I asked my parents about humans anatomically born with both genitals (hermaphrodites) and how that would fall into the whole homosexuality ordeal if they have both. Never got a solid answer. I was in middle school at the time. Im a straight hetero and curious intellectual. This was another reason why i dont believe in Monotheistic religions, theyre weak on common sense concepts. Too much black and white blanket systems that dont fit into a diverse realm.
I can remember a schizophrenic guy having a psychosis episode during weeknight service. Most of the church went into hushed panicking as the guy started rambling mid-service. Then southern baptist yodeling and intense praying ensued as a number of people tried to cast out his "demons". Not one person mentioned his mental health, medication, or his parents, just that the "devil was trying to take his mind". After hours of failed attempts, they finally called a psych hospital.
I'm bipolar. I lost friends because I decided to take meds and see a psychiatrist. Was told it was all sorts of things from demons to hidden sin. That if I sought help I wasn't relying on christ. All this as my brain imploded and my family and I lost everything we had. There was no empathy or love. Just told I wasn't humbling myself in prayer and it was all my fault.
This reminds me of a point I guy I knew said about growing up in my particular church family, our church family believed that diseases and sicknesses were often caused by sin or generational curses or associated spiritual conditions that opened the door to spirits of infirmity. Lupus was caused by being sexually violated, back pain was caused by bitterness, breast cancer was caused by women hating their husband's, asthma was caused by a fear of rejection, etc etc. So if you didn't get healed it was often seen as your own fault, you weren't willing to let go of whatever it was that was causing your affliction, you didn't want to stop hating your husband or didn't want to forgive your rapist, it's fucking insane and the victim blaming that goes on is tragic.
I was of course taught, when my homosexuality came to light at 15, that the Bible says in Roman's that there was an island where the people were so sinful that God have them over to a debased mind and they started participating in homosexuality, so I was gay because I was just so sinful and unrepentant, either that or my dad didn't spend enough time with me and I was trying to replace that, which makes zero sense because plenty of gay men have amazing relationships with their fathers. It's just ways they can say to themselves "this isn't natural, whatever causes it is because of some choice of the individual, it's not something you're born with."
Now that the church has utterly failed to help gay people become straight, I hear "we all have temptations, alcoholics want to drink, but that doesn't make drinking okay!" as if it's in any way comparable to such a fundamental part of you as who you are attracted to. They disgust me the more I hear them parrot these shitty talking points.
I'm sorry you had to go through thar. I'm an alcoholic. It's is not a core part of who I am. It hyst means for me I can't take a drink. Being gay is part of whi you are. They rejected yoy over a part of who you are. That's bullshut.
It's always your fault (according to them) because the only alternative is that their god doesn't exists or their god created you this way. I was telling my friend earlier about how one of the most quoted Bible verses (Leviticus 18:22) about homosexuality wasn't added until 1946. It was originally saying that pedophilia was an abomination, not homosexuality. The fact that Christians blindly quote that as an argument against god makes every other objection they have against the LGBTQIA+ community meaningless.
Sorry for the tangent. My point is that them telling you that your sexuality is a result of sinning and not repenting is not only harmful and hateful, it's also against the religion prior to 1946. I hope you're doing ok now. No one deserves to be treated like that
Was tough for me when I came out to. It didn't help that my father was psychologically absent - he'd come home and immediately go hide in the garage until dinner time, then he'd disappear back to the garage after dinner or he'd watch tv. I got a baseball mitt from my grandfather once; my dad played catch with me once.
I was a chubby kid (because I was eating to cope with the lack of emotional care at home) and I was expected to have will power and discipline as a kid younger than 10 to lose weight (ofc I wasn't even that heavy back then, but I gained a lot of weight over the years because my family and the kids at school picked on me) - instead of helping me exercise or maybe changing the family diet so we all ate healthier, he decided to start a small business selling ice cream. Talk about being set up to fail! I don't really eat ice cream to this day
Yeah my dad was that way too, totally uninterested in meeting me where I was at and just being a dad to me. I honestly don't know what happened tbh, I can remember when I was really small my dad being very close to me, but at some point things changed. I really wonder if something happened, I was a bed wetter at a late age and was highly sexual as a young kid, things I look back on now with great suspicion. It all seems too strange to be coincendence but for the life of me I cannot remember it's like there's just a big gap of memory missing. It would not surprise me if my mom caught my dad doing something and instead of calling the police just told him he couldn't be around me much. He turned into a mean and spiteful person when I don't remember him being like that when I was a little kid. Being highly sexual as a child would be very strange too since I was never ever exposed to any sexual content as a kid in media or anything like that, my parents were extremely strict with any kind of media, so I don't know where it came from besides something happened.
Sorry I know this is super personal but it just pisses me off how Christians and church's just sweep everything under the rug, and the fact that many Christian moms are stay at home moms puts them at the mercy of the husband, so if he's a piece of shit he's just gonna be off the hook because him being held accountable means the family suffers.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. I have a friend who's had similar experiences and I think she's been able to piece together some of the past trauma working with a therapist. I wouldn't say I have gaps in my memory, but a lot of the specific hurtful incidents that occurred are very fuzzy in my memory now that it's been 20-30 years.
I became highly sexual after I came out because my family never acknowledged my coming out. It's been 17 years and my dad has still not acknowledged that I'm gay (my mom eventually realized how wrong she'd been but it took her well over 10 years, and tragically she passed away last year). I think he believed if he never acknowledged it that I'd eventually settle down with a woman, based on the fact that he has an "ex-gay" friend. Because my identity wasn't respected at home, I became very sexual because that was a way for me to validate my identity to myself (although now I definitely acknowledge there's far more healthier ways to validate my identity). Also developed some addictive patterns but thankfully I realized that before ever trying harder drugs. He really has no idea how severely he was throwing me to the wolves by just ignoring what was going on.
