Until I was 8-9 years old or so, I was under the impression that god and religion were abstract, philosophical concepts everyone used as practical metaphors. It made perfect sense as mythology and was seemingly culturally bound, different countries and languages having different religious traditions.
Then one day, I suddenly realized people were serious when they say they believed in god and they adhered religion as a matter of faith.
That realization was, and still is, very shocking to me.
I now think being #ActuallyAutistic might have something to do with me not taking people seriously on their religious faith claims.
@CynAq@actuallyautistic when I was 6 or 7, I asked my grandma (the only somewhat religious person I had) : "well, if God is the only god in heaven, where are living the others, like Allah, Jehovah or Vishnu ?". It seemed that these stories were too wtf for me still !
Around 9, I was briefly amazed by Christian religion teaching that all of us were welcomed and loved in the eyes of this guy named Jesus, but it was a very short period of my life 😅
@CynAq@actuallyautistic I was actually a true believer, but I was also sheltered from the world and most of my life I was surrounded by people who affirmed to me that my belief was correct. Then I moved away from home and experienced the world beyond my religion, and found that almost nothing that I had been taught about the world held up as predictive patterns. Cause every example I tried to follow just got me taken advantage of for free labour. Took me a decade to recalibrate my worldview
@Vincarsi What you say here resonates with me. The way I was taught to be, including religion, charity, goodwill, etc. didn't prepare me for the real world and put me in a position where I could be exploited, though my Dad was terrified of exploitation (he was abused by clergy plus had polio as a child) so I had a lot of mixed messages that made things very confusing and difficult to figure out. So I was taught fear & in a way it worked. It was just very unhealthy. @CynAq@actuallyautistic
When I was about 6, the Baptist Sunday school teacher told us that "cute" story about all the animals on Noah's ark and I started crying - why did god frown all the other animals and children? I was horrified.
Later I joined the Mormon church and, about 7 or 8 years in, when I could no longer just accept everything, I was told, "read the scriptures, you'll find all of your answers there "...
@CynAq@actuallyautistic The Mormons have 4 Books of scripture, which include the Book of Mormon and the Bible and I read them all 6 or seven times. Every time I read them I found more upsetting things and more questions.
The final straw came when I was in the kitchen with my father in-law, brother in-law and my husband, who said:
I must be:
breaking the word of wisdom.
becoming too worldly.
committing adultery.
I decided it was no place for a woman who thinks and never looked back.
L! I hadn't done any of that, and my husband accusing me of that, simply because I was having a crisis of faith and asking honest questions that none of them could answer, broke my heart.
I left him, left the church, got my BA in theatre and have, for the last 32 years, been married to a man who had zero interest in having a "Stepford wife"
When I left, a huge percentage of LDS women were suicidal and they couldn't understand why. 🤦♀️
@JosieBLawson@CynAq@actuallyautistic They asked my parents to keep me out of Sunday School. My ASD mind could not grasp their crap. To me, it was just lying.
One thing I love about kids is their honesty and directness. Then we ruin them by punishing/training that out of them. Apparently you can't do that with autistic kids, which is awesome.
@CynAq@actuallyautistic When I was young, I was taught religion like it's facts and I also believed in it for a short time.
What made me skeptical were contradictions within religious teaching and being lied to on religious hollidays about the easterbunny/santaclaus(and it's german equivalents).
To me it felt a bit like at some point adults just forgot to tell their children that besides the easter bunny and santa claus, the whole jesus and god thing is also made up.
I agree. I grew up in a very religious community and actually bought into it for most of my life.
I thank my autism for preventing me from becoming fully indoctrinated.
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