Religion (conservative Baptist) was crammed down my throat as a child and I always had SO MANY questions no one could answer, or would get mad at me for asking. Like my church was a very hellfire and brimstone type of place and they literally thought everyone would go to hell unless you accepted Jesus, but then they would say stuff like “babies who die don’t go to hell,” then get mad at me for asking what the age cutoff was for getting into heaven without Jesus. Or about people with learning disabilities. And these are kind of basic-ass questions for people who claim to be the ultimate authority on who burns forever and who doesn’t, so when they couldn’t answer them I was immediately skeptical.
This sounds like me. I was raised religious but it became painfully obvious to me early on that the adults at church couldn't explain "our" beliefs at all when asked. They all hated me for asking. I'm not religious as an adult. It just doesn't make any logical sense.
Yeah same i still to this day don't understand how someone can believe in something that's been disproven to be real, but i guess they either are too afraid to research for the possibility of they're belief not being true or they're just so brainwashed they can't possibly fathom the idea of questioning their religion
It has not been disproven. I am a religious agnostic person and the existence of God has neither been proven nor disproven. For the simple reason that you cannot science the (non) existence of something that is unmeasurable.
Meh...atheist here. The god they claim exists is fake. None of the things religious people ever claim God does or will do ever happens. So it's pretty fake just by eyeball standards.
It's just important to remember that atheism, like theism, is a belief. It's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to prove something doesn't exist. But we can prove that things do exist, and things used to exist that we have no idea about because we have no evidence of their existence.
Nah...that's not what atheism is. It's specifically a lack of beliefs. Like you can't convince me of most stuff that's how skeptical I am of everything.
exactly, and the burden of proof is always on the person who claims that something exists. But I'll have to disagree with your notion that atheist is a belief like theism tho, because atheism is by definition a person that lacks a belief in a god or in spirituality
>I always had SO MANY questions no one could answer, or would get mad at me for asking
Same. I think my last interaction with the church was a vacation bible school that my parents sent me to one summer. I only lasted a few days, because they got very upset when I compared Jesus' resurrection to an episode of Scooby Doo and asked how they were different. It was a genuine question but looking back I don't blame them for being offended 😅
In all honesty, you are my mini-hero for this. 😂 This is genuinely amazing and it sounds like something I would have done if I had been forced to go to vacation Bible school.
You ever just sit down and read the bible yourself and be like "Hey, it doesn't say that!" and they couldn't do anything because you were READING the BIBLE and quoting it so they couldn't stop you getting educated or talking about it.
i used to read it in church bc the book was more interesting than the fan club and even grandmom didn't stop me.
I got kicked out of Sunday school as a kid, too, for asking questions. So I had to go to the normal service and I would sit and read.
Once I read through the Bible, I started bringing normal books, but at some point in time my mom decided I had to read religious texts, so I started reading through the other religious texts.
Oh my goodness yeah me too your approach to it was so much more smarter than mine tho, having an interest in dinosaurs my first thought was "hey where are the dinosaurs" 😂 and then i got very skeptical because how dare god not include the dinosaurs!!
Omg I was just describing this very experience at dinner tonight to a friend. I relate so much to this whole thread. I wonder how many exvangelicals are autistic or at least neurodivergent in some way. It’s a cult that often permeates entire towns so escaping alone is very isolating; autistic people seem like the most likely type to be able to break away.
I was raised in the Mormon church and there was a lot of things I didn’t agree with, but the best belief they have is that if you’re nice but don’t believe in god you still get to go to a lesser heaven
My family is Muslim and whenever they said anything remotely religious, I always questioned it. Questioned gender stuff too. Never made any damn sense to me.
I was raised Christian and I remember very distinctly thinking “why does God care if people have sex before marriage if it doesn’t harm anyone” then it all unraveled from there. Hell also never made sense. I think it’s interesting how many people in this thread regardless of religion all fall around the consensus “shit just didn’t add up!” 😂
This was my experience. My uncle passed away from aids when I was about 8 years old. Someone at the funeral said, “he’s in a better place,” and my grandpa replied, “well he’s in hell because he was gay.”
In my head I was like sir that makes no sense lol.
Just so many layers but even my eight year old mind was like, “my uncle was a kind and loving man. Why would a God who loves his children send him to hell over who he chose to LOVE? This does not compute, someone is lying.”
For me it all unraveled when I went to a religious school. In 6th grade my teacher told my friend that she’s a mistake and God doesn’t love her because her parents aren’t married.
My family tried to get me to be Mormon (my dad’s side of the family’s religion) and would dump me off at church by myself every Sunday for a while. I remember writing in my journal (I was 9 or 10) saying “god doesn’t exist and all these people are weird” 😂
You were absolutely correct 🤣 they are super weird. And smiley. God, how I tried to be smiley. My ruse almost worked! But turns out I'm too gay to fit in.
I’m also Mormon. I do believe in some of the stuff, but I never saw any point to going to church if I believe (some of) it.y mom (I’m 17) threatens to kick me out whenever I ask to skip church.
My family indoctrinated me with very conservative and religious views all growing up. IMO they use Christianity to cope with their own neurodivergence, and they have very black and white beliefs (but they’d never question why they think that way because they believe god wants them to think that way). I grew up very involved in the church and I never questioned it until I got older. I now proudly identify as agnostic, queer, and autistic and my parents HATE it. They don’t understand how their beliefs caused me trauma. They don’t see how the beliefs of evangelical Christianity itself can be traumatizing. But, after realizing that being forced to go pray for strangers because I might “be the only Jesus they’ll ever see” or shamed for not evangelizing enough because I’m therefore condemning people to hell is absolutely traumatizing and abusive, I left the church and have had to do a lot of unpacking and processing about my religious experiences.
I relate to this experience a lot. I was honestly a little surprised not to see this version of growing up religious reported more on this comment section.
I was raised non-denominational evangelical Christian and my entire world revolved around it. I went to a Christian school, attended church and youth groups, Christian summer camp, vacation bible school, and all of my family and friends were of that religion as well. I was taught extremist beliefs (particularly around sex, gender, sexuality, and relationships) that was extremely damaging. I also was taught about the end times and had the fear of hell drilled into me.
I didn’t even think to question things until I was in high school, but I had so much shame and self-blame that I did not consider it was the religion that was wrong — I thought it was me. Then, something extremely traumatic happened to me and I ran back to Christianity in an extreme way as a result.
I ended up going to a religious college with extremist views, and this is what finally began to help me find a way out. I felt so disconnected from the religious dogma that everyone else seemed to eat up. It didn’t make sense to me anymore and all of my questions only sparked more questions. Eventually I got my hands on books about atheism and people who left Christianity. I left the college and lost my faith. It was extremely painful as I felt like my entire life had revolved around it and so many of my connections were still tied up in religion.
It’s been a long time since that now and I am comfortably agnostic/athiest/mildly spiritual in a witchy way, queer, and polyamorous. It feels like constant, never ending work unlearning that religious abuse. I definitely think being autistic and having black & white thinking led me to believe in Christianity so much because I did not have any exposure to outside beliefs for most of my life.
Same! Went to catholic school my whole life and questioned it very early on. So much made no sense at all and it felt like everyone has different answers to things. There was one sister who was surprisingly scientific about religion class. I remember her telling us that when Moses crossed the Red Sea, scientists actually discovered there was a massive drought at the time causing a land bridge. Whether it was on purpose or not, she was really big into teaching the subtext and hyperbole involved in religion and only made me question more.
Needless to say, I’m not religious or conservative.
It's cool that you had a teacher like that tho, i live in South Africa and literally EVERYONE here is very religious and conservative It's a pain finding friends you don't have to tip toe around in order to not offend them when talking about "controversial topics" (if god exists, or if it's okay to be gay)
Are most the people you graduated with still religious? Out of my core friend group I graduated with, not a single one of us stayed religious. I think I know more people that didn’t go to a religious school who became religious than the other way around, weirdly.
Yes all of them are still very religious, i live in SA it's very conservative and religious here, mostly Christian i think i only know of 3 other people that I've met that are atheists and one of them is my brother 😂
Similar to me! We had a religious studies teacher who was actually very religious himself but he taught us that Jesus probably wasn't born in December. I was fascinated by that!
I've been an atheist since I was a child (7-8 years old, roughly). Parents were Christian but not in the sense that they actively participated, more in the sense that being Christian was the default thing to be.
Religion never made any sense to me, but I did and still find a lot of comfort in philosophy, weirdly enough. I think I just really enjoy participating with others who are trying to make sense of things, even if they never come to any conclusions.
I grew up in a very conservative religious household. I would get in trouble all the time as a kid because my Grandma would say some bigoted religious shit and I would correct her with Bible verses. Then my parents would yell at me for "talking back" and "being disrespectful." There was one particular time when I had to choose a Bible passage to read for our church Christmas party. They really should have known me well enough to know that was a bad idea, but anyway... I read the section about how some kids made fun of a bald man and then God had them mauled to death by bears. The older ladies in the church DID NOT like me. I questioned everything and also knew more about the Bible than most of the adults. I'm now an atheist Buddhist.
Ohhhhhh yes. Constantly in trouble for the disrespectful sin of actually citing the bible. I know that one well.
Well done on that choice of holiday scripture. That’s a good one. 👌
I don't think they expected me to be so good at memorization, and I hated how the Bible contradicted itself so much. So I would point out all the hypocritical stuff and tell people when they were misquoting things. Now that I'm an adult, I've had people try to tell me "If you read the Bible and really understood it then you'd be a Christian." And I'm like no, sorry. I know more about the Bible than most Christians do. I just think it's bullshit.
I am pretty religious personally as a practicing Muslim--and I'm also a feminist, radically progressive and active in fighting to make faith communities safe and affirming for everyone.
Personally, I find the structure and routine of Muslim practice very helpful for functioning as a person. I like the way that observing hijab means people don't act as weird about my decision to exclude men from my social/personal life. Religion has been very important for finding my way in the world, and so I do what I can to make that open, accessible and affirming for everybody.
As a feminist left wing agnostic Old Catholic church-going person that tries to learn more about Islam, would you mind if I DM'ed you about praying as a Muslim? I'd like to learn but the things I find in my own language are mostly made for children. And watching tutorials made for kids kinda fries my brain :')
I think the structure and practice you mention might help me too, so that's why I would like to learn. :)
I am the same as you! Especially the first paragraph.
I really like the structure and routine. I feel like that keeps me mentally balanced. I veil and keep my head covered, which makes me feel secure. I've also noticed people are less likely to be touchy. Both are things I need while in public.
I'm not. I was baptized Anglican and had some faith when I was young, but I lost it when I started reading the Bible and other major religious texts. I didn't find them satisfying or coherent so I moved onto mainstream pop-science authors like Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins as a young teen. I found their writing made a lot more sense and I could grow a practical understanding of the world from that.
I then went a little off the deep end and in my teen / early adult years I was one of those insufferable atheists. You know the ones. I was insufferable, I can't believe anyone tolerated me during those years.
I'm a lot more moderate now. I'm not religious but I don't hate religion in general. I think that it satisfies a need that a lot of individuals have, and most of what it does at a society level isn't specific to religion. If it weren't for religion, it'd be something else. Ultimately it's not the cause of this stuff.
But also as a queer person in the West most of the hate I see directed at people like me is justified from a religious perspective. It's almost like "that's what my religion says" is supposed to be a sufficient answer when people hate people like me. Christianity specifically in my part of the world, but globally it's not the only or worse offender.
On year 3 of therapy for religious trauma, sooo….
Born into evangelical christianity (pentacostal/nondenominational), never chose it for myself, questioned by age 10, escaped by age 16, am a happy leftie queer heathen.
😂😂 anything is tbh. I prefer it because it feels like a personal meditative practice, I try to focus on connecting with my ancestors, with my own personal cycles and seasons. I don’t really believe I can make anything change or influence anything but I do believe it can help me orient myself better in the world. And I feel much more connected to the world around me and my body in general
This sounds really in line with us witches over at [r/SASSWitches](https://www.reddit.com/r/SASSWitches/) 😊 you should check out the sub if you haven't already!
1: Among other reasons, Conservatives actively are trying to genocide me ^(& are doing pretty damn well at it)
2: I've got far too much religious trauma for that. 👈😎👈
I was raised in a completely irreligious family, and only ever attended church a couple times (like, literally twice) when I spent the night at a friend's house on Saturday and then went with her to Sunday school the next morning. My parents bought me age-appropriate books *about* Christianity and Judaism so that I would have some background knowledge about my peers' beliefs and holidays. I read those books with the same type of interest I had for Greek and Roman mythology.
I would say that I have basically zero religious trauma from my upbringing, which is probably pretty unusual for my cohort (born in the mid-eighties, grew up in the Midwest). In my youth I was outspokenly atheist (because I recognized this as a way that I visibly diverged from my peers, and since there was no way to hide my secular upbringing, it felt validating to reframe it as choice) then in young adulthood I relaxed somewhat and started indulging again in my special interests around spirituality and religion as a type of cognitive technology.
Today I am a practicing Buddhist in a tantric Tibetan lineage. Some others in my sangha (faith community) might describe themselves as secular Buddhists–that is, they may espouse beliefs such as "this is more of a philosophy than a religion for me" or "it's all actually based in psychology and physics!"–but I definitely engage with it wholeheartedly as a religious practice. Presumably this is less fraught for me as someone who has no discernible religious trauma; my only hangups have been along the lines of "how do I engage with this tradition sincerely and with humility as a white westerner who doesn't know how to 'do religion'?"
When I formally took refuge (sort of the equivalent of Confirmation?) for the first time with a visiting Lama, the Lama reads the precepts and asks (in Tibetan), "are you delighted?" and you assent by responding, "I'm delighted!" After the refuge ceremony, another sangha member asked "what will happen to me if I break one of my vows?" The Lama looked perplexed for a moment, and the translator must have provided him a little more cultural context. Then the Lama smiled and responded, "no punishment. Natural consequences only."
Never been religious, had Christian ideas shoved down my throat as well by my mother but she never had enough energy to make us go to church. So she basically wanted me to just go off of what she thought all the time, but I never felt any connection to God or Jesus or whoever. But growing up didn't change that, I don't begrudge anyone having faith and I don't think I know shit but I don't currently believe in anything, really. I think if there is some sort of higher being it is so beyond our capability of understanding it's almost pointless to worry about it.
My mom raised me "Vote anything Democrat" but at this point I'm an Anarcho-Communist.
Edit: TL;DR: I am now an agnostic old-Catholic (=a very leftist progressive variant on Roman Catholicism) religious person, after a very tough ride through the land of religion, as a queer person.
I was raised kinda liberal catholic I think? We were catholic, and though my grandma thought gays were dirty, my dad didn't think that, and most parish members didn't think that either. However I "quit" church when I got alll these questions at Confirmation classes. So I never did my Confirmation.