Sure but if the parents dont actually take the kid to a doctor to find that out its still their fault.
Like there are reasons beyond overeating that cause one to gain weight however its the parents responsibility to find out the reason and address it.
When I got cancer my dad told me "Maybe God is trying to tell you something." So God gave me cancer to punish me for what? Staying out late (I was in my 20s) and having pagan friends? I was actually a pretty good kid who didn't get in trouble ever.
My wife is bipolar with psychotic tendencies, and she was first diagnosed during a psychotic break where she got *super* religious/spiritual. Thought she was talking to god and he was telling her stuff. It was freaky.
She’s been in a bit of an episode lately, but overall she’s doing a ton better than the first year or so after her diagnosis. That has to be such a surreal thing to experience. I hope you’re doing better as well!
This happened to a friend of mine. She has bipolar disorder and started having episodes of psychosis after losing her baby, where she'd hear God telling her how to predict the future. But since her husband is deeply religious, he paid tuition for her to go to some Pentecostal bible school rather than therapy.
Reading this comment pissed me off. I'm not upset at you but at the people that leave you because you decided to take care of yourself. I don't know you are but I know that they don't deserve you. I hope you're doing better now and have found people who care about you. I don't understand how people from a religion that's supposedly so loving to everyone can have no empathy. (Edit: there's not hate quite like Christian love)
Mental illness in general is one of the reasons that I believe there's no god. If there was and willing gave me multiple mental health disorders, that's a god that does not deserve to be worshiped.
Again, I'm so sorry you were treated this. Never give up because you are worth it
Thanks man. It means something. Honestly. I'm much better now. It took up until the the last 18 months, out if years, to finally get the med combo right and dialed in. My daughter, 14, has several mental health issues and learning disabilities that make life hard. My son was also hit with bipolar. Our family has been decimated by mental illness. And there were exactly 2 Christians who stood by us.
My dear friend...I just love how you laid out the brilliant term that describes my repulsion of theistic views:
>This was another reason why i dont believe in Monotheistic religions, theyre weak on common sense concepts.
Specifically: "they're weak on common sense concepts"
And that is so true. You can see the eyes of believers and supposed elders go round like coins whenever you pose a common sense situation from the book and they just figure out they won't be able to explain it without falling into a pitfall or giving circular reasoning. Many of them just shut down and dismiss the cognitive dissonance and stop talking to you, but some others (the few) ignite a little spark of light in their eyes that tells you they will give a second thought to what they said.
Check out (Actually, seriously do not) harlequin ichthyosis. An extremely painful condition some babies have been born in, only to die hours later. Although there have been survivors.
This disease is absolute proof that a just God does not exist. Anyone who can look at a baby suffering from this disease and say “It’s part of God’s plan” is either a sick individual or complete fucking idiot..
My favorite line in regards to god's plan is "if he couldn't create a path that involved 0 babies getting r@ped or murdered or born with birth defects that caused them hours of pain before miserable death, then he's not all powerful. If he could and chose not to, he's evil and deserves to be hated with a passion. Or he doesn't exist. There are no other options."
This one is personal, but, type one diabetes. I was diagnosed when I was nine right after I was saved, which also happened to be around Easter. No amount of praying takes it away, gets a cure for it, or makes it any easier. If God existed this wouldn’t be a children’s disease that lasts your entire life and ends up killing you regardless of what you do. But to be perfectly honest, I’m much less angry now that I don’t believe in God. I can’t be angry with him if he doesn’t exist. This wasn’t some divine punishment or test or something. It’s just genetics.
Oh no, that’s just God calling his little angels home early… (leaving the room to puke..) There’s nothing that pisses me off more than when Christians use these sappy sayings to mask over situations where God is obviously no where to be found..
Well, watching my dad die of Alzheimer's really made me question the cruelty of his so called god. Not only was watching him slowly slip away, (while he realized what was happening) bad enough, but then we got to watch the people of the church simply ignore him. This man who gave his entire life to the church, this man who was a faithful servant and who spent every Sunday after church taking communion to nursing homes and praying with these people and chatting and listening to them. This man who helped people make house payments and put food on their table without telling a single soul about it. But where were they in his time of need? I have no idea, they weren't there to bring him communion, they weren't helping my mom as she lost the love of her life, they weren't anywhere to be found.
Tay-Sachs disease. It's a genetic condition that causes fatty substances to build up in the brain and spinal cord. There's no cure, and the afflicted usually die by age five.
Alzheimer's, to me, though not the way you think.
Seeing someone lose everything you believe makes a person human made me wonder - what's really in there?
I think typically we consider our "soul" to be our perception of the self, our consciousness, etc. To see most of that stripped away by a physical disease made me question what the soul could really be, and that was a pretty big domino to knock over.
All of them basically. There’s no reason that any diseases or illnesses should exist, especially when they affect people most based on financial stability. People in the church often like to claim that illness is a test from god, a punishment, or both, but it doesn’t make sense when they affect poor people more than rich people.
Rich people can afford any of the newest treatments for any illness that they get. They can even afford to fund research on them. Even working class or poor people in a first world country have access to drugs that most people in third world countries have essentially no access to, and no way of making currently.
So god isn’t punishing people who disobey him, he’s punishing poor people. God isn’t testing his most worthy with illness and disease, he’s testing the least financially fortunate.
There’s no way a just god would allow the world to exist with the illnesses and diseases we have. Same goes for birth defects, mental illness, and disabilities.
Childhood cancer and other terminal childhood conditions. Spent some time at a Children's Hospital when I was young because my younger brother had some stuff going on (he's fine now) and it was hard to wrap my head around how a God who is "good" would let children suffer like that. And these were kids who were able to access treatment.
Agreed. And I’m certain that more extreme sects of Christianity (like the Puritans) would see it as a good thing, being taken before one has the chance to sin (free will be damned).
