The Last Straw - When Christianity Failed You

Swagger5 said:
Christianity has never failed me, and God has blessed me richly. Even through crisis God is there.
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I won't mock you. That's very touching.

I still kind of wish I could say the same thing for myself.

Alas, I have to tell you that I didn't feel God was there through crisis.

I tried hard to think he was. It didn't work.

Which is why I'm on this board at 10 o'clock, talking to all you fine people.
 
Christianity never blessed me with anything but fear and loathing. It was the plague of my childhood. Every "blessing" endowed was in fact a curse of eternal conflagration. But my skepticism did blossom from the poisoned roots of the S. Baptist church, so I have that to be thankful for.
I raised my own daughter in an environment of healthful skepticism, and she unscarred by the drivel of sanctimonious proselytization turned out perfect. Skepticism stood at my side through all the same trials and tribulations that affect the faithful, and it served me well. I have a secret smile and a great deal of pride any time a born again assigns my soul to the scourge of xianity's self-righteous retribution.
 
As a little 6 yr old i was sent to Catholic school and said my prayers everyday and tired to be a good little kid but that did not stop sister Evelyn from paddling me in front of the class and telling me i was no good, i prayed for her to stop but she would not, latter on i prayed that my dad would stop coming home drunk and beating me up and he did not, i prayed that my life would change and the hurt would stop but it didn't, then i realized that i was on my own cause god never showed, so i changed my life all by my self, so now if i need something i pray too me and things get done lickety split ~
 
I worked my way up the church hierarchy looking for the secret handshake...whatever it was that I needed to do to reveal God to me. I almost wasted a bunch of money at seminary, until a friend of mine that quit the school let me know there was no secret handshake there either.

...Which of course was my fault because I wanted evidence, not simply faith.
 
shawmutt said:
...Which of course was my fault because I wanted evidence, not simply faith.
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You were right. Evidence is the key. Faith failed to impress me. Searching for faith was for me a fool's errand. But you seem to be mourning its loss.

(new idea)
Even the idea of a "soul" which transcends the death of the brain, & which as far as I can determine is the self, a function of the brain, is utter nonsense. It's as if metabolism were to transcend the death of the body, or peristalsis the death of the colon.

Atheism was both boon and deliverance to me. What I mourn is the little boy who was terrified by the fire & brimstoners. I have nothing but contempt left for the addiction of faith.
 
fossilhound said:
You were right. Evidence is the key. Faith failed to impress me. Searching for faith was for me a fool's errand. But you seem to be mourning its loss.

(new idea)
Even the idea of a "soul" which transcends the death of the brain, & which as far as I can determine is the self, a function of the brain, is utter nonsense. It's as if metabolism were to transcend the death of the body, or peristalsis the death of the colon.

Atheism was both boon and deliverance to me. What I mourn is the little boy who was terrified by the fire & brimstoners. I have nothing but contempt left for the addiction of faith.
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No mourning here--got through that phase years ago. As far as the fire and brimstone, I'm just glad my kids won't have to go through what I went through.
 
What's beautiful for me now is I don't have to worry about my grandson's childhood being tainted by it. What the fundies do to children is emotional abuse, and I feel like I've liberated 3 generations from its clutches.
 
Awesome work Fossilhound :) ~ now if only more would make the effort we could keep the cult at bay and the children safe.
 
I read the Bible when I was very young. From the beginning I saw it as a combination of storytelling and the history of some ancient culture that had no relevance to my life in 1960's suburban Montreal. The only part that ever resonated with me was Matthew 25:35-40, which to my ears sounds like "Treat that shivering, hungry guy over there as if he is a god, and you're on the right track."

A year or so later, I was actually taken aback to discover how fervently some people believed the stories. I was about 7½ when I saw through the hellfire myth and pointed out to a friend's older brother that the hell concept was an excellent way to keep the unwashed masses in line.

When I got older and was living on my own in Winnipeg, a guy in the laundromat across the street tried to convert me. He asked me to say the Sinner's Prayer, but I couldn't bring myself to say it. Christianity fails for me simply because there's no way I can justify letting someone die in my place.
 
