Most people on planet Earth are religious, and you could argue that spirituality is an intrinsic part of the human experience. For many folks around the world, religion is their way to connect to community, tradition, morality, and meaning.
However, like all things in life, even organized religion has its dark side. So much so that instead of attracting followers, some pastors push their most loyal believers away. Inspired by internet user u/PizzaBliAnanas, some formerly devout people took to r/AskReddit to share the reasons why they lost their faith and left their religions. From greed to corruption, scroll down for a peek into how bad things can get in some communities.
#1
A lady explaining to me that my dog that just died wouldn't be in heaven waiting for me, since a dog can't accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior.
I'd rather be in hell and have my dog, lady.
Image credits: BoredBSEE
#2
When stillborn babies, who were not baptized, were buried under the hedge near the cemetery, because they could not be buried in the cemetery itself. F**k such a heartless religion.
Image credits: BenPanthera12
#3
When I was 14 my brother got AIDS. He hid his diagnosis from everyone, he didn't want people to know he was gay. All the while I was forced to go to a church that ranted against gay people. When he died because he'd hid his diagnosis so long from everyone, and would rather die than put that on his name or our family name in our very redneck town, I had to listen to them tell us that gay people go to hell, while also hosting my brother's funeral.
I still have nights just thinking about my brother dying.. knowing he was dying, dying alone because he was scared of the judgment. Knowing he could never tell us how he really felt, admit if he was scared, tell us what he really wanted us to know before he went. He never got to be himself. We never got to really know him.
First they told us it was hepatitis, then they told us it was cancer. Then he had kaposi's sarcoma, I think my mom knew by then but my dad and the rest of our community, and our extended families just wouldn't have accepted it. I still to this day have family members who just say he died of cancer.
My brother was a good guy. He didn't deserve that. When I saw how they treated a normal innocent person who I cared about who was really no different than me, I knew it was all b******t. All just made up stories to control people.
My other brother was gay as well and the minute he turned 17, he ran away from home. That's just how bad it was around us.
After the torment both my brothers went through, my mom became a home hospice nurse for AIDS patients and she's been a staunch advocate for LGBT+ and pretty much my entire family as well.
The messages churches are sending out about trans people is the same exact rulebook, the same b******t bullet points they usedd in the Bush era when gay marriage was being proposed, when gay men were getting hate crimed.
Image credits: Protect_Wild_Bees
Statista reports that 31.6% of the global population identified as Christian in 2022, followed by 25.8% as Muslims, and 15.1% as Hindu. Buddhism and Judaism (6.6% and 0.2% of the global population) also rank among the top five major religions of the world. Meanwhile, 14.4% of all people on Earth weren’t affiliated with any religion.
Though it’s impossible to predict the future with a high degree of certainty, we can look at certain trends to more or less gauge in what direction things are moving. By the year 2050, the landscape of world religions is likely to undergo some noticeable changes. For one, the number of Muslims in the world will almost catch up to the number of Christians due to demographic developments.
#4
No going outside without a man, no wearing what I want, no makeup, no music, no life, I'm cursed day and night by everyone, when I open a book, podcasts, or TV channels all they do is telling me how I'm the reason of all evil because I'm female, how I'm nothing, inferior, dumb..etc
Oh news flash, 100% of Islamic countries are ruled by Muslim men and they are corrupted, no one helped Palestine, they're the most misogynistic countries BUT hey let us just ignore these and focus on your tantalising lipgloss b***h!
It's completely weird how religion honoured women but all I see are privileges for men, it seems like religion is a bunch of rules women must adhere to, while men must just make sure women follow those rules
Polygamy for men
Inheritance for men
Control for men
I can't go to heaven unless I obey my husband, not the other way
If I don't fulfil his desire I'm going straight to hell
He can beat me
Lock me in the house
I must obey my husband more than my father
.
.
.
.
Long list
Anyway just be a girl and live in an islamic society, you will be their source of all evil, if the economy goes down It's my fault, if I got SA it's my fault, if Omar got sick it's my fault...etc.
Image credits: MauritanianGirl
#5
Asking me for a paystub to verify I was actually tithing 10%. Pastor was driving a new Cadillac. Gtfo.
Image credits: anon
#6
I was in the church youth group. A boy I had a big crush on bragged about his summer vacation activities. He and his brother visited their cousins in Texas. They liked to go out and find homosexuals to beat up as a fun family activity, like visiting an amusement park.
We went to different schools. I had gay friends at my school. He and his brother were huge. Everyone else was very impressed and congratulated him for being such a good christian. I was horrified and stopped going to church not long afterwards.
