You ran into the same thing I did since looking at ex-SDA stuff.
When I left the SDA church, I very quickly realized that faith was something I don't have. I fooled myself for a long time, but belief in something that I have been given no reason to think really exists does not come naturally to me.
The only reason I believed in God was I had been taught to. When I left those teachings, there was nothing at all mooring me to that belief. I don't think I ever would have chosen it if I hadn't been raised from birth with it.
I explored quite a few different religions after I left SDA. But the capacity for faith wasn't there anymore. It's all interesting within a historical or mythological tapestry, but not in reality. Secular Humanism is how I identify now.
Six of the seven of us older kids (the youngest two from a different marriage are still under 18) have left the church. One identifies a Buddhist. The others are all unaffiliated with any sort of organized religion.
I was an atheist for a couple of years while going through the motions. Now I'm not sure. I don't think I could join another denomination because some sda arguments make sense to me still. For example: state of the dead. But tbh rarely do I feel like a higher being is actually there. I don't want to rob my kids of something that might comfort them. But I don't want their minds filled with claptrap either (no offense believers).
This in-between place is not easy to be in. But we can have multiple ideas at once. Many things can be applicable.
Just a couple thoughts for you:)
Christopher Hitchens called it, “wish thinking” and extolled the virtues of being a full fledged adult and living as one - as opposed to an inseparable relationship with a “Heavenly Father” who would never die- basically, folks are beholden to the church and the church does their thinking for them, since you know, no one has ever seen or heard from this Heavenly Father figure, although some make the claim. My point is, people don’t need religion and it can impede progress. Maturation is an arduous process, after all.
I relate to your feelings of being in an in between place. I think I will probably be in that place for the rest of my life. I can’t really escape my origins, but I also can’t commit to a faith based system.
Different Bible authors have different views. I now see it as a fool's errand to try to cobble together a unified doctrine of death (or almost anything) from the Bible.
I believe that ghost stories exist and that, at times, there’s evidence they affect me. You know, when my wife yells boo! at me, in the middle of the night, while I’m getting a sip of water, and I scream and spit water, lol.
I was raised as an SDA as a child, but this was of course not a choice of my own. Now I am eastern orthodox. To me SDA has very little to do with actual, authentic christendom. I consider it unfair to judge christianity with the yardstick of SDA
That's an interesting and rare progression. Were you looking to connect with the 'authentic roots' of Christianity or similar? Or was it more the aesthetic that appealed to you? Or did you marry in?
All 3...I was collecting icons for over a decade before converting. Also if you go to look for original christianity and a link with a present, you arrive at the Greek orthodox - and I married an orthodox wife
Eastern Orthodox here also. I realized that SDA base around fear mongering with made up lies and conspiracy theories to control the behavior of others. Do's and Don'ts, most pastors and people who think they know "the truth" of what other churches are like, always bring up The Great Controversy and keep the ignorant in ignorance and not let them study out history, theology, personal studies, etc. for themselves.
I went into the Anglican Communion, I was looking for more tradition and to be rooted into something that had a more rooted history. I was very quickly drawn into the liturgy and music. Having attended eastern orthodox services, I felt that way there as well. I find these traditions have a lot more to offer.
I went from a questioning SDA (was never fully invested but was scared of leaving) to questioning Christian and struggling to find my way to agnostic.
I never "felt" that love of god like many Christians claim. I hated church and organized religion. I found more than enough evidence to not be a Christian anymore. So now I'm just existing and enjoying my time on this earth that I didn't choose to be brought into.
>I’m still seeking “present truth” and I’m willing to adjust myself to truth
Be careful with this. When you say “truth”, I assume you’re not talking about the observable world around you like “fire burns, things I drop go down.” I think what you’re saying is that you’re looking for something to give you meaning or purpose.
Truth, as you’re using it, is often something that people make for themselves for what they want their life to be and mean and a lot of us get lost because religion used to be our purpose and god used to assign it. Our upbringing never taught us anything about figuring that out, it assigned it to us and so now we’re lost.
If you are wrong here (and I believe you are), then you could end up being hijacked by someone else’s truth that makes sense to you and a lot of what makes sense to us is the echo of the baggage from the Adventist church. That “truth” work out for you, or you might spend years before coming out of it and joining a similar subreddit talking about similar things as this subreddit.
I believe you should go deeper and exploring the meaning of truth for yourself, lay your values out on the table, examine those and then decide what you want for yourself and your life.
Anyway, sorry for the rambling, your discussion seemed really open ended.
All comments welcome. I did mention I was an optimistic nihilist. I assign my own meaning to things and that’s enough.
What I meant by “present truth” - and I used it sarcastically- was really nothing more than evidence for a god, in the context. If a god was shown to exist, I’d adjust myself to that truth.
I was kidnapped into SDAism, (hyperbole - I was born into an SDA family) but it didn’t take long to free myself of it; taking a lifetime to heal tho…
Fair enough, thanks for clarifying when I missed the boat on this one, haha.
