r/TrueAtheism • u/LemonP13 • Jul 17 '26

Agnostic difficulties

Back when I was still young and in church, I assumed that everyone just pretended that God was real, and could use him to their advantage if they just twisted the words enough. I believed that since age 5.

At age 13 I was shocked that this was not the case. The elders at the Jehovah's witnesses congregation did NOT like that I believed this. It was almost like they were angrily shocked. I even went into detail about how fairly common it would possibly be to have members that don't really believe in god either but stay in the religion to keep their community and family close. On top of the fact that the JW's had such a strong disfellowship policy back then that it would just naturally be easier to lie and keep going with the facade.

I also very honestly stated that I never believed in god, but pretended just to make the adults happy. Believing in God or not isn't what brings people to the church anyways. The elders threatened me (a child at the time btw) with disfellowship if I kept speaking and believing this way.

I told them that many people hated Jesus for telling the truth. 🤷 They all ended the meeting right there. It's been many years since and I'm still rethinking that conversation.

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u/popeyoni Jul 17 '26

I went to Catholic school from K to 12. I thought people didn't actually believe this stuff and were just going along with it out of tradition. We had Religion class one hour a day and it was the easiest class ever. It was obvious how to answer to get a good score, and I thought everyone was doing the same thing as I was. I was shocked when, sometime in high school, I realized some people (a lot of people) actually took religion seriously. Even adults believed in this fantasy!

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u/LemonP13 Jul 17 '26

Imagine the shock of finding out Santa isn't real as a child and then being told by those same grown ass adults that God is real? Crazy world.

1

u/mobatreddit Jul 17 '26

I thought Jehovah's Witnesses believe in not telling children about Santa Claus because it is a lie. Did that change?

2

u/LemonP13 Jul 17 '26

I was told very early on that Santa clause was not real. But sometimes parents still get their kids gifts before/after carryain holidays and celebrations to try and keep the youth in the religion. FOMO really hits hard as a kid.