A Commentary on my Religious Stance

Earlier this year, on Saturday 28th January - I believe whilst having dinner at a restaurant - I renounced my unswerving faith in God and with it my ties to Catholicism and Christianity. It has been over eight months since that day and I have decided to finally reflect upon the topic in a blog here. I'm not sure as to whether this will be particularly interesting to anyone here, however I am finding it - for want of a better word - therapeutic, to provide a written manifestation of my feelings on the matter.

To contextualise my background and to shed some light on my eventual decision, one must take a step into the murky backwaters of my early childhood. As a baby I was Baptised a Roman Catholic, without any choice in the matter and without a thought given to the ramifications this action would pose to me in the coming years. My father who is also a Roman Catholic, had the most to do with this decision. Naturally, it made sense to continue the family's religious tradition. Not to mention the fact that he unfalteringly promised to raise me a Catholic when he applied to be married in the Church. Perhaps ironically, my mother - who believed herself to be an adherent to the Church of England, but was listed as an 'un-Baptised Christian' by the Catholic Church - is less religious. As it stands, I feel that she is unsure as to what she 'is'. I know that she does not consider herself a Catholic, nor does she have any intention of becoming one. If anything, she is a theistic agnostic, though she raised me as a Catholic like my father.

I went to an (at the time) good Catholic primary school, attended a good Catholic Church and when I was bullied for two or three years, I was bullied by good Catholic children. In time I took my Holy Communion and entered the second phase of becoming a fully fledged Christian. Because apparently the Church requires you to prove your devotion three times: Baptism, Communion and Confirmation. Although I have always thought that I unswervingly followed the doctrine of the Church, apparently from even a young age I began to ask questions about faith and God that neither of my parents could answer. I do not feel that any of these questions had an impact on my belief until much later, the indoctrination was too thick and my appearance at Church was too regular.

Until secondary school I was shy, lonely, somewhat intelligent and fat. I succeeded in the academic half of primary school, and failed miserably in the social aspects. I had perhaps a single true friend by the time I left and was for the most part lonely. Ironic when Christianity promotes equality, togetherness and friendship against all men*.

In secondary school I slowly began to alter myself in accordance with my peers. Naturally, when going from a class of 30 and a total school of 210 into a class of 210 and a school of 1200, one automatically alters oneself in order to better fit in. It was a change but nonetheless, not a big enough to stop a continuation of the bullying which lasted sporadically for another two years before circumstantial events allowed me to shift this bullying onto other people. Dog eat dog. Towards the end of my 11th year of living, I began to swear, something that simply did not occur to me before. The good, quiet Christian boy who always kept his head down suddenly found himself slightly more accepted into the playground politics.

That was perhaps my first step on the road to agnosticism. By 2008, at the age of 13, I found my way onto Oddworld Forums. Obviously I was childish and immature. By my posting in religious debates and in fact elsewhere across the forums, one can follow a trail of a unique brand of religious intolerance and un acceptance. In the God debate for instance, I seem to distinctly remember condemning certain members to Hell for not renouncing their belief (or lack of).

It was not until 2010 that I began to really change my opinions. At this point I altered many of my religious opinions which I had held at one point or another in my life, as standard. Most importantly, I became more tolerant, much in the same way as the Tsarist regime became more tolerant after the 1905 revolution, I made moderate reforms to my outlook. I renounced my homophobia. To this day I am sickened to remember that I had a deep seated dislike of gays. Although I am not trying to lessen my blame for this, I would like to point out that I was 14 or 15 when this occurred, later than I seem to remember but upon reflection, that number appears more realistic than what I had initially led myself to believe. The point I am making is that a fourteen year old child had installed in him, a series of intolerant perceptions, largely put in place by the doctrine of the Church. A child does not simply acquire a dislike of gays without some external input. He does not have racist tendencies without external input.

As I have said repeatedly, one of the factors which led me to turn away from Christianity, and in fact most religion, was my time spent here. To engage in intelligent discussion with people older and brighter than I, I was opened up to new concepts and ideas which allowed me to seriously consider why I was a Christian. What did I gain from being a Christian? Why should I continue being a Christian? By 2012 these questions had overwhelmed me and after hiding behind self-created fantasies and unintelligent notions, I finally renounced my Christianity and my faith to God.

I am now an Agnostic, though if you were to have a scale:

v-------------------v-------------------V
R..........................Ag.........................At

Where R is religious, Ag is agnostic and At is atheist, you would find me in between Ag and At, a massive difference from even three years ago when I was firmly positioned at R.

Now, why do I dislike the Church? Despite the good that they spread, and continue to spread, they could be doing more for people than they are doing already. Whilst Christianity devotes its help to developing countries in the form of the Red Cross (as Islam does with the Green Crescent) they also spread lies about the negatives of condom usage at a time when we now have the potential to educate these countries and see a steady decline in HIV and AIDS. I will ignore a few other arguments that are too petty to mention and would no doubt hurt and argument I posed about whether the Church does more harm than good. Instead I will move on to one last point, Christianity, and all religion, has too much of a say in secular politics. Why does the Church of England still have a hand, however small, in the running of a secular country? I hold no allegiance to the CofE, nor did I when I was a Catholic! This has to stop and it has to stop soon. The careful blend of hysteria and propagandist brainwashing still continues to seep into the heads of the easily led and the easily confused. This is perhaps on of my most important points.

I make no conclusion here, I simply leave the blog open to comments and questions if you have any. Whilst it is not my intention to provide you with interesting life information in a period of potential boredom, I do hope that you got something out of this. Whatever that something is, is none of my concern.

Thank you for reading.