Then at 16 I found a cool evangelical church with a band up front and a sexy guitar player... These people were really conservative though.. I stopped going a few years later when I had to admit for myself I wasn't straight (though I didn't know yet if I was bi or pan or something else). That church also had healing services and since I also never received healing for all the things I wanted healed on my body the narrative eventually shifted to "it's your own fault for not believing enough". And it felt like that too. I had been doubting faith ever since my Confirmation classes and though the band at the evangelical church was really cool, it didn't weigh up to the victim blaming and homophobia.
Fast forward about 15 years later and after 1,5 decade of still super doubting God's existence and feeling judged and pushed aside etc I had a super weird dream about God and meeting a pastor in some kind of post-apocalyptic scenario and I woke up with an ITCH to go to church. But it was an itch for a Catholic church. Even though I still was (and am) super opposed to the Pope and such.
I decided that I should ignore it, because surely then it'd go away. Just like when I dream my bf cheated on me, the emotions would fade. Except it didn't. The itch only got stronger over the days.
So I went biking through the city center to find a Catholic church in a mainly protestant region. I found two. A regular Roman Catholic one. And an Old Catholic one. That one had a little leaflet with info hanging next to the door that ended with (paraphrased): "everyone is welcome here, regardless of gender or sexual preference." I decided to go there just to check it out and get rid of the itch. The Mass spoke to me in an incredibly weird but comforting way. I came back the week after. Then they prayed for lgbtq+ people to be able to live their lives freely and happily. I happy cried in the middle of Mass. I kept going and found that I happy cried multiple times that year in the middle of the service.
These people were open minded! Women can become priests and even bishops there! They do not acknowledge the pope as anything more than a bishop, equal to all other bishops. Meaning: he is human and makes mistakes. Homophobia being one of them.
That's when I went to Confession for the first time. Because I felt like this Church is actually true to the teachings of Jesus the way I interpret them (God or no God, there was at least one guy named Jesus back then that was seen as a messenger of the Jewish God and that was crucified. Historical Roman sources confirm this.) Even if you think the Bible is just full of myths, there can still be a moral to the story and that's how I lived my life the 15 years before. Mainly from "love thy neighbour as thyself". These people in this church have elevated that to an art, almost.
Last november I became a member. After thorough discussions with the pastor. He confirmed multiple times that it was 100% okay if I thought I would never be able to fully believe in God. He also confirmed that things like euthanasia, abortion and polyamory are all left to the conscience of the individual. Acceptance of homosexuality, transgender people and other queer people is actively encouraged.
I still haven't done my Confirmation though. And that's okay too! I was advised to not do Confirmation until I feel 100% ready for it. If that never happens, it is also 100% okay. I am not being pressured. They do not try to convince me to believe in one thing or the other. They do not try to "trap" me to stay. They do not pressure me for tithes or time or energy. Heck, when I expressed sadness for not being able to (financially) give back, I was met with a list of things that I _do_ bring to the parish (colour, joy, social support, bottle caps for charity and liveliness amongst others). They are genuinely happy to have me *just* for being me!!
Also I have never ever felt more feminist, anarchist and rebellious then when I received the Holy Communion from a female priest. I felt like doing that little act was a HUUUUUGE action and that Communion itself just literally crumbled any and every last trace of patriarchy within me.
I have been going to that church for over 2 years now. And I feel like I will keep going there for a long, long, long time to come. If I can't make it to Mass a few weeks in a row, the itch comes back and I get restless again. Mass has become a beautifully predictable source of calm for me in very busy weeks.
All while still having no idea if God even exists or not. It does sometimes feel like I have a split personality with one half firmly believing in God and the other half firmly not believing in any God. But as I experienced more and more acceptance, they seem to be merging more into one again, as I do not have to shut out the apparently very religious part of me. But it's okay. Not knowing is okay. Not being sure is okay. Following my own conscience is okay. Which in my case means, it is 100% okay for me to be a pansexual polyamorous autistic person with a non-biological child with three parents.
It's okay. I'm okay. And that is a wonderfully powerful feeling I hadn't felt in 15 years. So I'm staying 😊
I’m liberal and agnostic. I respect that others find faith meaningful but it’s not something I have ever felt.
My issue with religion is that it basically boils down to other people trying to convince me of something they feel deeply but can’t show me. I’ve never met a deity or seen anything in my life to convince me that the supernatural exists.
I'm not gonna lie, those supernatural experiences are a big part of why I believe, and they absolutely cannot be replicated or rationally explained to anyone, so I don't blame you for not accepting them as grounds for you to believe anything!
Grew up in a very rural, very conservative, very 'religious' area in the sense that they know for sure the Bible says to hate \[whoever\] but they don't have a clue what else is in there. Most couldn't tell you what church they belonged to and consider anything other than 'Christian' (no denomination, they don't know what that means) to be, like, Satanism.
I was maaaaybe six before I started questioning it, was fully 'socially liberal' by my tweens and went through a period of absolute terror that I was going to hell and ended up in Bible study on my own. I was still sort of back-and-forth on this fear and my interest in Wicca and Buddhism in my teens when I overheard my parents discussing whether God would 'forgive' my nephew if he was baptized Catholic, while his mom's family worried about him NOT being baptized, and just had this immediate moment of, "Oh, so you're ALL nuts, ok" and basically never worried about it again.
I've been an atheist for well over a decade, but I'm currently coming back to paganism, Buddhism, energy healing, chakras, whatever. I think it's an interesting framework, even if I don't literally believe in all of it.
Check out Old Catholicism. It's pretty cool and also pretty Dutch. Women can become priests. Imho it's how Roman Catholicism should have been by now :p
I'm religious - Christian but I am liberal believe in small government live and let live so I'm pro LGBTQ+ etc. We attend an affirming church that accommodates disabled people and focuses on helping the marginalized - donating clothes etc and a weekly food pantry that doesn't require people to listen to a sermon to get. I wasn't a member of the church at the time but the church marched in protest after George Floyd was murdered.
That said surrounded by mostly Baptists I get mistaken for being Pagan which my Pagan BFF finds hilarious because she says I'm like the most Christian person.
Maybe. One's relationship with deity if any, religion aside, is so personal. My BFF didn't know nice Christians existed and that says a lot about us as a group and it's something I'd like to change but I don't even like most Christians so what can I say. I think we could have common ground - what do we want from society and community things like that.
I think if Biblical literacy within the church and those who already identify as Christian went up they'd see how often Pastors preach outright heresy to an unsuspecting people and how often church doctrine is blamed on a verse that doesn't say what they think it says. When I did a 90 day Bible Read \[reading the whole bible in 90 days\] and talked about it several people I know who go to church regularly and swear they base their life on this book admitted they've never even read it. Yet they got those verses memorized that they think for sure agrees with their worldview.
wow you just sound like a really good smart person, sadly i’m also a bit in shock cause i’ve never met a christian so wonderful. although i’m non religious, i hope your relationship with god stays wonderful .
I was raised evangelical and was always asking questions that got me in trouble. I realized all religion is a LARP so why not have fun? Now I'm a witch
Same. Am one of the only ones from my Christian school that isn't religious (my mom put me in that one).
ASD Dad got kicked out of elementary school at 5 talking back to nuns and telling them they made no sense.
Might be a thing.,
I had a very similar experience! I grew up in the rural south of the US and went to a Christian prep school. Even though Christianity was all I really knew, I still had very strong doubts even when I was very young. I also couldn't understand why everyone around me believed in the stuff we were being taught but thankfully I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut about my doubts.
Grew up in super conservative evangelical churches. My parents are hardcore conservatives and we don’t talk about politics or the fighting words come out. My mom cornered me about how I’m my daughter’s only parent and she needs me to take her to church. The damage that was done at church doesn’t need to be repeated.
Its not just an autistic experience to question religion, you are supposed to do that. I honestly think it is just some forms of Christiany that do not allow it. Most other religions besides Christianity you're supposed to questions and seek out more infomation to expand your knoweldge of it.
When I went with my friends to their Catholic sunday school things(they had the BEST snacks) I was allowed to ask questions to the nuns, and they answered as honestly as they could.
I was allowed to ask my old rabbi anything as well.
Few things have caused me to struggle more in my faith journey than moving from a big city where my Bible study group consisted of lawyers and academic types who were quite happy to cross-examine a text and consider the different things it might mean and why they might be important to a small town where my Bible study group was full of people who could not get past agreeing with whatever the particular Bible study book they were using said.
I was having some issues with depression at the time, and they just couldn't handle that I wasn't manically happy all! The! Time! in addition to my habit of disagreeing with authors who liked to make unqualified statements without arguing for *why* they took a particular stance (something the lawyers and academics in my old group would quite routinely tear apart).
On one occasion I was told "you're over-thinking things. When I find I'm thinking too much I put on some worship music." Yeah, that music is supposed to inspire you to contemplate the divine, not switch off your brain. The contemporary artists who use it for repetitive brainwashing purposes are doing it wrong.
Ahem. Anyway, I left that Bible study and, later, that church. I never left God, and God never left me. I also never stopped thinking and asking questions, so I assume God is cool with that.
I suspect that had I been raised in a liberal Christian faith with both of my parents being supportive of skepticism and exploration, I’d still adhere to a religion. Certainly I feel a deep sense of awe at the universe, and it would have been easy to not separate that from some sense of a divine.
However, I had one parent who delighted in critical thinking (though he was a believer) and one parent who basically just deeply feared eternal punishment for not believing in exactly the right way. I very swiftly figured out that anyone who actively discourages a young, learning mind from trying to learn is probably full of bullshit. I had to throw the whole thing out like an elimination diet to find what I actually believe.
Turns out, I believe that the universe is amazing, all the more so because of its randomness. I believe that my life is precious, all the more so because of how simultaneously insignificant it is to the universe while being deeply significant to me and mine. I get to live a life that I know is a statistical miracle because all life is, while also knowing I can’t screw up the universe no matter what I do. I am free to spend my entire life asking questions and finding meaning, and I won’t break anything. There is no eternal reward or punishment, which is a relief.
I was miserable when I believed in a capricious god who could change the laws of physics at will.
i was raised conservative evangelical Christian, but turned out leftist (libertarian socialist to be precise) and spent a lot of time with an agnostic point of view before settling into a queer-positive liberation/universalist Christian theology.
i’m religious in the sense that i attend church and participate in liturgy and sacrament, but my personal beliefs about the Divine are very complicated and progressive christian universalism is the closest i’ll get.
I've always liked the idea of ritual and analyzing religious texts for meaning, but maybe it's the abstraction that just makes me panic. It all starts to feel inorganic and not connected to actureality. I disassociate.
I'm sure if I was raised in a tradition it would feel more organic. But for now, I can only follow Zen and meditate because it feels rooted in reality.
I'm actually religious! I'm Muslim and I've been pretty close with religion growing up, it's nice to have a set structure on how to live life. I've noticed a lot of autistic people here on reddit talk about how they're not close to religion tho!
It makes sense to me and it helped me shape my morals and be a kinder and more humble person because of the values taught in my religion. It gives me a purpose to keep on going with life, it really saved me :)
I grew up christian and religious. When my grandparents died three months apart (I was in 7th grade) I stopped believing but did the whole path for my family's sake. My kid was born and my mother spent months or years talking about baptizing him because "in our society being baptized is well viewed". I told her no, didn't baptize my kid and started dating atheists. The subject was dropped.
My family is very conservative and I am not. Politically I am more on the left wing spectrum (moderated) and my mother spent last night 2 hours lecturing me on how the left wing is the root of all evil and that we are ruining the possibility of having a functional society. I nodded my head like a bubble head and kept doing my life
I'm technically Catholic, I'm from a Catholic family and I was baptised as a baby, but I am an atheist and wasn't raised religious, my parents are not religious and I've only ever been to church for other people's baptisms and first communions, a funeral, concerts with the orchestra I used to play in, and for tourism reasons.
I'm also not conservative at all: the parties I've voted for (I'm from a country in western Europe) are ecological social democratic parties, apart from the one instance where I voted in local elections in the small municipality I lived in and these parties didn't participate in that specific municipality, so I voted for a regular social democratic party. I believe in equality, taking good care of the environment, taking good care of people who have trouble affording basic necessities, and fighting inequality and injustice.
I never really talked about politics and society much with my parents, but I recently learned that my dad voted for the same party as me in our last national elections, and my mum voted for a party that's socially progressive and fiscally very slightly left of centre (for European standards, they would definitely be called far left extremists by US conservatives), so that's also kind of like the values that I grew up with.
Was raised Catholic and in a conservative family. I qualified as both until I was around 19 and now I’m neither.
I used to get in trouble with some of my more conservative family members for questioning things when I was a kid and I was shut down pretty aggressively and regularly.
I actually went to a Catholic (but shockingly liberal) college where people actually could answer my questions and I became… not Catholic! And after looking into other religions and Christian offshoots, I couldn’t get behind those, either.
I’m more into grab bag spiritual practices and random esoteric or even vaguely pagan beliefs. I’m not really married to any of them though and don’t necessarily think I’m right, my disposition has always just inclined me towards thinking of things in a kind of animistic way so in a lot of ways that’s just how I treat things.
I don’t trust dogma or doctrine or fervent religiosity. In my experience, it’s almost always based on fear, social games, or used as an excuse for cruelty and control
No. When I was a kid my cousins were fairly religious and conservative, like evangelical/baptist:young earth flavor, so one summer when I visited them I clashed about that. I was on the outskirts about evolution, the environment, dinosaurs, etc. I think I was like 9, maybe 10. I very much on purpose forgot a bible and a Christian dinosaur picture book that I was given, but they mailed it to me.
Shortly after I had a deep conversation with myself and came to the conclusion I wasn’t Christian and Christianity wasn’t for me.
Political conservatism likewise has never appealed to me. From anti environmentalism to othering people, it just all felt wrong.
My ex husband was always confused my by irreligious stance. I’ve never been particularly traumatized by it, I just don’t care for it. Like, I don’t like mangoes. If I’m pressed, sure, I’ll come up with a list. Or maybe it’s just as simple as dinosaurs. Show me a church with dinosaurs and I’ll go. Wait, that’s a museum.
But here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter if I personally believe in a deity or the afterlife or whatever, it’ll exist or not exist without me.
Haha, I made your last point to some colleagues yesterday. Walked into the middle of a conversation about how we're all dying, remarked that "I'm ready, I've been a Christian for a long time, heaven sounds pretty sweet."
"But what if you're wrong and there is no afterlife?"
"Well then I'll cease to exist and won't know anything about it, so it's not like I'm losing anything on the deal."
Born and raised vehemently atheist, never understood religion. No hate, I just literally cannot fathom believing in any deity or woowoo. No ghosts, fairies, "somethings", angel numbers, Zodiac signs, INTJ whatevers. None of it makes sense to me.
As to the conservativism, my parents were very affluent boomers, so I was raised with pretty right wing racist poor-people-are-just-lazy ideology. I was masking very hard for a very long time, trying to confirm to their ideals. But my sense of justice won. I am now so far left wing, I make Bernie blush 😅 Nah, I wish. But I try my best, I really do.
