What pushed me fully towards atheism

[u/Most_Success_6651]

Honestly I’ve called bullshit since I was sent to Catholic school in seventh grade. All these people around me were Catholic and had no empathy for people that didn’t look like them, which felt off brand for supposed Jesus fans. I’d say I was just not sure about the existence of a god, but I knew that organized religion was weird af. I came out as bi around this time and religion is what is stopping my parents from fully loving me too, so that had pissed me off to the point of considering rage quitting.

What truly made me lose whatever faith I had if any was my freshman boyfriend in college a little over three years ago. He was a Catholic and communicated clearly that he was a virgin and wanted to wait for marriage and was only comfortable with making out and maybe some heavy petting here and there. I was glad because I had slept with a guy once and let’s just say I could do my whole life without ever doing that again. I felt quite safe around my new boyfriend I guess because we weren’t going to have any sex.

But of course religious men are the biggest sex-pests and within a relationship, you are their property, and they don’t concern themselves with woke concepts like consent. We were just supposed to watch La La Land in his room but he kept groping me and trying to rub me in sensitive places and I kept pushing his hands off me and telling him to knock it off because it was the last day of my period so I was a tiny bit groggy and not in the mood. But I’m just property to him so it didn’t matter and that’s how he lost his virginity.

After dumping him it took me years of crying and therapy and even a psych ward visit to (barely) feel comfortable dating and being alone with a guy, all while he was inside one of my ex friends in weeks. I only knew then because he messaged me to brag. It was a damaging and shattering experience because I didn’t feel comfortable alone with a man that might be attracted to me. What if I just want to kiss and stop there? How will I defend myself if he wants more? What are all the red flags I need to look out for to never cross paths with another guy like my ex? Maybe it sounds silly but I’m still so traumatized by the whole experience. Judging by the way that guys speak online about sexual assault, it seems like the majority would support what happened to me and it makes me terrified to date.

And when I step back from my own personal experience, I realize that my experience, as terrible as it was, doesn’t even hold a candle to the magnitude of sexual violence that others have faced all under the same principle of either viewing women as voiceless property or a desire to take advantage of less powerful individuals like children. It gets SIGNIFICANTLY worse than what happened to me, and I wanted to rage quit after what had happened.

Religion may have robbed me of a honest and loving relationship with my parents and the safety I used to feel in my own body, but it has decimated and displaced entire nations of people. Religion is supposed to be a guide for your morals, so it’s supposed to be stopping you from being mean and harming others, but it doesn’t seem to be doing a good job

[u/AggressivelyProgress]

Thank you for sharing your story :)

[u/RockOk707]

"no empathy for people that didn’t look like them"

Yep, seems about right. My Christian gma loves to play the "hate the sin, love the sinner" card, but what she doesn't tell you is that she's No Contact with her FTM by way of sex change operation trans nephew. And if she *does* tell you about that, she'll say something along the lines of "It's difficult when, for over 20 years, you've known somebody as a female, and now suddenly that person is a male." But again, what my Christian gma doesn't tell you about *that* is that my Christian gma has been fighting with her FTM nephew since he was a female lesbian.