What was the point in your life that made you go from being agnostic to full-blown atheist?
Mine was when my mother joined a church of one of her co-workers when I was in high school and they sent a group of people to our house after she got baptized. They demanded to see her paycheck stubs and checkbook to determine how much her tithe should be. They literally said they wouldn't leave without a check, and I had to call the cops to get them to leave. The co-worker that got her in that church never spoke another word to her again, literally refuse to acknowledge her presence in the room and even flat-out refused to work with her again.
There is nothing out there after death, just energy that becomes part of the universe taking up less space than you did before!!!
I did NOT travel the Agnostic to Atheist road to 100% honest.
Instead, as a child I was raised by an Atheist father and a, what I choose to call, a Christian of Convenience mother.
When I asked my father a question regarding things I got a straight answer, No God or mysteries involved, ask my mother and I'd get the exact opposite so with her I would walk away still confused, with my father, the opposite, I'd have reasons and reasonings.
During my 60+ years I have been confronted, quite often in fact, by the " God did it" brigades and the ridiculous and inane twaddle so I decided that I would bring my daughter up just as my father did wqith me.
My journey evolved over time from the age of 13.
Religion is a business so it is not surprising that money is a priority for them. What is surprising to me is how many people in this day and age fall for it.
It takes bookoo moola to pay a mortgage on a big building and a preacher's shiny car.
@BufftonBeotch They do have to have the best of the best.
Wow, they really showed their true colors, huh?
I call myself an agnostic with atheistic tendencies. I think the probability that God exists is vanishingly small but not zero.
Even the merest whiff or hint of money will have, like vultures to a fresh corpse, the God-Mobsters flocking around ready to strip the new sucker down to the bare bones.
Extreme tithing
Give it its CORRECT name and meaning, Tithe = TAX, the word is derived from the OLD English and its roots of origin are embedded in both Latin and Ancient Greek with its true origins to be found in ancient Aramaic and the more modern version being Hebrew.
Religion use the word TITHE as a sugar coating for their self-appointed RIGHT to levy a tax on those who partake of and in it.
I've never heard of this before. I am told that believers can be agnostic too. In my mind that means a person who goes to church and says they still do not believe everything they are taught. I don't know the point of that. I simply would not go. I call myself an agnostic atheist. It means I cannot prove to you that there are no gods and I damned well know you cannot prove gods exist either. In my world people who try to prove gods exist all have their minds made up beforehand. Belief without evidence is a foolish and shallow belief.
The pressure to donate is very strong at any church, even something as benign as Unitarian.
What you described sounds closer to a mob shake down though.