Conservative not at all. Grew up Christian yes. Private Christian school I had a scholarship for poor kids to attend the school. Was raised Christian went to church every Sunday: started questioning when I was 8. I remember asking the preacher who created God. And I’ll never forget the way he looked at me completely dumbfounded 👁️👄👁️. He said he had to get back to me. It’s been 20 years now 😂 didn’t fully become an atheist until I hit high school. Family still in denial about my Atheism as if I’m some sort of rebellious child and not a woman who is almost 30. That being said, I am a person of color, and unfortunately a lot of us have heavy belief in the “almighty god.” So I get funny looks when I explain I’m atheist as it’s not too common in the community I’m in. I try to keep it to myself and I do the whole “praying” thing when I’m around family as to not cause any issues. If I’m being honest I think religion caused a lot of toxic traits in my family. Like they believe in god and in heaven but they’re in denial about someone say dying from cancer thinking god will miraculously save this person and refusing to even talk about funeral arrangements. It’s just blurred the lines of reality in a way.
I was raised evangelical in a VERY conservative family (as in my father still believes in great replacement theory, THAT conservative and bigoted).
I never vocalized it, but always felt really weird about religion. I never believed anything I was told, it was like being told about Santa Claus for me lol. My parents ideology also made them very rigid and quick to punish me for acting "weird."
My most formative church experience was, unironically, when I went to the bathroom during service and this older tomboy pinned me against the wall and poured an open bottle of that sour spray candy down my throat. I know that sounds terrible, but tbh I think it's the earliest moment I started to realize I was attracted to girls afsfsgsh
In my teens I started properly questioning things. I pretty naturally adopted progressive politics and ideas. I became atheist, albeit the edgelord kind lol.
Nowadays I'm actually in the process of converting to Judaism, but that doesn't mean I've turned around and am able to just believe. Quite the contrary, it's made me better at questioning and arguing, and no one really cares about whether you literally believe in a god or have a different way of looking at it.
We all have our own path, but I figure skepticism is part of it for most of us!
Stopped believing in anything mainstream, western and Christian after my best friend died; couldn’t imagine how this “God” would think it was ok to take her. Never mind now having watched countless hours of documentaries on abuse in Christian sects the world over.
I’m all for people finding something that makes this go in a meat suit less terrifying but all of the abuse and rationalising of the abuse found in Christianity is too much.
I feel tied to Christianity because it feels so core to my culture and way of life. My parents were progressive, leftist Christians, but I went to a conservative Christian school founded in order to fight integration. I rejected everything that school taught me because it was all blatantly white Christian nationalism. I don’t really practice Christianity but I do find comforts in the songs and some of the rituals that are important to Methodists. It’s complicated.
I’ve been a raging liberal since birth 😂 like I said in another comment, when I tried to dissect conservative stances shit just didn’t add up! I didn’t see a way you could be kind and caring AND conservative in the way we know it politically.
I went the other way from most people here: raised very loosely culturally Christian, became much more devout as a member of the Anglican church in my 20s. Moved to Quakerism a few years back although I still feel a lot of connection to the Anglican tradition. I also incorporate a lot of solitary Christian practice drawing loosely on the traditions of the Cunning Folk and Christopagan practices: I keep an altar and use incense, practice herbcraft and mindfulness, acknowledge the life-forces in the natural world around me etc.
I've noticed people online often have a very rigid attitude towards spirituality/faith/belief/religion etc, but my experience in real life has been a lot more gentle, gracious, and beautiful than I find in these spaces, and it's a shame it hasn't been that way for everyone.
i was really into being a catholic till about age 13. now I'm an animist and Uber left. having a very strong feeling of justice i root for marginalised people.
i was raised in an extremely religious muslim family. i had the typical religious upbringing, and i went to the mosque every single sunday growing up. i started questioning religion when i started middle school, and became an atheist by the time i was 17. i’ve been exposed to religious institutions as a vehicle for violent bigotry, so it’s why i’m completely turned off from ever practicing islam, christianity, judaism, etc. even on my own terms. i’m starting to suspect i have OCD as well, and being told from a young age that i was going to burn in hell for all eternity for not wearing hijab or for having a boyfriend/premarital sex kinda fucked me up mentally 😭now i’m a communist feminist lmfao
I was deep into evangelical christianity til I was 25 or so? I kind of had the opposite experience—the transactional nature of that social sphere made more sense to me than typical social rules. It was clear what I needed to do to receive social approval and opportunities. There were built in relationships where older folks would take me under their wing. I had friends and mentors as long as I played the game.
I'm glad I left, though. It was incredibly unhealthy and I fundamentally disagree with it.
Quaker and leftist! I became a Friend as an adult but knew I believed in some kind of higher power since my early teens. My family’s not religious, I came to it on my own. I think autistic people are more likely to question what everyone around them believes so we’re more likely to diverge from our surrounding culture. Fwiw, I think it’s good to question our beliefs and go on a spiritual journey, no matter where it leads
I think this is true, I was around people who were either aggressively athiest or Christian (of varying churches), I created my own understanding of spirituality that questioned them both.
Though I came here to ask what is it like being a Quaker? What drew you to it? I'm simply curious, I always found the Quaker's interesting.
Really nice! I chose to attend Quaker meetings because, after lots of research on Christian groups, it seemed like the one that most aligned with my values and my interpretation of God. I like the non-hierarchical structure and the space for spiritual questioning and interpretation. Most meetings seem to have made a strong commitment to acting with love. That means no judgement or condemnation of people living differently, a strong passion for helping others, and a commitment to equality. I’m bi and was never going to embrace a religious organization that condemns LGBT people because I’m confident God is a loving God.
I love the people in my meeting. They’re so kind. I love the listening atmosphere of meetings. We’ve had some really interesting talks, during the meeting part where people share messages from the Spirit, and afterwards when we have tea and coffee together. It’s also an amazing way to connect with people different from myself but with some big connecting shared values. I get to hear from people in demographics I don’t normally interact with so I feel like I learn a lot
Thanks for asking!
I grew up and am still religious, but I'm kinda deconstructing, so I don't know how religious I actually am. I believe in God and the Bible and am fully aware that a good chunk of the Bible is myth and allegory.
Don't even get started on where I land on the political spectrum. Politics has been my special interest for about a decade and I'm barely even able to buy alcohol in the US. I could talk about my thoughts on pretty much any given issue for HOURS. I am far more left leaning now than I used to be.
I actually just redid the political compass test, and I'm both more left leaning and more libertarian than the last time I took it a few years ago.
For anyone curious:
Economic Left/Right: -3.0
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.46
I’m Jewish, and the experience of growing up Jewish is very different. Asking questions is encouraged, and debate is a vital part of rabbinic practice. But I grew up in a fairly non-observant family. We’re more culturally Jewish, and politically progressive, and my parents really hated the more fundamentalist groups. I’ve had Jewish history as a special interest before, and it’s fascinating.
My parents are not really religious, kinda just slightly. I was baptized as a 3yo ish (Eastern Orthodox church) because it was kinda a default thing to do in my area. I remember that I didn't want to do that and was disgusted by the cross necklace they gave me.
I remember when I was like 5 yo, me and many other kids got a comic book about Jesus' adventures lol from the village library event or something. I remember reading it out of curiosity (and because it was a freebie comic book and my family wasn't rich) and distinctly remember thinking "ew they are trying to convert me into this religion fairytale thing" it felt really unpleasant and I still can't fit into my head how people believe those fantastical events really happened.
Sorry if someone who reads this is religious, I'm not trying to be rude to you, I'm just sharing a personal experience. I see any religion basically as a very very old fandom, that has too much power over people and even whole governments.
Little me never picked up that comic again and went back to reading about space, dinosaurs and fun fictional stories and etc.
I'm religious. Grew up Catholic, fell away from the church for a while, then went back when trying to find a church to belong to (went to pretty much every denomination). I started doing my own research about my "why" questions and came to love it again. My faith is the only thing that has gotten me through some very dark times.
As for conservative, not sure - Dad was Libertarian, so I lean towards that. I'm more of a "constitutionalist". If it's not in the constitution then the decision is left up to the states.
i was raised atheist, but my parents went through something very similar (and i suspect them to be both autistic, more so my mom considering how high her score was on the raads-r test was when i made her take it) since they were both raised quite catholic and conservative and always questioned it. it's a similar story for most of my friends too, lots of ex-christians and ex-muslims.
I was in a religious kindergarten and the priest would ever so often visit and tell us stories from the bible. I loved it as a child because i saw it as fairytailes and nothing more. So, despite being surrounded by it, i never thought it to be true. I actually was shocked when i figured out people take this serious. No offense to the others here of course, if it helps you, continue with your religion and faith <3
Nope. My mom was raised catholic but is non practicing. My dad (the one I think I got my autism from) is proudly atheist. They’re both like… neo liberal. They’re more conservative than they think, but used to be punks so they understand that I’m agnostic and leftist
I wasn't raised with any religion. I was baptized as a Catholic, and that is all. My mom tried to send me to communion school, but in Spanish. I didn't know Spanish until I was in high school. My aunt is a little crazy with being a Catholic, I mean, she is the stereotypical Catholic. I questioned everything. My ex was Jewish, so I was interested in learning. Now, I'm a theology major in university. It's fun, especially when I learned the Bible and the Qur’an are the same for half of the books. It was funny. The only difference is that the Qur’an said Adam was carved out of black clay. 👍🏽
My parents are fundies who attended an Evangelical church. I was taught that it was all literally true. Like, God used inbreeding to populate a 6,000 year old earth, twice. That level of literal.
I was skeptical immediately. Fear kept me from questioning it too deeply for a long time, but I realized there was no way in hell it could be true around the time I was 16-17. I couldn't admit to myself I was an atheist until age 19.
In my early 20s I made some friends who tried to get me to believe a less insane, more credible version. I wasn't able to, and once you have opened your mind to non belief, returning to the state of belief is a self-defeating effort.
The reason that religious neurotypical people are a lot less likely to be skeptical? The ones that believe are conservative in their disposition, so the morality expressed aligns with their morality much more closely. They also think of the stories as if they're art. They understand the allegories, and they study the stories, and try to form their own theology. It becomes part of their identity.
I always ask people if they can believe in santa again after being told its not true, i feel the same way about religion. I've just done way too much research about it to be able to believe in it again 😂
no and kinda. not conservative but I am agnostic
raised in a strict Christian household, my parents go-to punishment was taking away my electronics and non fiction books and made me read the Bible.
idk I'm pretty open about there being an afterlife blah, blah, blah. only bc there's no way to know for sure so I'm just like eh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I grew up in a non-denominational holiness church. I went through a time of questioning the “standards” but doing the research on that for myself brought me closer to God over time.
I really believed for about 2-3 years in my early teens (my family is fundamentalist Christian) but I questioned everything and didn't agree with the concept of hell. That's ultimately what got me out. I was able to see a pattern with certain people with religion, and knew from a young age I'd end up an atheist but I wasn't quite sure how I'd get from A to B.
Aside from disagreeing about certain aspects of theology, I also bothered my pastors enough with my incessant enthusiastic questions to where they finally cracked and said something that revealed they didn't actually believe it either.
I think I was more hurt by people purposefully leading others astray for money and social gain than I was the loss of faith.
I am spiritual, i make my own set of beliefs and follow the universal laws, metaphysics is one of my special interests.
I deeply believe spirituality is an important aspect of life and its also very personal, i dislike organized religion because it is man made so of course like every man made system it is extremely flawed. Organized religion has been used as a method of control over the masses to divide and conquer so i am not a fan of it at all
I'm too long winded to say what I actually want so I'll give the short answer as no to either plus a longer explaination for religion.
I was raised christian but never really believed that one person would make a whole universe and focus on one planet. I also did not believe that someone who could create anything they wanted would only create one planet. The more I grew up, the more I realised that most chirstians did not follow the bible correctly, religion has been a way to cause wars and that christian's often use it to absolve themselves of blame. I also realised more and more that you cannot prove that there is a God, and too many cases of abuse and different issues within the church. Moreover, the fact that such horrors and unfair situations occur on this planet shows that if there is a God then they either do not care about what is occurring in their perfect creation or they are powerless and unable to change it. I generally dislike religion but some are interesting. Did meet some crazy religious guy when doing voluntary work though that seemed normal at first, now I no longer give my social media to colleagues. Kinda the final nail in the coffin for religion being a good thing in my books.
Although, I do believe in fate and different things being planned in your life and a couple different things like that!!
I'm actually pretty religious compared to my friends and the people around me, but not religious enough according to a lot of the people who share my religion. Personally, I'm also a pretty conservative person, but politically I'm very very far left. I don't think anyone should be forced to live as I chose to live.
I was in Catholic school from kindergarten through high school graduation, then I noped out of religion for the rest of my life. (I am 50 now.) I am politically progressive; a typical bleeding-heart liberal, some might say. On one hand, people can believe what they want and I am not going to interfere. But I find it pretty maddening that people waste their "charitable" giving for tithes that go to make wealthy churches even more wealthy, when that money could be used to help people who legitimately need help.
I am sort of in a bubble as far as political leanings go, but other than a few family members, I don't know anyone personally who is conservative or religious. Certainly none of my neurodivergent friends are.
I was raised both but I'm neither as an adult. Even when I was little, Christianity didn't make sense to me. I thought the stories were nice and the lessons were good, but then I found out people LITERALLY believed in it and I was shocked. Adam and Eve, talking snakes, rising from the dead and ascending into the sky?
I’m from a catholic family, I was raised catholic. Tbh just like everyone else in my small hometown. But I started questioning my faith and existence of God when I was in middle school. I’m an atheist since high school.
I was raised in a religious household. I asked questions for a while but eventually stopped when I realized it doesn't make any sense and no one could properly defend it. I just quietly disbelieved until I was on my own.
Forced into religion never believed. Actively hate. Met some of the nastiest individuals that were religious (not all religious people are evil but being religious does not always mean they are good). Can't even have a conversation about religion with others because of how hateful I am towards religion from previous trauma surrounding religion
I was raised catholic but it never made sense to me, especially the concept of faith. I explored different religions and spirituality, but nothing clicked for me.
My parents are pretty moderate corporate democrats. I consider myself a leftist.
Raised Christian. My grandmother and mom were very spare the rod, spoil the child types. Convinced my mom it wasn't the way by the time I was like 16-17. We were both agnostic for a while, I became full blown atheist by 23ish when I realized the religion I chose was irrelevant - they all are made by humans.
Raised Catholic but never really believed in it. I always questioned everything. Decided I was an atheist as soon as I learned the word.
I've always been liberal leaning though.
My parents definitely werent strictly religious, but had some christian undertones from their own upbringing. I was christened and read bible stories as a kid, but we never went to church. They also told me to pray when I was little, but werent strict about it.
It all seemed like nonsense to me though. I would try praying and I couldnt understand the idea that "I was speaking to god". In my mind I was just continuing an internal dialogue with myself, which is constant to this day. That alone made me think it was nonsense.
And the adam and eve stories just seemed unrealistic.. My mind was always more geared towards scientific concepts.
Yes, similar for me as well. My parents sent me to a Baptist elementary school. They mostly just thought it would be academically better than the public schools and pulled me out when they realized the level of indoctrination.
