Who else left organized religion because of believers' recruitment tactics?
If people must witness, we might as well let them know what *hasn't* worked in the past. I was a pretty good Catholic until I went to college and my next-door neighbors were all members of the Baptist Student Union. Concerned for my soul, they gave me a comic book on the "TRUTH about Catholicism" -- as if 18 years as a practicing Catholic didn't make me more of an expert. It was full of lies and slander about monks forced into homosexuality and people in the Inquisition burned for refusing to accept Jesus as their savior (?!?). What that did for me is it gave me my first full-on experience with how religions can lie in attempts to convert you... so I started looking into EVERYTHING. I'm now a happy Unitarian Universalist Pagan. Does anyone else have a story?
Abby C2007-01-01T01:24:12Z
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I was a baptist christian. I posed a question to my youth pastor that had been on my mind for while. "The people who have never heard of God, never been told the story, and they live in some third world country....where do they go when they die?" My youth pastor looked me right in the eye, and pointed at the floor. He said they go to hell. That was when I left the church. If this is what they believe, then I'm not going to be a part of it. I also started reading about the dark side of christian history, and my reasons for leaving became stronger. I do not believe in organized religion. I hate it. All it does is misinform, and mistranslate. I believe that if people want to be close to their god, then they should practice at home and interpret their bible, koran, etc. the way they want to percieve it. As of right now, I am an agnostic. I still think that a higher power/being may be a possible answer to Earth's unknown phenomena, but there is still much of the bible that has been debunked scientifically. I'm an in-between.
I was an athiest for a while. Then my friend told me about jesus and everything went down hill from there, and I feared living an eternity in these flames of hell.
Then, I discovered the freedoms that Atheism at the age of... I think 10, and from there I lived a more relaxed style of living. At the ages of 12 and 13 I found a great interest in Wiccanism, but figured out that the beliefs presented were not compatible with my own. Nonetheless, I stuck with it for a few months, then went back to atheism.
During high school someone told me about the Protestants, and, being my best friend at the time, I figured "Sure, why not?" but then left after about 20 minutes during a church session because the women were not allowed to wear pants, and the men had to cut their hair. (I was kind of rebellious at the time).
Back to Atheism. I joined the military in 2002 and, about halfway through, I tried out the system of Shamanism (I'm Native American) and tried to live in that sense of fashion. That ended up not working for me but I stuck in there for about 2 years.
Back to Atheism again, after the military last year in August of 2006. About a week ago, I turned to Satanism and found it to be perfect to me. I could think like a human, dress how I want, and not have to conform to rules that the church has put out for the last 2,000 years. I can smoke cigarettes, drink beer, perform carnal interactions and everything like that without fear of retailation after I die.
To each his or her own, I say. I mean that. Happy New Year.
I left all religion behind simply because I learned how to think logically. Once I recognized the common evolution of all religions from previous religions, it was easy to see they were nothing but stories passed on for far too long to be anything remotely like the originals, and saw no use for them any more, let alone the imaginary deities they all had.
As a sixth generation Unitarian Universalist, let me say welcome. I didn't realize the we weren't organized, but hey, life is how you see it. I've done a lot of exploration as a UU to get to where I am and I keep exploring.