Getting baptized. Before then, I felt no spiritual connection or “heard the voice of god” or anything. I understood that once I was baptized, I’d be one of god’s children and I assumed the holy stuff would kick in after that point. Funny thing though, nothing changed. No matter how hard I prayed or tried to believe, nothing was different.
I spent several years trying to find literally anything to show that any of it was real. But everything lead to the same dumbfounding dead end: you just have to have faith.
As I learned more about Christianity from a scholarly perspective, it became increasingly clear that it’s not real. The oldest book in the new testament wasn’t written until at least a hundred years after the events took place, meaning it was all disparate verbal stories for hundreds of years. The Council of Nicea later just decided to remove parts and add some new parts to the bible, justifying it by the council itself being divinely inspired to have arrived at the correct version of the bible.
It’s clear now that the rich and powerful have historically used religion as a tool to control and manipulate the masses. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s just an obvious scam that has no basis in reality. So for that reason, I’m out.