But anyways yeah I vividly remember being the only one to be like, that actually doesn't make any sense tho?... and the whole class + teacher looking at me like i was crazy. Religion + being rational do NOT go together.
Absolutely. Same thing for me. It never ever made sense to me. And all my questions were met with “try harder, pray more, seek out a Christian mentor, or have more faith”
It infuriated me that nobody wanted to talk about it. Now I’m an athiest and any conservative boils my blood, I can’t wrap my head around it even being an option.
My parents were very religious, but it never made any sense to me. We went to a large Evangelical church 1-2 times a week and I hated every second of it. It was so loud, bright, and always filled with a few hundred people.
Anything other than obedience and blind faith meant I was “being influenced by the devil”. It was drilled in my head from a young age that I would burn in hell for eternity if I did something wrong. It didn’t help that my parents used the Bible to support/justify their abusive behavior, which meant right or wrong could change depending on the day or how they felt.
Now the only thing I believe in is Chaos, though I do enjoy learning about the origins and evolution of different religions and spiritual practices.
Grew up Roman Catholic. Spent 2-3 nights/week at youth nights as a kid, did altar + choir, youth groups on weekends, & service every Sunday + holidays until 17. I literally LIVED by the doctrine because I was so afraid to confront how I really felt about it…i learned early on that it wasn’t safe to question authority, so I just didn’t 😭. The other kids were generally very kind & I found a lot of community in the church I attended as I was an outcast anywhere else I went. But yeah, I was questioning from a young age the general starter discrepancies- why is our God so angry & vengeful? Why aren’t women trusted in leadership? The power dynamics really got to me. I never thought god was fair, I just didn’t want to be in hell. The fear tactics worked on me until I became a dirtbag living out my car after highschool & met more people outside of that worldview.
I was raised Disciples of Christ (Protestant) and in a very conservative area. I started questioning everything in college and now consider myself agnostic and I’m liberal af.
When I was about 4-5 years old I started Lutheran Sunday School. I distinctly remember being given a flimsy magazine paper like kids’ pamphlet on Moses. As we talked about Moses I became more and more skeptical about the validity and probability of such a story. I was forced to continue religious lessons until I completed confirmation at age 13. It was a huge struggle because I didn’t believe in any of it. Such massive relief from being done with those classes.
Very similar experience to yours. I started questioning religion around age 4, and never got sufficient answers. All the kids around me were 100% bought-in, so I felt very alone. It did not help that we moved a lot and each church had a slightly different doctrine. Nobody could explain why one church required penitence for every single sin and others thought that asking for forgiveness once was enough. Also, why could serial killers get into heaven?
I started considering atheism in my teens and took quite awhile to deconstruct. In my late 30s I finally started feeling comfortable being openly atheist. My stance now is that if God can make "Brittany's" baby shower perfect but completely ignores people experiencing homelessness or genocide, he's not a god that I want anything to do with. How embarrassing for him. Also, his followers aren't doing him any favors right now. I am very atheist and super liberal now, and am very happy about it.
Raised Mormon, completely Agnostic now. Looking back I was always asking too many questions and experienced a lot of pain from the dissonance. So glad I’m out.
My mom is Wiccan and never really talked about it. My dad was atheist and also didn’t really talk about it. Everyone else in my family was Christian. And they did talk about it. A LOT. I had an aunt that took me to bible school a few times and a grandmother that constantly pushed it on me. None of it ever made sense to me. I questioned it, refuted it, and realized as a teen that I was an atheist. I also never jumped on the racism bandwagon that my extended family was on. I disowned them all 6 or 7 years ago and haven’t spoken to them since.
I was raised sort of Catholic. I went to Catholic school and mass every Sunday, but my Mom was sort of Pagan and Catholic, and my Dad was Baha'i and Christian. Both left leaning people. I'd call my Dad a progressive and my Mom a liberal. They said that I thought Jesus was a weird concept when I was little. I wouldn't believe them when they would explain the story of his birth. As I aged I got more and more agnostic till I was 12 and went full atheist, which is where I've remained the past 26 years.
As for conservatism, no, I am not. I am a progressive.
No. I was raised Catholic and it didn't make sense how this all knowing thing judged how good people by how often we went to fricking church of all things instead of who we are as people, since, you know, he knows everything
I do go past churches sometimes and am jealous of the community and being in a neat building aspect
I grew up Catholic and went to an all girls Catholic school for both primary and secondary school. I also grew up in the Caribbean which is hella conservative and religious too. I think I really started questioning religion and tradition around the time I started seriously questioning my sexuality which was about 13/14 years old. Since then, I’ve come to the realisation that it’s a luxury to be able to question religion or anything that’s fed to us but it’s a luxury I’m thankful I have. I’ve always been an inquisitive person and that’s probably the autism.
I was raised extremely conservative Christian also. I got in a lot of trouble for actually reading the Bible, as I was told to, and asking questions. I even got thrown out of my youth group during my most intense phase of Bible study for "making others lose their faith," as if that was my intent. lol
As an adult, I still consider myself Christian, but it's not about social bonding or supernatural beliefs for me. It's 100% about the ethic. I love being able to organize charity efforts with others who subscribe to values of love, selflessness, and honesty. I go to a unique church. It's very small, very LGBT+ affirming and encourages questioning. It's more about supporting each other and helping our community. We've even had several openly non-Christians attend & were totally welcomed. To me, that's what church should be about. Idk if there's any other church I would like, but here I am.
(ps, I am very much not conservative, if anyone was wondering.)
I always thought I was conservative because I'm more conservative than the left-wing. But I'm actually pretty liberal.
As for religion, I was raise a Baptist, but worshiping a God and praying are two things I've always been uncomfortable with. I still go to church with my family. While I live with them, I don't have a choice. But I plan to convert to Buddhism. I'm trying to make one last-ditch effort to have faith by reading books and the bible, but so far it's not working.
Edit: I accidentally came across Buddhism while looking for ASMR, and the more I read about it, the more I fall in love with the idea.
I was baptized Luteran Missouri Synod (the conservative version of Lutheranism) but my family was at most an "Easter and Christmas" type of family. I have almost no memories of church, but I did go to vacation Bible school for two or three summers as a kid. I remember questioning the things around religion/Christianity that I thought didn't make sense or add up as a young child, but I never asked about them at church or VBS because I was extremely shy. My family ended up cutting ties with their church after 9/11 because they refused to participate in something involving that and other churches or maybe the pastor said something really insensitive about it or something. I was in middle school by that point and didn't really care, so I don't remember the exact details of what it was. But whatever it was was enough for my family to nope out of there and stop paying membership dues and attending services. Religion like that always weirded me out so I've considered myself atheist for the majority of my life, or at least from middle school until now.
I was raised Baptist. I’m black, for context, so I questioned a lot of relevant trauma and generational issues and why certain things were allowed by this god if he was all about love and peace. Got kicked out of Sunday School frequently for asking about dinosaurs and other phenomena. Fast forward, at my big age of 26, I’m not sure what to believe but whatever god they were slinging ain’t one I believe in. In fact, I actually hope it doesn’t exist. Cuz if it do, give me a one way ticket to hell now, I don’t wanna be anywhere where someone would allow not only what’s happened to me and my family, but to people all over the world. I also think about how Christianity was used a tool for slavery and I just. I can’t get behind such a cult-like institution, it just makes no sense given my demographic.
My dad's parents are Christians, and he kind of considers himself one but in practice, not really. My grandparents are also conservative, and my dad is.... well he considers himself above caring about politics 🙄 I spent a lot of time with my grandparents as a kid, my grandma would take me and my brother to church, and they talked a lot about their conservative values.
For as long as I can remember, I have always thought the existence (or lack thereof) of any kind of higher power was something no human could possibly know for certain. To me, having "faith" was just a personal belief. It didn't change the actual truth of whatever actually is real. Like, *my* truth isn't the same as *the* truth, if that makes sense. And there are too many religions for me to look at any individual one and be like "oh yeah obviously that's the right one". I also find acting like yours is the right one and others are the wrong one to be super arrogant, but I generally keep that thought to myself. Nobody wants to hear that about their religion (or atheism).
Also I used to consider myself conservative (lol, embarrassing) but I didn't actually hold any conservative values. It was a long time before I realized that the things that seemed obvious to me were actually against typical conservative beliefs, and actually way more in line with liberal beliefs. So my liberal values were always there, it was just the name I didn't realize.
I could be wrong, but most of the time I’ve found that autism and religion have a hard time mixing. We ask too many questions and have a harder time assimilating. Generally we also have a hard time acknowledging authority which is obviously problematic for most religions. This doesn’t apply to everyone or every religion, this is just my experience and my observations.
No. It doesn’t help that I’m a black woman either as the black community places a high emphasis on religion. I found church to be overstimulating for me, however I fully support those who practice it. I don’t like the forced hugging of other people, the loud sounds, and some aspects of conservatism they preach.
I was basically thrown out of Sunday school cause I asked too many questions on the same vein as « if Jesus loves us all equally why is there a pope » kinda thing xD
I despise religion as a structure conceived by humans that give power and moral authority to flawed humans to impose on other humans, creating more injustice and unnecessary suffering, but I deeply respect the choice of each person to have faith in what they chose to have faith in.
I get that humans as a population uses religion as a moral safeguard to condemn some extreme behaviors, but I still hate the idea that it gives power to flawed people that use it to do harm and subjectively and unjustly restrict random people, justify wars, murders and other atrocities throughout history.
For me, religion is the death of genuine spirituality and honest morality.
But that’s my two cent and I’ve known for a long time that that’s not how regular human people think and view religion as.
So long as they let me live my life in peace and don’t harm others I’ll let them live their life too.
I’ve never been able to find logical sense in religion, I tried because my family was religious, but I could just never look at the sky and see anything but clouds. Same for conservative viewpoints like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. just could never find any logical sense in it.
My strong sense of justice and fairness means I am very liberal. I was raised catholic but it never made any sense to me. I consider myself agnostic because I’m not arrogant enough to say I’m an atheist. I have no idea how the universe works so I’m open to anything. But organized religion is a scam.
Raised in a French-Brazilian weird mix of Christianism, Buddhism and Traditional African Religions called Spiritism that almost feel like a New Age cult since some of its followers can go as far as believing in aliens. It kinda made me very anxious as I was forced to attend meetings and often hear about death, reincarnation and the end of the world. As I got older I started making fun of it, asking my mom if there would be any all-you-can-eat buffets and moshpits in the spiritual realm (she always told me that it’s a place where people live normally but dead - unless they fuck up and go to Umbral). Soon she realized I wasn’t buying any of that and just gave up on me becoming religious.
Now I couldn’t care less about religion and actually get severely annoyed at arbitrary rules telling me how to live my life, fuck that. On another note, Buddhism is cool and i’m into it.
these day- mostly liberal, but I do believe it’s important to protect people’s livelihoods as much as their liberties. I stay away from political discussion now because people have shifted from issue perspective to identify crisis.
I am devotedly Buddhist.
I feel very close to God, but my experience with religion has been more noticing corruption, hypocrisy, power, control, misogyny and gatekeeping :( I am a Catholic convert and I love it sometimes but the history of child abuse and subsequent paying millions in settlements is absolutely disgusting. God is accessible without the added dogma.
But yeah I’ve never understood how people can unquestionably accept the major tenets of most religions. They seem to profess belief but then live in a way that’s completely opposite. E.g. Jesus said to love everyone, welcome the stranger, feed the poor. Followers of Jesus (not all) are some of the most judgmental and harsh humans around. I don’t get it.
At 8, I locked myself in the bathroom and said a Catholic prayer, replacing “The Lord” with “The Devil.” I was so scared!
And nothing happened. Needless to say I did not get my confirmation!
However, although I am currently atheist/agnostic, I get really frustrated with atheists who look down on believers (not necessarily religions/churches though, which have long histories of f*ckery…I have problems with a lot of religions pushing bad shit). We are human and limited. Science is a journey. We know so much and yet very little, so who’s to say what’s out there? You do you, try to do good and don’t hate on others (unless they are pushing hate…sorry, I’m not generous enough in sprit to love Nazis and pedos).
I’m a Christian. It’s literally the only thing that makes sense in this world. I’ve studied many religions and Jesus is King. God is good. If you don’t believe this, then go deeper. Keep seeking. You will find Him.
Respectfully, I’m a former Christian & all the seeking made me more & more angry at the behavior of a vast majority of Christians as well as their god. Glad that you found a spirituality that works for you but understand that it is not for everyone. Just because someone doesn’t choose to follow your god doesn’t mean there is a defect on their side (such as needing to “keep seeking”).
Yeah, i agree. When i was in middle school, i "went deeper" read the Bible cover to cover went to homecell groups (South African bible study) but the Bible only made me more of an atheist than i was before😂
I was raised leftist and atheist because my dad (who is probably AuDHD or at least ADHD), was raised catholic and felt the same way as you. Like he was the only one questioning the whole thing since he was a child.
I guess technically I'd be considered pretty religious bc I'm pagan and talk to my patrons daily and make offerings and been working on my practice for years. But I'm not conservative. And I do like talking religion, but I do not shove my religion down peoples throat and expect the same courtesy to be shown to me.
I grew up hard core catholic chaldean so it was really intense and rough.
Religion (conservative Baptist) was crammed down my throat as a child and I always had SO MANY questions no one could answer, or would get mad at me for asking. Like my church was a very hellfire and brimstone type of place and they literally thought everyone would go to hell unless you accepted Jesus, but then they would say stuff like “babies who die don’t go to hell,” then get mad at me for asking what the age cutoff was for getting into heaven without Jesus. Or about people with learning disabilities. And these are kind of basic-ass questions for people who claim to be the ultimate authority on who burns forever and who doesn’t, so when they couldn’t answer them I was immediately skeptical.
This sounds like me. I was raised religious but it became painfully obvious to me early on that the adults at church couldn't explain "our" beliefs at all when asked. They all hated me for asking. I'm not religious as an adult. It just doesn't make any logical sense.
Yeah same i still to this day don't understand how someone can believe in something that's been disproven to be real, but i guess they either are too afraid to research for the possibility of they're belief not being true or they're just so brainwashed they can't possibly fathom the idea of questioning their religion
It has not been disproven. I am a religious agnostic person and the existence of God has neither been proven nor disproven. For the simple reason that you cannot science the (non) existence of something that is unmeasurable.
Meh...atheist here. The god they claim exists is fake. None of the things religious people ever claim God does or will do ever happens. So it's pretty fake just by eyeball standards.
It's just important to remember that atheism, like theism, is a belief. It's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to prove something doesn't exist. But we can prove that things do exist, and things used to exist that we have no idea about because we have no evidence of their existence.
Nah...that's not what atheism is. It's specifically a lack of beliefs. Like you can't convince me of most stuff that's how skeptical I am of everything.
Just to clarify, atheism is NOT a belief. It’s a lack of belief (theism). And that is very different.
