Vs. Organized Religion

[Cramulus]

One thing I think most of us have in common is a distaste for organized religions. (surprise!) Many of us were raised in a religious environment, or at the very least were exposed to religion, but aren't "religious" anymore. Why? What happened?

I'm curious to hear about other people's experiences with Organized Religion. What made you decide it was for spags?

[Mourning Star]

Cramulus asked me to repost this story here after I told it to him in IRC.

I'm too lazy to type it all out, so I'm going to copy and paste the majority of the story as I was telling it in IRC.

<Mourning_Star> when the church gave me the boot when I was 9
<Mourning_Star> my mother stopped going
<verbatim> that's awesome
<Cram> the church gave you the boot at age 9??
<Mourning_Star> became completely disillusioned with the church
<Mourning_Star> yeah
<Mourning_Star> I was kicked out of church school 2 weeks earlier too.
<Mourning_Star> I kept asking questions that the nuns couldn't answer
<Mourning_Star> and when they gave the generic "Because that's how god made it" or whatever.
<Mourning_Star> that wasn't good enough for me
<Mourning_Star> I was starting to make the other children question their "faith" (read: brainwashing)
<Cram> ah, I see -- they kicked you out for being a snarky little know-it-all :-P
<Mourning_Star> so they decided i had to go.
<Mourning_Star>
<Mourning_Star> If you want.
<Mourning_Star> I was honestly curious tho
<Cram> heheheh
<Mourning_Star> i wasn't being snarky
<Mourning_Star> I wanted to know WHY things were like they were saying it was.
<Mourning_Star> I honestly believed at that point.
<Mourning_Star> But I needed to know more.
<Mourning_Star> believing just because they said so didn't make sense to me, even as a kid.
<Mourning_Star> anyway, after mass one morning, the children who were being prepped for first communion were asked to stay after mass to meet with our priest
<Mourning_Star> some pompous assbag who's name I cannot remember.
<Mourning_Star> The priest asked questions such as "How do you feel about sin?"
<Mourning_Star> most kids gave the usual braindead answers he wanted to hear "Sin is bad!" or "Jesus doesn't like sin."
<Mourning_Star> I actually thought about it, and said "There's no such thing as sin."
<Cram> uhhuh
<Cram> then what happened?
<Mourning_Star> When he asked me to explain, I told him "God made us, exactly as we are.  How can god get mad at us for doing something, if he LET us choose?"
<Mourning_Star> or something to that effect
<Cram> heheheh
<Mourning_Star> basically arguing that if god made us
<Mourning_Star> and god gave us free will
<Mourning_Star> how can any action be sinful, so long as we used the gifts he gave us to make that choice.
<Mourning_Star> this is rational thought
<Mourning_Star> logical
<Mourning_Star> and apparently
<Mourning_Star> to the ears of a catholic priest in Lisbon, NY
<Mourning_Star> BLASPHEMY!
<Mourning_Star> He told my parents never to bring "That blasphemous little monster" to "his" church, ever again.
<Cram> lol
<Cram> but how can you blaspheme if God made you to blaspheme? :-P
<Mourning_Star> exactly
<Mourning_Star> So my father was happy that he got to stay home on sundays and watch TV
<Mourning_Star> my mother became very disillusioned.
<Mourning_Star> she's still a believer
<Mourning_Star> but her opinion of the church is basically "fuck them"
* Cram nods
<Mourning_Star> and me?  For a time I felt like god had abandoned me.
<Mourning_Star> Which turned into a rebellious hatred for god and all things religion during my teen years
<Cram> I think this would probably be a pretty good forum topic. I bet most of us have some interesting early experience with organized religion.
<Cram> uhhuh
<Cram> word.
<Mourning_Star> and eventually I came to where I am now.
<Mourning_Star> An understanding of WHAT religion is, and what it's used for.

I would like to add in, that there was a 3 year stint where I turned to Judaism, and eventually found my way back to atheism, and discovered in Discordia, ideas I'd had all my life finally put into words that made sense.

So yeah, that's my story.  At least the best I can tell it right now.