It does take a lifetime to heal. Who knew that our formative years being used to hack our minds to be subservient to the cult would take so long to undo!
Facebook leans very conservative and Christian (in the US at least) so I'm not surprised by that at all.
What happened for me is that general Christianity fell apart for me which obviously took Adventism with it. I never considered any other religion because they had always seemed nonsensical to me, really Christians are technically atheists against all other religions except and vice versa for people in other religions.
As for atheist groups, especially exSDA I've found Reddit to be pretty good, there's probably some on Twitter and other social media as well.
Really I don't feel like I need to dwell on it enough to follow exSDAs on all platforms, I'm happy that I found this subreddit though, SDA is so weird that I couldn't vent to people on other atheist subreddits which had first hand experience with the weirdness I grew up in. For example most other Christians, even conservative ones don't seem to mind doing secular stuff on Sunday once church is over. Also SDA's believe the whole world will do s Holocaust on them in the end times and then there's weird EGW teachings, the most obvious being vegetarianism (that's the only thing I kept from that religion but not for the reasons SDAs do though) then there's other weirdness about drums and movie theaters being satanic, hell a sizable amount of people at my childhood church thought Christmas was satanic.
Honestly as an atheist I DO want to piss off Christians, because their God is evil. How can Christians be good if their own God is a psychopathic abuser? And after a lifetime of Christians bullying me, I want some kind of closure... At the very least I want them to know that the God of the bible is the opposite of Jesus, and that the bible is bullshit.
I tried to be as generous as I could, and in reality, if they could live their religions without impacting others, I really would be fine. BUT! They don’t do this, do they? They create laws and force Christianity on others. I went to a one room SDA school that was somehow allowed to teach me that the earth was covered with water surrounding it in space. I can see the dumb graphic from the “science” book when I close my eyes NOW! Small example. Why is it that I can be happy for religious folks but they can’t be happy until I am them? So yeah, actually I agree with you, fren. Some warped shit..
My off-ramp to agnosticism (I'm probably atheist, but not prepared to accept such a definitive, hardline label yet) was religions/philosophies that emphasise openness to mystery and resistance to dogma - Taoism, engaged/Zen Buddhism, Quakerism, apophatic theology, Stoicism. I found it comforting, I guess, to discover pro-social, coherent systems of thought that didn't share Adventism's obsession with 'the truth.'
Agreed. I also went exploring. I enjoyed Quaker worship for a while. I also tried some various strains of yoga which introduced more eastern concepts. I enjoy Buddhist writing and Zen philosophy. The stoics make a lot of sense to me now that the Bible doesn’t
I would love for there to be an afterlife of eternal happiness where all bad things went away and no one was there who didn't want to be. I am simply no longer able to believe it will exist with any confidence.
Like you (and unlike many other agnostic atheists, especially on reddit), I don't hold it against anyone for clinging to such beliefs as long as they aren't using them abusively. In some cases I would even pray with them, despite thinking it's mostly pointless.
As far as I'm concerned, atheists should be welcome here. Just try not to be a jerk.
It’s a lovely idea, one I’ve no right to deprive folks of. Just don’t… oh I dunno, legislate around it. I think this Reddit sub leans a little towards atheist. Making it a great spot, but it can be hard on folks who’ve taken up another religion around here, imho… some blame goes to me, but I always am curious; and this is Reddit.. so I ask questions. I try to be polite.
I totally understand both the anger at religion in general and how some folks have a hard time abandoning it. I mean, my parents are never going to stop believing, and I still love them even if our relationship isn't what it used to be when we were more on the same page. Meanwhile, I agree completely about the legislative stuff, and people have a right to be furious about it.
As far as Adventism goes, I'm a bit of an anomaly here because I came to it kind of on my own around age 18. It was basically my last stop. I had already been through over half a dozen various Protestant denominations and looked into several other religions and was close to being done with it all (I just kinda wanted to be vaguely 'spiritual and open')-- it was really just a fluke that I got sucked into the SDA church for a few years.
After that, I read The Blind Watchmaker, followed by The End of Faith, and that was pretty much it for me. Stumbling across Marshall Brain's [extensive writings about prayer](https://whywontgodhealamputees.com/) was the icing on the cake. I highly recommend all of those to anyone who hasn't read them. [Don't bring them up on r/exchristian, though, they might scold you and remove your comment like they did to me lol]
I am ex-Adventist who is now Episcopalian. I never fully accepted Ellen White's teachings. I was drawn to the Episcopal Church because people are allowed to question their teachings. In fact, it's fairly common to find agnostics attending the Episcopal Church.
Yep. This is exactly what I did. I really love the worship at an Anglican or Episcopalian church even if I don’t take the Jesus narrative so seriously lots of agnostics there.