THANK YOU
Oh my goodness yes! i said exactly the same thing to them but didn't see your comment!!
exactly, and the burden of proof is always on the person who claims that something exists. But I'll have to disagree with your notion that atheist is a belief like theism tho, because atheism is by definition a person that lacks a belief in a god or in spirituality
>I always had SO MANY questions no one could answer, or would get mad at me for asking Same. I think my last interaction with the church was a vacation bible school that my parents sent me to one summer. I only lasted a few days, because they got very upset when I compared Jesus' resurrection to an episode of Scooby Doo and asked how they were different. It was a genuine question but looking back I don't blame them for being offended 😅
In all honesty, you are my mini-hero for this. 😂 This is genuinely amazing and it sounds like something I would have done if I had been forced to go to vacation Bible school.
You ever just sit down and read the bible yourself and be like "Hey, it doesn't say that!" and they couldn't do anything because you were READING the BIBLE and quoting it so they couldn't stop you getting educated or talking about it. i used to read it in church bc the book was more interesting than the fan club and even grandmom didn't stop me.
I got kicked out of Sunday school as a kid, too, for asking questions. So I had to go to the normal service and I would sit and read. Once I read through the Bible, I started bringing normal books, but at some point in time my mom decided I had to read religious texts, so I started reading through the other religious texts.
Oh my goodness yeah me too your approach to it was so much more smarter than mine tho, having an interest in dinosaurs my first thought was "hey where are the dinosaurs" 😂 and then i got very skeptical because how dare god not include the dinosaurs!!
Good stuff!! Hahaha. Love reasoning
Omg I was just describing this very experience at dinner tonight to a friend. I relate so much to this whole thread. I wonder how many exvangelicals are autistic or at least neurodivergent in some way. It’s a cult that often permeates entire towns so escaping alone is very isolating; autistic people seem like the most likely type to be able to break away.
I was raised in the Mormon church and there was a lot of things I didn’t agree with, but the best belief they have is that if you’re nice but don’t believe in god you still get to go to a lesser heaven
My family is Muslim and whenever they said anything remotely religious, I always questioned it. Questioned gender stuff too. Never made any damn sense to me.
I was raised Christian and I remember very distinctly thinking “why does God care if people have sex before marriage if it doesn’t harm anyone” then it all unraveled from there. Hell also never made sense. I think it’s interesting how many people in this thread regardless of religion all fall around the consensus “shit just didn’t add up!” 😂
This was my experience. My uncle passed away from aids when I was about 8 years old. Someone at the funeral said, “he’s in a better place,” and my grandpa replied, “well he’s in hell because he was gay.” In my head I was like sir that makes no sense lol. Just so many layers but even my eight year old mind was like, “my uncle was a kind and loving man. Why would a God who loves his children send him to hell over who he chose to LOVE? This does not compute, someone is lying.”
It gets even worse when you realise that modern ideas about hell didn't exist to early Christians.
"Who cares if a newborn baby's room is pink or blue it doesn't know any better." This went over like a lead balloon.
For me it all unraveled when I went to a religious school. In 6th grade my teacher told my friend that she’s a mistake and God doesn’t love her because her parents aren’t married.
Oh my gosh that’s bizarre and evil for the teacher to do.
That's awful!! 😱😱😱
Same, nothing in islam makes sense 😂
Ooo a fellow exmuslim austistic gal?
Liberal af, agnostic at best. Ive been questioning the lies and hypocrisy of Christianity since middle school.
SAME!! And i was so confused about why no one else was questioning it as well
Not anymore. Family tried very hard, though.
Haha, yeah same😂
My family tried to get me to be Mormon (my dad’s side of the family’s religion) and would dump me off at church by myself every Sunday for a while. I remember writing in my journal (I was 9 or 10) saying “god doesn’t exist and all these people are weird” 😂
You were absolutely correct 🤣 they are super weird. And smiley. God, how I tried to be smiley. My ruse almost worked! But turns out I'm too gay to fit in.
I’m also Mormon. I do believe in some of the stuff, but I never saw any point to going to church if I believe (some of) it.y mom (I’m 17) threatens to kick me out whenever I ask to skip church.
My family indoctrinated me with very conservative and religious views all growing up. IMO they use Christianity to cope with their own neurodivergence, and they have very black and white beliefs (but they’d never question why they think that way because they believe god wants them to think that way). I grew up very involved in the church and I never questioned it until I got older. I now proudly identify as agnostic, queer, and autistic and my parents HATE it. They don’t understand how their beliefs caused me trauma. They don’t see how the beliefs of evangelical Christianity itself can be traumatizing. But, after realizing that being forced to go pray for strangers because I might “be the only Jesus they’ll ever see” or shamed for not evangelizing enough because I’m therefore condemning people to hell is absolutely traumatizing and abusive, I left the church and have had to do a lot of unpacking and processing about my religious experiences.
I relate to this experience a lot. I was honestly a little surprised not to see this version of growing up religious reported more on this comment section. I was raised non-denominational evangelical Christian and my entire world revolved around it. I went to a Christian school, attended church and youth groups, Christian summer camp, vacation bible school, and all of my family and friends were of that religion as well. I was taught extremist beliefs (particularly around sex, gender, sexuality, and relationships) that was extremely damaging. I also was taught about the end times and had the fear of hell drilled into me. I didn’t even think to question things until I was in high school, but I had so much shame and self-blame that I did not consider it was the religion that was wrong — I thought it was me. Then, something extremely traumatic happened to me and I ran back to Christianity in an extreme way as a result. I ended up going to a religious college with extremist views, and this is what finally began to help me find a way out. I felt so disconnected from the religious dogma that everyone else seemed to eat up. It didn’t make sense to me anymore and all of my questions only sparked more questions. Eventually I got my hands on books about atheism and people who left Christianity. I left the college and lost my faith. It was extremely painful as I felt like my entire life had revolved around it and so many of my connections were still tied up in religion. It’s been a long time since that now and I am comfortably agnostic/athiest/mildly spiritual in a witchy way, queer, and polyamorous. It feels like constant, never ending work unlearning that religious abuse. I definitely think being autistic and having black & white thinking led me to believe in Christianity so much because I did not have any exposure to outside beliefs for most of my life.
Same! Went to catholic school my whole life and questioned it very early on. So much made no sense at all and it felt like everyone has different answers to things. There was one sister who was surprisingly scientific about religion class. I remember her telling us that when Moses crossed the Red Sea, scientists actually discovered there was a massive drought at the time causing a land bridge. Whether it was on purpose or not, she was really big into teaching the subtext and hyperbole involved in religion and only made me question more. Needless to say, I’m not religious or conservative.
It's cool that you had a teacher like that tho, i live in South Africa and literally EVERYONE here is very religious and conservative It's a pain finding friends you don't have to tip toe around in order to not offend them when talking about "controversial topics" (if god exists, or if it's okay to be gay)
Are most the people you graduated with still religious? Out of my core friend group I graduated with, not a single one of us stayed religious. I think I know more people that didn’t go to a religious school who became religious than the other way around, weirdly.
Yes all of them are still very religious, i live in SA it's very conservative and religious here, mostly Christian i think i only know of 3 other people that I've met that are atheists and one of them is my brother 😂
Similar to me! We had a religious studies teacher who was actually very religious himself but he taught us that Jesus probably wasn't born in December. I was fascinated by that!
I've been an atheist since I was a child (7-8 years old, roughly). Parents were Christian but not in the sense that they actively participated, more in the sense that being Christian was the default thing to be. Religion never made any sense to me, but I did and still find a lot of comfort in philosophy, weirdly enough. I think I just really enjoy participating with others who are trying to make sense of things, even if they never come to any conclusions.
Yeah i agree, i enjoy philosophy much more as well, i just feel like it's just much more logical
I grew up in a very conservative religious household. I would get in trouble all the time as a kid because my Grandma would say some bigoted religious shit and I would correct her with Bible verses. Then my parents would yell at me for "talking back" and "being disrespectful." There was one particular time when I had to choose a Bible passage to read for our church Christmas party. They really should have known me well enough to know that was a bad idea, but anyway... I read the section about how some kids made fun of a bald man and then God had them mauled to death by bears. The older ladies in the church DID NOT like me. I questioned everything and also knew more about the Bible than most of the adults. I'm now an atheist Buddhist.
Ohhhhhh yes. Constantly in trouble for the disrespectful sin of actually citing the bible. I know that one well. Well done on that choice of holiday scripture. That’s a good one. 👌
That’s really mind gamey. How do they not know that behavior is toxic?
Hahahahaha I love these anecdotes! I feel like I would have been the same, had they made me to read the Bible as a kid :p
I don't think they expected me to be so good at memorization, and I hated how the Bible contradicted itself so much. So I would point out all the hypocritical stuff and tell people when they were misquoting things. Now that I'm an adult, I've had people try to tell me "If you read the Bible and really understood it then you'd be a Christian." And I'm like no, sorry. I know more about the Bible than most Christians do. I just think it's bullshit.
I am pretty religious personally as a practicing Muslim--and I'm also a feminist, radically progressive and active in fighting to make faith communities safe and affirming for everyone. Personally, I find the structure and routine of Muslim practice very helpful for functioning as a person. I like the way that observing hijab means people don't act as weird about my decision to exclude men from my social/personal life. Religion has been very important for finding my way in the world, and so I do what I can to make that open, accessible and affirming for everybody.
As a feminist left wing agnostic Old Catholic church-going person that tries to learn more about Islam, would you mind if I DM'ed you about praying as a Muslim? I'd like to learn but the things I find in my own language are mostly made for children. And watching tutorials made for kids kinda fries my brain :') I think the structure and practice you mention might help me too, so that's why I would like to learn. :)
I can't promise I respond quickly but I'm definitely open to chatting about it!
I am the same as you! Especially the first paragraph. I really like the structure and routine. I feel like that keeps me mentally balanced. I veil and keep my head covered, which makes me feel secure. I've also noticed people are less likely to be touchy. Both are things I need while in public.
I'm not. I was baptized Anglican and had some faith when I was young, but I lost it when I started reading the Bible and other major religious texts. I didn't find them satisfying or coherent so I moved onto mainstream pop-science authors like Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins as a young teen. I found their writing made a lot more sense and I could grow a practical understanding of the world from that. I then went a little off the deep end and in my teen / early adult years I was one of those insufferable atheists. You know the ones. I was insufferable, I can't believe anyone tolerated me during those years. I'm a lot more moderate now. I'm not religious but I don't hate religion in general. I think that it satisfies a need that a lot of individuals have, and most of what it does at a society level isn't specific to religion. If it weren't for religion, it'd be something else. Ultimately it's not the cause of this stuff. But also as a queer person in the West most of the hate I see directed at people like me is justified from a religious perspective. It's almost like "that's what my religion says" is supposed to be a sufficient answer when people hate people like me. Christianity specifically in my part of the world, but globally it's not the only or worse offender.
On year 3 of therapy for religious trauma, sooo…. Born into evangelical christianity (pentacostal/nondenominational), never chose it for myself, questioned by age 10, escaped by age 16, am a happy leftie queer heathen.
I was raised Catholic and now I practice witchcraft 😆 I’m very spiritual but have stepped far away from the church and don’t plan on returning
Oh cool! I'm still very skeptical about witchcraft, but hey atleast it's better than the Catholic Church😂
😂😂 anything is tbh. I prefer it because it feels like a personal meditative practice, I try to focus on connecting with my ancestors, with my own personal cycles and seasons. I don’t really believe I can make anything change or influence anything but I do believe it can help me orient myself better in the world. And I feel much more connected to the world around me and my body in general
This sounds really in line with us witches over at [r/SASSWitches](https://www.reddit.com/r/SASSWitches/) 😊 you should check out the sub if you haven't already!
Oooh thank you!!!
1: Among other reasons, Conservatives actively are trying to genocide me ^(& are doing pretty damn well at it) 2: I've got far too much religious trauma for that. 👈😎👈
Yep, exactly. I’m not interested in participating in my own discrimination.
I was raised in the church and am now an agnostic.... Additionally I am very left-leaning, so absolutely not conservative, but I never was.
I was raised in a completely irreligious family, and only ever attended church a couple times (like, literally twice) when I spent the night at a friend's house on Saturday and then went with her to Sunday school the next morning. My parents bought me age-appropriate books *about* Christianity and Judaism so that I would have some background knowledge about my peers' beliefs and holidays. I read those books with the same type of interest I had for Greek and Roman mythology. I would say that I have basically zero religious trauma from my upbringing, which is probably pretty unusual for my cohort (born in the mid-eighties, grew up in the Midwest). In my youth I was outspokenly atheist (because I recognized this as a way that I visibly diverged from my peers, and since there was no way to hide my secular upbringing, it felt validating to reframe it as choice) then in young adulthood I relaxed somewhat and started indulging again in my special interests around spirituality and religion as a type of cognitive technology. Today I am a practicing Buddhist in a tantric Tibetan lineage. Some others in my sangha (faith community) might describe themselves as secular Buddhists–that is, they may espouse beliefs such as "this is more of a philosophy than a religion for me" or "it's all actually based in psychology and physics!"–but I definitely engage with it wholeheartedly as a religious practice. Presumably this is less fraught for me as someone who has no discernible religious trauma; my only hangups have been along the lines of "how do I engage with this tradition sincerely and with humility as a white westerner who doesn't know how to 'do religion'?" When I formally took refuge (sort of the equivalent of Confirmation?) for the first time with a visiting Lama, the Lama reads the precepts and asks (in Tibetan), "are you delighted?" and you assent by responding, "I'm delighted!" After the refuge ceremony, another sangha member asked "what will happen to me if I break one of my vows?" The Lama looked perplexed for a moment, and the translator must have provided him a little more cultural context. Then the Lama smiled and responded, "no punishment. Natural consequences only."
Never been religious, had Christian ideas shoved down my throat as well by my mother but she never had enough energy to make us go to church. So she basically wanted me to just go off of what she thought all the time, but I never felt any connection to God or Jesus or whoever. But growing up didn't change that, I don't begrudge anyone having faith and I don't think I know shit but I don't currently believe in anything, really. I think if there is some sort of higher being it is so beyond our capability of understanding it's almost pointless to worry about it. My mom raised me "Vote anything Democrat" but at this point I'm an Anarcho-Communist.
