I was once a devout Catholic; at least as 'devout' as a pre-pre teen can be. Over the years I have had people ask me why I am an atheist and I am going to post this answer her because I have decided to use the lovely inter-webs to divulge my deepest,darkest secrets I am going to answer the question here....with the same answer I posted on my facebook a few years ago (with a couple of tweaks to grammar and such)....cuz hey, why not?
1) My mother died when I was two years old. My family told me that she was with the angels, watching over me. This idea comforted me for many years (however at every water fountain, on ever birthday cake, and every shooting star, I wished for her to be alive up until the age of about 11 and nothing ever came of it). There came a point though, after an awful childhood experience, that her “watching over me” was not nearly enough. And I got angry, very angry. If God was real, how could he take my mother from me? How could he tear my family apart through her death (my family was catapulted into a horrible custody battle over who should have me. My mother was 21 and had no will). How could he let me live in the awful circumstances I was forced to live in? Why did he give me a father that couldn’t be a dad if his life depended on it? These were questions that began to haunt me, and seep into my nightmares.
2) When these circumstances arose, I asked the above questions (to priests, and family members). I received some of the most helpful, and descriptive answers of my life; “God has a plan” and “God has a reason for everything”. Now, if you’ve just come to the realization that your mother is gone, and never coming back, would someone telling you (in my opinion) God killed your mom for a reason, really help you heal at all? The answer, no. *NOTE* I am aware that some people do feel comforted by these sentiments and mean no disrespect at all. If religion is helpful to you then you are very lucky to feel so. I feel such statements are as helpful and comforting as giving me a bandaid for a gunshot wound.
3) My biological father’s mother was a very religious person. She was one of the people fighting in the custody battle. There came a point, when I was ten, that I told her that I wanted to stay living with my aunt/mom and uncle/dad (my mom's sister and her husband- my parents in every respect). I told her that I wanted to love her but that it hurt me that she never listened to what I wanted. She got extremely angry with me and started talking about religion, telling me that God would send me to live with her, that she would have me as her own, and how bad my parents were. Needles to say, I was shocked and hurt. This was not the first time she used God to try and convince me that she was right “doing God’s will” and such. It was, however, the first time that she blamed me for all the fighting….right, because a ten year old has complete control over adults' actions. I told her that she was hurting me, and that God wouldn’t want her to keep doing this to me. The rest I will leave out, but the conversation ended very badly and she never called me again.
4) Hypocrisy. There is too much of it. I could go on and on with examples from the past, and present. If you’d really like to hear some stories, just ask me.
5) I am a very liberal minded person. I do not judge people based on anything except the decency of a human being. The Church, at large, I have found to be; judgmental, exclusive, hypocritical, and prejudice to the point of twisting, what should be (and is on it’s own) a beautiful work, the Bible, to make it discriminatory, cruel, and hideous.
So these are my reasons for why I am not Catholic and the explanation of my religious cynicism.
-Enjoy and ponder the meaning of life
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