I'm angry. I cannot get back the wasted decades.

The only thing I can do is make those small changes that will make me a better person in the future. I could probably write a sizeable book answering those three questions, though few would find it that interesting.

In the meantime, my life's goal is to live in peace. I'm hopeful.

Intellectually: Being raised in a religious family, I was not taught to distinguish between myth and reality. "Reality" was whatever the church leaders taught. Also, I was not allowed to use reason when it came to ethics. Morality was whatever "God" wanted me to do. And to know "God's" will, I could only listen to the church leaders and obey whatever they told me to do. Now, being free from such intellectual repression, I can use logic and reason to figure out what is ethically right and wrong. I can also distinguish between myth and reality.

Psychologically: Expert psychologists know that masturbation is natural, normal and healthy, especially for unmarried youth. However, the church leaders caused me to think it was a grave sin. As a result, I spent my adolescent years in guilt and shame, confessing my "sin" and promising to stop it, only to have it happen again and again. As a result of this sexual repression, I suffered psychological abuse, which has left a scar on my life. Happily, I have learned the truth, and feel no more guilt and shame. I do, however, have that ugly scar on my past.

Financially: I have wasted way too much money on tithes and offerings, especially in a time of my life when I could not afford it, and lived in poverty just to satisfy the demands of the church. Happily, I now know that religion is a scam based on a myth. I can spend my earnings as I see fit. I have enough for my needs and even for some luxuries, and have some left over for donating to worthy, nonreligious causes.

So, religion has caused me intellectual, psychological and financial suffering. Now, though I have a scarred past, I am happily free from the scam of religion.

It made me realize that people with trauma can and will use religion as a justification for all kinds of cruel and anti-social behaviors. It made me realize that a lot of people are willing to settle with a comfortable lie over an uncomfortable truth. It made me understand more about the pattern recognizing prices of the brain and its ability to false positive.

Emotionally, it has driven a wedge between me and many people I know because I cannot fully be myself around them. So, it is tough.

It cost me the woman I love.

The worst part of being brought up as a Jehovah's Witness and remaining one until around the age of twenty-eight or so, was that it delayed my education. My first reaction to the question was that it delayed my intellectual development, which it did a little, but not completely, since I have always actively used my mind in my work. After getting out of the religion, which discouraged "secular" education, I had to educate myself in philosophy, psychology, economics, history, and literature. I took a few years off from working full time and spent most of my time reading and thinking.

Well even if there are no personal attachments to religion we live in a culture that is built around it to a certain degree. I mean most western civilizations have evolved with christianity as a base/foundation.
So in some ways it is inescapeable.
Personally I don't feel like I still have any lingering damage or negativity. I do not hate religion...I hate what people do in the name of religion. Ideologically they all have a good message but people are corrupt and have always used religion as a tool to control the masses.

It is the hypocrisy that just amazes me. I went to catholic schools my whole life until college. I was also picked on, teased, and bullied all throughout those years. It never made any sense to me why the school did nothing about it to make it stop. All those trips to church and listening to the stories of doing to others as you would done to yourself just started a little fire inside me. That little flame would grow with each passing incident. I despise the catholic church now because of its hypocrisy. That little flame has turned into a raging inferno that wants nothing more to see the collapse of the church. While in school the principal, who was a nun, told my mom that if I decided to start a fight about being picked on that she would look the other way. I refused to stoop that low to confront violence with violence. That wasn't how I was raised and that wasn't the message they were teaching. In high school, I was getting pretty fed up with all the crap I was being put through. But I held to my morals. It wasn't until my chance to get into the national honor society that my hands became tied. I was refused entry into the society because I was too unpredictable and passive-aggressive and the school didn't know how I would respond to the teasing and bullying. There had been a former student that was going through what I was and just snapped. He beat a kid with some kind of rod which brought dishonor to the school and to the society and they were not going to have a repeat occurrence. My mom wrote a letter to the school stating that I was raised turn the other cheek and not use violence to solve problems. I told her that my hands were now effectively tied and I could not respond in any way or the school would say that they were right. I only got into the honor society because there were only a few eligible seniors left and we wouldn't have the time to dishonor the school or society. To this day, I don't feel like I got in based on my merits. This is what religion has done to me. I cannot deal with the hypocrisy of religion and religious people, it just angers me to see it.

I had a very rough childhood and a lot of bad things happened to me. Religion made me angrier that this god who supposedly loved me so much would allow those things to happen (or make them happen for a supposed reason) and I had issues of guilt and self loathing believing I must have deserved these "lessons" from said god.

Fortunately, those feelings did not stick with me very long. I stopped believing in god at the same time I figured out Santa Claus.

If anyone one out there didn't know about Santa - I apologize for the spoiler.

I was raised Jewish, so I always felt like an outsider in regard to Christian faiths, but I also felt like an outsider in the Jewish faith, because I never really connected with it. At this point, I see being Jewish from more of a cultural perspective than anything else. My feeling is, people can believe what they want and I'm always open to hear about what people believe and why, but don't judge me or try to bring me around to your way because I think or feel differently than you.

