Women who have left a religion, why

[IrishCawfee]

And how has it changed your life?

Thank you.

I can understand people's need for religious beliefs when their lives are very hard and their circumstances particularly cruel and difficult. I can see how powerless so many women are in their societies and so I understand that they hold onto religion to help them get through such unfairness.

This is very true, but it is is not an argument against religion per se. I think we are all much more complacent about our lives, and less dependent on faith, when all is well, we are secure, we have no difficulties to face. My own "Road to Damascus" moment came on Saptember 1st 1972; I was in an absolutely terrible fix, with no way out, no-one to help me, and faced an awful, awful life ahead. I had nowhere to turn, and that's when I started to pray again. The comfort and relief I felt, the sense that all will be taken care of I can't describe it. It still gives me goosebumps. I simply relaxed and let go. And hey presto that very evening a miracle occurred. I can't go into details here but the whole problem was miraculously resolved in a way I had not dreamed.

I'm not saying that prayer solves external problems -- it doesn't. Sometimes it only gives us the strength and fortitude to carry on.
This is what I've observed in many Indian women (I've lived quite some time in India). But it's true that the most religions communities are often the ones with the worst problems, particularly by women.
The person I most admire in the world, the strongest, most loving and caring and at the same time most resolute and -- well simply incredible, is an Indian woman of faith.

When all is well in our lives what need is there of prayer, or faith? That's why atheism thrives most in the richest countries.

Overall though, I am so much happier as an atheist. It's like a huge weight has been lifted off me. I have been very fortunate to have a good life and live in a good country that protects my right to live free from religion. There is so much beauty and wonder in the natural world. I've never felt the need for a "higher power" to experience admiration and humility at our brief time in this world. I know that humans, as amazing as we are, do not sit outside of the animal world.

This is exactly how I've felt since turning away from atheism! Except I do believe that that "higher power" is not separate from nature, external to us as humans. It IS nature, it IS who we are. It is the wonder and beauty and splendor of nature, in every living creature, in the miraculous synergy between everything in nature, an intelligence and consciousness alive in every living cell and every stone. And we can feel it if we listen.

That sodding skyfairy is nothing but a strawman built out of a book character.

I get quite angry that I was raised to believe that strawman, because it left me closed off, psychologically-speaking, from a lot of very decent human beings.

I believe the human mind's capacity for belief is a phenomenon that evolved (alongside everything else), which means it must provide some benefit to the overall function of the human organism. Under the atheist no-creator-deity model of reality, if that brain-function gets programmed right, people can clearly use it to great effect - examples upthread.

It's not an inherently evil function, it's just part of how humans do being human; and it's vulnerable to being warped round the local power structures - ie, male-dominance.

Works for me. I don't need to know if this god or that god is real; it's quite literally immaterial. All I need to know is that everything is real to those who believe it, and everybody is real.

And I'm with Mala on what the higher power is. Unfortunately there's a bit of a Tower of Babel effect going on, so it seems bonkers to people who believe exactly the same thing but express it differently.

Tyro yes, I think you and I sound very similar in our approach and beliefs.

Cheers my heart to hear it, Floral.

Why do you want to know?

I left Catholicism for Liberal Judaism. Liberal Judaism is very egalitarian, my rabbi is a woman and female rabbis play a very important role in the movement. Liberal Judaism emphasizes the evolving nature of the faith and therefore men and women have equal status in line with 21st century norms.

I left b/c I lost faith in God. Not due to church related reasons. My Catholicism was a positive experience before this. Lots of strong female role models, strangely enough, including nuns.

Effect on my life? About a decade of feeling pretty wretched about the problem of evil, and my self-exile, another decade of spiritual exploration in other traditions, eventual acceptance of my atheism, which has now morphed into comfortable agnosticism.

When all is well in our lives what need is there of prayer, or faith? That's why atheism thrives most in the richest countries.

Yes, very true.

I've always found praying utterly useless. More anxiety provoking than anything. Back when I "believed" I did resort to it out of habit when times were tough or I felt really low. I would envy people who felt praying helped to calm them and they could "hear" god. I always felt empty and hollow after it. Maybe I never truly believed.

I mean for every time I prayed and something "good" happened, there were lots of other times I prayed and it made no difference. What about the mum praying in anguish watching her child die of leukemia or some horribly slow and painful disease? What kind of god or higher being / power listens to my prayers and not hers? I just can't think of myself as someone the universe listens to when there is so much unrelenting suffering in the world.

