Both of my parents were Christian, as was the entirety of my extended family. I was fortunate enough to be born into an immediate family and a massive extended family full of Christians who follow the religion in a loving way rather than the prideful arrogant judgmental way I so often hear Atheists complaining coming across in their lives. I was raised Catholic by my mom (though my dad was a Methodist), and though my beliefs were important to me and my parents, my parents didn't raise me with a fundamentalist dogmatic authoritarian practice of Christianity as much as instilling the core values of Christianity within me.
Within the past couple of years, I since had psychedelic experiences that shifted my religious beliefs, allowed me to truly understand my beliefs, and helped me logically justify why I believe what I believe, and I am now a non-denominational Trinitarian Universalist who doesn't believe in biblical inerrancy or reject science.
(Side note: Even though I believe the Bible to contain divine Truth, it is truth passed through the imperfect medium of the humans who wrote it, and thus it is a flawed work. Scientific concepts however are in a sense God’s direct word that is a part of his act of creation. Thus I find the notion of rejecting science from a Biblical basis to ironically enough be sacrilegious and blasphemous against the direct word of God.)
I'm in a good philosophical place right now where I believe something that makes sense to me and has made me a better person, and I stand nonjudgemental towards the religious/philosophical beliefs of others so long as they are good human beings, and though I believe in Christianity I admit that I could be wrong. If I turn atheist sometime later in my life, I wouldn't resent Christianity or deny that my experiences with Christianity at this point in my life have helped make me a better person than I would've been otherwise, and if I die a Christian and it turns out I was wrong about the existence of God or Heaven I wouldn't regret the way I've lived my life.
I'll be the first to admit that religion can be detrimental. I've heard stories from others and seen a few Christians who are self-righteous judgmental pricks, and I understand the dangers of Sharia Law and Islamic Terrorism. Yet at the same time I've also seen religion transform people's lives for the better. My life has been transformed for the better by my religious beliefs, many of the kindest, most loving, and most humble people I have met in my life are Christians whose Christianity has notably impacted who they are as people, and Ben Shapiro is a man who sticks steadfast to certain ethical principles in a way that I believe is influenced by his Jewish belief in an objective morality over moral relativism. In a similar manner, I've met atheists who are a bunch of elitist pricks that spend their time justifying a sense of superiority rather than using their supposedly superior knowledge to actually benefit humanity, and I know of atheists who are deeply immoral people under the justification of moral nihilism or moral relativism. At the same time, some of my best friends are atheists who have become great human beings through a completely secular approach to life
Originally posted by Patient_LeechOCD in combination with religious bs is a nightmare. Makes it so much worse to handle. Sorry about your brother.
Yeah, pretty much this for me, too...My dad is still a fundamentalist Christian to this day (my mom has since rejected a lot of that dogma, but still loves the Bible), so you better believe I grew up going to church, and even went to Christian middle school and high school hearing plenty of the fire and brimstone bullshit. My oldest brother was OCD and eventually really started taking much of the Christian dogma to heart and really turned full blown schizophrenic and killed himself 11 years ago this May 5th. Would he have been crazy without the religion? Possibly, but I have no doubt in my mind that he was made exponentially worse because of Dogmatic Christian Bullshit. So I was pretty similar to my oldest brother and actually felt a lot of the same thoughts/feelings sinking in (especially going to Christian high school), but was fortunate enough to see how much it tore my brother apart from the inside out, so I was able to break away and reject it.
That being said, I have been on a few Medical Mission trips with my dad (he's a Pediatrician) and they were some of the best experiences of my life (I of course skip the "mission" portion of it, but the "medical" portion is amazing). I went to Peru and Trinidad with him a few years ago. We actually were on a boat on the Amazon River in Peru. It was amazing.
So needless to say, I'm quite anti-Christian or any fundamental religion and lean more toward. People in this country are brainwashed to be afraid of Muslim terrorists, but I'm just as scared of Christian fundamentalists, and now we have faux fundamentalists in our highest offices. Wolves in sheep's clothing. It's terrifying. These people don't listen to science, logic, reason, facts. They've even coined the phrase "Alternative Facts."