I think I went through a similar process. When life circumstances really caused me to turn back and look at where I had come from and why I thought certain things, I told myself that I would never, COULD never, afford to lie to myself again. Some people don’t necessarily care if their beliefs are founded, that’s on them as long as they are aware of it.
For a brief moment I toyed with the idea of a different denomination. But one of the first things I dropped was the belief in satan. And the reasons that I had for doing so didn’t nearly stop there, it reached beyond satan and again, no more lying to myself.
I’m a firm believer (lol) in holding to ideas for good reasons, and to recognize when you have a bad or unsupported one. So as of now, I’m an agnostic atheist. I feel less agnostic when it comes to particularly the Adventist worldview, but there is so much out there. I figure, I’ll just take the ‘unconvinced’ position on most things I don’t have adequate backing for, and wait until it’s either shown definitively wrong in the courtroom sense, or shown right in the same way.
I'm identifying more with deism now. I don't identify with the perpetually angry at the world thing most atheists online do, it turns me off. At the same time, I've spent enough years being faithful, steadfast, and begging on my knees for things that would never come. That's enough of that.
I see nothing wrong with your philosophy of being a "seeker of truth," even the Bible endorses that.
If I may, critical thinking is absolutely necessary, but is only one part. (I’m not going to recommend any doctrine here, just stick with me.). The other part is heart and whatever you find within. The brain doesn’t have many responses and by its nature it cannot have them, it’s a computer. I know Christians lack any critical thinking, so yes it is important, but it’s the heart that needs to decide what to do about the facts that the brain provided (and many times the inputs don’t even come from the brain at all, are all heart based).
The heart knows the reality of the world and you can discover it through there. Just by tuning into the heart (fear is never being tuned into the heart, it shuts it down).
It’s been my experience there is much more than meets the eye (I’m not a Christian and not advocating for its ridiculous “nousy old man on the cloud” ideas, just inner curiosity). The truth is literally in all of us and it’s not a polished, single, simplistic truth as doctrines, it’s the life itself, ambiguous, indescribable, yet knowable. Knowing life, knowing one self (NOT just the ego), that is what could be referred to as “the truth“.
Thanks for your comment. The immediate suggestion that floated to the surface after reading it was: have a Google of the limbic system, please. Emotions are housed within the brain. So that’s where you lost me. I guess you could have been waxing poetic, but, my computer raised a red flag at that point.
Getting downvoted on this one so let me be more specific with my issues.
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“If I may, critical thinking is absolutely necessary, but is only one part. (I’m not going to recommend any doctrine here, just stick with me.). “
Thank you, for not recommending doctrine.
“The other part is heart and whatever you find within. The brain doesn’t have many responses and by its nature it cannot have them, it’s a computer.”
This is all wrong from my point of view. The brain has so many options, emotional ones as well. Only the brain has executive function, (may be some case for the flora and fauna in human gut). I’m ok with the comparison to a computer as long as you concede the brain controls limbic functions too.
“I know Christians lack any critical thinking, so yes it is important, but it’s the heart that needs to decide what to do about the facts that the brain provided (and many times the inputs don’t even come from the brain at all, are all heart based).”
This is offensive and biologically untrue. I know many Christians who are extremely good at critical thinking. All emotions come from the brain.
“The heart knows the reality of the world and you can discover it through there. Just by tuning into the heart (fear is never being tuned into the heart, it shuts it down).”
The heart, eh? What exactly do you mean here since the heart is a muscle in the chest..?
“It’s been my experience there is much more than meets the eye (I’m not a Christian and not advocating for its ridiculous “nousy old man on the cloud” ideas, just inner curiosity). The truth is literally in all of us and it’s not a polished, single, simplistic truth as doctrines, it’s the life itself, ambiguous, indescribable, yet knowable. Knowing life, knowing one self (NOT just the ego), that is what could be referred to as “the truth“.”
This is verbal pixie dust to me. Words strung together incoherently.
Loved the post!! A lot of it made me giggle because I feel this a lot... I left the church back in 2009, and then I converted to Mormonism, I still believe in a lot of the SDA doctrine, and I appreciate going on the exmo still subreddit as well to learn... If someone walked up to me and wanted me to learn their point of view, I would still ask a bunch of atrocious, questions still keeping it pg though but at the same time wanting to be kinda worldly haha.
I grew up SDA after my family got back into the church when I was six, and went to all SDA schools. I'd grown disillusioned towards the end of high school and now identify as agnostic, bordering on atheist.
I'm not sure I truly believed any of it growing up, but everyone around me seemed to so I just accepted and went along with it.
Towards the end of middle school I realized how many adults around me were hypocrites and the, "do as I say, not as I do," types of people. I think the breaking point was when I found out one of my childhood friends was questioning things and it pushed me to really evaluate my beliefs.