I don't think I have the imagination or whatever it is that makes people feel they "hear" things. I feel like that one person attending a séance. Everyone has their eyes closed and feels they can hear the dead or hear some rustling or feels the chill of the deceased in the room. And I'm the person who can't get into it all because I genuinely don't hear anything and I've noticed there's a window open which would explain the chilly sensation. 🙁

I don't think I'm cut out for this faith malarky lol.

Many if not Most Christians in England now celebrate Christmas and Easter etc but aren't real Christians.
I'm intrigued by what 'real Christians' means as I've never met two Christians who have the same faith. It's a very flexible and diverse religion morally. Really you just need to believe in Jesus, that he died for our sins, and in the central tenet of forgiveness. The rest is pick and mix.

I left our trendy, happy clappy church (only church in the area) because they were aggressively anti gay. Glad I did as DS came out a few years later. But I still like a good High Anglican service.

So I'm quite ho-hum about people these days declaring their atheism as if it is some kind of rebellion against the establishment.

Do people really do that? It's surely not very 'establishment' (in England at least) to be religious. Atheism is just the norm for most people as far as I'm aware. I don't know anyone openly Christian except the layperson from my village church who helps out at school. I was brought up by atheist parents, but atheist in its proper sense of simply being without a god. It wasn't a 'cause' or a rebellion against anything.

• When all is well in our lives what need is there of prayer, or faith? That's why atheism thrives most in the richest countries.

One of the main correlates for a reduction in religiosity of a society is the extent to which it has a good, fair modern justice and policing system, from what I've read. If one of the reasons for religions existing (taking them as man made systems) is for social control, this makes sense. Some functions of gods can be displaced by good detectives, forensic science and the law. (I may have my tongue slightly in cheek but I'm not sure I'm entirely wide of the mark)

When all is well in our lives what need is there of prayer, or faith? That's why atheism thrives most in the richest countries.

That's not an argument against atheism though. Being in a position to make rational and clear-headed decisions about what is real, uninfluenced by the desperation caused by terrible poverty, hardship and oppression is certainly a privilege, but it can hardly be regarded as a bad thing!

Makes sense, Errol - psychologically speaking, a god-story that works for you will make you feel you're being looked after; you've less need of that if you've sense that you're living in a civilised society that will look after you when things are bad.

It's a reasonably effective replacement in terms of psychological security, until something happens to shake your faith in society.

@lazylinguist

When all is well in our lives what need is there of prayer, or faith? That's why atheism thrives most in the richest countries.

That's not an argument against atheism though. Being in a position to make rational and clear-headed decisions about what is real, uninfluenced by the desperation caused by terrible poverty, hardship and oppression is certainly a privilege, but it can hardly be regarded as a bad thing!

I didn't say it is. I said that is what happens.

But what I said earlier still stands: we may think we are rational and clear-headed and highly intelligent; yet if there IS a (so-called) "higher power" we are still ignorant. Because for all our intelligence and rationality we still could never grasp a power and intelligence behind this universe. Our intelligence would be as that of an amoeba compared to that. It very obviously could not be understood by mere human reasoning. That's where humility comes into play.

'Yes, I've figured it all out' is also not an argument.

@NonnyMouse1337

When all is well in our lives what need is there of prayer, or faith? That's why atheism thrives most in the richest countries.

Yes, very true.

I've always found praying utterly useless. More anxiety provoking than anything. Back when I "believed" I did resort to it out of habit when times were tough or I felt really low. I would envy people who felt praying helped to calm them and they could "hear" god. I always felt empty and hollow after it. Maybe I never truly believed.

I mean for every time I prayed and something "good" happened, there were lots of other times I prayed and it made no difference. What about the mum praying in anguish watching her child die of leukemia or some horribly slow and painful disease? What kind of god or higher being / power listens to my prayers and not hers? I just can't think of myself as someone the universe listens to when there is so much unrelenting suffering in the world.

I don't think I have the imagination or whatever it is that makes people feel they "hear" things. I feel like that one person attending a séance. Everyone has their eyes closed and feels they can hear the dead or hear some rustling or feels the chill of the deceased in the room. And I'm the person who can't get into it all because I genuinely don't hear anything and I've noticed there's a window open which would explain the chilly sensation. 🙁

I don't think I'm cut out for this faith malarky lol.

Yes, of course prayer is useless if you pray for things to happen the way you want. Prayer helps the person praying, not the outcome. It helps the grieving mother cope with her grief. It might not stop a child dying. It brings strength and fortitude -- ask anyone who has gone through a catastrophe and had the anchor or prayer to hold on to throughout. I said earlier that we create God in our own image; this is an example of just that. "If God is loving, He won't let anything bad happen to me". It's nonsense. Bad things happen. There isn't a "man in the sky" to stop them happening. But: how do we deal with them? The ability to find a source of strength within is a valuable skill.