Image credits: MariaLynd
“The changes in population sizes of each religious group is largely dependent on demographic development, for example, the rise in the world's Christian population will largely be driven by population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, while Muslim populations will rise across various regions of Africa and South Asia,” Statista states.
“As India’s population is set to grow while China’s goes into decline, this will be reflected in the fact that Hindus will outnumber the unaffiliated by 2050. In fact, India may be home to both the largest Hindu and Muslim populations in the world by the middle of this century.”
#7
I'm a young woman in her twenties and I just happen to have a close friend who is a young man, he isn't my husband he is just my friend. Sometimes I do spend time alone with him, just talking.
I got judged for that. I got called a wh*re for having a male friend. I no longer hang out with the mormons.
Image credits: holy_guacamole_why_
#8
I left when I was 15. It had been a long time coming but I did have a final catalyst.
Backstory: my sister is 9 years younger than me, and she is my 'half sister.' Our mom and her dad were not married when she was born.
She came home from Vacation Bible Scool in tears because they told her than since she was born out of wedlock she was going to automatically go to hell. She was six f-ing years old!!! Who the hell tells a first grader they're going to burn for all eternity because their parents weren't married when they boned?!?!
I marched down there and gave them a piece of my mind, told them what I really thought of them and their church, and told my mom we were never going back there.
My mom still went, my siblings and I did not.
Image credits: ShinyUnicornP**
#9
Weirdo youth pastor went on a tirade about how your life is worthless if you're not converting people regularly (to a bunch of 13 year olds). My parents finally agreed that I didn't have to go to church anymore.
Image credits: False_Pace286
Do you see yourselves as religious, dear readers? Have you ever lost your faith? What do you think could be done to push back against some of the greed and corruption that’s seen in parts of organized religion?
Feel free to share your thoughts and ideas in the comments. Just remember to keep the discussion civil.
#10
Not to sound like an elitist snob but literally just becoming more educated. Learning the history and evolution of various religions, the history of mankind as a whole, seeing patterns of how religions are used and contorted to control groups of people or to allow great atrocities to occur, seeing the embedded misogyny and racism within various religions etc. and most of all, the hypocrisy of the religious.
Image credits: Chunky_Potato802
#11
The first big thing was when I asked why girls couldn’t hold the priesthood. I was told by my Sunday school teacher that women aren’t worthy of power because of Eve’s “transgression”.
Learning that women had to wait in a sort of purgatory until a worthy man called them into Heaven. Then if you were married you would have to deal with afterlife polygamy.
Watching in disgust as the Bishop and congregation welcomed a pedophile back into the fold….
No regrets with leaving.
#12
At my dad's funeral, the pastor told us that we'll never see our dad again if we don't get right with God & start going to church. That was the final straw.
Image credits: amyjrockstar
#13
Getting out in the community, really. The church I was raised in was one of those super strict ones that think women wearing pants was a huge issue. They would always preach about how gay people were sent here by satan. I started working with a company that had offices worldwide. The people came from a very diverse background that was somewhat bewildering to my sheltered, redneck self. I got to know and become friends with not just one, but tons of gay people. I just couldn't go to that church anymore. These nice gay folks were spending their days off volunteering at the local foodbanks, helping the homeless and this church thinks they are bad people. "demons"
I never saw a single person in that church do anything for the community.
Image credits: TheSpiralTap
#14
The priest asked us to pray for “Christian prisoners of war” and my 13 y/o brain was like hold up why only the Christian ones?? It was like in that moment I realized that everything in the Church had this explicit or implicit coating of “our way is the only way and everyone who isn’t us is wrong/bad/a sinner/undeserving” and I didn’t like that at all.
Image credits: DeathCabforJuicy
#15
I left my church at 16. I’m now 37. It was a Southern Baptist church and the hypocrisy is what drove me away. The judging woman for not being a virgin. Referring to them as a used up piece of chewing gum if they have sex before marriage. The drinking is as bad as murder thing. I worked at a bar in college and some of these good god fearing people were regulars. Also, guess who has sex before marriage? They did. I’ve also been interested in science and was told that wasn’t lady like. My parents still attend that church and the new pastor is my age. They no longer preach the old timer ways but I won’t go back.
Image credits: klsprinkle
#16
There wasn't one. I asked questions that no religion has a good answer for. At first I was afraid of that. Then I decided that if there was a god and he was good, my faith shouldn't matter. Any god that would punish a person that is trying to be good with eternal torture just for disbelief is a monster and not good. That let me start exploring further and the questions began piling up. The first question I asked before that was "Why is my religion more correct than others'?".