[AFK]

I was raised Baptist.

It was when I was 13 I started to question my religion.  And it was the death of my Grandmother that started the questioning.  She actually had just been baptised shortly before her death.  In the Baptist sect of Christianity you don't get baptised until you are "ready", whatever that means.  They take it pretty seriously.  If you doubt your faith you don't get baptised.  Same thing with communion, that was only for Really Real Baptists.  Anyway, she went in to have some heart surgery to repair a hole in one of her valves.  She died shortly after the surgery, on the morning My father, my brother, and myself were supposed to go visit her.  So I though, what kind of fucking asshole deity takes my awesome, funny as hell Grandmother away from me on what was supposed to be a fairly routine procedure AND on the same day we were supposed to see her.  

Then of course, as I became more and more educated, I asked more and more questions.  I started thinking, so why does MY religion have all of the right answers?  Why is MY religion right, but say, the Muslim religion wrong?  There's all of these religions, why is MINE beyond reproach?  

So eventually I made the transition from a god-fearing, praying Baptist Christian to a questioning skeptical Monkey.  

[Verbal Mike]

I was a very inquisitive child. I'm told when I had just learned to talk, I mostly just asked "why?" all the time.
I remember, rather vividly, a conversation with my mother, in the car, on the way home. I must have been no older than 6, possibly younger.
"If god made everything, who made god?"
"Well, he made himself."
then I had some crazy fantasy about how he had a diamond remote-control that he pressed and it made him exist. I was into diamonds and general shiny as a child.
My parents and siblings are generally reform jews. Very laid back about the whole thing, but my parents wanted me to go to a reform kindergarten and school "so that I at least come in contact with the religion". Kindergarten was cool, I liked the songs (some of the tunes the reform movement uses are really powerful) and basically didn't have much opinion about the fact that I was being pumped full of a weird hippie interpretation of an ancient monotheistic religion. Some time early in grade school that changed. I remember being asked some time in second grade if I believe in god, thinking about it for a second, and saying no. It just went downhill from there. We were supposed to pray every day in that school (again, in singing, with pretty neat tunes). I remember refusing to in the firth grade. For some reason this really insulted everybody, and the teacher and students (!) insisted I should at least make believe, and stand up in the part where you're supposed to stand up. I would, sometimes, but sometimes I think I just outright refused.
The schools I went to after that didn't force anything on me. After the seventh grade I had a Bar-Mitzvah because I wanted the presents and didn't want to upset my grandma. Then I progressively become more anti-religious and slowly got very serious about atheism and secularism. It was basically at the height of this (when I was 17 or so) when I found out about Discordianism, at which point I progressively stopped giving a damn. Let them have their rituals for all I care.

[Voodoo]

I grew up in Eastern Kentucky, and while I didn't grow up in snake-handling churches like y'all may think, I got the full-force Baptist treatment.  In these Baptist churches, it doesn't matter if you were baptised in the christian church, you are going to hell if you were not baptised in that particular church.  But all the churches in that area were hellfire and damnation--except the catholic church my wife went to.



I can remember being in bible school, probably age 6ish, and not believing anything they were selling me.  It was hard as a kid not to call bullshit on virgin births, walking on water, and raising the dead.  (Sounds like witchcraft to me.)  So while I had those bad experiences, I don't think they changed my opinions, but just reinforced my previously held beliefs.

My mother was a cancer nurse in that region for 20+ years.  She had lots of stories about how her patient's families would them since the only reason they were sick is because their "faith wasn't strong enough."  That's when I became militantly anti-christian.

It wasn't until I was in college and learned about Zen Buddhism that I realized other people thought the same way I did (sorta).  But it is really the basic Hindu cosmology that I dig.  (And fyi, the only part of buddhism I buy is the 4 Noble Truths: the rest is gloss.) 

I think like most of us, I became a student of world religion--probably to try and figure out where they went wrong.  (Spoiler: it is the concept of God.)