I don't think I have the imagination or whatever it is that makes people feel they "hear" things.

I for one never spoke of "hearing" things. It's another straw-man argument: "ah, so hear made-up things!"

Why bother with something that we would never hope to understand? If there is a higher power, it clearly has no interest in our plight judging by the fact that 'evil' and misfortune are indiscriminate.
Our efforts are best directed in the here and now in making the world we have a better place for as many as possible. It would appear no one is going to save us.

'Yes, I've figured it all out' is also not an argument.

Correction: "'Yes, I've science has it all out' is also not an argument."
Who or what "invented" the rules of science? Did they just randomly come into play? A big bang, and then everything just miraculously fell into perfect order?
("invented", for want or a better word!)

Bad things happen. There isn't a "man in the sky" to stop them happening.
But: how do we deal with them?
The ability to find a source of strength within is a valuable skill.

Ah ... You speak of resilience. That I agree with. Resilience and fortitude are skills we all should be encouraged to develop.
And there can be various ways to do this - whether it is praying, chanting alone or in a group, meditating, having a close circle of people you feel you can absolutely rely on (partner, parents, other family members or friends), or even going for a long run / hike to 'clear the mind'.

I think everyone has different coping mechanisms, and as a society we should encourage healthy ones vs unhealthy ones (like drinking to get through the day).

I'm not seeing the connection of what any higher power has to do with the myriad ways human beings cope with the harsh realities of life?

Yes, I've figured it all out' is also not an argument

I would never claim to have remotely figured it all out. (Presumably most religious people wouldn't either). My atheism isn't a result of feeling that I've 'figured anything out'. It's a result of never having had any reason to believe there's a god, and of finding the teachings of the religions with which I'm familiar highly unconvincing at best, actively harmful at worst. I do not need to be scientifically knowledgeable or have a feeling of arrogance or superior knowledge to be unconvinced by the idea of the existence of a deity.

Humans invented the rules of science. It's just a description of what our senses experience that seems accurate so far. A predictive tool. That's all.

Obviously the universe might have its own rules, but we don't know the universe's version, only our own.

As for "I've got it all figured out" - there are people from all religions and none who think this. It's arrogant, to my mind. They've got it figured out to their personal satisfaction, all well and good, but everybody isn't the same as them.

The Abrahamic religions are formed with misogyny at their core.

Pretty much this. My wife is Irish so it was pretty much impossible in rural Ireland to escape the clutches of the Catholic Church. While she has left the church in terms of not attending Mass, generally being thoroughly disgusted by the abuse scandals, the treatment of women in the magdaline laundries and the impact the Church had on women's rights and freedom of choice in her home country she still carries a lot of cultural baggage from her youth, most notably around guilt and feeling crap over minor issues. She is a good person and has a sound moral compass but it does not take much for those early Catholic teachings to undermine her.

I was a staunch C of E Christian, and had a strong image of God the father. I worked for the council, helping families who weren't needy enough for a social worker but did need some help with various areas of raising their children. There were a few families over the space of a year where cases were coming down to us from social care and the physically abusive father had left the family, leaving the mother to pick up the pieces. There was a term bandied about at the time, "failure to protect". As in, this loving mother isn't managing to protect her child from (insert danger here). This was a decade before I'd ever heard the phrase contextual safeguarding. I felt that "we" were judging one mother in particular for not protecting her child from the damage caused by his dad. If God is a loving father, let alone omniscient and omnipotent, then why is he letting this mother fail at what she was trying to achieve? If God is the heavenly father, why wasn't he protecting her child, the rest that I knew about, all the victims of abuse (physical, sexual, emotional, neglect). I lost faith in any God that would let this happen.

The impact on me has been profound. I've had to learn secular meditation. When you've done religious prayer and meditation every day since the age of 7 up to early 30s, your brain misses it. I'm not as sharp as I was in many ways. I'm fatter coz I overeat. I'm undisciplined about meditation now. And I really miss being part of a church family. I've moved house but I still miss it.

I'm not seeing the connection of what any higher power has to do with the myriad ways human beings cope with the harsh realities of life?

That's because you continue to equate "higher power" with a metaphorical man in the sky, distant from us, unrelated to us, something "out there".
When you realise that that so-called "higher power" is not at all distant, but is right here, every moment; and that we have access to it, and it can transform our lives and ourselves from the ground up, that it's a constant source of strength, balance, love, peace, happiness if only we knew how to activate it -- it's a different story.