Image credits: leonprimrose
#17
My friend David grew up deeply religious, but doubts crept in over time. The turning point came when his close friend was ostracized by their church for being gay. David questioned how a faith that preached love could be so harsh. After trying and failing to find compassionate answers from church leaders, the final straw was a sermon on sin and punishment that conflicted with his beliefs about kindness. He walked out that day, knowing it was the end of his faith .. i supported him that day and still do.
Image credits: betty9fb04
#18
When the new pastor decided that we needed to move away from "Serving the local community" (inner city church) and move to "Knowing God."
The God I want to believe in is pretty straightforward that the main thing is to look after those in the community who are most disadvantaged. Screw theology, stick with service.
#19
The pastor’s son groped me on the school bus. Next sermon was about forgiveness and the one after was about women staying chaste and not “tempting men to the devil”. A few months later, i was baptized there. The pastor grabbed my a*s. I was 12.
#20
My desire for truth outweighed my fear of leaving the faith.
Image credits: Funny_Blueberry4873
#21
I just didn't believe that Satan could give God so much trouble if God was truly omnipotent and omniscient. So I started questioning why God let's Satan exist, if Satan is the antithesis of God. Like, why tolerate an upstart usurper of significantly lower power than you.
Ultimately I told my youth leader that either god wasn't as all knowing and powerful as I was being led to believe or God and the bible was lying about the threat satan posed. This led me to stop believing satan/hell existed at all. I told my pastor at the time that I straight up felt like he was lying about hell and the devil, because otherwise he worships and promotes an all powerful god who can't even keep his own soldiers in line.
I was sent home with a note to my parents about how I'd fully fallen to Satan and needed to be sent to a Christian boarding school to get me back on track. My parent's didn't send me, because neither of them were particularly religious, and I ultimately decided that the whole thing was either made up entirely or a faith based on a god not worth worshiping.
People really handwave a lot of evidence that there is no god with "He works in mysterious ways".
#22
When my parents were still alive, my dad had some early stage dementia to where several memories would become a single memory. He was convinced that my mom (both of my parents in their 70’s) was cheating on him. She couldn’t do anything without him believing she was going to see someone else even with someone else with her. It became worse and worse.
My oldest sister and I decided to take my parents to see the priest of their church. In their religion (Orthodox) for some reason the priests wife is considered holy as well. As we are there, my dad is talking to the priest on one side, my mom and sister are talking to the priests wife. I’m just standing nearby listening when the priests wife says “Sisters name! Your dad is possessed by a demon! What you need to do is SPIT ON HIM AND SAY “DEMON I REJECT YOU! Three times!”
I f*****g SNAPPED! I shouted that the first one to spit on my dad was getting knocked the f**k out. Stood right up to the priests face and said she’d be the first. I went on a tirade that the doctors had already said it was early stage dementia and this whole demon stuff was b******t.
My mom and sister pulled me away from her. I never went back to a service other than funerals, memorials or weddings. S**t still makes my blood boil and it’s been 17 years.
#23
For me, the big sticking point was the problem of suffering. Why would an all-powerful, benevolent god allow suffering.
The worst part was, although very few people would say it out loud, the answer was: suffering is good.
Image credits: kitskill
#24
When I was a young teenager, I considered myself a Christian who believed in God and in Jesus. It was comforting to believe that heaven and hell existed, that our souls were eternal, and that if there is no justice in this life, that it will be served in the next. "Good people" will go to heaven and "bad people" will go to hell. Then sometime when I was 16-18, I started disagreeing with Christianity's definition of justice.
I eventually came to the conclusion that there was no real evidence that God existed, and that even if he does exist and he is exactly as the Bible describes him, then he doesn't deserve anyone's worship. Some of my issues with Christianity:
- If one follows the Bible to the letter of its word, then one has to accept that it's somehow a moral failure to lack faith in the Christian God. What about all those people who were raised in non-Christian cultures? What about all those people who died before ever meeting any missionaries or before they ever heard the "good news" about Jesus the savior? People are just supposed to take it on faith that some guy in Judea two thousand years ago died to save us from the corruption of Adam and Eve's original sin, and it's somehow a moral failing to have doubts about this story?
- The Bible has passages implying that homosexuality is "unnatural," in part because that is a union that will never lead to having biological children. But what about all the heterosexual couples out there who are unable to have biological children for medical reasons? Why is God supposedly okay with a man and a woman together who will never have children, but not two men or two women? It feels completely arbitrary, and the only logical explanation to me is that the guys who wrote the Bible were men from thousands of years ago who had what modern society would (rightfully) consider to be regressive social views.
