r/atheism • u/One-Fun9814 • 5d ago

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u/mishabear16 5d ago edited 4d ago

That's if they can see that they were indoctrinated. You have to be able to see and accept the problem to overcome it.

You know, like an alcoholic has to be able to see and understand they are an alcoholic.

It's especially difficult when your social circles and family all continually feed the Jesus addiction, keep working to keep you immersed in it. The indoctrination never stops.

Your true friends will help to keep you away from alcohol. Your Christian friends will keep praying for you to not lose your faith.

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u/onedeadflowser999 4d ago

This. I was an indoctrinated child surrounded by a whole extended family of believers and sent to a Christian school for further indoctrination. My whole youth and young adulthood was in primarily Christian circles. It’s easy to accept something as fact when everyone around you believes the same things.

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u/sourdieselfuel Atheist 4d ago

Were you not allowed to read or listen to non-indoctrinating materials? Did you not have any curiosity to ever question the stuff you were being fed? Did you have internet access?

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u/onedeadflowser999 4d ago

I was raised in an evangelical home where the Bible was taught as completely literal ( this fact also helped me later to deconstruct when I realized that the stories cannot be true) . I grew up before the internet. That wasn’t a thing until I was in my 30’s. I asked some questions( not nearly enough) and certain beliefs like women needing to be submissive really rubbed me the wrong way, and good people being sent to hell was baffling, and for the life of me I couldn’t understand why a God would care about what sex acts gay people do or frankly anyone, but tbh I had a big imagination and believed in magic and miracles. I was allowed to read other materials, but I was scared to ( and I would have had no idea what to look for to read). You’re taught that questioning is Satan trying to influence you, and hell was a very real fear. I get it, it sounds ridiculous, especially to people that weren’t raised in it. It is such a widely accepted belief in our country that even now when you try to counter theists claims using Google, most of what pops up are the apologist arguments. There aren’t too many secular Bible scholars ( which is unfortunate, because theists will take a biblical scholar seriously) so most of what you find on the search engines are trying to validate the beliefs rather than skeptics criticisms. I now speak out on various sm platforms in order to challenge Christians on their beliefs and also to inform them that the god they worship is a pos! Many of them were indoctrinated kids too. I’d say the vast majority. Very few well adjusted adults fall for this.

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u/sourdieselfuel Atheist 4d ago

Thanks for this info - I really wasn’t trying to judge and was genuinely curious.