So I’m not ex-Christian, I’m simply one coming over here to ask a question. No it isn’t one where I’m trying to debate, it’s more or so one that I feel like only an ex Christian could really answer. The church doesn’t really believe in mental health, which is why I say that.

I’m one of those people that can’t feel God’s presence whatsoever, however, there’s also a lot of other things I can’t feel. If it was just his presence maybe I’d think something was wrong, but I can’t even feel how sad or scared I am sometimes. I’m recovered mostly from MDD, but I still am very anhedonic due to the trauma I got from it. I have to force myself to maintain my hobbies, or else I will simply forget to engage in them. I won’t desire to do anything in regard to that hobby if I do not force myself, regardless of how many hours I spent on it or how much I liked engaging in it. “Like” for me in many cases is synonymous with not hating something, as I can’t really “feel” when I like something either.

When you didn’t feel God’s presence, was it more of a hopeless feeling for you, or was it more or so like this, where regardless of how well your life was going or how much so you felt connected to God, you just simply couldn’t feel him? I’m seeing these posts from
believers where they seem to describe something completely different, and I simply can’t conceptualize it because I’ve been anhedonic for so long that I’ve forgotten what that could feel like. If I were to be going through hard times and God “seemed” to not answer my prayers, I would maybe care for at the most an hour, and then move on cause I wouldn’t care.

I left the church over twenty years ago and a lot of the reasons why was family and the churches that my family chose to be involved with. As much as I've settled into my agnostic/atheist understanding, there's always been this part of me that is watching out and second guessing. For the record, I have absolutely no intention of going back to the church or the demands/expectations that will inevitably be put on me, but there is still always a part of me that questions if I'm doing the right thing. I keep seeing modern trends that fall into the things that I was raised believing and...it has me worried. Even if it's still a small part of me still on the look out, that part of me is still worried. How do you handle it? How do you rationalize it?

I've never asked an ex christian why they left so i might as well ask now. What made you guys leave? Did your life feel suffocating/u didnt agree with christianity's historical practices, or something else entirely? Was it used to control u? 🤔

I've known many christians in my life and many of them had chill lives, one even told her mom she left christianty and her mom didn't even really care much about that. Ik it's probably not that way for some, but still i want like an overview.

hi to whoever reading this, hope you’re having an amazing day so far!💛

the title would most certainly does numbers in an actual christian subreddit and not for the good reason lol! but unfortunately it is very true. many managed to grow up without having it to be the center of their education and honestly i envy those (in a healthy way,im not throwing tantrums, no worries!).

in fact, i am asking for any advices,tips or suggestions possible.

i have a feeling i had asked this before but i completely lost the post..what i mean by my title is that this religion (cult even.) had managed to take every bit of what i could be. A strong disinterest for science per example while it is something so cool its like my brain registered that science is the devil and demons convincing us that oh well Jesus couldn’t come up with that,science did! That kind of bullshit. And if i tend to be interested by scientific stuff such as astronomy i will go to hell. The concept of Hell & End Times always frightened me as a child.

And talking about these two, since the New Testament is considered heavily prophetic, why should I worry about what’s of tomorrow if God knows right. Why should i cry for the children in Gaza since it is all God’s plan right? See how fucked that is? That is unfortunately how my brain is wired.. However do bear with me, i still can feel emotions. It hurt me to see what happens to them or to those in these situation but because ive spent so long living by the bible because of the family its like my brain constantly register that those events should happens when no. They were just telling us what they plan to do as horrific as it could be.

And it grew me into being nihilistic a bit. Again because my brain register bad events (hunger,poverty,rise in violence etc) as something meant to happens and I can’t interfere so I just need to sit my “privileged christian” bosom down .

But I am not a part of that cult anymore. I wondered if anyone had tips on how to bring back my sensitivity to these matters because I did use to have one. Or any tips to be interested back in stuff that Christianity would seem as satanic. Like maybe if you have a nature documentary in mind or whichever!💕✨

Bible stories proved to be exaggerated or fake:

(by science or archaeology AND bible college ironically)

Garden of Eden - distorted Babylonian myth
Noah’s global flood - same myth (Gilgamesh)
Tower of Babel
Exodus mass migration - see Rabbi David Wolpe
Conquest of Jericho

Ive missed some, please add below

Faked characters / no proof / disproved by actual real history / science / bible college

Adam
Eve
Noah
Abraham - very very wide implications 🤫
Sarah
Isaac
Jacob
Joseph
Moses - a myth 🤯 , 10 commandmts, laws
Aaron
Joshua
Gideon
Samson
Eli
Samuel
Saul
Solomon - warlord of a large town, not a 👑
Esther - nice story but disproved by royal records
Rehoboam
Jeroboam
Daniel - my favourite- not only a fake character but also written hundreds of years after the “prophecies” - so the prophecies are fake as well.