- This is a slightly more philosophical question, but the existence of God and of afterlife in heaven and hell based on how "good" or "bad" you were in life implies that there is a built-in black-and-white morality to the universe, and that just doesn't make sense to me. There are many people who ended up "bad" because the conditions in which they were raised never gave them the opportunity to be "good," and I don't think they deserve eternal hellfire for that. Even the concept of an eternity of being shut out of heaven makes no sense to me. If our souls are eternal and we live forever, then believe it or not, I probably would eventually find it within me to forgive the guy in hell who murdered me back when we were mortals several millennia ago.
I know there are several denominations of Christianity, some of which are accepting of gay people and who reject the idea of all atheists going to hell. But to me, that honestly just feels like arbitrary picking-and-choosing of what to believe in the Bible, and I cannot personally see myself doing that. When I became an atheist, it did force me to accept the idea that there is no one looking out for me, that many bad people will live comfortable lives and that many good people will die horrific deaths after miserable lives, that there is no justice in this world or any order to the universe. But no longer believing in God was also freeing, because our lives are our own. We can choose to be good to the world and to the people around us without some esoteric supernatural force influencing our decisions.
#25
Youth group leader asked my mom if my sister had started her period yet.
Image credits: Bibblegead1412
#26
Pastoral greed for overserving a congregation. The husband and wife pastoral team carry on as if nothing is happening when clearly, only one of them is needed. The enabling committee/council help them to bilk the congregation of precious $
Make no mistake, in my experience, very few pastors practice what they preach.
Hypocrites.
Image credits: Late_Fact_1689
#27
I left when I realized the church potluck was the only thing keeping me going!
Image credits: IndependenceOwn7865
#28
I wanted to be part of a community that accepted everyone, not just a select few.
#29
I had a profound realization that I could find purpose outside religion.
#30
Seeing everyone go nuts over "miracles" like people's headaches and depression being cured. The Bible said that Jesus raised a man from the dead and Paul cured a paralytic man. What happened to real miracles? It all felt suddenly so absurd. If we're supposed to believe in the power of God, then why can't something that is actually, objectively impossible happen before my eyes? Why is it always something subjective and self-reporting?
Image credits: I_SuplexTrains
#31
As an Ex-catholic, when i started reading Foucault and some history started to realize how religions are used to control populations and to fix the agenda for the richest people.
#32
I came to realize that most "religious" people I met were that way for selfish reasons. Rather than being and doing "good" for the right reasons, most I know are only there to try and guarantee their ticket to heaven gets punched.
They don't really care about others they just want to make sure they get their afterlife.
Image credits: jjmart013
#33
One of my first jobs was working for a Christian call center that took calls for the Jim Bakker show. Seeing how that man manipulated people for money under the name of God pretty much did it for me. But he wasn’t the only one. I took calls for other ministries and they were pretty much the same.
Image credits: Eat-**t-reddit-
#34
When my new work colleague who happened to be gay was terrified of me because he knew I went to church.
#35
"god made you a boy and that cant be changed" yeah f**k that. I was like 10 when I decided thats not for me,after someone said this to me , because why would a good god do such a cruel thing to me?
#36
Conversations with atheists opened my eyes to a more rational perspective.
#37
Young pastor continually transferred to small, struggling churches. Living off donations and food stamps and our own paychecks. State church leader came to visit one Sunday and gave us a plaque praising our efforts but no practical help for us. He was driving a Mercedes. We're not churchy anymore and our faith is our own.
Image credits: theoriginalalexa
#38
The excuse for being treated like s**t is always "this is god's will" & "he has better plans" bad people hide behind god so they excuses for being s****y people.
#39
I became frustrated with the lack of open-mindedness in my church.
Image credits: ohlisacarterdrd
#40
I was encouraged by friends who embraced their authentic selves without religion.
#41
The man that got me involved in the church was sleeping with my mom and he was married.
#42
Ehh, just the b******t was enough. I won't mention exactly which one it was, but it's a problem in almost all of them.
Several years ago, I dared challenge the beliefs of community with some Darwinian knowledge and facts like the Earth being round...
Needless to say, I was asked to leave just so they don't have to kick me out.
#43
I was a small child who accidentally said s**t in Bible school. One of the much older boys almost dislocated my shoulder because, this is the house of the Lord. Blah blah blah. If that's God's love...I don't want it. If I could remember his name, I would looked him up decades ago.
#44
For me, it was like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole for way too long. I kept thinking, “Maybe this time it’ll work!” But then, I found myself in a situation where I was told that love and acceptance only applied to certain people. That was the moment I realized I’d rather find my own path than follow rules that didn’t make sense to me. Plus, when your coffee tastes better than the sermons, it’s definitely time to reconsider your options!
#45
The pressure to fit in became overwhelming and stifling.
Image credits: hgsharonhillag