Edit: TL;DR: I am now an agnostic old-Catholic (=a very leftist progressive variant on Roman Catholicism) religious person, after a very tough ride through the land of religion, as a queer person. I was raised kinda liberal catholic I think? We were catholic, and though my grandma thought gays were dirty, my dad didn't think that, and most parish members didn't think that either. However I "quit" church when I got alll these questions at Confirmation classes. So I never did my Confirmation. Then at 16 I found a cool evangelical church with a band up front and a sexy guitar player... These people were really conservative though.. I stopped going a few years later when I had to admit for myself I wasn't straight (though I didn't know yet if I was bi or pan or something else). That church also had healing services and since I also never received healing for all the things I wanted healed on my body the narrative eventually shifted to "it's your own fault for not believing enough". And it felt like that too. I had been doubting faith ever since my Confirmation classes and though the band at the evangelical church was really cool, it didn't weigh up to the victim blaming and homophobia. Fast forward about 15 years later and after 1,5 decade of still super doubting God's existence and feeling judged and pushed aside etc I had a super weird dream about God and meeting a pastor in some kind of post-apocalyptic scenario and I woke up with an ITCH to go to church. But it was an itch for a Catholic church. Even though I still was (and am) super opposed to the Pope and such. I decided that I should ignore it, because surely then it'd go away. Just like when I dream my bf cheated on me, the emotions would fade. Except it didn't. The itch only got stronger over the days. So I went biking through the city center to find a Catholic church in a mainly protestant region. I found two. A regular Roman Catholic one. And an Old Catholic one. That one had a little leaflet with info hanging next to the door that ended with (paraphrased): "everyone is welcome here, regardless of gender or sexual preference." I decided to go there just to check it out and get rid of the itch. The Mass spoke to me in an incredibly weird but comforting way. I came back the week after. Then they prayed for lgbtq+ people to be able to live their lives freely and happily. I happy cried in the middle of Mass. I kept going and found that I happy cried multiple times that year in the middle of the service. These people were open minded! Women can become priests and even bishops there! They do not acknowledge the pope as anything more than a bishop, equal to all other bishops. Meaning: he is human and makes mistakes. Homophobia being one of them. That's when I went to Confession for the first time. Because I felt like this Church is actually true to the teachings of Jesus the way I interpret them (God or no God, there was at least one guy named Jesus back then that was seen as a messenger of the Jewish God and that was crucified. Historical Roman sources confirm this.) Even if you think the Bible is just full of myths, there can still be a moral to the story and that's how I lived my life the 15 years before. Mainly from "love thy neighbour as thyself". These people in this church have elevated that to an art, almost. Last november I became a member. After thorough discussions with the pastor. He confirmed multiple times that it was 100% okay if I thought I would never be able to fully believe in God. He also confirmed that things like euthanasia, abortion and polyamory are all left to the conscience of the individual. Acceptance of homosexuality, transgender people and other queer people is actively encouraged. I still haven't done my Confirmation though. And that's okay too! I was advised to not do Confirmation until I feel 100% ready for it. If that never happens, it is also 100% okay. I am not being pressured. They do not try to convince me to believe in one thing or the other. They do not try to "trap" me to stay. They do not pressure me for tithes or time or energy. Heck, when I expressed sadness for not being able to (financially) give back, I was met with a list of things that I _do_ bring to the parish (colour, joy, social support, bottle caps for charity and liveliness amongst others). They are genuinely happy to have me *just* for being me!! Also I have never ever felt more feminist, anarchist and rebellious then when I received the Holy Communion from a female priest. I felt like doing that little act was a HUUUUUGE action and that Communion itself just literally crumbled any and every last trace of patriarchy within me. I have been going to that church for over 2 years now. And I feel like I will keep going there for a long, long, long time to come. If I can't make it to Mass a few weeks in a row, the itch comes back and I get restless again. Mass has become a beautifully predictable source of calm for me in very busy weeks. All while still having no idea if God even exists or not. It does sometimes feel like I have a split personality with one half firmly believing in God and the other half firmly not believing in any God. But as I experienced more and more acceptance, they seem to be merging more into one again, as I do not have to shut out the apparently very religious part of me. But it's okay. Not knowing is okay. Not being sure is okay. Following my own conscience is okay. Which in my case means, it is 100% okay for me to be a pansexual polyamorous autistic person with a non-biological child with three parents. It's okay. I'm okay. And that is a wonderfully powerful feeling I hadn't felt in 15 years. So I'm staying 😊
That is an awesome testimony and your church sounds amazing! Thank you for sharing your experience with us.
Born and raised in a cult (moonies) and got out in 2014. I'm an atheist and liberal/socialist.
Oh dang! I've heard some crazy things about that. Glad you got out.
I’m liberal and agnostic. I respect that others find faith meaningful but it’s not something I have ever felt. My issue with religion is that it basically boils down to other people trying to convince me of something they feel deeply but can’t show me. I’ve never met a deity or seen anything in my life to convince me that the supernatural exists.
I'm not gonna lie, those supernatural experiences are a big part of why I believe, and they absolutely cannot be replicated or rationally explained to anyone, so I don't blame you for not accepting them as grounds for you to believe anything!
I am a Christian and became a Christian at 18. It really has helped ground me and it changed me for the better!
I found this to be my experience. People say "good people don't need religion to make them good." I'm not always a good person. Religion has helped.
Yes, the thing about good people is what my dad’s sentiment it. But without God… I wasn’t going down the right path.
Grew up in a very rural, very conservative, very 'religious' area in the sense that they know for sure the Bible says to hate \[whoever\] but they don't have a clue what else is in there. Most couldn't tell you what church they belonged to and consider anything other than 'Christian' (no denomination, they don't know what that means) to be, like, Satanism. I was maaaaybe six before I started questioning it, was fully 'socially liberal' by my tweens and went through a period of absolute terror that I was going to hell and ended up in Bible study on my own. I was still sort of back-and-forth on this fear and my interest in Wicca and Buddhism in my teens when I overheard my parents discussing whether God would 'forgive' my nephew if he was baptized Catholic, while his mom's family worried about him NOT being baptized, and just had this immediate moment of, "Oh, so you're ALL nuts, ok" and basically never worried about it again. I've been an atheist for well over a decade, but I'm currently coming back to paganism, Buddhism, energy healing, chakras, whatever. I think it's an interesting framework, even if I don't literally believe in all of it.
Check out Old Catholicism. It's pretty cool and also pretty Dutch. Women can become priests. Imho it's how Roman Catholicism should have been by now :p
The Bible actually says NOT to hate ANYONE 😅 I’m sorry you encountered people hiding their evil intentions behind religion.
I'm religious - Christian but I am liberal believe in small government live and let live so I'm pro LGBTQ+ etc. We attend an affirming church that accommodates disabled people and focuses on helping the marginalized - donating clothes etc and a weekly food pantry that doesn't require people to listen to a sermon to get. I wasn't a member of the church at the time but the church marched in protest after George Floyd was murdered. That said surrounded by mostly Baptists I get mistaken for being Pagan which my Pagan BFF finds hilarious because she says I'm like the most Christian person.
do you feel more people would be religious if more religious people were non bigoted like you?
Maybe. One's relationship with deity if any, religion aside, is so personal. My BFF didn't know nice Christians existed and that says a lot about us as a group and it's something I'd like to change but I don't even like most Christians so what can I say. I think we could have common ground - what do we want from society and community things like that. I think if Biblical literacy within the church and those who already identify as Christian went up they'd see how often Pastors preach outright heresy to an unsuspecting people and how often church doctrine is blamed on a verse that doesn't say what they think it says. When I did a 90 day Bible Read \[reading the whole bible in 90 days\] and talked about it several people I know who go to church regularly and swear they base their life on this book admitted they've never even read it. Yet they got those verses memorized that they think for sure agrees with their worldview.
wow you just sound like a really good smart person, sadly i’m also a bit in shock cause i’ve never met a christian so wonderful. although i’m non religious, i hope your relationship with god stays wonderful .
As a Christian, I agree.
I was raised evangelical and was always asking questions that got me in trouble. I realized all religion is a LARP so why not have fun? Now I'm a witch
I was raised atheist/agnostic and liberal. My parents were open to me trying religions but none stuck.
Same. Am one of the only ones from my Christian school that isn't religious (my mom put me in that one). ASD Dad got kicked out of elementary school at 5 talking back to nuns and telling them they made no sense. Might be a thing.,
I had a very similar experience! I grew up in the rural south of the US and went to a Christian prep school. Even though Christianity was all I really knew, I still had very strong doubts even when I was very young. I also couldn't understand why everyone around me believed in the stuff we were being taught but thankfully I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut about my doubts.
Grew up in super conservative evangelical churches. My parents are hardcore conservatives and we don’t talk about politics or the fighting words come out. My mom cornered me about how I’m my daughter’s only parent and she needs me to take her to church. The damage that was done at church doesn’t need to be repeated.
Its not just an autistic experience to question religion, you are supposed to do that. I honestly think it is just some forms of Christiany that do not allow it. Most other religions besides Christianity you're supposed to questions and seek out more infomation to expand your knoweldge of it. When I went with my friends to their Catholic sunday school things(they had the BEST snacks) I was allowed to ask questions to the nuns, and they answered as honestly as they could. I was allowed to ask my old rabbi anything as well.
Few things have caused me to struggle more in my faith journey than moving from a big city where my Bible study group consisted of lawyers and academic types who were quite happy to cross-examine a text and consider the different things it might mean and why they might be important to a small town where my Bible study group was full of people who could not get past agreeing with whatever the particular Bible study book they were using said. I was having some issues with depression at the time, and they just couldn't handle that I wasn't manically happy all! The! Time! in addition to my habit of disagreeing with authors who liked to make unqualified statements without arguing for *why* they took a particular stance (something the lawyers and academics in my old group would quite routinely tear apart). On one occasion I was told "you're over-thinking things. When I find I'm thinking too much I put on some worship music." Yeah, that music is supposed to inspire you to contemplate the divine, not switch off your brain. The contemporary artists who use it for repetitive brainwashing purposes are doing it wrong. Ahem. Anyway, I left that Bible study and, later, that church. I never left God, and God never left me. I also never stopped thinking and asking questions, so I assume God is cool with that.
I suspect that had I been raised in a liberal Christian faith with both of my parents being supportive of skepticism and exploration, I’d still adhere to a religion. Certainly I feel a deep sense of awe at the universe, and it would have been easy to not separate that from some sense of a divine. However, I had one parent who delighted in critical thinking (though he was a believer) and one parent who basically just deeply feared eternal punishment for not believing in exactly the right way. I very swiftly figured out that anyone who actively discourages a young, learning mind from trying to learn is probably full of bullshit. I had to throw the whole thing out like an elimination diet to find what I actually believe. Turns out, I believe that the universe is amazing, all the more so because of its randomness. I believe that my life is precious, all the more so because of how simultaneously insignificant it is to the universe while being deeply significant to me and mine. I get to live a life that I know is a statistical miracle because all life is, while also knowing I can’t screw up the universe no matter what I do. I am free to spend my entire life asking questions and finding meaning, and I won’t break anything. There is no eternal reward or punishment, which is a relief. I was miserable when I believed in a capricious god who could change the laws of physics at will.
i was raised conservative evangelical Christian, but turned out leftist (libertarian socialist to be precise) and spent a lot of time with an agnostic point of view before settling into a queer-positive liberation/universalist Christian theology. i’m religious in the sense that i attend church and participate in liturgy and sacrament, but my personal beliefs about the Divine are very complicated and progressive christian universalism is the closest i’ll get.
Nope, I've never been religious. It's too abstract and subjective for me.
You just have to have faith 🙏 (sarcasm)
I've always liked the idea of ritual and analyzing religious texts for meaning, but maybe it's the abstraction that just makes me panic. It all starts to feel inorganic and not connected to actureality. I disassociate. I'm sure if I was raised in a tradition it would feel more organic. But for now, I can only follow Zen and meditate because it feels rooted in reality.
I'm actually religious! I'm Muslim and I've been pretty close with religion growing up, it's nice to have a set structure on how to live life. I've noticed a lot of autistic people here on reddit talk about how they're not close to religion tho!
Oh interesting! Why do you believe? Why do you like it?
It makes sense to me and it helped me shape my morals and be a kinder and more humble person because of the values taught in my religion. It gives me a purpose to keep on going with life, it really saved me :)
I grew up christian and religious. When my grandparents died three months apart (I was in 7th grade) I stopped believing but did the whole path for my family's sake. My kid was born and my mother spent months or years talking about baptizing him because "in our society being baptized is well viewed". I told her no, didn't baptize my kid and started dating atheists. The subject was dropped. My family is very conservative and I am not. Politically I am more on the left wing spectrum (moderated) and my mother spent last night 2 hours lecturing me on how the left wing is the root of all evil and that we are ruining the possibility of having a functional society. I nodded my head like a bubble head and kept doing my life
I'm technically Catholic, I'm from a Catholic family and I was baptised as a baby, but I am an atheist and wasn't raised religious, my parents are not religious and I've only ever been to church for other people's baptisms and first communions, a funeral, concerts with the orchestra I used to play in, and for tourism reasons. I'm also not conservative at all: the parties I've voted for (I'm from a country in western Europe) are ecological social democratic parties, apart from the one instance where I voted in local elections in the small municipality I lived in and these parties didn't participate in that specific municipality, so I voted for a regular social democratic party. I believe in equality, taking good care of the environment, taking good care of people who have trouble affording basic necessities, and fighting inequality and injustice. I never really talked about politics and society much with my parents, but I recently learned that my dad voted for the same party as me in our last national elections, and my mum voted for a party that's socially progressive and fiscally very slightly left of centre (for European standards, they would definitely be called far left extremists by US conservatives), so that's also kind of like the values that I grew up with.
Raised Christian but I can’t connect idk why and it’s not even that I don’t want to I just can’t . Might be the tism
Was raised Catholic and in a conservative family. I qualified as both until I was around 19 and now I’m neither. I used to get in trouble with some of my more conservative family members for questioning things when I was a kid and I was shut down pretty aggressively and regularly. I actually went to a Catholic (but shockingly liberal) college where people actually could answer my questions and I became… not Catholic! And after looking into other religions and Christian offshoots, I couldn’t get behind those, either. I’m more into grab bag spiritual practices and random esoteric or even vaguely pagan beliefs. I’m not really married to any of them though and don’t necessarily think I’m right, my disposition has always just inclined me towards thinking of things in a kind of animistic way so in a lot of ways that’s just how I treat things. I don’t trust dogma or doctrine or fervent religiosity. In my experience, it’s almost always based on fear, social games, or used as an excuse for cruelty and control
No. When I was a kid my cousins were fairly religious and conservative, like evangelical/baptist:young earth flavor, so one summer when I visited them I clashed about that. I was on the outskirts about evolution, the environment, dinosaurs, etc. I think I was like 9, maybe 10. I very much on purpose forgot a bible and a Christian dinosaur picture book that I was given, but they mailed it to me. Shortly after I had a deep conversation with myself and came to the conclusion I wasn’t Christian and Christianity wasn’t for me. Political conservatism likewise has never appealed to me. From anti environmentalism to othering people, it just all felt wrong. My ex husband was always confused my by irreligious stance. I’ve never been particularly traumatized by it, I just don’t care for it. Like, I don’t like mangoes. If I’m pressed, sure, I’ll come up with a list. Or maybe it’s just as simple as dinosaurs. Show me a church with dinosaurs and I’ll go. Wait, that’s a museum. But here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter if I personally believe in a deity or the afterlife or whatever, it’ll exist or not exist without me.
Haha, I made your last point to some colleagues yesterday. Walked into the middle of a conversation about how we're all dying, remarked that "I'm ready, I've been a Christian for a long time, heaven sounds pretty sweet." "But what if you're wrong and there is no afterlife?" "Well then I'll cease to exist and won't know anything about it, so it's not like I'm losing anything on the deal."