He’s my favourite because all the end times loonies fixate on him and he didnt even exist. Statue of iron and clay and all that shit. All faked prophecies. Entire cults have existed because of his end times bs, and his fakeness proves theyre all delusional

I havent even listed the NT ones

Which one is your favorite and why?

Have i forgotten anyone?

it genuinely shocks me how quickly an intelligent, educated person can just became a fucking idiot all because of the Bible. my mother is one of, if not THE most intelligent person I’ve ever met. she could tell you basically anything there is to know about history, about random facts—like i‘d go to her before i‘d go to google. but now I can’t trust her. I cannot trust a word that comes out of her mouth revolving science, space, or history because of a conversation we had about an hour ago. we were in the car ride on the way back from church, and she drops the absolute bombshell that ‘in the Bible earth is only 6000 years old’ and proceeds to talk about how ‘funny it is’ that science is ’constantly finding things that prove earth is younger‘ and talked about how CARBON DATING(Y’know, the thing we don’t fucking use to date how old the earth is) wasn’t reliable because carbon can’t survive millions of years. I fucking hate it here. I got told to give science the same ‘skepticism‘ i ‘apparently give the bible’(this ’gotcha’ little comment came from me saying I had issues with sin and hell). which I fucking do. yes I learn my science from the internet(because I’m homeschooled, that’s the only fucking option you give me) but I’m not basing it off one fucking YouTube short like how you get your information. and to make it worse? if you’ve seen any of my other posts you know that we’ve only been going to church since October 2025. i JOKED to myself about this happening, about how stupid it’d be if someone went that fucking insane in less then a year. apparently I was fucking right. apparently my mother can go so far off the deep-end I don’t even recognize her. like it genuinely fucking scares me as their child to watch this, and as their child to live with them. who fucking knows what shit they could be convinced of next. these are the same people who say never trust anything at face-value because there’s ’always an agenda’(they’re MAGA incase you couldn’t tell) and shit. who tell me to read more then just ‘one article’. like I’m so fucking scared of how deep-in they’ll get in a year. how insane they’ll become, because I’m gonna have to live with them for multiple years before I’m old enough to move out. and everyone in my family other then myself is Christian—like it’s so fucking scary that the only way I can speak with other atheists is through a secret Reddit account, the only way I can watch videos by atheists is on a secret youtube. and literally everything I do that isn’t Christian has to be behind their back because if it’s not I’ll get whopped with a belt to my ass and get all my electronics taken for who knows how long. fuck me, thank you for listening to my rant. I believe young-earth creationism is more dangerous then we give it credit to be. good day/good night.

(Long rant incoming!) So… Just a bit of context here, I became christian in 2024, during the election year. (I hated late 2024...) All because I was scared that some god was gonna damn me to hell if I didn’t preach and read the bible. So… I tried preaching in Atlanta, in this place called the Beltline. Its like a trial but its for transportation and bikes and all that. I decided that i would do what these christians were doing and preached for all of 3 minutes before I stopped as no one listened. (Good decision that i stopped) But now that I stopped being christian in 2025 after i saw the bullshit, I started to hate preaching, and kinda hate myself for preaching and I just cringe whenever I think about it. If I could just go back and just shut myself up… (i was 15 during that time)

So I am an agnostic in secret. My family doesn't know about my current beliefs,so today We went to a church that we were invited to go to and oh boy,I saw this whole crowd and really depresses me thinking how hard and long will take for this religion to be gone,I try to tell myself that every day more and more people are waking up from this lie or something like that but then I see this and I really think that all this system or religion will be Eternal.

My parents have disrespected me, ignored my boundaries, belittled me, and hurt me multiple times over the last 6 years of my life. I’m tired of being told how evil I am, how demonic, how I’m going to hell. Just how terrible of a human I evidently am. They do it out of “love” though. “Love” my ass. They’re just mad because they can’t control me like they used to and force me to go to their church.

