Skip to main content

Leaving Christianity: Looking Back After One Year

By Antitheist Joker ~

I committed to atheism on May 25, 2013. My de-conversion took years to come to fruition and was met with, as expected, many angry responses. I only recently discovered this site and would like to share my story as well.

Raised by my grandparents from birth, I was in church every Sunday since I can remember. My grandfather was a preacher and I learned quickly to be quiet and sit still during service. When I didn't, my grandmother would take me out the front door and spank me good. That was the beginning of the religious fear I would carry for 28 years.

When I was five my mom (as I called her) told my brother and I the entire spiel of Christianity for the first time. We were both "saved" that very night. My indoctrination was in full swing from that point onward. I had the typical brainwashing of memorizing the bible and learning all the cherry-picked "good parts" of the book.

When I was 12 I was filled with the holy spirit and began talking in tongues and trying to save every classmate I could. I condemned any who wouldn't listen to me, of course. This went on for four years until I tasted alcohol for the first time.

I, like other kids I guess, began partying and experiencing so many pleasures I was sheltered from for so long. These experiences always brought on the horrible cycle of guilt, shame and repentance. I always found myself going back to church and having a few months of "good" behavior.

In school I began skipping science class because it was of the devil and caused me to question my faith. I eventually dropped out and got my GED, believing my life was meant for ministry and I didn't need the secular education. Talk about a red flag!

At 22, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. My grandparents' solution for this was to hold an exorcism to deliver me from the spirit of bipolar. You name a problem and that was their answer. There were demon spirits that specialized in every negative aspect of life, from sickness and mental disorders to anger and lust. I can't count how many demons they tried to pray out of me over the years.

Every spiritual experience I had was a production of my own bipolar (in my case) and gullible mind. When I finally got on medication after many failed exorcisms, I began to study the power of the brain and wondered if all my religious experiences were products of my defective and vulnerable mind. I kept these thoughts to myself until I had my final revelation because of Robotussin.

I do not recommend or endorse my drug experimentation to anyone reading this, but here's what I discovered. A friend of mine had suggested that I try "Robo-tripping," as it is called, for a month or so. So one night I finally tried it. The feeling I got from using DXM (the active ingredient of Robotussin) was the exact feeling I had when I was filled with the holy spirit. I'd felt it every time I was speaking in tongues in a religious frenzy. I felt what we called "slain in the spirit." I wondered for months after, if I really felt the spirit of God, how on Earth could I recreate that experience with simple cough syrup?!

I began to suspect what all of us here discover: Every spiritual experience I had was a production of my own bipolar (in my case) and gullible mind. The wealth of knowledge on the internet led me to the Christ Myth Theory, The God Delusion and The God Virus. After months of depression and education, I emerged an atheist.

I look back all the time. If I hadn't been raised in a cult, would I have a Master's degree by now? As of this writing, I am a sober, mentally fit cashier. I devour all the scientific knowledge I denied myself years ago. Actually, I learn everything I possibly can about EVERYTHING. I no longer see myself as educationally stunted because of my cultish indoctrination. I am a Phoenix rising from the ashes of ignorance and oppression. The future holds nothing but opportunity for me to better myself, my education and my life.

I love this site, I love you all, and I love these stories of freedom you all share with the world. May we all continue to inspire and uplift one another. Thanks for your time.

Website: http://facebook.com/antitheistjoker

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two