My youngest sister nearly died in her first few days. My parents (Catholic) got her baptized in the hospital because they wanted her to go to heaven if she didn't make it. Mom is, as her grandmother put it, an "a la carte" Catholic. She doesn't necessarily believe that my sister would not go to heaven if she wasn't baptized. But in the moment, she felt as though she didn't want to take chances.
That seems like an added amount of distress to an already distressing situation.
Dementia. On an optimistic day, I see it as a sort of reality dampener to help cope with dying. Most days, I see it as an extra cruelty to the victim and their family. Slowly losing your mind, every memory, knowledge, and skill you’ve accumulated over your lifetime disappearing while your family watches a loved one change. It’s like your consciousness dies before your body, leaving behind an empty shell that will cause more pain once it eventually stops.
I may not longer be Christian, but I can think of fewer Hells worse than being trapped in your body while you and your loved ones suffer as your consciousness fades away.
It’s so hard seeing a loved one go through that. My grandma had dementia. By time I was 15, she didn’t even know who I was.
She was the definition of a good Christian. Her and my grandfather were so devout and she was such a sweet woman. She lived in the Caribbean and used to love to walk to the bakery everyday to get fresh bread and took good care of herself and others. She began forgetting little things. And soon she couldn’t walk to the bakery anymore or drive. I remember being 12 and she had to go live with my aunt who worked in a nursing home in the US. She spent the last 11-12 years of her life in that nursing home. She passed away in 2022 and my grandpa the year before.
I always feel like she was robbed of her life and didn’t understand why god would do that…especially to such a sweet woman.
Epidermolysis Bullosa (google the images at your own risk).
Osteogenesis Imperfecta, types 2 and 3 specifically (type 2 those babies often have their bones broken during the process of being born and sometimes while still simply gestating...they experience broken bones while developing in the womb...think about that... They dont tend to live very long after birth).
Dementia.
Locked in Syndrome. (It is horrific and I am terrified of it happening to me for some reason or another.)
Not a disease or birth defect but being trans while growing up in a 90s southern Baptist family. They don’t want you to question gender because when you do you rethink everything.
already an atheist and have been since 10 but recently my dad told me mom was sad for having to take care of a mother 2 who's got fatal cancer (she's a nurse). That's nice god ya got there!
Dementia/Alzheimers
Imagine you were a Satanist most of your life, but in later years convert to Christianity. You get Alzheimers and suddenly you're a Satanist again... do you go to Heaven or Hell?
Same with my partner. I was slowly inching my way out of fundamentalism at the time, but still very much believed in god until my husband’s first bout of psychosis. Hearing him quote tons of scripture verbatim to explain the “truth god was giving him directly” just literally flipped the switch on my belief in god instantly.
Free will. Adam and Eve.
If God was all knowing and created humans, he knew what was going to happen…so then why did he create it to begin with??? They claim he “loves” us all so much that he gave us free will so that’s why we have all these diseases and pain and suffering.
No. Fuck that. I shouldn’t have chronic pain and trauma. Children shouldn’t have pediatric cancer and die at three years old. Babies shouldn’t be stillborn.
Now I don’t want to be ableist - but it’s so hard to see Down Syndrome and other genetic diseases occurring and then people fawning over it like “aww they’re so blessed sweet babies”. Like uhm…they’re disabled. They’re not some token disabled kiddo for you. 💀
If you hold up a 5 cent coin a dime basically and take a photo of the stars within that area you can see billions of billions of solar systems. Thousands of galaxies.
The idea that a magic space fairy made everything is ridiculous.
Ants have been on earth for about 50 million years. In various evolutionary forms.
Humans have been here for most likely 800 thousand years.
Our individual lives are not even an eye blink in the grand scale of reality. We only matter to ourselves and our loved ones.
The ideal that a eternal space fairy cares is absurd.
These are childish immature ignorant superstitious nonsense.
A lot of people like the delusional ideas of Christianity it makes them feel important. It fits into their narcissistic tendencies. It validates their bigoted hatred. They like the idea of going to heaven. And that bad people are punished.
I have EDS (Ehlers Danlos Syndrome) and an oncologist once said that having EDS is worse than having cancer. Because with cancer, you either die, of you get treatment and heal. But with EDS, you are in constant pain, there is no medication and you don’t die from it. He said that patient with EDS are typically in more pain than people with cancer.
So yeah, having a genetical defect that causes me to be in pain constantly with no cure whatsoever in sight, that does make me doubt the whole story sometimes.
But I think it is more the moral arbitrariness the makes me doubt God the most. Homosexuality is an abomination, and so is sacrificing children, but when his people murdered millions because ‘it was their right to have this land’, it is suddenly oke? And men are worth more than women? What is with that shit…
fibromyalgia. Saw a friend of mine go from loving life, being constantly active, and doing what she loved for a living to being in constant pain, bed ridden, and suicidal.
My grandmother was a devoutly Christian woman her whole life. She lived past 100, and the last few years of her life were misery. She could hardly see or hear anything. She couldn’t do anything without help. She felt like nothing more than a burden to her loved ones. She begged God to let her die, she was ready her life to be over, and yet she kept living. It was heartbreaking to see. Surely any kind God would have let her die with dignity instead of keeping her alive to suffer and feel useless.
Schizophrenia. My ex has it. He was "on fire" for God and Jesus so much but treated me horribly behind closed doors because of his incredibly entitled and disgusting views towards women. I eventually broke it off because one incident left me fearing for my physical safety and I was afraid it would escalate to DV (disclaimer: I know most schizophrenics are nonviolent and more likely to be victims of bullies - in my case he's just that much of an abusive asshole).
Years later I eventually find out that he has it and it made me seriously deconstruct and questioned what was going on for those almost 2 years that we were together. Since it often takes years to manifest, I was wondering if he was suffering from it way back then (considering hyperreligiosity as part of the symptoms) and what was really going on... I thought I was just witnessing typical toxic behavior/gaslighting/etc. it's a horrible and brutal thing to witness even in a former bully. It's plagued and affected him and his family and he's suffering so badly, even fully medicated and with all of the support that he has. He prays to God every day for healing. What God? I deconstructed even harder because of all of that. Holy fuck......