[That One Guy]

As I've said other places, I was raised Unitarian Universalist. The main thing that is "organized" about UU is the committees. Oh, gods, the fucking committees. There is a committee for everything. I was "Youth Group" (IE, high-school-aged people section of the religious ed program) representative for a year, mostly because someone had to do it and I didn't care enough to say no.

When you've had 2 hours of a 3-hour planning meeting taken up by a discussion of "how" to organize the meeting before you get to the stuff you were supposed to be spending 3 hours on, you get a little disillusioned with the process. When that happens for the fourth month in a row, you get fed up with things completely.

I happen to like all of the positions/ethics/philosophy I got out of my UU RE program throughout my childhood. I just disliked all the pointless committee structure that passed for "hierarchy". Hell, I still consider myself UU in addition to all the other random religious stuff I've since tacked on to things. I just have no desire to deal with the organized part of things.

I'm a gnostic agnostic - I believe it's impossible to determine whether or not "god" exists, but if "god" does exist, then I don't think there's any particular reason there needs to be an interpreter/middleman between me and "god". I saw nothing in the UU structure (probably one of the least "organized" of any even slightly major religion) to make me think differently. Thus, I tend to shy away from "structured" religion of any kind on the basis that it exists merely to impose a middleman between me and "god".

I will say, however, that it was not the committee thing that brought me to this opinion/philosophy. I figured out what I believed on my own (as encouraged by the UU RE program throughout the years) and the organization part just never fit, so I abandoned it when I was done with the UU RE thing.

[Mangrove]

I was raised in a home environment that was almost religion-free.

My mother went to Catholic school (not her idea) and it was as every bit as horrifying and traumatic as you would imagine 1950's English Catholicism to be. My father was nominally Church Of England and I don't think he particularly cared about it that much.

By the time the 70's rolled around and they had kids, my parents pretty much had bailed on Churches of any kind. I was baptised in a Catholic church largely because my parents' friends and work colleagues were Catholic. It was simply a social convenience. In fact, I didn't even know under which denomination I had been baptized until I was in my mid 20s. As you can see, it couldn't have been much of a concern for either me or my parents - they couldn't be bothered to tell me and I couldn't be bothered to ask.

I don't remember many church visits when we lived in Canada. The only one I can recall was because my mother made my brother and me wear godawful suits and I had my 'Ben' Obi-Wan Kenobi figure with me. There's no memory of God, Jesus, religion etc...just Star Wars.

When we moved to the UK in 1982, I went to Church Of England schools for no other reason than that's what was around and the schools were good. I think you'd even have been hard pressed to find a bible in our house. We certainly never discussed any of it at all.

At age 12, I was interested in martial arts and all things Eastern: Buddhism, Taoism, Oriental Medicine etc. I experiemented with Buddhism for a while, especially 1992-94 when I was reading a lot about the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition. But it didn't 'take'. I found that it was easier to be Buddhist by not labelling oneself as one. There was plenty about it that I liked and absorbed and whatever didn't appeal just fell out of my head. Back in the day I was filled with a lot of rage and would rant at the drop of a hat, thus earning the moniker from my college friends: BWA (Buddhist With Attitude).

By 1996 I didn't consider myself to be of any religious persuasion. In fact, I found atheism to be extremely refreshing and liberating. For some people, this is a shocking, crisis of faith. To me it was a great relief. "Well, thank fuck that is over!"

Inspite of my secular upbringing, I realized that simply living in the Western World meant that you absorbed Judeo-Christian concepts via osmosis. I became very interested in the historical origins of Christianity once it had been removed from the agenda of the various churches. This lead to topics of archaeology, ancient history and a whole mess of Hermeticism, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Occultism, Qabalah, Gnosticism etc etc etc. So I set about purging the left over Xtian memes from my mind, replacing them with my own research and then delving into all the Western Mystery Tradition stuff they didn't want me to know about.

As far as religion goes, I've been left to my own devices pretty much my whole life and am very very grateful for that.

