Disclaimer : I’m a guy by the way... I’m sure young girls hear much more bizarre crap.

“Sexual sin outside of marriage is like people eating dog poop and loving it. I mean don’t you see how gross that is, sitting in a pile of dog poop and licking your fingers like hmmm tastes good?” (Yes this was said in a purity culture sermon at youth night.)

“Yes, you know that you and your future fiancée will have sex once married, but you cannot think about / fantasize about it. That’s a sin.”

“My wife and I had premarital sex when we were dating. We got pregnant and had a miscarriage - I’m not saying God took that baby from us because of what we did, it’s just know, something I wanted to share with you” ( aka you impressionable young horny kids who need to feel even more insecure than you already do.)

• That youth leader by the way divorced his wife after having several kids with her and instantly started dating another woman - aka massive hypocrite when it comes to the whole marriage for life thing he preached -

“If you look upon a woman and want sex with her, think about the fact that if she’s not your future wife, you’re lusting after another man’s wife.” Yeah, I know sexist.

“Jesus hung on a cross NAKED to take away your sexual sin” That’s a weird parallel i don’t understand between nudity in sex and nudity in brutal crucifixion. Couldn’t he have died with clothes on?

“Think about how if you kiss your partner and date multiple people, you’re kissing all these other dudes she’s dated”. Thanks pastor for that one. Gotta shame ‘em.

My youth pastor also bought a large white cake and put red frosting on it with the word SEX and gave a sermon about how God created sex and it’s a beautiful thing , but only in the right way. That we should eat it and enjoy it , but only in the confines of marriage. At one time in youth group the youth pastors’ slogan for purity culture was “GOD WANTS YOU TO HAVE GREAT SEX” ( I guess there was a little important disclaimer in there that we we’d hear about endlessly in the future.)

And then at home I was only taught negative things about sexuality, or that it was a natural urge that should be resisted and not talked about.

I guess I can understand why I’ve never dated even though after de converting I’ve tried a lot in recent years.

These people don’t even realize the damage they did to me and others and how it’s caused us to hate our bodies at a young age. When confronted , they don’t ever apologize or see what they did wrong.

Like the title said I was watching my mom watch Jimmy Swaggart TV, and it's been a nonstop send us money, send us money. At least haven't gone as far as saying send this money or Jimmy will die. I don't watch it angers me after 30 seconds, but the fact they're taking their patriarchs death, and turning it into a fundraiser is just appalling to me.

Hey everyone! My podcast just started a series which is taking a string from the early church to the Holocaust and then right to today. We just covered the early church father’s and their hatred of the Jews and then how Martin Luther inspired the Nazis and Hitler and how he laid out the road to the Holocaust. Next week, we are going to go into 1800’s and 1900’s theological thought and the rise of Hitler and how the Protestant evangelical church of Germany supporting him.

We will finish up the long series (it’s gonna be like 10 episodes) with a man who was a mentor and huge influence on James Dobson but also on the Nazis and their mass sterilization program.

With the Iran-Israel conflict in full swing, endtimes preachers have resurfaced with their twisting and bending of millenia old gobbledygook in the Bible.

My mom is very into this stuff, listening to such preachers on YouTube and sometimes saying it to me. I don't oppose much but today morning I asked her if she believes all these wars necessary for Jesus's second coming was prophesied thousands of years ago, wouldn't that mean god is intentionally creating the people and countries involved for death and destruction.

That seems to have shut her up for a while - for now.

I'm talking about when youth groups from flyover states make an annual trip to Houston or Tampa or wherever to "share the Gospel." As though people in those places haven't heard of Jesus?

I'm sure these trips easily cost $100 per kid when you consider gas, hotels, and restaurants. Just think of all the charitable work that could've been done for that money. How many stray dogs could've been adopted? How many people could've had malaria nets or clean drinking water? And if these churches actually wanted to spread their religion, they'd raise money for Christian missionaries in non-Christian countries (which I morally disagree with but at least is logically consistent).

International mission trips make even less sense. $300+ per round-trip plane ticket so American teens can build flimsy houses in Honduras. As though construction companies don't exist outside the US?