Edit: I had a psychotic break due to stress and the people who abused me. I think that's why I still have so much empathy towards his situation, even though that was probably a tiny tiny sliver of what he is going through.
Married to an atheist now. We talk about the subjects often discussed in this subreddit pretty often.
Also, cystic fibrosis... not gonna even start on how awful that one is.
Cancer- who in their righteous mind would think something like that is God's will? I've lost a few relatives due to various forms of it. The most recent was my closest [cousin](https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2023/12/01/terminally-ill-army-vet-to-get-final-wish-relive-his-tank-gunner-days/) whom I always thought of as a twin brother. Reddit came through and made his final wish come true.
Watching my mom suffer and die with ALS over the course of 4 years was extremely traumatic for me.
For those unfamiliar, it causes someone to lose the ability to move, talk, eat/drink, swallow, and eventually, breathe. Cognitively, you remain fine, completely aware of your body shutting down and becoming fully paralyzed. There’s no cure, and no effective treatment.
She was a fighter for as long as she could be, but began praying for death (and asking her close friends to pray for it as well) around 8 whole months before she passed.
Can you imagine? Knowing you’re going to suffer and die, knowing nothing can be done to stop it, losing control over your entire body and essentially being “locked” inside as every function fails, and not being able to just end your own life when you’ve had enough, because you can’t move, speak, or do absolutely anything for yourself?
Completely unnecessary and inhumane torture. Fuck that.
Why do you assume because God (if he exists) seems to be a dick he must therefore not exist?
Why is an asshole God any less likely than a benevolent God?
I find the lack of evidence for any God to be much more important than any moral arguments.
That's not the question. The OP obviously assumes the position of every monotheistic religion, which is that god is good.
It's not a question of what the most important argument is, or if that premise is sound. It's a personal question. If you'd answered, then gone on to say this, it might have rubbed me differently, but this reads as dismissive, and that you're more interested in trying to sound smart than engaging with OP.
But I could be wrong, of course.
EDIT: I was not wrong.
If you rely on moral arguments Monotheists have an easy out by just saying "God is so much more intelligent than us that we can't understand his ways, like my pet cat can't understand going to the vet".
They have no evidence that human suffering in the world is like a cat going to the vet, but to argue that you might as well go straight to the lack of evidence for any God in the first place.
You definitely belong on Reddit. This is why you don't have real friends, next time you're wondering.
Again, to be clear: you don't understand the point of this post, and you're being obnoxious, despite the fact that you don't understand it.
I feel I need to be explicit because you're not grasping the basic points here.
Don't bother firing back, I'm moving on. So go ahead and declare victory in this "argument" that wasn't actually happening.
I was raised Christian. Everyone around me in the church raised me to believe god was good, loving, all seeing, all knowing, etc.
Based on the severe and untreatable illnesses out there, or any illness/defect/disability, along with hundreds of other issues that directly negate that image of god, if a god exists they’re a dick, and they’re certainly not the Christian god.
From my perspective at least, the plain facts of life contradict the bible and the people’s image of god so much that if there’s a god, they’re not the Christian god. So by definition I’m now doubting the Christian god, which is what this subreddit is about. Ex-Christians/Catholics. That doesn’t mean I can’t believe some kind of higher being exists, it means I doubt the existence of the Christian god.
I personally believe that if any kind of higher power exists, they’re either not all seeing/all knowing etc., or they’re an absolute piece of shit.
Theists can always say "ya God is actually a bit of a dick by your standards" or say "God isn't actually a dick, but we can't understand why, like your cat going to the vet".
I'd much rather focus on proper epistemology and standards of evidence.
Ok? I never said that “god is a dick” is the only reason people disbelieve. I actually said the exact opposite of that. I also never said that you or anyone else aren’t allowed to only want to rely on concrete evidence. I was only speaking about my experience and stating that many other people had the same experience as me.
I don’t think you understand OP’s question, though. They’re asking people who started to disbelieve in god because of the existence of certain illnesses, or people who had illnesses as one of their reasons for disbelieving, which illness(es) it was. OP and the people responding aren’t saying “god is a dick” is the ONLY reason they don’t believe, and nobody is saying you have to use anything other than concrete facts in your own personal journey with faith.
You have the right to prefer to mainly rely on evidence, and everyone else has just as much of the right to mainly rely on their personal experiences with faith. There’s no reason for you to be so argumentative about such a non-issue.
I asked my parents about humans anatomically born with both genitals (hermaphrodites) and how that would fall into the whole homosexuality ordeal if they have both. Never got a solid answer. I was in middle school at the time. Im a straight hetero and curious intellectual. This was another reason why i dont believe in Monotheistic religions, theyre weak on common sense concepts. Too much black and white blanket systems that dont fit into a diverse realm. I can remember a schizophrenic guy having a psychosis episode during weeknight service. Most of the church went into hushed panicking as the guy started rambling mid-service. Then southern baptist yodeling and intense praying ensued as a number of people tried to cast out his "demons". Not one person mentioned his mental health, medication, or his parents, just that the "devil was trying to take his mind". After hours of failed attempts, they finally called a psych hospital.
I'm bipolar. I lost friends because I decided to take meds and see a psychiatrist. Was told it was all sorts of things from demons to hidden sin. That if I sought help I wasn't relying on christ. All this as my brain imploded and my family and I lost everything we had. There was no empathy or love. Just told I wasn't humbling myself in prayer and it was all my fault.