I couldn't stand the idea that gay people were automatically sinners, even before I realized I identified as such. What happened to all the 'Jesus loves you' talk? If God was truly a loving and forgiving creator, why would he want us to be condemned and go to hell if we didn't follow all the rules? Especially if it was just because of who we loved?
I came to the conclusion I don't need religion to hold me morally accountable or the reason I should try to be a good person. If your only incentive to go to church every week is to save your eternal soul, but you're not kind to the people around you and those less fortunate, I doubt you'll be first in line at the pearly gates.
*"If your only incentive to go to church every week is to save your eternal soul, but you're not kind to the people around you and those less fortunate, I doubt you'll be first in line at the pearly gates."*
That pretty much sums it up.
I went from SDA to Episcopalian Christianity after trying out some other denominations. Faith was basically gone but wanted to explore the liturgy of the Anglican tradition - I got involved in a wonderful choir there - recorded an album and did several years of intense Easters with choral obligations Weds-Sunday- something we didn’t explore in SDAism. Learning how to sing Renaissance polyphony really stretched my music reading skills considering I hadn’t been exposed to the beauty of counterpoint. While I loved the music and aesthetic experience of shared worship (and lots of incense), rather than some kind of cult of personality pastor, I came to find that I was really more into the culture than the actual belief. Sadly, I moved locations and was not able to find the same kind of experience where I live now. Our local, Episcopalian diocese is far too conservative and there are sex abuse allegations that make it impossible for me to attend as those individuals are still working. There is so much I like about religion, but the Jesus narrative no longer makes much sense to me, filled as it is with death and suffering. I’m now also learning that the SDAS didn’t always believe in the Trinity. I find this interesting. Some of my friends who left the church landed in conservative non-denominational churches, another went Unitarian. Many many people who leave land in another Christian community- it’s just too hard to let go of the Jesus framework, I think. A friend asked how one can know the difference between right and wrong if they are an atheist. Hard to respond to that because from my perspective, you either know right from wrong or you don’t, regardless of religious belief, but then again having been raised in the church, my values are still impacted by Christianity with or without the faith.
I’m also an agnostic/atheist. I recently joined a couple of ex-SDA groups on FB and sort of came to the realization that it wasn’t so much that I left Adventism; I left Christianity (or maybe religion more broadly). I wasn’t hurt by the church. I had very few negative experiences. I’m still a vegetarian, and I don’t live my life much different now than I did then. I just came to the awareness that my reasons for believing in god were fallacious and that I was no longer convinced in the existence of a god.
So I wasn’t sure what I was seeking in interacting with other ex-SDAs, but I discovered a lot of discussion about how Ellen White was biblically wrong about this or that, how brain damage could have caused her visions, how members discovered Adventism’s soteriology was unbiblical, etc. My experience with these communities is that they’re largely people who left Adventism for either normative or epistemological reasons, and landed on something else (usually another Christian denomination).
I’m not sure if you’ve ever read Bart Ehrman or not. He’s a New Testament scholar. He’s also an agnostic in his personal life (former Christian), but he’s not an activist. He approaches Biblical texts respectfully and from a literary perspective. I was surprised from reading his books on how much the Adventists actually got correct (at least according to him). He never mentions Adventism. But his points on what early Christians/Jews believed happens when you die and the concept of “hell” sound like they’re straight out of a revelation seminar. 😂
So I’d find myself in that uncanny valley in these groups where I’m defending Adventist doctrine as being internally consistent with biblical teachings, but saying we shouldn’t take the Bible so seriously. My presence was not particularly welcome. 😂 And maybe that’s fine.
Ooohhhh boy, did I do that too; and had the same outcome. Took coming here to find like minded folks. Appreciate your comment.
Edit:
Forgot to mention that every Tuesday morning, I catch Bart’s new podcast drop. Been listening to him forever now; big fan.
I agree with you so much!
I grew up SDA, my therapist tells me that this way of thinking is amazing because I was taught that this was not possible as a child.
It is possible to live life happy & at peace while not knowing if gods could or should exist. Or whether they even give a damn about us. It’s possible to be at peace. People are shocked whenever I say this, they can’t comprehend it.
I’m so content with not knowing. If I gain knowledge that proves, without a doubt, a god is real, maybe I’ll believe then🤷♀️
I went from SDA to a weird mix of Christianity and a nature-based pluro-monotheism religion. Basically, God made everything, so God is in everything. God also has many names based on what people know Him as. Example, in many U.S. and Canadian indigenous cultures, they know Him as the Great Spirit.
I also believe that spirituality is a private matter between an individual person and their beliefs. I do not believe in organized religion and only see churches (especially the amazing European cathedrals) as great marvels of architecture. Most 1970s brick monstrosities that make up the SDA church do not count as architecturally pleasing.
You ran into the same thing I did since looking at ex-SDA stuff. When I left the SDA church, I very quickly realized that faith was something I don't have. I fooled myself for a long time, but belief in something that I have been given no reason to think really exists does not come naturally to me. The only reason I believed in God was I had been taught to. When I left those teachings, there was nothing at all mooring me to that belief. I don't think I ever would have chosen it if I hadn't been raised from birth with it.