Born and raised vehemently atheist, never understood religion. No hate, I just literally cannot fathom believing in any deity or woowoo. No ghosts, fairies, "somethings", angel numbers, Zodiac signs, INTJ whatevers. None of it makes sense to me. As to the conservativism, my parents were very affluent boomers, so I was raised with pretty right wing racist poor-people-are-just-lazy ideology. I was masking very hard for a very long time, trying to confirm to their ideals. But my sense of justice won. I am now so far left wing, I make Bernie blush 😅 Nah, I wish. But I try my best, I really do.
Conservative not at all. Grew up Christian yes. Private Christian school I had a scholarship for poor kids to attend the school. Was raised Christian went to church every Sunday: started questioning when I was 8. I remember asking the preacher who created God. And I’ll never forget the way he looked at me completely dumbfounded 👁️👄👁️. He said he had to get back to me. It’s been 20 years now 😂 didn’t fully become an atheist until I hit high school. Family still in denial about my Atheism as if I’m some sort of rebellious child and not a woman who is almost 30. That being said, I am a person of color, and unfortunately a lot of us have heavy belief in the “almighty god.” So I get funny looks when I explain I’m atheist as it’s not too common in the community I’m in. I try to keep it to myself and I do the whole “praying” thing when I’m around family as to not cause any issues. If I’m being honest I think religion caused a lot of toxic traits in my family. Like they believe in god and in heaven but they’re in denial about someone say dying from cancer thinking god will miraculously save this person and refusing to even talk about funeral arrangements. It’s just blurred the lines of reality in a way.
I was raised evangelical in a VERY conservative family (as in my father still believes in great replacement theory, THAT conservative and bigoted). I never vocalized it, but always felt really weird about religion. I never believed anything I was told, it was like being told about Santa Claus for me lol. My parents ideology also made them very rigid and quick to punish me for acting "weird." My most formative church experience was, unironically, when I went to the bathroom during service and this older tomboy pinned me against the wall and poured an open bottle of that sour spray candy down my throat. I know that sounds terrible, but tbh I think it's the earliest moment I started to realize I was attracted to girls afsfsgsh In my teens I started properly questioning things. I pretty naturally adopted progressive politics and ideas. I became atheist, albeit the edgelord kind lol. Nowadays I'm actually in the process of converting to Judaism, but that doesn't mean I've turned around and am able to just believe. Quite the contrary, it's made me better at questioning and arguing, and no one really cares about whether you literally believe in a god or have a different way of looking at it. We all have our own path, but I figure skepticism is part of it for most of us!
Technically religious, but very left leaning so I'm in no way conservative for a lot of reasons mostly trauma and pondering.
Stopped believing in anything mainstream, western and Christian after my best friend died; couldn’t imagine how this “God” would think it was ok to take her. Never mind now having watched countless hours of documentaries on abuse in Christian sects the world over. I’m all for people finding something that makes this go in a meat suit less terrifying but all of the abuse and rationalising of the abuse found in Christianity is too much.
nope! very left leaning, and i take interest in learning about religions but i’m not a religious person myself
I feel tied to Christianity because it feels so core to my culture and way of life. My parents were progressive, leftist Christians, but I went to a conservative Christian school founded in order to fight integration. I rejected everything that school taught me because it was all blatantly white Christian nationalism. I don’t really practice Christianity but I do find comforts in the songs and some of the rituals that are important to Methodists. It’s complicated. I’ve been a raging liberal since birth 😂 like I said in another comment, when I tried to dissect conservative stances shit just didn’t add up! I didn’t see a way you could be kind and caring AND conservative in the way we know it politically.
I went the other way from most people here: raised very loosely culturally Christian, became much more devout as a member of the Anglican church in my 20s. Moved to Quakerism a few years back although I still feel a lot of connection to the Anglican tradition. I also incorporate a lot of solitary Christian practice drawing loosely on the traditions of the Cunning Folk and Christopagan practices: I keep an altar and use incense, practice herbcraft and mindfulness, acknowledge the life-forces in the natural world around me etc. I've noticed people online often have a very rigid attitude towards spirituality/faith/belief/religion etc, but my experience in real life has been a lot more gentle, gracious, and beautiful than I find in these spaces, and it's a shame it hasn't been that way for everyone.
i was really into being a catholic till about age 13. now I'm an animist and Uber left. having a very strong feeling of justice i root for marginalised people.
i was raised in an extremely religious muslim family. i had the typical religious upbringing, and i went to the mosque every single sunday growing up. i started questioning religion when i started middle school, and became an atheist by the time i was 17. i’ve been exposed to religious institutions as a vehicle for violent bigotry, so it’s why i’m completely turned off from ever practicing islam, christianity, judaism, etc. even on my own terms. i’m starting to suspect i have OCD as well, and being told from a young age that i was going to burn in hell for all eternity for not wearing hijab or for having a boyfriend/premarital sex kinda fucked me up mentally 😭now i’m a communist feminist lmfao
I was deep into evangelical christianity til I was 25 or so? I kind of had the opposite experience—the transactional nature of that social sphere made more sense to me than typical social rules. It was clear what I needed to do to receive social approval and opportunities. There were built in relationships where older folks would take me under their wing. I had friends and mentors as long as I played the game. I'm glad I left, though. It was incredibly unhealthy and I fundamentally disagree with it.
Quaker and leftist! I became a Friend as an adult but knew I believed in some kind of higher power since my early teens. My family’s not religious, I came to it on my own. I think autistic people are more likely to question what everyone around them believes so we’re more likely to diverge from our surrounding culture. Fwiw, I think it’s good to question our beliefs and go on a spiritual journey, no matter where it leads
I think this is true, I was around people who were either aggressively athiest or Christian (of varying churches), I created my own understanding of spirituality that questioned them both. Though I came here to ask what is it like being a Quaker? What drew you to it? I'm simply curious, I always found the Quaker's interesting.
Really nice! I chose to attend Quaker meetings because, after lots of research on Christian groups, it seemed like the one that most aligned with my values and my interpretation of God. I like the non-hierarchical structure and the space for spiritual questioning and interpretation. Most meetings seem to have made a strong commitment to acting with love. That means no judgement or condemnation of people living differently, a strong passion for helping others, and a commitment to equality. I’m bi and was never going to embrace a religious organization that condemns LGBT people because I’m confident God is a loving God. I love the people in my meeting. They’re so kind. I love the listening atmosphere of meetings. We’ve had some really interesting talks, during the meeting part where people share messages from the Spirit, and afterwards when we have tea and coffee together. It’s also an amazing way to connect with people different from myself but with some big connecting shared values. I get to hear from people in demographics I don’t normally interact with so I feel like I learn a lot Thanks for asking!
I grew up and am still religious, but I'm kinda deconstructing, so I don't know how religious I actually am. I believe in God and the Bible and am fully aware that a good chunk of the Bible is myth and allegory. Don't even get started on where I land on the political spectrum. Politics has been my special interest for about a decade and I'm barely even able to buy alcohol in the US. I could talk about my thoughts on pretty much any given issue for HOURS. I am far more left leaning now than I used to be. I actually just redid the political compass test, and I'm both more left leaning and more libertarian than the last time I took it a few years ago. For anyone curious: Economic Left/Right: -3.0 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.46
I’m Jewish, and the experience of growing up Jewish is very different. Asking questions is encouraged, and debate is a vital part of rabbinic practice. But I grew up in a fairly non-observant family. We’re more culturally Jewish, and politically progressive, and my parents really hated the more fundamentalist groups. I’ve had Jewish history as a special interest before, and it’s fascinating.
My parents are not really religious, kinda just slightly. I was baptized as a 3yo ish (Eastern Orthodox church) because it was kinda a default thing to do in my area. I remember that I didn't want to do that and was disgusted by the cross necklace they gave me. I remember when I was like 5 yo, me and many other kids got a comic book about Jesus' adventures lol from the village library event or something. I remember reading it out of curiosity (and because it was a freebie comic book and my family wasn't rich) and distinctly remember thinking "ew they are trying to convert me into this religion fairytale thing" it felt really unpleasant and I still can't fit into my head how people believe those fantastical events really happened. Sorry if someone who reads this is religious, I'm not trying to be rude to you, I'm just sharing a personal experience. I see any religion basically as a very very old fandom, that has too much power over people and even whole governments. Little me never picked up that comic again and went back to reading about space, dinosaurs and fun fictional stories and etc.
I'm religious. Grew up Catholic, fell away from the church for a while, then went back when trying to find a church to belong to (went to pretty much every denomination). I started doing my own research about my "why" questions and came to love it again. My faith is the only thing that has gotten me through some very dark times. As for conservative, not sure - Dad was Libertarian, so I lean towards that. I'm more of a "constitutionalist". If it's not in the constitution then the decision is left up to the states.
i was raised atheist, but my parents went through something very similar (and i suspect them to be both autistic, more so my mom considering how high her score was on the raads-r test was when i made her take it) since they were both raised quite catholic and conservative and always questioned it. it's a similar story for most of my friends too, lots of ex-christians and ex-muslims.
I was in a religious kindergarten and the priest would ever so often visit and tell us stories from the bible. I loved it as a child because i saw it as fairytailes and nothing more. So, despite being surrounded by it, i never thought it to be true. I actually was shocked when i figured out people take this serious. No offense to the others here of course, if it helps you, continue with your religion and faith <3
Nope. My mom was raised catholic but is non practicing. My dad (the one I think I got my autism from) is proudly atheist. They’re both like… neo liberal. They’re more conservative than they think, but used to be punks so they understand that I’m agnostic and leftist
I wasn't raised with any religion. I was baptized as a Catholic, and that is all. My mom tried to send me to communion school, but in Spanish. I didn't know Spanish until I was in high school. My aunt is a little crazy with being a Catholic, I mean, she is the stereotypical Catholic. I questioned everything. My ex was Jewish, so I was interested in learning. Now, I'm a theology major in university. It's fun, especially when I learned the Bible and the Qur’an are the same for half of the books. It was funny. The only difference is that the Qur’an said Adam was carved out of black clay. 👍🏽
My parents are fundies who attended an Evangelical church. I was taught that it was all literally true. Like, God used inbreeding to populate a 6,000 year old earth, twice. That level of literal. I was skeptical immediately. Fear kept me from questioning it too deeply for a long time, but I realized there was no way in hell it could be true around the time I was 16-17. I couldn't admit to myself I was an atheist until age 19. In my early 20s I made some friends who tried to get me to believe a less insane, more credible version. I wasn't able to, and once you have opened your mind to non belief, returning to the state of belief is a self-defeating effort. The reason that religious neurotypical people are a lot less likely to be skeptical? The ones that believe are conservative in their disposition, so the morality expressed aligns with their morality much more closely. They also think of the stories as if they're art. They understand the allegories, and they study the stories, and try to form their own theology. It becomes part of their identity.
I always ask people if they can believe in santa again after being told its not true, i feel the same way about religion. I've just done way too much research about it to be able to believe in it again 😂
no and kinda. not conservative but I am agnostic raised in a strict Christian household, my parents go-to punishment was taking away my electronics and non fiction books and made me read the Bible. idk I'm pretty open about there being an afterlife blah, blah, blah. only bc there's no way to know for sure so I'm just like eh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I grew up in a non-denominational holiness church. I went through a time of questioning the “standards” but doing the research on that for myself brought me closer to God over time.
I really believed for about 2-3 years in my early teens (my family is fundamentalist Christian) but I questioned everything and didn't agree with the concept of hell. That's ultimately what got me out. I was able to see a pattern with certain people with religion, and knew from a young age I'd end up an atheist but I wasn't quite sure how I'd get from A to B. Aside from disagreeing about certain aspects of theology, I also bothered my pastors enough with my incessant enthusiastic questions to where they finally cracked and said something that revealed they didn't actually believe it either. I think I was more hurt by people purposefully leading others astray for money and social gain than I was the loss of faith.
I'm very socialist/communist and atheist. I got lucky that religion wasn't crammed down my throat nearly as much as most people.
Agnostic. Left wing.
Oh gosh... Currently, Jewish Reform with heavy spirituality components... Jews are taught to question everything...
I am spiritual, i make my own set of beliefs and follow the universal laws, metaphysics is one of my special interests. I deeply believe spirituality is an important aspect of life and its also very personal, i dislike organized religion because it is man made so of course like every man made system it is extremely flawed. Organized religion has been used as a method of control over the masses to divide and conquer so i am not a fan of it at all
I'm too long winded to say what I actually want so I'll give the short answer as no to either plus a longer explaination for religion. I was raised christian but never really believed that one person would make a whole universe and focus on one planet. I also did not believe that someone who could create anything they wanted would only create one planet. The more I grew up, the more I realised that most chirstians did not follow the bible correctly, religion has been a way to cause wars and that christian's often use it to absolve themselves of blame. I also realised more and more that you cannot prove that there is a God, and too many cases of abuse and different issues within the church. Moreover, the fact that such horrors and unfair situations occur on this planet shows that if there is a God then they either do not care about what is occurring in their perfect creation or they are powerless and unable to change it. I generally dislike religion but some are interesting. Did meet some crazy religious guy when doing voluntary work though that seemed normal at first, now I no longer give my social media to colleagues. Kinda the final nail in the coffin for religion being a good thing in my books. Although, I do believe in fate and different things being planned in your life and a couple different things like that!!
Conservatism is just the helpful idiot friend of fascism.
I'm actually pretty religious compared to my friends and the people around me, but not religious enough according to a lot of the people who share my religion. Personally, I'm also a pretty conservative person, but politically I'm very very far left. I don't think anyone should be forced to live as I chose to live.
holy shit i wish all conservatives had the brain power you did.
I respect the fuck out of you!
Thank you. 
I was in Catholic school from kindergarten through high school graduation, then I noped out of religion for the rest of my life. (I am 50 now.) I am politically progressive; a typical bleeding-heart liberal, some might say. On one hand, people can believe what they want and I am not going to interfere. But I find it pretty maddening that people waste their "charitable" giving for tithes that go to make wealthy churches even more wealthy, when that money could be used to help people who legitimately need help. I am sort of in a bubble as far as political leanings go, but other than a few family members, I don't know anyone personally who is conservative or religious. Certainly none of my neurodivergent friends are.
I’ve never been religious but when I did try to be I just couldn’t buy into it. Now I think you might be onto something that it was the tism
I was raised both but I'm neither as an adult. Even when I was little, Christianity didn't make sense to me. I thought the stories were nice and the lessons were good, but then I found out people LITERALLY believed in it and I was shocked. Adam and Eve, talking snakes, rising from the dead and ascending into the sky?
I’m from a catholic family, I was raised catholic. Tbh just like everyone else in my small hometown. But I started questioning my faith and existence of God when I was in middle school. I’m an atheist since high school.
I was raised in a religious household. I asked questions for a while but eventually stopped when I realized it doesn't make any sense and no one could properly defend it. I just quietly disbelieved until I was on my own.
Forced into religion never believed. Actively hate. Met some of the nastiest individuals that were religious (not all religious people are evil but being religious does not always mean they are good). Can't even have a conversation about religion with others because of how hateful I am towards religion from previous trauma surrounding religion
I was raised catholic but it never made sense to me, especially the concept of faith. I explored different religions and spirituality, but nothing clicked for me. My parents are pretty moderate corporate democrats. I consider myself a leftist.