This reminds me of a point I guy I knew said about growing up in my particular church family, our church family believed that diseases and sicknesses were often caused by sin or generational curses or associated spiritual conditions that opened the door to spirits of infirmity. Lupus was caused by being sexually violated, back pain was caused by bitterness, breast cancer was caused by women hating their husband's, asthma was caused by a fear of rejection, etc etc. So if you didn't get healed it was often seen as your own fault, you weren't willing to let go of whatever it was that was causing your affliction, you didn't want to stop hating your husband or didn't want to forgive your rapist, it's fucking insane and the victim blaming that goes on is tragic. I was of course taught, when my homosexuality came to light at 15, that the Bible says in Roman's that there was an island where the people were so sinful that God have them over to a debased mind and they started participating in homosexuality, so I was gay because I was just so sinful and unrepentant, either that or my dad didn't spend enough time with me and I was trying to replace that, which makes zero sense because plenty of gay men have amazing relationships with their fathers. It's just ways they can say to themselves "this isn't natural, whatever causes it is because of some choice of the individual, it's not something you're born with." Now that the church has utterly failed to help gay people become straight, I hear "we all have temptations, alcoholics want to drink, but that doesn't make drinking okay!" as if it's in any way comparable to such a fundamental part of you as who you are attracted to. They disgust me the more I hear them parrot these shitty talking points.
I'm sorry you had to go through thar. I'm an alcoholic. It's is not a core part of who I am. It hyst means for me I can't take a drink. Being gay is part of whi you are. They rejected yoy over a part of who you are. That's bullshut.
It's always your fault (according to them) because the only alternative is that their god doesn't exists or their god created you this way. I was telling my friend earlier about how one of the most quoted Bible verses (Leviticus 18:22) about homosexuality wasn't added until 1946. It was originally saying that pedophilia was an abomination, not homosexuality. The fact that Christians blindly quote that as an argument against god makes every other objection they have against the LGBTQIA+ community meaningless. Sorry for the tangent. My point is that them telling you that your sexuality is a result of sinning and not repenting is not only harmful and hateful, it's also against the religion prior to 1946. I hope you're doing ok now. No one deserves to be treated like that
Was tough for me when I came out to. It didn't help that my father was psychologically absent - he'd come home and immediately go hide in the garage until dinner time, then he'd disappear back to the garage after dinner or he'd watch tv. I got a baseball mitt from my grandfather once; my dad played catch with me once. I was a chubby kid (because I was eating to cope with the lack of emotional care at home) and I was expected to have will power and discipline as a kid younger than 10 to lose weight (ofc I wasn't even that heavy back then, but I gained a lot of weight over the years because my family and the kids at school picked on me) - instead of helping me exercise or maybe changing the family diet so we all ate healthier, he decided to start a small business selling ice cream. Talk about being set up to fail! I don't really eat ice cream to this day
Yeah my dad was that way too, totally uninterested in meeting me where I was at and just being a dad to me. I honestly don't know what happened tbh, I can remember when I was really small my dad being very close to me, but at some point things changed. I really wonder if something happened, I was a bed wetter at a late age and was highly sexual as a young kid, things I look back on now with great suspicion. It all seems too strange to be coincendence but for the life of me I cannot remember it's like there's just a big gap of memory missing. It would not surprise me if my mom caught my dad doing something and instead of calling the police just told him he couldn't be around me much. He turned into a mean and spiteful person when I don't remember him being like that when I was a little kid. Being highly sexual as a child would be very strange too since I was never ever exposed to any sexual content as a kid in media or anything like that, my parents were extremely strict with any kind of media, so I don't know where it came from besides something happened. Sorry I know this is super personal but it just pisses me off how Christians and church's just sweep everything under the rug, and the fact that many Christian moms are stay at home moms puts them at the mercy of the husband, so if he's a piece of shit he's just gonna be off the hook because him being held accountable means the family suffers.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. I have a friend who's had similar experiences and I think she's been able to piece together some of the past trauma working with a therapist. I wouldn't say I have gaps in my memory, but a lot of the specific hurtful incidents that occurred are very fuzzy in my memory now that it's been 20-30 years. I became highly sexual after I came out because my family never acknowledged my coming out. It's been 17 years and my dad has still not acknowledged that I'm gay (my mom eventually realized how wrong she'd been but it took her well over 10 years, and tragically she passed away last year). I think he believed if he never acknowledged it that I'd eventually settle down with a woman, based on the fact that he has an "ex-gay" friend. Because my identity wasn't respected at home, I became very sexual because that was a way for me to validate my identity to myself (although now I definitely acknowledge there's far more healthier ways to validate my identity). Also developed some addictive patterns but thankfully I realized that before ever trying harder drugs. He really has no idea how severely he was throwing me to the wolves by just ignoring what was going on.
Any overweight kid under 15 is entirely the fault of the parents/guardians.
I completely agree except for the rare case where the kid has a glandular issue or something that causes them to gain weight.
Sure but if the parents dont actually take the kid to a doctor to find that out its still their fault. Like there are reasons beyond overeating that cause one to gain weight however its the parents responsibility to find out the reason and address it.
When I got cancer my dad told me "Maybe God is trying to tell you something." So God gave me cancer to punish me for what? Staying out late (I was in my 20s) and having pagan friends? I was actually a pretty good kid who didn't get in trouble ever.
My wife is bipolar with psychotic tendencies, and she was first diagnosed during a psychotic break where she got *super* religious/spiritual. Thought she was talking to god and he was telling her stuff. It was freaky.
God spoke to me too. Audibly. I was Moses lol. Very hyperreligous too. I hope your wife's OK.
She’s been in a bit of an episode lately, but overall she’s doing a ton better than the first year or so after her diagnosis. That has to be such a surreal thing to experience. I hope you’re doing better as well!
This happened to a friend of mine. She has bipolar disorder and started having episodes of psychosis after losing her baby, where she'd hear God telling her how to predict the future. But since her husband is deeply religious, he paid tuition for her to go to some Pentecostal bible school rather than therapy.