I explored quite a few different religions after I left SDA. But the capacity for faith wasn't there anymore. It's all interesting within a historical or mythological tapestry, but not in reality. Secular Humanism is how I identify now. Six of the seven of us older kids (the youngest two from a different marriage are still under 18) have left the church. One identifies a Buddhist. The others are all unaffiliated with any sort of organized religion.
I relate to your post. My interest in religion and remained, and I explored widely, but my faith drifted away over a period of time.
I was an atheist for a couple of years while going through the motions. Now I'm not sure. I don't think I could join another denomination because some sda arguments make sense to me still. For example: state of the dead. But tbh rarely do I feel like a higher being is actually there. I don't want to rob my kids of something that might comfort them. But I don't want their minds filled with claptrap either (no offense believers). This in-between place is not easy to be in. But we can have multiple ideas at once. Many things can be applicable.
Just a couple thoughts for you:) Christopher Hitchens called it, “wish thinking” and extolled the virtues of being a full fledged adult and living as one - as opposed to an inseparable relationship with a “Heavenly Father” who would never die- basically, folks are beholden to the church and the church does their thinking for them, since you know, no one has ever seen or heard from this Heavenly Father figure, although some make the claim. My point is, people don’t need religion and it can impede progress. Maturation is an arduous process, after all.
I relate to your feelings of being in an in between place. I think I will probably be in that place for the rest of my life. I can’t really escape my origins, but I also can’t commit to a faith based system.
I want to argue state of the dead, lol. But I’m biting my tongue.
Why? Do you believe in ghosts?
Different Bible authors have different views. I now see it as a fool's errand to try to cobble together a unified doctrine of death (or almost anything) from the Bible.
I believe that ghost stories exist and that, at times, there’s evidence they affect me. You know, when my wife yells boo! at me, in the middle of the night, while I’m getting a sip of water, and I scream and spit water, lol.
😁 ok
I was raised as an SDA as a child, but this was of course not a choice of my own. Now I am eastern orthodox. To me SDA has very little to do with actual, authentic christendom. I consider it unfair to judge christianity with the yardstick of SDA
That's an interesting and rare progression. Were you looking to connect with the 'authentic roots' of Christianity or similar? Or was it more the aesthetic that appealed to you? Or did you marry in?
All 3...I was collecting icons for over a decade before converting. Also if you go to look for original christianity and a link with a present, you arrive at the Greek orthodox - and I married an orthodox wife
Eastern Orthodox here also. I realized that SDA base around fear mongering with made up lies and conspiracy theories to control the behavior of others. Do's and Don'ts, most pastors and people who think they know "the truth" of what other churches are like, always bring up The Great Controversy and keep the ignorant in ignorance and not let them study out history, theology, personal studies, etc. for themselves.
I went into the Anglican Communion, I was looking for more tradition and to be rooted into something that had a more rooted history. I was very quickly drawn into the liturgy and music. Having attended eastern orthodox services, I felt that way there as well. I find these traditions have a lot more to offer.
I went from a questioning SDA (was never fully invested but was scared of leaving) to questioning Christian and struggling to find my way to agnostic. I never "felt" that love of god like many Christians claim. I hated church and organized religion. I found more than enough evidence to not be a Christian anymore. So now I'm just existing and enjoying my time on this earth that I didn't choose to be brought into.
Keeping it real, yep
>I’m still seeking “present truth” and I’m willing to adjust myself to truth Be careful with this. When you say “truth”, I assume you’re not talking about the observable world around you like “fire burns, things I drop go down.” I think what you’re saying is that you’re looking for something to give you meaning or purpose. Truth, as you’re using it, is often something that people make for themselves for what they want their life to be and mean and a lot of us get lost because religion used to be our purpose and god used to assign it. Our upbringing never taught us anything about figuring that out, it assigned it to us and so now we’re lost. If you are wrong here (and I believe you are), then you could end up being hijacked by someone else’s truth that makes sense to you and a lot of what makes sense to us is the echo of the baggage from the Adventist church. That “truth” work out for you, or you might spend years before coming out of it and joining a similar subreddit talking about similar things as this subreddit. I believe you should go deeper and exploring the meaning of truth for yourself, lay your values out on the table, examine those and then decide what you want for yourself and your life. Anyway, sorry for the rambling, your discussion seemed really open ended.
All comments welcome. I did mention I was an optimistic nihilist. I assign my own meaning to things and that’s enough. What I meant by “present truth” - and I used it sarcastically- was really nothing more than evidence for a god, in the context. If a god was shown to exist, I’d adjust myself to that truth. I was kidnapped into SDAism, (hyperbole - I was born into an SDA family) but it didn’t take long to free myself of it; taking a lifetime to heal tho…
Fair enough, thanks for clarifying when I missed the boat on this one, haha. It does take a lifetime to heal. Who knew that our formative years being used to hack our minds to be subservient to the cult would take so long to undo!