It becomes more that a "coping mechanism".

The impact on me has been profound. I've had to learn secular meditation. When you've done religious prayer and meditation every day since the age of 7 up to early 30s, your brain misses it. I'm not as sharp as I was in many ways. I'm fatter coz I overeat. I'm undisciplined about meditation now. And I really miss being part of a church family. I've moved house but I still miss it.

Yes, this. Secular meditation is just another word for prayer; prayer is with words, meditation is silent; it takes you beyond words and eventually beyond thought, and your brain does miss it if you grow lax. But sometimes all it takes is a jolt to get yourself back into the habit.

Prayer is easier as it is more relatable. There's something very comforting in think of God as a father taking care of us, and it does work. We're only human, and speaking of it in human terms is a great help. It's a metaphor for the actual process the mind goes through when turning away from the ego and what the ego wants. It's an anchor -- do try again @Love51! We all grow slack now and again, but just a little bit of effort and we're back in the saddle!

^ Sorry, need to amplify a little: "When you realise that that so-called "higher power" is not at all distant, but is right here, within us every moment; and that we have access to it, that it is the very foundation of who we are etc etc

I left the Catholic church because of its knotweed of misogyny, prejudice, abuse of power, abuse of children and adults, and the church's view on same-sex unions. Pope Francis has pushed the boundaries on same-sex unions and this is a great achievement, but the backlash within the Catholic church itself is enormous and will possibly pummel his good and loving intentions.

I left about 5 years ago and it was an enormous bereavement. I felt very much like I was wandering in the wilderness, void of spirituality or guidance of any kind, lost underneath godless skies. I'd truly, truly lost my spirituality in a way I hadn't realised one could. It had been eroded by years of rhetoric and dogma spouted from the pulpit of the church I attended (it is fair to say that not all churches and not all priests are the same! I just happened to cross paths with a priest who would aid in altering my view of my religion- highlight the negatives of Catholicism). That dogma, those rules, and regulations really went against my beliefs, and boy, was I bitter. I felt very sour.

I did a lot of soul searching. It took time. When I realised that changing faiths was not the answer for me personally, I began really digging deeply to find out what faith and spirituality truly meant to me - did faith and spirituality have meaning at all in a life that appeared void of meaning and hope at times? Eventually, I realised, 'there is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in,' and all that kind of stuff that moves you when you're in the midst of an existential AND spiritual crisis. What a Venn Diagram that would make!

For me, there is a singular story in my family history that really defined the difference between religion and faith. My grandfather was an Irish Catholic. He was born in 1902. And back when he was a young man (I'm not sure when exactly because this is a story that's been handed down), his Protestant friend had died. As a Catholic, he was not allowed to enter the church and attend his friend's funeral. As a man with human heart, as a friend, above all, he put his religion aside and walked into that church and took his seat in the front pew. It was a statement. I am sure many an Irishman did the same! But it was straight from the heart and it was him declaring love- and true faith in that very love- over religious dogma. He was being a true Christian, you could argue. And that to me defines what 'it's' all about, really. You just do the right thing, right? Treat others as you yourself would want to be treated. You don't need ANY religion to know this. And yet, EVERY religion does teach this- in between all the bits o' crazy.
Be nice! You don't need a Good Book to tell you.

As for myself, I've explored all faiths, with great respect and integrity in my search. Because of my family history on dad's side, Judaism seemed like a natural 'next step'. But in the end, it was not at all for me. I realise that I am Christian, in my faith, in my thinking, in my philosophical approach to things- with elements of Humanism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam thrown in for good measure. They all bring something to the table. I think we all have different aspects of faith influencing our approach to living life. We're just not always aware of this.

My prayer comes easily to me again (which was something I had lost). And my temple is the outdoors. That sounds corny. But on my daily walks with my dog, I have chosen sanctuaries where I walk and think and pray and cry and submit to what cannot be changed and hope for the world that can be. I feel a spiritual flame within my womb at all times and I really try to tap into that feeling, that reality that we are part of something miraculous, beautiful, sad, and fleeting called life. And its force lives within us. It's glorious when you tap into that. It really is a lifebuoy of sorts. That is, for lack of a better way of putting it, God, imo.

Sorry to ramble on. Thank you for reading, if you did. Coffee time and school runs are next (I've been up since 4am trying to rescue my cat from our neighbour's ridiculously HUGE tree).

I've enjoyed everyone's beautiful interpretations of faith and religion as well as great, personal insight on this thread. It is indeed a very personal journey.