Religion
In reply to the discussion: Question for atheists. [View all]DerekG
(2,935 posts)Unlike many here, I would describe my religious upbringing as positive. Grew up in a moderate Protestant church (no talk of hell, whatsoever) and blossomed into a Christian socialist in my late teens and twenties.
Unfortunately, the utterly meaningless suffering and incomprehensible evil I would come to see and confront destroyed my Christian cosmology. There was just no reconciling the brutality and injustice of the world with a god of grace. It was tremendously painful. I didn't so much lose my faith, as it was ripped out of me, beaten, raped and left in the ditch to die.
There's nothing liberating about my own break from religion; the nonexistence of god is just an unbearably sad truth with which I live. Kinda keeps me out of the loop of the comparatively liberated New Atheists.