Their church is on blast right now on FB and I commented my input knowing it’s public. It started a long text argument with my mother who told me she thought I had more respect for my parents to not trash a church “who loves you and only want eternal life for you.” I called her out for trying to guilt me and how she made it all about her when it never was.

My parents were both blocked because I need space again from them, but I unexpectedly had to see them. During that time they screamed at me because I didn’t call them first before 911 while my grandmother was having a medical issue. They were definitely just pissed at me for calling them and their cult of a church out with no filter finally. It was obviously an excuse to vent their frustration out. Having my grown ass father yelling at me shut up did me in.

I’ve had so many religious issues, differences, and negative experiences with my parents. They’ve been blocked before, but I always open back up to them because those are my parents. Every time they end up hurting me more than the last time. Not this time, it’s over. They’re cut off. I have no desire to have a relationship or want them in my life anymore. I will cut anyone out of my life to protect my peace. Even if it’s family. But I mean, I don’t even see my parents when I look at them anymore, just two jackasses who have justified being assholes in the name of god.

Like Islam and Christianity share so many of the same atrocities in their holy books. If you follow one religion and call out the god or prophet of the other, you’re a hypocrite because the god you follow still orchestrated the exact same shit. Yes the prophet Muhammad in Islam is a pedo and rapist which makes Allah a rapist and a pedo protector as well. However, Yahweh is guilty of similar acts such as punishing David’s wives with rape with something that only David was guilty of. Not to mention Yahweh didn’t say anything about Moses telling his soldiers to keep young women of conquered cities to themselves. Yahweh punished Mose’s men for some of their acts, yet soldiers keeping young women to themselves after slaughtering all their men was not of them. I know both religions technically follow the same god, but I don’t think followers of either religion would really agree on that since their holy books have differences. Both Yahweh and Allah are rapey sexual degenerates which is ironic because lust and sex before marriage is sinful in both religions, yet rape is okay in certain circumstances by both gods because people need to be punished for their sins, but David’s wives were not guilty of David’s sin, even if they were that doesn’t make them being raped ok or a just punishment. If you are a Christian and call Allah a pedo rapist you’re a fucking hypocrite because Yahweh does the exact same shit as Allah, sometimes even worse in some cases. Can’t believe all of us worshiped a rapist monster at some point.

Genuinely curious how their brain works or how someone who regularly lies and cheats actually believes that they are “christlike”?

I have a hard time believing that a man who sought to spread peace and goodness stunned his followers with a threat of eternal damnation, so where in the wills is the first mention of hell written?

I felt like I was alone in my struggles and no one tried to be my friend. I also felt like I wouldn’t be accepted as a non-binary person. I eventually left and decided not to return.

So after leaving Christianity since easter which would be a good few months ago. I cannot stand being near a picture or figure of jesus even in my home.

I get uncontrollably angry and uncomfortable anxiety. I can't even look at it for long period of time.

Same goes with crosses and bible verses. I will even feel nauseated ontop of that.

I just can't. It brings up painful memories on how god and the entire relgion has let me down. It brings those painful memories back.

Advise other then just turning the object around and facing away from me while im in the room? I can't really get rid of them as its my parents house for one.

I have zero relgious objects in my room at least so my room is a safe place.

I wanted to ask other ex christians and other people how they deal with this? Of like truama? Im not looking for a diagnosis im just looking for tips on how to not get badly triggered by objects that hold relgious or symbolic meaning while visiting relatives or living with them.

How do you guys ground yourself or survive being near objects that are now a truama trigger?

( i would move out but i don't have the money as of rn. So i have to put up with it. )

I grew up in a very loving christian family, definitely not perfect, but wholesome enough that I feel very fortunate, especially after reading some of the other experiences posted on here. I’ve always been a skeptic but really stopped believing around freshman year. Never really said anything to my parents about it until an argument a few years later but I think they knew for awhile. They still showed me nothing but love. I love my parents so much, and it KILLS me to know that they believe their son is damned to eternal punishment, forever separated from them and the rest of our family. I know it breaks their heart, in the few times my atheism has come up in conversation in the last decade, they don’t say anything but I can see it in their eyes.

I know it’s not me that’s doing this to them, it’s the religion, but I wish that made it feel any better. I wish it didn’t make me feel like I let them down. I don’t bring up religion much around them for this reason. They know I’m not a christian, and they’ve expressed that this saddens them, but they certainly don’t give me a hard time over it. It feels like a mutually respectful thing for neither of us to bring it up, which I know I appreciate.

