this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
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There's not really a set number of phases for leaving or entering a religion. As an aside, there isn't actually a fixed set of stages for grief either. People's journeys through life vary. I also see people repeating the most conservative interpretations of Islam here. People interpret and experience religion differently. Don't cite the most conservative interpretation as the one true interpretation, you're only giving them more credit than they deserve.
There is a study which says you are most likely to become agnostic/atheist if you grew up with parents who are not very religious. It was posted on Reddit and I did not read the study, but my guess it's because you're not being exposed to religious teachings. The findings corroborate my personal experience. My family and I pretty much stopped going to church nearly twenty years ago. My parents are believers but not devoted, although my mother watches televised mass.
My siblings and I then just do things on our own, and from our own readings on the topic along with others, we all became non-believers independent from each other. I am agnostic (I don't believe that deities in mainstream human religion exist but I do not discount the possibility of magical beings existing if evidence is presented) but my siblings are fully atheists.
I believe it. People like me who grew up in a devout household and are atheists now are the weird ones. I can almost tell by sight at every atheist event I go to. The ones that look like they have seen hell vs the ones that were lucky.
I didn't want to cause a whole thing because I have better things to do with my life than get offended but the last atheist event I went to someone asked me if I was considered introducing my kids to some diet religion type deal for "community" like Methodist or Baha'i or reformed Judaism. It just popped in my head that you might as well ask a homosexual who was forced into conversion therapy to "at least try dating the other gender and see where it goes".
Now again I didn't react the way I secretly wanted to I just told him that I think we are fine but I so wanted to bite his head off. I clawed my way out of that shit and no way anyone is inflicting it on my children.
Growing up I only ever saw church and religion on TV and never really thought much of it. One day as kids my mom pulled my brother and I aside and asked us, "It doesn't really make any sense for there to be a bearded man in the sky, does it?" That's all I really needed to hear to be science-minded for the rest of my life.
I'm a little jealous of people who grew up with church communities though. There's lots of good people out there, even if it's for the wrong reasons.
Don't be jealous of us. Not when I sometimes wake up at night from a dream when I am in hell or can just sit there for hours replaying the repeated physical abuse and it takes everything I have to not track those people down and "have a conversation with them".
The recovery from religion foundation has been a big help.
That makes sense, though there are also people who were brought up in strictly religious households and still came out being agnostic/atheist. It's partially statistics, but I wouldn't describe the process as a strict set of phases.
Oh yes, of course. I'm not saying otherwise. But that study showed contrary to popular belief that strict religiosity and bad experience of it makes someone atheist or agnostic, the less religiously strict an upbringing is, the more likely the person would become non-believer. Then on the flip side, strict religious upbringing could make someone more so. Human individuals are complicated and there is still deviations but the trend is still present and strong.