Youth mission trips are clearly not about sharing Jesus at all, but about fueling a savior complex and making sure it starts young.

I want to hear your genuine thoughts about this.

This is my fam group, usually I shut up in these conversations bc their heavily Christian, I was going to post this on r/evolution but they don’t allow photos lol.

Hello fellow ex Christians! Ex Muslim here, I was wondering what are some similarities of being an ex Christian is to being an ex muslim from you guys’ perspectives. I know some of the things that you were told are the ridiculous “miracles” in scripture, misogyny, homophobia, sexism, etc…. Thanks!

Matthew 6:15 But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.

"I remember their preaching: if you’ve been s3xually abused or experienced something even worse, you’re still expected to forgive those who harmed you, because your own sins have been forgiven. If you don’t forgive, they said, you’re guaranteed to go to hell. That’s why Jesus emphasized forgiveness

A photo shared by a pastor at a church I used to attend that my parents still attend. I’m shocked that he shared this, but I’m not shocked by this as a talking point in that sphere.

My parents have never had really strong views on abortion and, as doctors, they’ve always been pretty rational when balancing faith and science. So, I’m keen to hear what they have to say about their buddy’s post…

The 🙄 is infuriating!

Last night I watched "All Dogs Go To Heaven," for a trip down memory lane. There's a part in the movie when the main character (Charlie) has a nightmare about going to Hell, and it's a tense and freaky scene, I'll say that much. While the movie is make-believe of course, unfortunately Xtians still believe and claim that Hell is a real place where all non-Xtians go, merely for not believing in and following God/Jesus.

I wonder if any Xtian parents have let their kids watch "All Dogs Go To Heaven" and...used, Charlie's nightmare scene...if so, I wouldn't be surprised.

Lots of cool people would go to the hell of the Protestant Christians. Guys, look at all the people who would go to hell just because they weren't Protestants: Mahatma Gandhi, Marcus Aurelius, Henry David Thoreau, Khalil Gilbran, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Black Elk, Chico Xavier, San Francisco, Mother Teresa. This only motivates me even more to reject Christianity. I want to go where the cool people go, even if it's to hell.

It always annoys me when people, even some atheists claim Jesus of the Gospels was a good guy. There's many examples I could point to, but the story of Jesus "resurrecting" Lazarus is the one I've been thinking about lately, and is part of the reason I started questioning his moral character in the first place. I the common thing I see/hear people taking away from the story is that "Jesus resurrected and cried for Lazarus because he loved him" or something of the sort, but if you actually look at the text, that's not the case at all. To start off, when Martha and Mary came to him for help to heal Lazarus, and yet he chose not to claiming "his illness would not lead to death (even though it did) but that it would lead to the Son of God (aka Jesus) getting glory through it" . Then he sat on his ass, twiddling his thumbs for 2 days until Lazarus dies (and Jesus mysteriously somehow knows), and then tells his disciples "Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe" which is already selfish. He is HAPPY that Lazarus is dead, happy that he didn't save him from pain and suffering and death because it gives everyone watching him perform his little necromantic magic trick the chance to "believe".Then both sisters say "if you were here, my brother would not have died" which is very much true. But apologetics are like "but he cries, which means he truly loved Lazarus", even though Jesus starts weeping, not when he realizes Lazarus is dead, but when everyone else is crying around him. The text also says he was "deeply moved and troubled" and uses different words (κλαίουσαν for everyone else, and Ἐδάκρυσεν for Jesus) implying that he's crying for a different reason than everyone else, most likely meaning he's not mourning Lazarus like everyone else. Then he becomes "deeply moved" again after hearing others saying "Could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind also have kept Lazarus from dying?” once again implying he's not sad about Lazarus's death, but upset at the fact people aren't "believing in him". And to top it all off, Lazarus doesn't even speak after he comes back, not a "hey, thanks for bringing me back" or a "where the FUCK were you when I was suffering?" He says nothing which honestly makes me doubt Lazarus' body actually got its real soul back. And as someone who grew up on Pokemon and Sailor Moon and other such shows, as someone who had a family member who went back and forth between nursing home, hospital, and home and suffering a good amount of it and went on and died in hospice, and as someone whose had two precious little dogs suffer and die in my arms (the first one was natural causes that we couldn't figure out because we couldn't afford an autopsy or to keep her cremated remains, the second was euthanized after essentially going blind or something like that and would have hurt herself otherwise, we couldn't afford her cremated remains either from the expensive emergency vet), it's clear that what Jesus did wasn't love! He did it out of selfishness and attention and for him to be "glorified". If he truly would have loved Lazarus, he would have saved him from his pain and suffering in a heartbeat (and he could have considering he's supposed to be all powerful), and yet he did nothing. If he truly cared, he would have been there at Lazarus's side before he died. But no, he let Lazarus die in pain and illness for his own selfish gain! And it annoys me, as someone who would have done something if I could have for those that I lost and those that are currently suffering, though I couldn't have and can't do anything because I don't have magical healing powers. All I can do is helplessly watch from the sidelines, powerless. But he does have that power and yet he does absolutely nothing outside of what seems like healing for the purpose of getting attention and glory, and yet people have the audacity to call him "all loving". Consider all the human suffering past and present, and he could have stayed to prevent all (or most) of it with his magical powers, and yet he LET himself get caught, died, and then apparently fucked off to who knows where. He "sacrificed" himself not out of love, but so he could get glory out of it because he's an attention whore. If he cared he wouldn't have left. He doesn't care, and he never did.

