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If You Were Taught a Religion, Which of its Dogmas or Policy Positions Did You Drop First and Which Did You Drop Last?

If you like, rephrase that question as "Which dogma or policy position did you find easiest to drop and which did you find hardest to drop?"

I ask because my parents made dropping the "God is love" idea easiest. I dropped the xian god idea next. I needed the xian golden rule more and held onto it until, while reading of world religions, I saw that most of them had a form of the rule.

Additionally, when a non-religious friend told me he didn't agree with the "We are descended from monkeys" idea, I quickly told him that we and monkeys have a common ancestor. He right away dropped his objection, which of course pleased me.

We know of militant and non-militant atheists, philosophical atheists, and a few more kinds. The author of the Univ. of Tennessee "Six Kinds of Atheism" study (Google it) named that many kinds. Will it be useful to know which parts of religion are most easily dropped, and which parts are harder to drop?

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Permalink Reply by Patricia on September 17, 2017 at 3:15pm

Not difficult to drop any of it.

I never felt I really adopted any of it in the first place, although I tried as a kid.

It just didn't stick.

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Permalink Reply by kathy: ky on September 17, 2017 at 4:05pm

Like Patricia I never adopted any aspects of religion. I didn't even like the community of religion. That's likely because of the hard core crap they believed in. I like the idea of community but there's nothing around here. It's almost two hours round-trip to get to a UU so I've not went.

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Permalink Reply by James Kerr on September 17, 2017 at 5:07pm

There is no evidence of any creative intelligence only laws of physics and earth constants and the physical world we have. I learned that these religions all share the same false belief that their is a god. But when I learned about evolution to me god went out the window. I dropped Judaism as a belief but genetically I'm jewish

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Permalink Reply by Michael Penn on September 17, 2017 at 5:14pm

I'm not sure which ideas of religion I dropped first, but over time it was easy to drop it all until I could finally say I was atheist. My remembrance of it was that I once believed and wanted to be a minister, but once I discovered there is nothing to it, I felt betrayed. I still do. I feel betrayed by the adults that brought religion to me and they are believers because their parents did the same with them. I feel those who are the most upset on ideas of atheism are that way because they don't want to admit they were fooled.

Some want to tell me that I am wrong and they start making up more crap to prove it. All I know for sure is that our world of religious writing in no way reflects feelings or words of any creator being. People that think otherwise wanted to believe in the first place and they just keep on making more stuff up.

I have no more proof one way or the other on these matters but I do not have doubt revolving around some ancient writing. There is no proof that gods are trying to contact you.

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Permalink Reply by tom sarbeck on September 19, 2017 at 8:30pm

Did no one else question one religious dogma or policy and drop it first, before they questioned another and dropped it?

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Permalink Reply by kathy: ky on September 20, 2017 at 12:13am

I don't think I would say I questioned things. I just could not make myself believe them to begin with. The virgin birth? Bullshit. Original sin? Bullshit. The holy trinity? You guessed it, bullshit. Since I didn't believe it there was nothing to question.

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Permalink Reply by Bruce Carroll on September 20, 2017 at 6:35am

What a great question! I grew up in a reformed tradition (PCUSA) and was always encouraged to question things. I understood some things for the same reason I embraced Christianity -- almost everyone around me did as well. So evolution and a 14 billion year old universe were never at odds with my faith. Hell was also at least called into question as many family friends and fellow church members claimed no loving God would send anyone to such a place.

One of the first things I remember questioning was the idea of eternal life. If life was a gift from God, wasn't one, temporary, earthly life gift enough? Why did life have to go on forever?

As I grew older (some still question whether I have ever grown up) I began to question cherry-picking. Why was a loving god embraced and a wrathful, vengeful god rejected? Was it because one "felt right" and one didn't?

The last idea for me to drop was the idea of a deity. Once I had dropped everything else (The universe didn't require Him. The origins of life and consciousness didn't require Him.) "God" was just this extra, poorly-defined thing.