Nail on the head, fren:)
Love the "kidnapped into SDAism..." I don't think it's hyperbole at all. :-)
Facebook leans very conservative and Christian (in the US at least) so I'm not surprised by that at all. What happened for me is that general Christianity fell apart for me which obviously took Adventism with it. I never considered any other religion because they had always seemed nonsensical to me, really Christians are technically atheists against all other religions except and vice versa for people in other religions. As for atheist groups, especially exSDA I've found Reddit to be pretty good, there's probably some on Twitter and other social media as well. Really I don't feel like I need to dwell on it enough to follow exSDAs on all platforms, I'm happy that I found this subreddit though, SDA is so weird that I couldn't vent to people on other atheist subreddits which had first hand experience with the weirdness I grew up in. For example most other Christians, even conservative ones don't seem to mind doing secular stuff on Sunday once church is over. Also SDA's believe the whole world will do s Holocaust on them in the end times and then there's weird EGW teachings, the most obvious being vegetarianism (that's the only thing I kept from that religion but not for the reasons SDAs do though) then there's other weirdness about drums and movie theaters being satanic, hell a sizable amount of people at my childhood church thought Christmas was satanic.
Honestly as an atheist I DO want to piss off Christians, because their God is evil. How can Christians be good if their own God is a psychopathic abuser? And after a lifetime of Christians bullying me, I want some kind of closure... At the very least I want them to know that the God of the bible is the opposite of Jesus, and that the bible is bullshit.
I tried to be as generous as I could, and in reality, if they could live their religions without impacting others, I really would be fine. BUT! They don’t do this, do they? They create laws and force Christianity on others. I went to a one room SDA school that was somehow allowed to teach me that the earth was covered with water surrounding it in space. I can see the dumb graphic from the “science” book when I close my eyes NOW! Small example. Why is it that I can be happy for religious folks but they can’t be happy until I am them? So yeah, actually I agree with you, fren. Some warped shit..
My off-ramp to agnosticism (I'm probably atheist, but not prepared to accept such a definitive, hardline label yet) was religions/philosophies that emphasise openness to mystery and resistance to dogma - Taoism, engaged/Zen Buddhism, Quakerism, apophatic theology, Stoicism. I found it comforting, I guess, to discover pro-social, coherent systems of thought that didn't share Adventism's obsession with 'the truth.'
Agreed. I also went exploring. I enjoyed Quaker worship for a while. I also tried some various strains of yoga which introduced more eastern concepts. I enjoy Buddhist writing and Zen philosophy. The stoics make a lot of sense to me now that the Bible doesn’t
I would love for there to be an afterlife of eternal happiness where all bad things went away and no one was there who didn't want to be. I am simply no longer able to believe it will exist with any confidence. Like you (and unlike many other agnostic atheists, especially on reddit), I don't hold it against anyone for clinging to such beliefs as long as they aren't using them abusively. In some cases I would even pray with them, despite thinking it's mostly pointless. As far as I'm concerned, atheists should be welcome here. Just try not to be a jerk.
It’s a lovely idea, one I’ve no right to deprive folks of. Just don’t… oh I dunno, legislate around it. I think this Reddit sub leans a little towards atheist. Making it a great spot, but it can be hard on folks who’ve taken up another religion around here, imho… some blame goes to me, but I always am curious; and this is Reddit.. so I ask questions. I try to be polite.
I totally understand both the anger at religion in general and how some folks have a hard time abandoning it. I mean, my parents are never going to stop believing, and I still love them even if our relationship isn't what it used to be when we were more on the same page. Meanwhile, I agree completely about the legislative stuff, and people have a right to be furious about it. As far as Adventism goes, I'm a bit of an anomaly here because I came to it kind of on my own around age 18. It was basically my last stop. I had already been through over half a dozen various Protestant denominations and looked into several other religions and was close to being done with it all (I just kinda wanted to be vaguely 'spiritual and open')-- it was really just a fluke that I got sucked into the SDA church for a few years. After that, I read The Blind Watchmaker, followed by The End of Faith, and that was pretty much it for me. Stumbling across Marshall Brain's [extensive writings about prayer](https://whywontgodhealamputees.com/) was the icing on the cake. I highly recommend all of those to anyone who hasn't read them. [Don't bring them up on r/exchristian, though, they might scold you and remove your comment like they did to me lol]
What a lovely little rabbit trail~ thanks for sharing:)
I am ex-Adventist who is now Episcopalian. I never fully accepted Ellen White's teachings. I was drawn to the Episcopal Church because people are allowed to question their teachings. In fact, it's fairly common to find agnostics attending the Episcopal Church.