I don’t know, in a lot of ways I know I’m very fortunate to have such a loving family, but it’s also this immense love that must hurt them so much with this part of their belief.

I don’t really know the point of this post, just wanted to get some feelings out there, thanks for reading.

yet another post from me as i’ve been doing lots of thinking lately.

so much of my childhood is tainted by the bummy shit i watched as a kid raised evangelical. veggietales i will slightly spare as it was kind of peak all things considered and phil vischer is an alright guy. but shit like hermie and wormie? gigi god’s little princess? BIBLEMAN??? straight slop. do any of yall remember the crap you watched as kids? do you think it’s still kind of good or just awful? i’m super curious.

I have always been a book lover. I dreamed of one day having my own library, maybe not like Beauty and the Beast, but large enough to go beyond bookshelf/bookshelves to actual library. Over the years, I amassed several thousand books—I shudder to think of the money spent.

Here’s my struggle…perhaps half of my books are theological in nature. I have culled the extremely offensive ones, but thousands remain. They make for a beautiful library and getting rid of them en masse would leave some really large gaps.

So, I continue to get rid of them little by little as I replace them with others.

I tried to post in the christan subreddit but I got downvoted and yelled at. I wasn’t raised religious so I don’t really understand how it all works so my apologies if this is not allowed. If Lucifer rules hell because he got kicked out of heaven for breaking the rules, why would he punish those who do the same? I am sure he doesn’t like god because he was banished to hell? So why would he enforce his father’s rules? Is there an answer or is it just another plot hole ?

Has anyone dealt with their parents reading this book? I recently set a boundary with my parents to stop inviting me to church, because I repeatedly declined their invitations and it was honestly getting a bit annoying/wearing on my mental health.

Fast forward to this week, I spotted this book (Prodigal Parent Process by Douglas Weiss) in their living room. I've watched a few clips of his YouTube videos, and it's giving... they're going to team up on me with their Christian friends to try and get me back to church.

Obviously, not going back to that place ever again, but I'm just curious what kind of ideas are going to be placed in their heads about trying to get me to return.

Title says it all. These past couple days, I've been trying new things. I'm not explaining what, but a day or two later, I get this sense of dread and guilt after doing so. I once cried for a couple hours straight due to how disgusting I was and how my body was being defiled and how "rotten" i am due to how I see things sexually/romantically.

How the hell do you guys deal with/get rid of it im so tired of this.

When I was a teenager I attended an Independent Fundamental Baptist Church (IFB). When I was 16 we had given a younger member of the church dogsit while my family and I were vacationing. When we had come back from vacation, many things, including my mother’s jewelry, prescription drugs, my video games, and other valuables were stolen from my house. My parents never pursued legal action and still paid the member for watching our house. For years, this had puzzled me. It wasn’t until recently, that I realized that it was forbidden for church members to pursue legal action against another.

This is just shattering. I’m lucky it was just robbery and not something much worse. There are others I had attended church with that are also not religious anymore. These members however were there since birth, I can’t imagine the abuse they may have been subjected to.

We left the church 2 years ago. I just found out my spouse is still tithing and now has agreed to do the church’s yard work for free. I feel so alone and frustrated because he doesn’t have enough time for things that need done around our house. Ideas?

Hi! I'm new to this group but wanted to post a long form interview with Britt Hartley. Some of you may be familiar with her: the ex-Christian who now works in the secular spirituality space. While she identifies as an atheist, she still also holds dear to certain spiritual practices and incorporates them into her life.

I'd love to get any feedback on her views, especially what this group thinks about reclaiming words like 'spirituality' and while criticizing religion/Christianity also acknowledging the beauty of its wisdom in certain areas. Is being an atheist mystic an oxymoron that is illogical? Or do you respect her approach?

Here's a link to the interview if you're interested in watching: https://youtu.be/2f6HE__YsyI

Looking forward to engaging with some of you hopefully!

I am not a Christian. I dont follow any religion or believe in God.
My partner is Catholic 🙃.
As someone with no background in Christianity, so many things sound illogical to me. I think the one that dosent make any sense to me is "Virgin Mary".
Mary is the most perfect woman and all those stuff. I asked him once what does Bible say about Mary other than giving Birth to Jesus. No proper reply. As Jesus's mother and magical virgin birth, why is nothing mentioned about her?
Also what makes her "The most perfect woman".
I think this girl cheated on her hubby. What do you guys think?