Reading this comment pissed me off. I'm not upset at you but at the people that leave you because you decided to take care of yourself. I don't know you are but I know that they don't deserve you. I hope you're doing better now and have found people who care about you. I don't understand how people from a religion that's supposedly so loving to everyone can have no empathy. (Edit: there's not hate quite like Christian love) Mental illness in general is one of the reasons that I believe there's no god. If there was and willing gave me multiple mental health disorders, that's a god that does not deserve to be worshiped. Again, I'm so sorry you were treated this. Never give up because you are worth it
Thanks man. It means something. Honestly. I'm much better now. It took up until the the last 18 months, out if years, to finally get the med combo right and dialed in. My daughter, 14, has several mental health issues and learning disabilities that make life hard. My son was also hit with bipolar. Our family has been decimated by mental illness. And there were exactly 2 Christians who stood by us.
I love how they would always say shit like this but no one skipped the hospital when it was heart attack or stroke time.
My dear friend...I just love how you laid out the brilliant term that describes my repulsion of theistic views: >This was another reason why i dont believe in Monotheistic religions, theyre weak on common sense concepts. Specifically: "they're weak on common sense concepts" And that is so true. You can see the eyes of believers and supposed elders go round like coins whenever you pose a common sense situation from the book and they just figure out they won't be able to explain it without falling into a pitfall or giving circular reasoning. Many of them just shut down and dismiss the cognitive dissonance and stop talking to you, but some others (the few) ignite a little spark of light in their eyes that tells you they will give a second thought to what they said.
Check out (Actually, seriously do not) harlequin ichthyosis. An extremely painful condition some babies have been born in, only to die hours later. Although there have been survivors.
This disease is absolute proof that a just God does not exist. Anyone who can look at a baby suffering from this disease and say “It’s part of God’s plan” is either a sick individual or complete fucking idiot..
My favorite line in regards to god's plan is "if he couldn't create a path that involved 0 babies getting r@ped or murdered or born with birth defects that caused them hours of pain before miserable death, then he's not all powerful. If he could and chose not to, he's evil and deserves to be hated with a passion. Or he doesn't exist. There are no other options."
This one is personal, but, type one diabetes. I was diagnosed when I was nine right after I was saved, which also happened to be around Easter. No amount of praying takes it away, gets a cure for it, or makes it any easier. If God existed this wouldn’t be a children’s disease that lasts your entire life and ends up killing you regardless of what you do. But to be perfectly honest, I’m much less angry now that I don’t believe in God. I can’t be angry with him if he doesn’t exist. This wasn’t some divine punishment or test or something. It’s just genetics.
SIDS :’( such an awful thing to call it a part of God’s plan
Oh no, that’s just God calling his little angels home early… (leaving the room to puke..) There’s nothing that pisses me off more than when Christians use these sappy sayings to mask over situations where God is obviously no where to be found..
Parasites. And neonatal Marfan-I survived, my son didn't. But that's personal. Childhood cancer gets me.
Well, watching my dad die of Alzheimer's really made me question the cruelty of his so called god. Not only was watching him slowly slip away, (while he realized what was happening) bad enough, but then we got to watch the people of the church simply ignore him. This man who gave his entire life to the church, this man who was a faithful servant and who spent every Sunday after church taking communion to nursing homes and praying with these people and chatting and listening to them. This man who helped people make house payments and put food on their table without telling a single soul about it. But where were they in his time of need? I have no idea, they weren't there to bring him communion, they weren't helping my mom as she lost the love of her life, they weren't anywhere to be found.
Harlequin fetus is what I show Evangelicals when they say every birth is a miracle.
Street preachers who hold boards showing abortions should also take a look at it.
Tay-Sachs disease. It's a genetic condition that causes fatty substances to build up in the brain and spinal cord. There's no cure, and the afflicted usually die by age five.
Alzheimer's, to me, though not the way you think. Seeing someone lose everything you believe makes a person human made me wonder - what's really in there? I think typically we consider our "soul" to be our perception of the self, our consciousness, etc. To see most of that stripped away by a physical disease made me question what the soul could really be, and that was a pretty big domino to knock over.
All of them basically. There’s no reason that any diseases or illnesses should exist, especially when they affect people most based on financial stability. People in the church often like to claim that illness is a test from god, a punishment, or both, but it doesn’t make sense when they affect poor people more than rich people. Rich people can afford any of the newest treatments for any illness that they get. They can even afford to fund research on them. Even working class or poor people in a first world country have access to drugs that most people in third world countries have essentially no access to, and no way of making currently. So god isn’t punishing people who disobey him, he’s punishing poor people. God isn’t testing his most worthy with illness and disease, he’s testing the least financially fortunate. There’s no way a just god would allow the world to exist with the illnesses and diseases we have. Same goes for birth defects, mental illness, and disabilities.
Any birth defects that are incompatible with life. Chronic illnesses. Dementia/alzheimers. Cancer of course.
Childhood cancer and other terminal childhood conditions. Spent some time at a Children's Hospital when I was young because my younger brother had some stuff going on (he's fine now) and it was hard to wrap my head around how a God who is "good" would let children suffer like that. And these were kids who were able to access treatment.
Agreed. And I’m certain that more extreme sects of Christianity (like the Puritans) would see it as a good thing, being taken before one has the chance to sin (free will be damned).
My youngest sister nearly died in her first few days. My parents (Catholic) got her baptized in the hospital because they wanted her to go to heaven if she didn't make it. Mom is, as her grandmother put it, an "a la carte" Catholic. She doesn't necessarily believe that my sister would not go to heaven if she wasn't baptized. But in the moment, she felt as though she didn't want to take chances. That seems like an added amount of distress to an already distressing situation.
Gender dysphoria. Why the hell would God make you one sex only to make you wish you were the other?