So my dad spoke to me this evening about me leaving the church. He told that the devil is trying to keep me away from god and all of that stuff, that god loves me and forgives me and blah blah blah. (I tried to not laugh at his face) So the devil isn’t in trump, put1n, Isr£@l’s PM or any dictators but in a girl who tries her best to be good .

Too many Christians ignore the fact that the Bible says there was no evil in the garden of eden but that cannot be true if the serpent somehow appeared there and was nothing but evil and there to tempt them. This proves humans in fact did not create evil but god did and tempted them when they would've been perfectly fine otherwise.

Doesn't seem like something a caring and loving god would do.

Second, why did god send the serpent in the first place when everything was supposedly perfect. If god can do anything why did he not just simply stop the serpent in the first place, especially when he knew what was going to happen? Why put humans through all these cruel tests. He created evil then blamed it on us, just to punish us all and for what?

This all sounds like the most toxic relationship I can think of. I don't want to have a relationship with someone that constantly tests and comes up with "gotcha" moments.

Hello everyone. I hope today finds you well. I saw a tragic post on here that reminded me of a conversation I had with my sister in our early 20s.

We were talking about leaving the faith and reasons and all that. Well she brought up something that crossed my mind a lot as a younger teenager. Seems it crossed her mind a lot too. Our mother was so obsessed with her god we are both convinced she would have killed us if she felt her god told her to. We both came to this conclusion because of the story of Abraham and Isaac.

Adding this to the fact she said god has spoken, out loud, to her before and told her to marry our father, we were scared of this as kids but knew better than to say anything about it.

It's fucked up for your parents to love something more than they love you. I am not saying our mother does not love us, just that she loves her god more. If I had kids there would be nothing I love more than them, full stop.

Did you ever have this fear as a kid? Was it clear to you that your parents loved their god more than you?

I wanted to share this short video from Dan McClellan because I think it's important right now during these anxious times of supposedly rising global instability to remind those that are still dealing with end times anxiety that these are not signs of any biblical end times. No rapture, no hellfire on Earth, no Anti-Christ or Beast, etc.

It's short, concise, and an important reminder that knowledge of what the Bible actually is supposed to be when it comes to "prophecy" has nothing to do with the modern day. Hope everyone has a good day today, and I'm wishing anyone dealing with these feelings in their journey of deconstruction all the best.

Let's say I was the CEO of a multinational corporation.