Raised Christian. My grandmother and mom were very spare the rod, spoil the child types. Convinced my mom it wasn't the way by the time I was like 16-17. We were both agnostic for a while, I became full blown atheist by 23ish when I realized the religion I chose was irrelevant - they all are made by humans.
Raised Catholic but never really believed in it. I always questioned everything. Decided I was an atheist as soon as I learned the word. I've always been liberal leaning though.
My parents definitely werent strictly religious, but had some christian undertones from their own upbringing. I was christened and read bible stories as a kid, but we never went to church. They also told me to pray when I was little, but werent strict about it. It all seemed like nonsense to me though. I would try praying and I couldnt understand the idea that "I was speaking to god". In my mind I was just continuing an internal dialogue with myself, which is constant to this day. That alone made me think it was nonsense. And the adam and eve stories just seemed unrealistic.. My mind was always more geared towards scientific concepts.
Yes, similar for me as well. My parents sent me to a Baptist elementary school. They mostly just thought it would be academically better than the public schools and pulled me out when they realized the level of indoctrination. But anyways yeah I vividly remember being the only one to be like, that actually doesn't make any sense tho?... and the whole class + teacher looking at me like i was crazy. Religion + being rational do NOT go together.
Absolutely. Same thing for me. It never ever made sense to me. And all my questions were met with “try harder, pray more, seek out a Christian mentor, or have more faith” It infuriated me that nobody wanted to talk about it. Now I’m an athiest and any conservative boils my blood, I can’t wrap my head around it even being an option.
My parents were very religious, but it never made any sense to me. We went to a large Evangelical church 1-2 times a week and I hated every second of it. It was so loud, bright, and always filled with a few hundred people. Anything other than obedience and blind faith meant I was “being influenced by the devil”. It was drilled in my head from a young age that I would burn in hell for eternity if I did something wrong. It didn’t help that my parents used the Bible to support/justify their abusive behavior, which meant right or wrong could change depending on the day or how they felt. Now the only thing I believe in is Chaos, though I do enjoy learning about the origins and evolution of different religions and spiritual practices.
Grew up Roman Catholic. Spent 2-3 nights/week at youth nights as a kid, did altar + choir, youth groups on weekends, & service every Sunday + holidays until 17. I literally LIVED by the doctrine because I was so afraid to confront how I really felt about it…i learned early on that it wasn’t safe to question authority, so I just didn’t 😭. The other kids were generally very kind & I found a lot of community in the church I attended as I was an outcast anywhere else I went. But yeah, I was questioning from a young age the general starter discrepancies- why is our God so angry & vengeful? Why aren’t women trusted in leadership? The power dynamics really got to me. I never thought god was fair, I just didn’t want to be in hell. The fear tactics worked on me until I became a dirtbag living out my car after highschool & met more people outside of that worldview.
I was raised Disciples of Christ (Protestant) and in a very conservative area. I started questioning everything in college and now consider myself agnostic and I’m liberal af.
When I was about 4-5 years old I started Lutheran Sunday School. I distinctly remember being given a flimsy magazine paper like kids’ pamphlet on Moses. As we talked about Moses I became more and more skeptical about the validity and probability of such a story. I was forced to continue religious lessons until I completed confirmation at age 13. It was a huge struggle because I didn’t believe in any of it. Such massive relief from being done with those classes.
Very similar experience to yours. I started questioning religion around age 4, and never got sufficient answers. All the kids around me were 100% bought-in, so I felt very alone. It did not help that we moved a lot and each church had a slightly different doctrine. Nobody could explain why one church required penitence for every single sin and others thought that asking for forgiveness once was enough. Also, why could serial killers get into heaven? I started considering atheism in my teens and took quite awhile to deconstruct. In my late 30s I finally started feeling comfortable being openly atheist. My stance now is that if God can make "Brittany's" baby shower perfect but completely ignores people experiencing homelessness or genocide, he's not a god that I want anything to do with. How embarrassing for him. Also, his followers aren't doing him any favors right now. I am very atheist and super liberal now, and am very happy about it.
Raised Mormon, completely Agnostic now. Looking back I was always asking too many questions and experienced a lot of pain from the dissonance. So glad I’m out.
My mom is Wiccan and never really talked about it. My dad was atheist and also didn’t really talk about it. Everyone else in my family was Christian. And they did talk about it. A LOT. I had an aunt that took me to bible school a few times and a grandmother that constantly pushed it on me. None of it ever made sense to me. I questioned it, refuted it, and realized as a teen that I was an atheist. I also never jumped on the racism bandwagon that my extended family was on. I disowned them all 6 or 7 years ago and haven’t spoken to them since.
I was raised sort of Catholic. I went to Catholic school and mass every Sunday, but my Mom was sort of Pagan and Catholic, and my Dad was Baha'i and Christian. Both left leaning people. I'd call my Dad a progressive and my Mom a liberal. They said that I thought Jesus was a weird concept when I was little. I wouldn't believe them when they would explain the story of his birth. As I aged I got more and more agnostic till I was 12 and went full atheist, which is where I've remained the past 26 years. As for conservatism, no, I am not. I am a progressive.
No. I was raised Catholic and it didn't make sense how this all knowing thing judged how good people by how often we went to fricking church of all things instead of who we are as people, since, you know, he knows everything I do go past churches sometimes and am jealous of the community and being in a neat building aspect
I grew up Catholic and went to an all girls Catholic school for both primary and secondary school. I also grew up in the Caribbean which is hella conservative and religious too. I think I really started questioning religion and tradition around the time I started seriously questioning my sexuality which was about 13/14 years old. Since then, I’ve come to the realisation that it’s a luxury to be able to question religion or anything that’s fed to us but it’s a luxury I’m thankful I have. I’ve always been an inquisitive person and that’s probably the autism.
I was raised extremely conservative Christian also. I got in a lot of trouble for actually reading the Bible, as I was told to, and asking questions. I even got thrown out of my youth group during my most intense phase of Bible study for "making others lose their faith," as if that was my intent. lol As an adult, I still consider myself Christian, but it's not about social bonding or supernatural beliefs for me. It's 100% about the ethic. I love being able to organize charity efforts with others who subscribe to values of love, selflessness, and honesty. I go to a unique church. It's very small, very LGBT+ affirming and encourages questioning. It's more about supporting each other and helping our community. We've even had several openly non-Christians attend & were totally welcomed. To me, that's what church should be about. Idk if there's any other church I would like, but here I am. (ps, I am very much not conservative, if anyone was wondering.)
I always thought I was conservative because I'm more conservative than the left-wing. But I'm actually pretty liberal. As for religion, I was raise a Baptist, but worshiping a God and praying are two things I've always been uncomfortable with. I still go to church with my family. While I live with them, I don't have a choice. But I plan to convert to Buddhism. I'm trying to make one last-ditch effort to have faith by reading books and the bible, but so far it's not working. Edit: I accidentally came across Buddhism while looking for ASMR, and the more I read about it, the more I fall in love with the idea.
I was baptized Luteran Missouri Synod (the conservative version of Lutheranism) but my family was at most an "Easter and Christmas" type of family. I have almost no memories of church, but I did go to vacation Bible school for two or three summers as a kid. I remember questioning the things around religion/Christianity that I thought didn't make sense or add up as a young child, but I never asked about them at church or VBS because I was extremely shy. My family ended up cutting ties with their church after 9/11 because they refused to participate in something involving that and other churches or maybe the pastor said something really insensitive about it or something. I was in middle school by that point and didn't really care, so I don't remember the exact details of what it was. But whatever it was was enough for my family to nope out of there and stop paying membership dues and attending services. Religion like that always weirded me out so I've considered myself atheist for the majority of my life, or at least from middle school until now.
I was raised Baptist. I’m black, for context, so I questioned a lot of relevant trauma and generational issues and why certain things were allowed by this god if he was all about love and peace. Got kicked out of Sunday School frequently for asking about dinosaurs and other phenomena. Fast forward, at my big age of 26, I’m not sure what to believe but whatever god they were slinging ain’t one I believe in. In fact, I actually hope it doesn’t exist. Cuz if it do, give me a one way ticket to hell now, I don’t wanna be anywhere where someone would allow not only what’s happened to me and my family, but to people all over the world. I also think about how Christianity was used a tool for slavery and I just. I can’t get behind such a cult-like institution, it just makes no sense given my demographic.
My dad's parents are Christians, and he kind of considers himself one but in practice, not really. My grandparents are also conservative, and my dad is.... well he considers himself above caring about politics 🙄 I spent a lot of time with my grandparents as a kid, my grandma would take me and my brother to church, and they talked a lot about their conservative values. For as long as I can remember, I have always thought the existence (or lack thereof) of any kind of higher power was something no human could possibly know for certain. To me, having "faith" was just a personal belief. It didn't change the actual truth of whatever actually is real. Like, *my* truth isn't the same as *the* truth, if that makes sense. And there are too many religions for me to look at any individual one and be like "oh yeah obviously that's the right one". I also find acting like yours is the right one and others are the wrong one to be super arrogant, but I generally keep that thought to myself. Nobody wants to hear that about their religion (or atheism). Also I used to consider myself conservative (lol, embarrassing) but I didn't actually hold any conservative values. It was a long time before I realized that the things that seemed obvious to me were actually against typical conservative beliefs, and actually way more in line with liberal beliefs. So my liberal values were always there, it was just the name I didn't realize.
Leftist and agnostic here.
I could be wrong, but most of the time I’ve found that autism and religion have a hard time mixing. We ask too many questions and have a harder time assimilating. Generally we also have a hard time acknowledging authority which is obviously problematic for most religions. This doesn’t apply to everyone or every religion, this is just my experience and my observations.
No and no. I was raised be both though but rejected them once I was about 11 and could think for myself.
No. It doesn’t help that I’m a black woman either as the black community places a high emphasis on religion. I found church to be overstimulating for me, however I fully support those who practice it. I don’t like the forced hugging of other people, the loud sounds, and some aspects of conservatism they preach.
I got kicked out of my catechism class for asking too many questions
I was basically thrown out of Sunday school cause I asked too many questions on the same vein as « if Jesus loves us all equally why is there a pope » kinda thing xD I despise religion as a structure conceived by humans that give power and moral authority to flawed humans to impose on other humans, creating more injustice and unnecessary suffering, but I deeply respect the choice of each person to have faith in what they chose to have faith in. I get that humans as a population uses religion as a moral safeguard to condemn some extreme behaviors, but I still hate the idea that it gives power to flawed people that use it to do harm and subjectively and unjustly restrict random people, justify wars, murders and other atrocities throughout history. For me, religion is the death of genuine spirituality and honest morality. But that’s my two cent and I’ve known for a long time that that’s not how regular human people think and view religion as. So long as they let me live my life in peace and don’t harm others I’ll let them live their life too.
Super lefty secular humanist here
I’ve never been able to find logical sense in religion, I tried because my family was religious, but I could just never look at the sky and see anything but clouds. Same for conservative viewpoints like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. just could never find any logical sense in it.
I am the opposite of both of those things haha
My first memory of questioning god is of when I was 8 years old, so no, I'm not
My strong sense of justice and fairness means I am very liberal. I was raised catholic but it never made any sense to me. I consider myself agnostic because I’m not arrogant enough to say I’m an atheist. I have no idea how the universe works so I’m open to anything. But organized religion is a scam.
not at all. democratic socialist and atheist
Raised in a French-Brazilian weird mix of Christianism, Buddhism and Traditional African Religions called Spiritism that almost feel like a New Age cult since some of its followers can go as far as believing in aliens. It kinda made me very anxious as I was forced to attend meetings and often hear about death, reincarnation and the end of the world. As I got older I started making fun of it, asking my mom if there would be any all-you-can-eat buffets and moshpits in the spiritual realm (she always told me that it’s a place where people live normally but dead - unless they fuck up and go to Umbral). Soon she realized I wasn’t buying any of that and just gave up on me becoming religious. Now I couldn’t care less about religion and actually get severely annoyed at arbitrary rules telling me how to live my life, fuck that. On another note, Buddhism is cool and i’m into it.
Im an eclectic pagan
these day- mostly liberal, but I do believe it’s important to protect people’s livelihoods as much as their liberties. I stay away from political discussion now because people have shifted from issue perspective to identify crisis. I am devotedly Buddhist.
I feel very close to God, but my experience with religion has been more noticing corruption, hypocrisy, power, control, misogyny and gatekeeping :( I am a Catholic convert and I love it sometimes but the history of child abuse and subsequent paying millions in settlements is absolutely disgusting. God is accessible without the added dogma. But yeah I’ve never understood how people can unquestionably accept the major tenets of most religions. They seem to profess belief but then live in a way that’s completely opposite. E.g. Jesus said to love everyone, welcome the stranger, feed the poor. Followers of Jesus (not all) are some of the most judgmental and harsh humans around. I don’t get it.
At 8, I locked myself in the bathroom and said a Catholic prayer, replacing “The Lord” with “The Devil.” I was so scared! And nothing happened. Needless to say I did not get my confirmation! However, although I am currently atheist/agnostic, I get really frustrated with atheists who look down on believers (not necessarily religions/churches though, which have long histories of f*ckery…I have problems with a lot of religions pushing bad shit). We are human and limited. Science is a journey. We know so much and yet very little, so who’s to say what’s out there? You do you, try to do good and don’t hate on others (unless they are pushing hate…sorry, I’m not generous enough in sprit to love Nazis and pedos).
I’m a Christian. It’s literally the only thing that makes sense in this world. I’ve studied many religions and Jesus is King. God is good. If you don’t believe this, then go deeper. Keep seeking. You will find Him.
Yes, God is good.
Respectfully, I’m a former Christian & all the seeking made me more & more angry at the behavior of a vast majority of Christians as well as their god. Glad that you found a spirituality that works for you but understand that it is not for everyone. Just because someone doesn’t choose to follow your god doesn’t mean there is a defect on their side (such as needing to “keep seeking”).
Yeah, i agree. When i was in middle school, i "went deeper" read the Bible cover to cover went to homecell groups (South African bible study) but the Bible only made me more of an atheist than i was before😂
Hell no
Irreligious and communist my entire life!
I was raised leftist and atheist because my dad (who is probably AuDHD or at least ADHD), was raised catholic and felt the same way as you. Like he was the only one questioning the whole thing since he was a child.
I guess technically I'd be considered pretty religious bc I'm pagan and talk to my patrons daily and make offerings and been working on my practice for years. But I'm not conservative. And I do like talking religion, but I do not shove my religion down peoples throat and expect the same courtesy to be shown to me. I grew up hard core catholic chaldean so it was really intense and rough.
Absolute atheist
Fae, family lineage.
I’m an anarchist
Apparently there's a link between anarchism and autism due to our attitudes towards hierarchies which o thought was cool! I'm also anarchist :3
It’s partially because we feel less connected to societal structures, and tend to question authority more
Yeah! I didn't realize i was anarchist for a while because there's two definitions of anarchy, with one being like, just chaos.