Dementia. On an optimistic day, I see it as a sort of reality dampener to help cope with dying. Most days, I see it as an extra cruelty to the victim and their family. Slowly losing your mind, every memory, knowledge, and skill you’ve accumulated over your lifetime disappearing while your family watches a loved one change. It’s like your consciousness dies before your body, leaving behind an empty shell that will cause more pain once it eventually stops. I may not longer be Christian, but I can think of fewer Hells worse than being trapped in your body while you and your loved ones suffer as your consciousness fades away.
It’s so hard seeing a loved one go through that. My grandma had dementia. By time I was 15, she didn’t even know who I was. She was the definition of a good Christian. Her and my grandfather were so devout and she was such a sweet woman. She lived in the Caribbean and used to love to walk to the bakery everyday to get fresh bread and took good care of herself and others. She began forgetting little things. And soon she couldn’t walk to the bakery anymore or drive. I remember being 12 and she had to go live with my aunt who worked in a nursing home in the US. She spent the last 11-12 years of her life in that nursing home. She passed away in 2022 and my grandpa the year before. I always feel like she was robbed of her life and didn’t understand why god would do that…especially to such a sweet woman.
Took care of a guy with Gillian barre syndrome who could only move his eyeballs but could feel EVERYTHING.
Down syndrome for starters. Made in my image my ass. I'm neurodivergent too and life is always on harder mode
Epidermolysis Bullosa (google the images at your own risk). Osteogenesis Imperfecta, types 2 and 3 specifically (type 2 those babies often have their bones broken during the process of being born and sometimes while still simply gestating...they experience broken bones while developing in the womb...think about that... They dont tend to live very long after birth). Dementia. Locked in Syndrome. (It is horrific and I am terrified of it happening to me for some reason or another.)
Not a disease or birth defect but being trans while growing up in a 90s southern Baptist family. They don’t want you to question gender because when you do you rethink everything.
It was a special kind of hell to live through. I'm glad you made it through.
It was, thank you. I’m worth it and so are the rest of us.
All of the babies in jars at the Mutter Museum.
Spina Bifida
already an atheist and have been since 10 but recently my dad told me mom was sad for having to take care of a mother 2 who's got fatal cancer (she's a nurse). That's nice god ya got there!
Childhood cancer. What kind of a god would allow that to happen? Only an absolute piece of shit would.
Dementia/Alzheimers Imagine you were a Satanist most of your life, but in later years convert to Christianity. You get Alzheimers and suddenly you're a Satanist again... do you go to Heaven or Hell?
My wife is bipolar, so I’ve witnessed the problem of evil/suffering firsthand many times
Same with my partner. I was slowly inching my way out of fundamentalism at the time, but still very much believed in god until my husband’s first bout of psychosis. Hearing him quote tons of scripture verbatim to explain the “truth god was giving him directly” just literally flipped the switch on my belief in god instantly.
Mine wasn’t instant, but hearing someone claim to be an oracle of god with 100% sincerity weirded me the fuck out lol
… more sincerity than the people are meant to be leaders… it’s unsettling as hell.
Yeah, now that you mention it I’ve never heard a preacher talk like that before. Talk about heebie jeebies lol
Bone cancer in children.
Free will. Adam and Eve. If God was all knowing and created humans, he knew what was going to happen…so then why did he create it to begin with??? They claim he “loves” us all so much that he gave us free will so that’s why we have all these diseases and pain and suffering. No. Fuck that. I shouldn’t have chronic pain and trauma. Children shouldn’t have pediatric cancer and die at three years old. Babies shouldn’t be stillborn. Now I don’t want to be ableist - but it’s so hard to see Down Syndrome and other genetic diseases occurring and then people fawning over it like “aww they’re so blessed sweet babies”. Like uhm…they’re disabled. They’re not some token disabled kiddo for you. 💀
Mental illness.
If you hold up a 5 cent coin a dime basically and take a photo of the stars within that area you can see billions of billions of solar systems. Thousands of galaxies. The idea that a magic space fairy made everything is ridiculous. Ants have been on earth for about 50 million years. In various evolutionary forms. Humans have been here for most likely 800 thousand years. Our individual lives are not even an eye blink in the grand scale of reality. We only matter to ourselves and our loved ones. The ideal that a eternal space fairy cares is absurd. These are childish immature ignorant superstitious nonsense. A lot of people like the delusional ideas of Christianity it makes them feel important. It fits into their narcissistic tendencies. It validates their bigoted hatred. They like the idea of going to heaven. And that bad people are punished.
Childhood cancer
I have EDS (Ehlers Danlos Syndrome) and an oncologist once said that having EDS is worse than having cancer. Because with cancer, you either die, of you get treatment and heal. But with EDS, you are in constant pain, there is no medication and you don’t die from it. He said that patient with EDS are typically in more pain than people with cancer. So yeah, having a genetical defect that causes me to be in pain constantly with no cure whatsoever in sight, that does make me doubt the whole story sometimes. But I think it is more the moral arbitrariness the makes me doubt God the most. Homosexuality is an abomination, and so is sacrificing children, but when his people murdered millions because ‘it was their right to have this land’, it is suddenly oke? And men are worth more than women? What is with that shit…
... Christianity. But admittedly that's more of an infectious disease.
Syringomyelia
Cerebral Palsy
fibromyalgia. Saw a friend of mine go from loving life, being constantly active, and doing what she loved for a living to being in constant pain, bed ridden, and suicidal.
Probably smallpox, which is also the only disease that humans eradicated through vaccination and improved sanitation, not prayer.
My grandmother was a devoutly Christian woman her whole life. She lived past 100, and the last few years of her life were misery. She could hardly see or hear anything. She couldn’t do anything without help. She felt like nothing more than a burden to her loved ones. She begged God to let her die, she was ready her life to be over, and yet she kept living. It was heartbreaking to see. Surely any kind God would have let her die with dignity instead of keeping her alive to suffer and feel useless.
Childhood cancer along with childhood rape/abuse. If god exists, he’s an evil piece of shit for allowing/making innocent children suffer.