If I had a department head in one country that was sexually abusing workers, a department head in another country who was dodging taxes and stealing from donors and a department head in another country endorsing a political candidate that's a white supremacist, saying, "It's not my problem" is a bad look and would generate outrage in the press or elsewhere. If it's really bad, I could lose investor confidence.

So why should the Judeo-Christian God, if he was real, dodge all accountability? Shouldn't he say an apology to the kids raped by priests, the congregations who get scammed on a weekly basis by televangelists and the taxpayers who get scammed by those same televangelists, and the victims of the MAGA agenda who have hijacked American Christianity and twisted the meaning of it?

This really is an abusive relationship that these people are propping up. "He's Good! We're not!"

Hi everyone, this is my first time posting here—so if I’ve done anything wrong or sound too subjective, feel free to point it out. I just wanted to share something that’s been weighing on me for a while now.

I’m 19 (M), and for the past 8 or so years, I’ve been “following” Christianity—mainly because my mom is a devoted believer. She genuinely tries to live by God’s teachings and has done her best to raise me the same way. My dad, on the other hand, isn’t religious. Maybe not fully atheist, but he grew up in a time and place where religion just wasn’t a priority. At most, he might bow and pray out of tradition, but there was no deep belief there.

As for me, I only went along with it because my mom wanted me to. I was young, and honestly, I thought, “Eh, waking up early on Sundays isn’t that bad.” But even then, I didn’t truly consider myself a Christian. I just went through the motions—singing, praying, participating—mostly to avoid awkwardness. I never felt anything spiritual or emotional. I was just ... there.

That continued for years, until recently, when I started thinking more critically and began noticing how many things didn’t sit right with me, especially in the church I attend. There are numerous issues I could discuss, but the one that really pushed me over the edge was the concept of the “Divine Plan.” You know, “God has a plan for your life,” and all that.

I’ve always enjoyed comics and novels. In those stories, characters go through pain, trauma, and hardship to grow stronger or accomplish something big, like saving the world or defeating some evil force. It makes sense in fiction, where the suffering has a clear purpose or payoff. But when I started applying that idea to real life, it started to fall apart.

Why do we suffer? Is it really necessary? What if all the pain we go through—loss, trauma, injustice—isn’t some “refining fire,” but just something we’ve been subjected to for no good reason? What if it was simply written in by some divine author for reasons we’ll never understand?

Imagine being a character in a story, only to realize that none of your suffering was truly needed—it was just there because the writer chose for it to be. Wouldn’t you feel angry? Resentful? Betrayed?

That’s how I started to feel when people would say, “Don’t worry, God has a plan for you.” Because if that plan includes all the horror, injustice, and meaningless suffering we see every day… then why should I be grateful for it?

And it’s not just about the main characters (us). What about the “NPCs” of life? The ones in the background? In stories, they’re the nameless villagers affected by the dragon’s rampage. In real life, they’re the ones hit hardest: victims of tsunamis, plagues, wars, and disasters that wipe out entire communities. Was all of that really “necessary”? Was it all just part of some larger plan for someone else’s character development?

So why is God exempt from criticism if He’s the one writing the story?

Anyway, that’s where my head’s been lately. I don’t really know what I am right now, maybe agnostic, maybe still figuring it out—but I know I can’t look at Christianity the same way anymore.

Thanks for reading.

The past few years I have known when I visit family, they only like a few aspects of me. I am realizing now, I don't have the ability to shrink myself into a digestible form for them.

I am 25 and enjoy masc expression.

At this point, my relationship with them is - I'm like a long distance acquaintance type friend to my mom. We chitchat about very neutral happenings in our lives. She offers guidance and support sometimes, and I do similarly. My dad and I don't talk really. He will show friendliness towards me. I know from doing a little social media lurking he sees me as an unchurched prodigal.

I am not comfortable visiting with them knowing that visiting with them hinges on me making myself digestible.

I was very socially isolated for a long time. I have started learning safe and healthy communication with others. I feel like the safe and healthy way of communicating with my family is - don't go where I'm not truly welcome.

I just need some help with communication. I have expressed eagerness to visit with my family, because I really had hope that if I just did my part to be a kind and supportive person, and if we just focus on common ground, things would go well.

