Atheists, why and how did you remove the shackles of religion and begin to think for yourself ?

Answer 1

I started calling myself an Atheist at 13 when I realized there were just too many contradictions in religion and people were using it as a excuse not to think for themselves. I'd bet just about every self proclaimed Atheist half expects to be struck down by lightening the first time they say, "I don't believe in God" and I was no different. I spent the next 25 years learning and searching for myself. I've taken college courses in comparative religion, picked up philosophy books to read on my own, and met tons of people as I travelled around different parts of the country.

I'm not an Atheist any more. I realized I did believe in a higher power, just not some old dude with a long flowing beard. I prefer to think of God as energy and believe we each carry a little piece of that energy with us. So today, I consider myself more of a Neo-Pagan although I've never really found a religous label that truly describes my beliefs.

Namaste,
Gwen

Answer 2

I actually began to think for myself probably from a young age. I simply didn't realize that it was ok and that it was the beginnings of atheism until much, much later. I questioned things innocently as a child, but deliberately and openly as a teenager as a result of the way my family treated me.

There was a lot of favoritism in the family playing myself and my now-missionary cousin off each other. Religion was also used to punish and intimidate people into conforming to the societal norms, particularly me. If I did something perceived as "unladylike", then the Bible was used to tell me that I'd pretty much go to Hell if I didn't do as I was told. Even when I did as I was told, rare as that was, it still wasn't "good enough" and I got the feeling that my own family thought I was bound for Hell no matter what I did.

I still think that I could become a literal saint and my family would somehow find something wrong with the accomplishment.

Because of all this, because it honestly didn't make sense to me that I went to church just like my cousin, Sunday school too, still believed(more or less. I didn't openly realize that nonbelief was even an option until college, that's how indoctrinated people are where I live), and yet he was clearly "better" than me somehow. They saw him as better despite us doing the things, so I began to think about what I was doing wrong, if I could find anything.

I found nothing. And that's when the gears started to turn. What sort of religion, let alone God, would allow something like that to happen? For one grandchild to be constantly praised and loved and adored, but another was more or less spiritually and emotionally abused in the name of that same God.

No decent religion ever would condone such a thing. Not a one.

Initially, I feared becoming atheist. From what everyone where I lived acted, atheists were scary, hateful people out to destroy everything good in the world. My own mother knew an atheist and said he was a "scary person". I thought it was a bad thing to not hold any beliefs for a long time, and that was a path I didn't want to take.

I didn't want to be thought of as someone who was mean spriited and deliberately hateful towards others. I was still me, even if my beliefs changed. I was afraid that if I became an atheist, it would mean that I was full of hate and be a bad person and I knew I wasn't a bad person. I just wasn't Christian anymore.

But time wore on and eventually won out. I grew tired of trying to find a religion that I felt I could trust and would not be corrupt and end up telling me that I wasn't "good enough". I grew tired of constant conflict with my family, with people who were supposed to love me and persecuted me in their own little way for casting aside the beliefs they'd raised me in. I got tired of defending myself and trying to tell them that just because I abandoned Christianity, didn't mean that I was suddenly a darker, nastier person. I was tired of telling them that I was still myself, just with different beliefs.

This has gone on for upwards of twenty years at least, if not closer to twenty five. My realizing of my identity as an atheist has come about within the last five. Before that, I tried to believe in something besides various forms of Christianity and fought with my family for it. It was a long, slow process, and I may have grappled with it still had it not been for one incident earlier this very year in February.

While I've never had much of a problem with my cousin being a missionary(I may not approve of the whole missionary bit, but it's his life, who the hell am I to tell another how to live?), I have a problem when he starts bringing his mission back home. Some of the things he has written in letters to the church where his father preaches have been greatly offensive and appalling to me, though I tend to ignore them as it's one missionary to a church. It's obviously going to be chock full of preachiness.

Up until he started work as a missionary, he and I were on surprisingly decent terms, despite him being the family "favorite" while I was the "black sheep" and outcast from the time we were young children. But after he's been out missioning, he's changed and unfortuately turned into yet another member of the family who has made it their mission in life to "save" me.

He has "given" me three religious books without my solicitation or approval in a clear attempt to reclaim me within the flock. He has ambushed both myself and my husband at family gatherings claiming to want to "talk" to us, only talks about what he's been up to have turned into heavy pressure and proselytization that have been more than uncomfortable and a little offensive.

Because his mother has been a frequent instigater of such crap, we thought it was her. But after the February email in which I had asked him about taking part in my upcoming wedding, he responded without really answering, and had once again proselytized to me. I asked about if he could be in the wedding, not how I could find God again.

It was like an emotional right hook. It was bad enough to have a grandmother, aunt, and my own father all ganging up on me at gatherings to try and drag me kicking and screaming back into the flock. I didn't need another person to add to it. But the proof was right there. There was no prompting from his mother as she was visiting his brother and nowhere near a computer to email him back and forth at the time. It was painfully clear that he was another person to watch out for and the way he has spoken to me with that religious arrogance was the last straw for me.

I thought; "If this is how believers are going to behave, even to family, then I don't need that sort of drama and baloney in my life." I didn't need to have flashbacks of when I was a teenager and younger being told that I was either going to Hell for farting wrong or that if I didn't do as I was told, as God told me, I would never amount to anything and nobody would want to be around me. I didn't need to hear that sort of abuse for the rest of my adult life.

I had already stopped going to church(aside from Christmas Eve services, I haven't regularly set foot in a church for Sunday services in almost a decade), so it wasn't very difficult for me to cut ties from religion altogether. My family does not know, though I desperately wish to tell them and why and how they're a big part of it. I know that if I do, the abuse and attacks will intensify as they try to "save" me, or worse. I'd welcome disownment, but I know it won't be that easy. And I dread what may happen if they find out before I'm ready.

So to sum up the answer to your question...

I gave up religion and thought for myself because of emotional/spiritual abuse from my family that I've endured for 20-25 years(for the record, I am only 26, so I've literally heard this abusive garbage in the name of God for nearly all of my life).

How I removed it was through 10-15 years of contemplation and eventual acceptance of what I was feeling, why I was feeling it, and that it was ok NOT to believe, contrary to what people believe and are taught around here. I literally had to buck my own culture and upbringing to get to where I am now. I'm still coming to terms with everything, although it's easier than it has been.

The trick for me now is to not feel so out of place as an atheist in a small town full of believers who know each other, likely knowing who does and doesn't go to church as well, and who will talk at the slightest sign of deviation from the local norms.