You are 100 % correct about you perceive at a church. I haven't set foot in a church in nearly 7 mos. and have no problem with never setting foot one again. I'm nobodies puppet.

I grew up in the church for the first 20 years of my life. I would disagree with the idea of most churchgoers are relatively good people. It has been my experience that the majority of churchgoers are deviants and church is the get ot of jail free card. They might try hard not to be, but they are still shitty people on the inside.

Most people are good natured, and in most of the US it is the commonly held belief that good people go to church. I disagree. Churches need rituals just like cults do. They normalize behaviors and keep people in line. For many people the harm is relatively small, for others it takes lives.

Today in the US, it is the religious that hinder solid education, declare climate change as a non issue cause Jesus is coming back, and insist we use biblical values that even most Christians really don't buy into. Dawkins accuratly described the christian god as "a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." If most of what was done in the old testament was done by anyone today we would be outraged, but they call it a foundation of morality. Today good people have morals in spite of religious texts.

I think it is always important to understand that we view religion today through the same filter that smoking was seen through. If there is something good then shout it to the heavens, if there is something harmful, sweep it under the rug. Priests molest children, then pay off the victims and move the priests, but if you support a charity, put up a banner. If your faith brings people together and creates community then invite others and rejoice, but if it causes people to burn young women for being witches then we pretend it didn't happen.

This reminds me of a quotation by the famous Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg. Weinberg said: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it, you'd have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion".

The end result of brainwashing is always tragic.

Yeah, I definitely have gone to a synagogue with a partner to support them because I could tell it was important to them. 100% my choice though. I think if it was ever mandatory or implied that not coming would result in consequences of any kind, id have to put my foot down.

So my mom is very devout and, despite my dad not being particularly religious, raised my sister and I in the church. Both my sister and I have since lost (perhaps rejected is a better word) our faith and didn’t tell Mom for a long time. Eventually she asked us outright and we admitted it and as expected she viewed it as a personal failure. When we are home we still go to church with her for her, but we do tend to mumble under our breath at some of the things said. What baffles me, even while I still claimed belief, was the victim complex. Like all these people going on like they are a persecuted minority. I mean I get that as Catholics in the Bible Belt we weren’t a majority, but we still weren’t by any stretch persecuted!! ?

Not me. I have no interest in being part of that "community", or any other like it.

My community is centered around my childhood religion and it is difficult to make friends in the neighborhood if you don't attend church. I have a friend who attends for that reason, even though she doesn't believe anymore. I've thought of doing the same since I already struggle socially but I just can't bring myself to do it.

I do see it as being all about control. It's so easy for me to see now that I'm on this side of it, particularly when my neighborhood generally rejects me when I don't go to church but accepts me when I do, despite my social struggles. It's totally about control.

One person’s brainwashing is another’s reasonable teaching. Many things taught by churches do not resonate with me, but I no longer fear being engulfed and controlled by those teachings. I personally think that we have no choice in what we believe or disbelieve at any one time. We have to follow our inner voices.

Religion comes from ‘religare’ which means ‘that which connects us’, and that’s what I find pernicious about it, that it convinces people to make a bond with some folks and to close off to others.

It is brainwashing. I was subjected to it my whole life. It wasn't until I took an honest look at it from an outsider's point of view that I was able to see it.

Outside of weddings and funerals, I had never really been in a church in my life. For a period maybe a decade ago I would go with a close friend to his church just to check it out. It was only a handful of times. I felt a bit alien, then a bit bored. There were nice people. I indulged my curiosity and moved on.