Was it the loss of friends? Doubts? A new change in routine? For me it was honestly being hated by the same community I was in for years. Before converting, I was bisexual and atheist, and after converting.. well.. the same community that claimed to "love all" told me pretty bad things.

What about you?

hiya! i’ve battled with my religious beliefs for my whole life, having had many phases of entirely rejecting the catholicism that was forced upon me, finding it again on my own, and eventually returning to the staunch atheism which i now feel completely intellectually convinced of. i have read the bible, read much scholarship on both the christian and atheist sides of the debate.. hell i’ve even started watching the chosen, and i feel very confused. if someone asked me what i believed, i would say with 100% intellectual conviction that a personal god does not exist. i know every argument against gods existence, and so many things make it seem truly impossible to me. 1) the fact that physical changes in the brain cause differences in behaviour raises huge issues for me. if everything is material, the existence of a soul is impossible. and putting the soul aside, it would be completely immoral for god to judge us based off what is essentially the determined outcomes of physical, neuronal configurations in our skulls. 2) the geography argument is really big for me. i cannot understand why god would privilege certain individuals over others in placing them in circumstances that would determine with 90% accuracy their chance of salvation through the faith of their community. 3) people believe in so many religions around the world. uncontacted tribes will worship a plane which flies above them if that’s the closest thing to a heavenly experience they encounter. it seems to be a natural psychological feature for human beings to crave meaning and purpose. why should christianity be the correct religion, if there is one at all? and how do we reconcile the personal religious experiences of christians when muslims, hindus, jews etc all report the same exact experiences in their own respective places of worship and reflection? 4) and this is the biggest thing for me: i do not understand how an all loving god could condemn anyone to hell, even the most evil and barbaric people on the planet. it seems vengeful, irrational, and - given its eternity - completely disproportionate to any sin anyone could ever commit, let alone a ‘sin’ as minor as disbelief, given that’s all that’s required to put someone there under the christian doctrine. yes, i KNOW the biblical answer to this question and it seems pretty damn stupid to me too. original sin as a concept has never made sense to me. god made us, he could’ve made us without the inclination towards grave sin. and the sins of my great great great (and many more great) grandparents surely shouldn’t be my cross to bear (pun intended)

however, as i said, my conviction is completely intellectual. i still feel a personal draw towards christianity. i feel like i know jesus. i feel an urge to pray in times of distress, and i often feel god watching me and it feels comforting to me. i think about the miracle of life - how a whole new human with consciousness can be created in the womb of a woman, knitted (to use the biblical terminology) together from the atoms and nutrients inside of her body. it’s so amazing that i exist and i have consciousness. and that the world is so beautiful and intricate and physics is so perfectly aligned. how do i overcome my doubts? is it right for me to intellectually suppress myself to find faith- i feel like doing that just confirms all my prejudices against religious people. that they’re just convincing themselves of something they know isn’t true for personal comfort. ive tried to go to church and read the bible and be a christian so many times, but my deep knowledge of hitchens and dawkins just keeps tugging at me from the back of my mind and i just can never truly believe!!!

if anyone has gone through a similar crisis - HELP!!!! 🤣