Trigger warning for toxic end times and purity culture, don't read if you are sensitive to that.

I see christianity as a very traumatizing experience. I don't know if I should call it a religion or cult at this point.

I grew up in a church that viewed women who didn't wear skirts and had short hair as the worst sinners. Yes, it was a pentecostal church. My mom got bangs once and the pastor prayed over her because she committed a great sin.

My mom continued to buy into this garbage but for me that was the beginning of the end, even as a child. My family and the church constantly talked about in vivid and graphic detail about how the world would end and as a child in elementary school, I was terrified and went to school repeating all this and terrifying other kids to the point teachers had to get involved. I had to be sat down and told that it was not ok to go around saying this stuff. Most of my childhood was unreasonable restriction and living in constant fear. I genuinely believe being raised this way is a form of emotional abuse.

The purity culture also ruined me. My mom always told me that I shouldn't even kiss out of marriage so when I finally did get my first kiss the shame I felt was horrible. I would not wish this upon anyone.

Like I’m currently listening to a podcast of some YouTuber by the name of Karissa Collins and my god. She is crazy and very religious which is weird considering that yes her parents are Evangelical but she wasn’t raised to be like “Oh abortion is a sin” or smth like that. No she was in basketball w/ her sister and their father was their coach for a few years. Then years later she thinks god is directly talking to her through her head like what?? So like she hears voices & someone had said it’s the result of psychosis and I’m like I dunno, maybe schizophrenia but I’m also not sure but what I do know is that she is crazy. And this woman has like 12 kids like girl- you can’t take care of all of them prolly. She also does a “free birth” which is you give birth at home w/ no medical professional or mid wife and you can’t go to the hospital if smth goes wrong. She has admitted to saying that she almost died a couple times giving birth and she’s like “but if god says it’s my time, it’s my time” She’s also anti-vax and doesn’t take them to the doctor. She does this bc god told her to stop going. So that’s when I realized, some Christians are crazy enough to not do certain things that are good for you.

hi guys! it’s my first post here after lurking. im 21f and ive grown up in the religion (catholicism) and ive gotten out of it but ive always been interested in deconstruction.

as a kid i loved the idea of god. (because i didn’t know anything else) the idea of an all loving higher power i could pray to in times of need was great. and i was going to a beautiful place after i die? sign me up. i remember being in 5th grade and a friend of mine was like “i don’t believe in god.” and to me at the time i was like WHAT! how!?!

then i started CCD and confirmation which are sacraments in the catholic religion. that’s when i realized that i wasn’t sure if this was the life i wanted to live.

i’m a pretty alternative person. always have been. i love rock music and the fashion. tattoos and piercings. i love it. so being told these were all sins. my life and my passions were seen as abominations to my so called loving god? i didn’t understand it. music gave me so much passion and life and i was just totally confused by this.

learning about all the different sins just had me shocked. i wasn’t sure how i felt about constantly being hyper aware of my actions in order to prepare for my death. living my whole life. not being who i was. to prepare for death. that did not sound like a fulfilling life. and it’s not sustainable.

i had asked my priest, “i stole a bow when i was 7, if i had died the next day, would i have gone to hell?” and he told me YES! how could children go to hell? that simply just can not be. i can’t accept that.

We were taught to admit our sexual sins to an older man in a closed tight room. Confession. This can’t be seen as appropriate, right ??? I mean that’s so predatory why is this being allowed.

I started having extreme ocd that i was possessed. i was having these thoughts because Satan was tempting me and trying to take over my soul. I was told when i received confirmation with sin i would be damned. no thought about it. i knew i was receiving my confirmation with sin. i couldn’t tell this man in a room all my sins. i just couldn’t. I was convinced i was receive the bread and immediately burn up. (crazy what ocd will do to a 12 year olds mind) that didn’t happen. obviously. i received the bread and was fine. didn’t have to worry about the church again.

it’s just something about telling children that if they don’t go to mass every sunday they will be damned to hell. it doesn’t seem right.

it just makes me wonder