[Anch]

As a toddler, I never REALLY believed that there was an old beardo in the sky, watching us;
Back then I couldn't read, but I could watch television; there were two cartoon series, and one of them I enjoyed, and he other I watched because it was animated, but I was not really into it.
I distinctly remember thinking "Hmm...I don't think there really IS a god...but, well, I guess I'll just pray, perhaps he's going to make the TV show my preferred cartoon."   
I was a really sciency-kid, with a experiment-kit and loads of books on various subjects and so on, and angels and JHVH just seemed implausible to me.

Then came the whole catholic confirmation thing, and for a while I was drawn into it, I really enjoyed it (partially because there was an altar girl I really liked)...but for me, it was never the whole GOD-thing, but the New Testament-stuff, peace and compassion and sympathy and so on. My parents were quite indifferent about it, and, after the whole Sell-Your-Soul-To-God-For-Eternal-Life event was over, I kind of dropped out.
It was just too much droning on and on about the SAME subjects every sunday, and the congregation mumbling through the happy-go-lucky God-songs. I was not really opposed to the church, but it couldn't give me anything worthwhile anymore. After that, I got an Education, became an atheist because that was the hip, intellectual thing to do back then, and proceeded to detest everything catholic.

I guess I have to thank my parents for that, because back then they identified themselves with Christian values but refused to go to church, and that kind of half-assed-ness grew on me.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I was pretty much born and raised as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. From as early as I can recall, that was my life. Meetings on Sunday, Tuesday night and Thursday night. Hours of knocking on doors on Saturday and Sunday, sometimes during the week if we had summer break. Every night was studying something, a bible passage or a publication from the Watchtower Society. The congregation I grew up in was old (for that particular religion). There were people living there that remembered when "Brother Russell", founder of the religion came through with lectures. The place was full of people that had spent their entire lives focused on the Bible, and the JW interpretation in ways that I have never seen from other Christians. It was not uncommon to go visit a friend, only to find them deep in research on some topic or other. I loved it. They called it understanding "the Deeper Things" and anyone that could handle a discussion of these 'Deeper Things' was bound to do well. I studied a lot and started giving lectures in the Theocratic Ministry School at the age of 6.  I got baptized at 13 and according to the elders who interviewed me, I showed a shocking depth of knowledge for my age. My love of reading (to the exclusion of most everything else) made it easy to grok all of the beliefs of the religion... or so I thought.

One of the biggest "Deeper Things" that was taught was about the Gentile Times. In short, they had all of these numbers and math which proved that God's Kingdom left earth in 607 BC with the fall of the last King of Judah. It would be held down for a period of "times" based on a couple prophecies and dreams. According to the JW's this "Gentile Times" would end when Jesus took the throne and cast Satan out of Heaven for Good. They predicted October, 1914 as the date. They saw WW I as proof that Satan had been cast down and "Woe to the Earth" had begun. Next they concluded that since Jesus told his apostles "This generation will not pass away..." that the people who were alive in 1914 would see Armageddon. They taught this, made us learn it and teach it to others. I could spout off the whole thing, the dates, they interpretations, which scriptures had to be used to figure out which other scriptures etc. All of it drastically pointed to the end of this system happening before I graduated High School.

-----------

In the mid 90's the Watchtower carried an article, which talked about this prophecy and it said "Some people thought that "generation" meant the people living at the time of 1914, but really, generation is simply a generalization of the attitude of people." Within a couple months, no one said anything about the end coming before all of the people alive in 1914 died. By the next year, the only time you saw a reference to it was in a "Well, some brothers were so silly, they actually believed..." rather than admitting that they had screwed up. That sent me into more research. If they wiped that off so quickly, what else had been tweaked? Once I began researching, I found out that they had predicted the end of the world many times, they had mistranslated, misinterpreted and just flat out screwed up a lot of things, then buried them when it became obvious and told all of the faithful that they shouldn't go exploring the "Apostate" literature which is basically what anything anti-JW is considered as, including a discussion of their history. That led me to serious questions, which I couldn't answer. About that time some other life changing events happened and I found it easy to disengage from the religion for a moment and step back. It was about that time that I ran into the SCA, Pagans and eventually, the Principia Discordia.

It was a bad trip.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I was raised without organized religion. When I was 18 I joined a fundamentalist Christian cult to see what it was like, but by the time I was 19 I was over it. 