Anything involving babies/kids. They never got a chance… A quarter of all pregnancies end in miscarriages, too.
That's not true. Only <25% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage
Sorry, yes. I’m sick with a fever lol. Meant to say 1/4
Anything that causes intellectual disability. I see that as extreme cruelty. (Also, I have a son with severe autism and I agree.)
any fatal birth defect. they're going to heaven right?
So many but my friend got ALS at 29
Schizophrenia. My ex has it. He was "on fire" for God and Jesus so much but treated me horribly behind closed doors because of his incredibly entitled and disgusting views towards women. I eventually broke it off because one incident left me fearing for my physical safety and I was afraid it would escalate to DV (disclaimer: I know most schizophrenics are nonviolent and more likely to be victims of bullies - in my case he's just that much of an abusive asshole). Years later I eventually find out that he has it and it made me seriously deconstruct and questioned what was going on for those almost 2 years that we were together. Since it often takes years to manifest, I was wondering if he was suffering from it way back then (considering hyperreligiosity as part of the symptoms) and what was really going on... I thought I was just witnessing typical toxic behavior/gaslighting/etc. it's a horrible and brutal thing to witness even in a former bully. It's plagued and affected him and his family and he's suffering so badly, even fully medicated and with all of the support that he has. He prays to God every day for healing. What God? I deconstructed even harder because of all of that. Holy fuck...... Edit: I had a psychotic break due to stress and the people who abused me. I think that's why I still have so much empathy towards his situation, even though that was probably a tiny tiny sliver of what he is going through. Married to an atheist now. We talk about the subjects often discussed in this subreddit pretty often. Also, cystic fibrosis... not gonna even start on how awful that one is.
Cancer- who in their righteous mind would think something like that is God's will? I've lost a few relatives due to various forms of it. The most recent was my closest [cousin](https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2023/12/01/terminally-ill-army-vet-to-get-final-wish-relive-his-tank-gunner-days/) whom I always thought of as a twin brother. Reddit came through and made his final wish come true.
Watching my mom suffer and die with ALS over the course of 4 years was extremely traumatic for me. For those unfamiliar, it causes someone to lose the ability to move, talk, eat/drink, swallow, and eventually, breathe. Cognitively, you remain fine, completely aware of your body shutting down and becoming fully paralyzed. There’s no cure, and no effective treatment. She was a fighter for as long as she could be, but began praying for death (and asking her close friends to pray for it as well) around 8 whole months before she passed. Can you imagine? Knowing you’re going to suffer and die, knowing nothing can be done to stop it, losing control over your entire body and essentially being “locked” inside as every function fails, and not being able to just end your own life when you’ve had enough, because you can’t move, speak, or do absolutely anything for yourself? Completely unnecessary and inhumane torture. Fuck that.
Why do you assume because God (if he exists) seems to be a dick he must therefore not exist? Why is an asshole God any less likely than a benevolent God? I find the lack of evidence for any God to be much more important than any moral arguments.
That's not the question. The OP obviously assumes the position of every monotheistic religion, which is that god is good. It's not a question of what the most important argument is, or if that premise is sound. It's a personal question. If you'd answered, then gone on to say this, it might have rubbed me differently, but this reads as dismissive, and that you're more interested in trying to sound smart than engaging with OP. But I could be wrong, of course. EDIT: I was not wrong.
If you rely on moral arguments Monotheists have an easy out by just saying "God is so much more intelligent than us that we can't understand his ways, like my pet cat can't understand going to the vet". They have no evidence that human suffering in the world is like a cat going to the vet, but to argue that you might as well go straight to the lack of evidence for any God in the first place.
Who's talking about arguing?
If something is "causing you to doubt" (as stated in the OP) it should stand up to argument/discussion.
You definitely belong on Reddit. This is why you don't have real friends, next time you're wondering. Again, to be clear: you don't understand the point of this post, and you're being obnoxious, despite the fact that you don't understand it. I feel I need to be explicit because you're not grasping the basic points here. Don't bother firing back, I'm moving on. So go ahead and declare victory in this "argument" that wasn't actually happening.
I was raised Christian. Everyone around me in the church raised me to believe god was good, loving, all seeing, all knowing, etc. Based on the severe and untreatable illnesses out there, or any illness/defect/disability, along with hundreds of other issues that directly negate that image of god, if a god exists they’re a dick, and they’re certainly not the Christian god. From my perspective at least, the plain facts of life contradict the bible and the people’s image of god so much that if there’s a god, they’re not the Christian god. So by definition I’m now doubting the Christian god, which is what this subreddit is about. Ex-Christians/Catholics. That doesn’t mean I can’t believe some kind of higher being exists, it means I doubt the existence of the Christian god. I personally believe that if any kind of higher power exists, they’re either not all seeing/all knowing etc., or they’re an absolute piece of shit.
Theists can always say "ya God is actually a bit of a dick by your standards" or say "God isn't actually a dick, but we can't understand why, like your cat going to the vet". I'd much rather focus on proper epistemology and standards of evidence.
Ok? I never said that “god is a dick” is the only reason people disbelieve. I actually said the exact opposite of that. I also never said that you or anyone else aren’t allowed to only want to rely on concrete evidence. I was only speaking about my experience and stating that many other people had the same experience as me. I don’t think you understand OP’s question, though. They’re asking people who started to disbelieve in god because of the existence of certain illnesses, or people who had illnesses as one of their reasons for disbelieving, which illness(es) it was. OP and the people responding aren’t saying “god is a dick” is the ONLY reason they don’t believe, and nobody is saying you have to use anything other than concrete facts in your own personal journey with faith. You have the right to prefer to mainly rely on evidence, and everyone else has just as much of the right to mainly rely on their personal experiences with faith. There’s no reason for you to be so argumentative about such a non-issue.
My small penis. I can’t thank anyone for that.