The arguments maybe too simplistic to some but I am thankful for this site launching me into decades of doubt and eventual apathy to atheism.
What was your initial journey to atheism?
The arguments maybe too simplistic to some but I am thankful for this site launching me into decades of doubt and eventual apathy to atheism.
What was your initial journey to atheism?
Gotta thank my paternal uncles for that! My grandfather was a retired Baptist preacher so I internalized the idea that Christianity was an ideology of love, generosity and brotherhood as a kid.
In middle school my dad made some bad financial decisions which put our house at risk of foreclosure, and his loving Christian brothers, who had received plenty of help from him to find jobs and transportation when they immigrated, promptly told him to fuck off while calling my mother a stupid whore. Anything goes when calling YHWH’s a one-way street.
So I started off as a confused misotheist, but reading through the Bible and the history of Christian faith again, I had the stunning realization that talking donkeys aren’t real. Oh, and also that being a sociopathic bastard is par for the course for soldiers of Christ, real and imaginary. At least modern Christians don’t have the teeth to kill and enslave their neighbors to steal their land. You know, like frugal loving people do.
I mean this in a nice way, not to diminish what you felt whatsoever. Did you tell this story on reddit or is this bullshit so common that it feels like I read it before?
Yes and yes! I have commented quite a bit on r/atheism and there are indeed a lot of assholes among Baptists (and almost every large denomination, really) who help create former theists with similar stories. PKs (Pastor’s Kids) are somewhat stereotyped even in church communities as being especially awful when they have an opportunity to power trip. This sort of verbal warfare wasn’t uncommon in the Asian American churches I’ve been to, since parents go a little insane trying to keep up their cutthroat competition of sending the most emotionally stunted child to the Ivy League and make a billion dollars when the pastor keeps telling them to live humbly and frugally (while also sending his own kids to college out-of-pocket).
The most bizarre outcome of this whole experience is that the rest of my immediate family is still staunchly Christian. They can’t conceive the idea of blaming God for having so many awful followers, or the real dreadful thought that no gods have ever been around to reply to their prayers at all.
Yeah my wife is an asian immigrant so most of our friends are as well. I have seen what you described.
The whole one-upmanship thing is…well a mixed bag. And yes my kids play violin and get straight As, how did you know? Haha. Fine line between a trait being positive and being toxic.