I actually did have a moment when everything just crumbled.

I was finishing junior high and just one signature away from going to novice school (yes.. catholic brotherhoods start recruiting that early), as I aproached my advisor I was thinking that I would like to study medicine before thinking of religious enrolment....

To my surprise, the teacher *religious brother, seemed very disappointed, and said "I think you are refusing Jesus call..." so.. it suddenly occur to me... "wait, how would you know what is Jesus call?, what if he needs me to become an MD? how in earth can you assume to know more about my life than myself?"

I just said to myself, that if this was the kind of thing the church does, I did'nt want anything to do with it.... I still remained a believer for a couple of years, then Daemon Haunted world came into my life.. and then I began reading and learning.. and realizing the fallacies and bigotry contained in religion... so here I am

BTW I did become an MD right now i-m doing my PhD on Neurosciences :D :D
 
I had a childrens' Bible when I was little (I think an upstairs neighbor with a grown child gave it to my parents in a box of used childrens' books) and I actually loved reading it.

I must have been seven or eight at the time- or even younger- but, even then, I was confused by a lot of it and asked my mother and father questions that they had no idea how to answer. Even then, I was skeptical and saw through a lot of the holes in it. I think I was doubting but still devout. I took it seriously, anyway.

I was also rather confused at all the sanitized for children violence and sex in the childrens' Bible, especially since I was very clean minded and proper and had never even imagined of any of these things. I remember being quite befuddled as to why Judith cut off Holofernes' head, for example.
 
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imagineaa said:
The misogyny reinforced it all--women have smaller brains, women's job is to breed, women are born to follow, women are bad at math, women's menstrual periods are a punishment because they were tainted by Eve, blah blah blah.
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I encountered a guy on the Internet once who tried to get the message across that oh, but it's supposed to be this way, because someone has to have the right to say "the buck stops here" in the household, and God has decided that's the man, etc. etc. etc. I suppose it'd be totally okay with him if he went to some foreign country where they had the exact opposite policy, where wives led the households and the job he wanted was reserved for women;).

TheDevilCried said:
As a little 6 yr old i was sent to Catholic school and said my prayers everyday and tired to be a good little kid but that did not stop sister Evelyn from paddling me in front of the class and telling me i was no good, i prayed for her to stop but she would not, latter on i prayed that my dad would stop coming home drunk and beating me up and he did not, i prayed that my life would change and the hurt would stop but it didn't, then i realized that i was on my own cause god never showed, so i changed my life all by my self, so now if i need something i pray too me and things get done lickety split ~
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Roald Dahl had a poem where he remembered how he had a religious teacher who both brutally beat his students at school and stood at the pulpit and preached forgiveness and mercy. Poor Dahl said in the poem that he spent a lot of effort trying to make sense of this without success.

Apparently, for many of the more... rigid believers, "turn the other cheek" works perfectly fine until it's your own cheek that's on the line.

Christianity has never failed me, and God has blessed me richly. Even through crisis God is there.
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Which is mighty good for you and all, but still the fact remains that lots of people do not share this experience.
 
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Safe-Keeper said:
Which is mighty good for you and all, but still the fact remains that lots of people do not share this experience.
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Like half the world's population that lives on less than $2 a day. But wait, they are the most blessed because they are in poverty!

What a crock of ****.
 
imagineaa said:
When I was 5 I asked the priest who Adam and Eve's kids married, and he said each other.
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I went into that same exact thing with my group leader. I started getting into in-breeding, and 'wouldn't we all have the same DNA'? He got a little flustered.

I followed it up with, 'And then the FLOOD?, I mean come on, there were like six people left alive, and we all descended from them?"

I also hit him with the physical impossibility of fitting 2 of each animal on the arc, and the logistics of travelling around the world picking up all of these animals. Remember, they'd have to be wild animals, not circus animals, because if they released a domestic elephant for example into the wild, it would die, thus causing extinction, since there were only two left.

(Once again bringing up the inbreeding problem)
 
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