where the school is located at. But you trust in your father and hope that he would deliver you to your new school safely. That is kind of like what faith is. It is trusting and relying on something no matter what, even if you do not understand it. To be honest, I feel so bad for you and I hope that you will come back to Christ.

I don't know if loving Jesus is wrong because if it is, I don't want to be right. Jesus is the way the truth and the life, no one goes to the father except through him. John 14:6 People, you have free will to believe whatever way you want to. God gives that to you. Don't believe, do believe, it's your choice. God loves you and wants you to spend eternity with him, but if you don't want to, he gives you an alternative. He allows you to spend eternity with Satan instead. So, no big deal.......

Jesus is the only way to heaven, not manmade religion. You were so consumed by man made traditions that your life became a mess. If you truly want to get saved, all you have to do is to admit that you are a sinner, believe on the LORD Jesus Christ, and call upon his name with a contrite heart sincerely, he WILL save you from hell. If you choose to get truly saved, Jesus will fill that void in your heart, for he filled the gap that was in my heart after I got out of Babylon (Roman Catholicism).

So sad and unfortunate, many people failed to find good spiritual life through Jesus! Why is it so difficult for many people to love God and love their neighbours? Jesus gives peaceful and joyful life through the feeling of love our God and love our neighbours. If one does these, one won't blame the religion for one's miserable life!!!

Very sad that you did not understand that God is not a religion !!!Jesus is the only way !

For a people who claim to be so enlightened and intelligent, you all are so deluded when it comes to a belife in God or something bigger. Religion is a construct of man used to focus their belife of a higher power. With it being made of man, it is subjected to all the horrible flaws man can muster. To say you have given up on God because of a flawed religion is weak.

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