[Triple Zero]

i went to a christian elementary school (ages 5-11, or thereabouts). the stories never seemed really real to me, and they were kind of relaxed about most things. i never picked up cursing ("goddamnit") though, until i went to a secular high school (12-18).

two things i remember that pissed me off. when i was 7, we had a teacher that was a littlebit more strict, and he didn't allow kids to say "jee" or "jemig", which translates basically to "djeez", cause it was based off of "jesus". i thought that was really stupid because the word had become an ingrained part of my language idiom, and until he drew my attention to it, i never considered what it may have been based on. also, when I said it, I hadnt based it on the word "jesus", so where's the big deal? (remember i was a kid)

the other thing was in the last grade, when i was 11, the teacher told us that Sinterklaas (like Santa Claus, except you get presents at december 5th) didn't exist, assuming we all had already figured that out by now. which was indeed the case, except for me, i had never really considered it as anything but another story, just like the bible stuff. (the reason why he told us btw was because we were going to make presents for our classmates, not out of any sort of sadistic urge to spoil childhood mystery). the thing that pissed me off, later on, was that he did say Sinterklaas didn't exist, he might as well have told us that Jesus wasn't really real, right?

[leaving aside any details about Sinterklaas being the bishop of Myra, or something, which is not really the point here]

[The Littlest Ubermensch]

I was generally raised with only minimal religion. We went to church on (some) Sundays, and the only church I can remember attending is a UCC (the one that was advertising how much they like gay people) church in Ann Arbor. My dad pretty much never went to church with us, his defense being that he had been to a parochial school and had a minor in philosophy, making his religious education complete.

Around the time I was 10, I got curious and decided to read through some of my dad's old philosophy books. After reading some, I came to the simple conclusion that God was bullshit and obviously not real. (and one year previous had come to the conclusion that Santa still wasn't real, but was a metaphor that people held deeply and has some positive impact, making him about as real as anything needs to be. It's still kind of funny to me how I had a more nuanced opinion of Santa than God at first.)

Admittedly, I never really cared about God. It was pretty obvious that it didn't make sense, but I spent most of my time learning/thinking about science and more abstract sorta scientific philosophical concepts (I remember being 7 and trying desperately to figure out what the hell time was. My final conclusion was that the universe is constantly being destroyed and reformed, but so fast we couldn't perceive it, and time is our way of connecting the constant changes in the universe in a way that makes sense to us.)

[Xooxe]

When we moved to the UK in 1982, I went to Church Of England schools for no other reason than that's what was around and the schools were good.

I was raised in an atheist family but told to make my own mind up. Went to a Catholic Church of England primary school and it was actually alright (apart from the hymns they made us mumble every fucking day (of which we covertly corrupted anyway)). They taught us a fucktonne of Greek, Norse and Egyptian mythology. I think I filtered all of the dull Christian Wango stuff out of my memory. Once, we also learnt about how changes in perception alter the way we experience the world. I think the CCE fucked up with our school.

[Thurnez Isa]

srlsy i just read the bible and thought even at a young age it was bullshit
I was raised by my grandparents who, being french canadiens, were roman catholic, but they were a little disappointed that me or my dad didnt believe any of it but didnt really push anything on us
that and i dont think i ever really thought too much about spirituality
just never crosses my mind
which i guess is a bit wierd, but...
plus i tend to put everything in historical contexts so that makes it heard to take any text on faith
wish there was a better answer

[P3nT4gR4m]

I was raised in a protestant school. Once a week some prick in a dog collar would lecture us on jesus and love and peace and shit like that. Meanwhile the older kids kids were teaching me to hate catholics and where the best places were to go kick the shit out of them.

I kinda preferred the shit-kicking to the stories about jesus.

Years later I went on summer camp which turned out to be 'scripture union' organised (I was 13 - I didn't know what the fuck SU was!) The next thing a bunch of hippies were trying to brainwash me whilst I was busy trying to get drunk and lose my virginity.

I kinda preferred the drunken sex to the stories about jesus.