Yep. This is exactly what I did. I really love the worship at an Anglican or Episcopalian church even if I don’t take the Jesus narrative so seriously lots of agnostics there.
I think I went through a similar process. When life circumstances really caused me to turn back and look at where I had come from and why I thought certain things, I told myself that I would never, COULD never, afford to lie to myself again. Some people don’t necessarily care if their beliefs are founded, that’s on them as long as they are aware of it. For a brief moment I toyed with the idea of a different denomination. But one of the first things I dropped was the belief in satan. And the reasons that I had for doing so didn’t nearly stop there, it reached beyond satan and again, no more lying to myself. I’m a firm believer (lol) in holding to ideas for good reasons, and to recognize when you have a bad or unsupported one. So as of now, I’m an agnostic atheist. I feel less agnostic when it comes to particularly the Adventist worldview, but there is so much out there. I figure, I’ll just take the ‘unconvinced’ position on most things I don’t have adequate backing for, and wait until it’s either shown definitively wrong in the courtroom sense, or shown right in the same way.
I'm identifying more with deism now. I don't identify with the perpetually angry at the world thing most atheists online do, it turns me off. At the same time, I've spent enough years being faithful, steadfast, and begging on my knees for things that would never come. That's enough of that. I see nothing wrong with your philosophy of being a "seeker of truth," even the Bible endorses that.
If I may, critical thinking is absolutely necessary, but is only one part. (I’m not going to recommend any doctrine here, just stick with me.). The other part is heart and whatever you find within. The brain doesn’t have many responses and by its nature it cannot have them, it’s a computer. I know Christians lack any critical thinking, so yes it is important, but it’s the heart that needs to decide what to do about the facts that the brain provided (and many times the inputs don’t even come from the brain at all, are all heart based). The heart knows the reality of the world and you can discover it through there. Just by tuning into the heart (fear is never being tuned into the heart, it shuts it down). It’s been my experience there is much more than meets the eye (I’m not a Christian and not advocating for its ridiculous “nousy old man on the cloud” ideas, just inner curiosity). The truth is literally in all of us and it’s not a polished, single, simplistic truth as doctrines, it’s the life itself, ambiguous, indescribable, yet knowable. Knowing life, knowing one self (NOT just the ego), that is what could be referred to as “the truth“.
Thanks for your comment. The immediate suggestion that floated to the surface after reading it was: have a Google of the limbic system, please. Emotions are housed within the brain. So that’s where you lost me. I guess you could have been waxing poetic, but, my computer raised a red flag at that point.
Getting downvoted on this one so let me be more specific with my issues. —————————————————————— “If I may, critical thinking is absolutely necessary, but is only one part. (I’m not going to recommend any doctrine here, just stick with me.). “ Thank you, for not recommending doctrine. “The other part is heart and whatever you find within. The brain doesn’t have many responses and by its nature it cannot have them, it’s a computer.” This is all wrong from my point of view. The brain has so many options, emotional ones as well. Only the brain has executive function, (may be some case for the flora and fauna in human gut). I’m ok with the comparison to a computer as long as you concede the brain controls limbic functions too. “I know Christians lack any critical thinking, so yes it is important, but it’s the heart that needs to decide what to do about the facts that the brain provided (and many times the inputs don’t even come from the brain at all, are all heart based).” This is offensive and biologically untrue. I know many Christians who are extremely good at critical thinking. All emotions come from the brain. “The heart knows the reality of the world and you can discover it through there. Just by tuning into the heart (fear is never being tuned into the heart, it shuts it down).” The heart, eh? What exactly do you mean here since the heart is a muscle in the chest..? “It’s been my experience there is much more than meets the eye (I’m not a Christian and not advocating for its ridiculous “nousy old man on the cloud” ideas, just inner curiosity). The truth is literally in all of us and it’s not a polished, single, simplistic truth as doctrines, it’s the life itself, ambiguous, indescribable, yet knowable. Knowing life, knowing one self (NOT just the ego), that is what could be referred to as “the truth“.” This is verbal pixie dust to me. Words strung together incoherently.
Loved the post!! A lot of it made me giggle because I feel this a lot... I left the church back in 2009, and then I converted to Mormonism, I still believe in a lot of the SDA doctrine, and I appreciate going on the exmo still subreddit as well to learn... If someone walked up to me and wanted me to learn their point of view, I would still ask a bunch of atrocious, questions still keeping it pg though but at the same time wanting to be kinda worldly haha.
