Quote Originally Posted by Rowan View Post
What I'm saying Alpha, is that most people that cant imagine a life without religion or god, have never tried to. I imagine that its painfully hard to reject a belief thats held by not only your immediate family, but relatives as well. Its hard to admit to yourself after being forced to church every sunday as a child, that you dont believe what you've been told for the past 15 years of your life. Imagine the amount of courage you would need to admit that you are the only one who doesnt share those beliefs held by your family and loved ones. Why should anyone have to feel that kind of pressure thats put upon them by a religious environment?
I have experienced all of that, in a sense. When I was a teenager, I found a Church that was a safe place for me to not feel on edge all the time. My home life was a piece of shit, and my parents made it very clear that I was the reason for everyone's unhappiness. Call it God, call it a psychological stimulator, call it whatever you want. I was specifically told not to go back to that Church on the basis that my parents thought it was making me rebellious and unsociable with them. Their idea of my sociability was that I should watch craptastic sitcoms with them, even though, as I said before, they made it abundantly clear that I was not wanted.

Funny things happen as time passes. No one from that congregation talks to me any more. Why? Maybe because I was never really wanted there in the first place. Or maybe it has to do with the fact that they all have families now, and they don't want some icky tr*nny corrupting their precious children (which is funny, considering that I was told that I "exude a motherly presence" yesterday, which I was told is why my friends' children wanted me to carry them while we were at the zoo). I'll probably never know.

I spent a few months trying out atheism. It made sense. I made my own rules for living my own life, and damn what some religious nutjobs may or may not think of me. It was really fantastic. And really scary. Like I said in my initial post, "I had to learn how to operate in a world with no arbitrary rules about what it meant to dress and act like a Christian rather than just being human." Except, it was different from when I transitioned. It was more... chaotic. I was in an ethics class at the time, and my professor had a "Flying Spaghetti Monster" pin on his lanyard. I scared Christians in that class. "This table is real," I would say. "I can see it, I can feel it, it is holding my books and papers, which I can also experience in real time." I would then go on to explain that we shouldn't be basing our moral ideas on what an entity who may or may not exist might think of us. There was a pothead in that class who got so angry with me when I kept shooting down his arguments against the moral permissibility of homosexuality that he left and didn't come back for three class sessions.

In time, I realized that I really liked the Church environment. I just didn't like the hate, though, and I didn't like they way they tended to sweep issues under the rug that really needed to be talked about. So, I ended up becoming a member of the United Church of Christ. Christian theology and theory is wonderful. However, the way it is usually practiced is deplorable. That's what I think I like about the UCC, they put into practice the actual theory of what it means to be a Christian by giving to those in need and reaching out to people on the margin. I guess what I'm trying to say is that sometimes, people are shunned by their families for having any faith at all. Other times, people who were formerly had a faith find themselves at a spot in their lives where it is a burden rather than a blessing. Sometimes, this even happens with religious leaders (a la The Clergy Project). There's a whole world of diversity out there, and sometimes, things are stranger than they seem. I get along with pagans and atheists better than I do with Christians most of the time (most Christians are shocked to hear that there is a difference between the two).