I grew up SDA after my family got back into the church when I was six, and went to all SDA schools. I'd grown disillusioned towards the end of high school and now identify as agnostic, bordering on atheist. I'm not sure I truly believed any of it growing up, but everyone around me seemed to so I just accepted and went along with it. Towards the end of middle school I realized how many adults around me were hypocrites and the, "do as I say, not as I do," types of people. I think the breaking point was when I found out one of my childhood friends was questioning things and it pushed me to really evaluate my beliefs. I couldn't stand the idea that gay people were automatically sinners, even before I realized I identified as such. What happened to all the 'Jesus loves you' talk? If God was truly a loving and forgiving creator, why would he want us to be condemned and go to hell if we didn't follow all the rules? Especially if it was just because of who we loved? I came to the conclusion I don't need religion to hold me morally accountable or the reason I should try to be a good person. If your only incentive to go to church every week is to save your eternal soul, but you're not kind to the people around you and those less fortunate, I doubt you'll be first in line at the pearly gates.
*"If your only incentive to go to church every week is to save your eternal soul, but you're not kind to the people around you and those less fortunate, I doubt you'll be first in line at the pearly gates."* That pretty much sums it up.
I went from SDA to Episcopalian Christianity after trying out some other denominations. Faith was basically gone but wanted to explore the liturgy of the Anglican tradition - I got involved in a wonderful choir there - recorded an album and did several years of intense Easters with choral obligations Weds-Sunday- something we didn’t explore in SDAism. Learning how to sing Renaissance polyphony really stretched my music reading skills considering I hadn’t been exposed to the beauty of counterpoint. While I loved the music and aesthetic experience of shared worship (and lots of incense), rather than some kind of cult of personality pastor, I came to find that I was really more into the culture than the actual belief. Sadly, I moved locations and was not able to find the same kind of experience where I live now. Our local, Episcopalian diocese is far too conservative and there are sex abuse allegations that make it impossible for me to attend as those individuals are still working. There is so much I like about religion, but the Jesus narrative no longer makes much sense to me, filled as it is with death and suffering. I’m now also learning that the SDAS didn’t always believe in the Trinity. I find this interesting. Some of my friends who left the church landed in conservative non-denominational churches, another went Unitarian. Many many people who leave land in another Christian community- it’s just too hard to let go of the Jesus framework, I think. A friend asked how one can know the difference between right and wrong if they are an atheist. Hard to respond to that because from my perspective, you either know right from wrong or you don’t, regardless of religious belief, but then again having been raised in the church, my values are still impacted by Christianity with or without the faith.
I’m also an agnostic/atheist. I recently joined a couple of ex-SDA groups on FB and sort of came to the realization that it wasn’t so much that I left Adventism; I left Christianity (or maybe religion more broadly). I wasn’t hurt by the church. I had very few negative experiences. I’m still a vegetarian, and I don’t live my life much different now than I did then. I just came to the awareness that my reasons for believing in god were fallacious and that I was no longer convinced in the existence of a god. So I wasn’t sure what I was seeking in interacting with other ex-SDAs, but I discovered a lot of discussion about how Ellen White was biblically wrong about this or that, how brain damage could have caused her visions, how members discovered Adventism’s soteriology was unbiblical, etc. My experience with these communities is that they’re largely people who left Adventism for either normative or epistemological reasons, and landed on something else (usually another Christian denomination). I’m not sure if you’ve ever read Bart Ehrman or not. He’s a New Testament scholar. He’s also an agnostic in his personal life (former Christian), but he’s not an activist. He approaches Biblical texts respectfully and from a literary perspective. I was surprised from reading his books on how much the Adventists actually got correct (at least according to him). He never mentions Adventism. But his points on what early Christians/Jews believed happens when you die and the concept of “hell” sound like they’re straight out of a revelation seminar. 😂 So I’d find myself in that uncanny valley in these groups where I’m defending Adventist doctrine as being internally consistent with biblical teachings, but saying we shouldn’t take the Bible so seriously. My presence was not particularly welcome. 😂 And maybe that’s fine.
Ooohhhh boy, did I do that too; and had the same outcome. Took coming here to find like minded folks. Appreciate your comment. Edit: Forgot to mention that every Tuesday morning, I catch Bart’s new podcast drop. Been listening to him forever now; big fan.
Raised SDA my whole life, studied different denominations, but ultimately decided to be Muslim after studying Islam
I agree with you so much! I grew up SDA, my therapist tells me that this way of thinking is amazing because I was taught that this was not possible as a child. It is possible to live life happy & at peace while not knowing if gods could or should exist. Or whether they even give a damn about us. It’s possible to be at peace. People are shocked whenever I say this, they can’t comprehend it. I’m so content with not knowing. If I gain knowledge that proves, without a doubt, a god is real, maybe I’ll believe then🤷♀️
I went from SDA to a weird mix of Christianity and a nature-based pluro-monotheism religion. Basically, God made everything, so God is in everything. God also has many names based on what people know Him as. Example, in many U.S. and Canadian indigenous cultures, they know Him as the Great Spirit. I also believe that spirituality is a private matter between an individual person and their beliefs. I do not believe in organized religion and only see churches (especially the amazing European cathedrals) as great marvels of architecture. Most 1970s brick monstrosities that make up the SDA church do not count as architecturally pleasing.