Religion affects me personally, because people who are religious don't try to reconcile their beliefs with reality while voting accordingly to those held beliefs.

It took my whole life from me.

It really didn't affect me as l got away from it in my early teens, but it sure has fucked up the world, especially this country, so it has affected my world in that regard.

I can't really claim that religion scarred me in some way that's particularly egregious compared to other aspects of life. If it hadn't been religion, it would have been something else.

My parents were pulled into fundamentalism from more liberal Christian traditions and between that and their basic good natures, they managed to unwittingly inoculate me from most of the shame and blame and guilt that goes with fundamentalism. I was a believer from before my 6th birthday and so also didn't identify with the typical fundamentalist testimony of being some awful profligate sinner saved from hell just in the nick of time.

Besides, I had a role to play in being credulous about that belief system and remaining in it well into adulthood. I was a conflict-avoidant pleaser, and had a Jesus complex a mile wide. I had to get over myself in order to see past all the bullshit. So while it would have been helpful to have been raised and mentored in things like critical thinking rather than religious dogma, it also suited me to an extent. I'm not proud of that, it wasn't my finest hour. But I have to own it, too.

My childhood experience as a Baptist was by no means all bad. We had a variety of ministers, some of whom were very loving and inspirational. Even though I disagree with Christian doctrine, just to be exposed to the ideas on a regular basis aroused in me a sense of wonder and awe and stimulated rational analysis. Another good influence was instruction on how to behave, with love toward all being the main focus.

If I am going to wallow in something I prefer it to be the positive.

It showed me that people and gods who "love" me can be cruel, rejecting, misogynist, racist, critical, and judgmental.

Beyond leaving me a bit angry, it's affected my relationships with relatives.

I'm always being very careful what I say for fear of upsetting things. Them? Not so much. They of course just go on like everyone believes what they do.

It affectede in many ways; thankfully all belong to the past. I didn't have sex or masturbated for 12 years. The mental and nervous damage caused by that alone took ages to heal. Also I was very selfish, thinking that everyone in the room will die in hell because they were not Christians like me. I didn't love the animals as much... Also I was intolerant towards gay people which I now love and respect as equal. Overall, I was full of bigotry and ignorance...

I felt I was the only person in the room..that knew the Emperor had no clothes..but unlike the fairy tale.. I could not..or was too spineless to shout about it..
I kept me mouth shut..until I saved enough money to get out.
I'm back here now..with my own family..I can say and do what I like now..nobody bats an eyelid..things have really changed. So I joined a non-religious Agnostic/Athiest Website to link up with other like-minded free thinkers...and here I am....

My family was "religious" but we never attended church even on holidays. It doesn't really affect me although sometimes when someone who doesn't know asks me I get a raised eyebrow but I rarely get engaged on the subject. They probably go away judging me as some sort of immoral heathen but, whaddayagonnado?

My father was a clergyman so I saw hypocrisy up close and personal

Well I won't go into too much detail with out a ridiculous amount of alcohol in me but I would of been save a lot of grief if a problem of mine hadn't been swept under the rug.

I left the church at 15, I read the bible cover to cover and it scared me out of Christianity. I was free of the guilt of sin and the fear of Hell. Then I became a pagan for about 25 years. After being a pagan, I became an agnostic, then after 3 or 4 years I became an Atheist.

I feel I have faired much better than most. I was raised catholic and was even an alter boy for a while. Un-molested alter boy I will add. What turned me away was the hypocrisy.

My first time I started to question was when i was at the age for confirmation. That special time as a catholic to renew the vows said for you by your parents and god parents at one's baptism. I ask my mother a few questions and all she could tell me is that I get to pick a new name. Not much substance for my liking. But, I tried again.

My first marriage was in a church and she was supposedly devout. That first wife cheated on me with someone she met in our church after a year of marriage. Fairly devout huh.

It goes further... My birth mother was forced/coerced by my biological father's family and the catholic church to put me up for adoption. In that journey I have found that I am the oldest of 7 and have 6 half brothers and sisters. I also found that they had my date of birth changed to make it harder to find my biological family.

I feel I am well adjusted and level headed. I also know that I am not buying into the snake oil salesmen that are peddling a 2000+ year old work of Fiction. My thoughts of religion are that they all cherry pick the work of fiction and use it to segregate all people and to place fear in the masses for easier control over them.

Religion showed me that is ok to be a hypcit and be ashamed that I'm attracted to men. yes, I'm still overcoming pieces of my religious upbringing, since I have only been an atheist for little less than 7 mos. I would tell that you should look at science , how world is so messed up, and all the contridictions in the bible. Also tell them only fools believe in god or any other deity.

My background is mostly from the new age / hippy stream, so not strongly religious. What I see is that a lot of people are conditioned to become part of a community steered by priests, and this costs them chunks of their freedom. Stories such as the heaven and hell ‘carrot and stick’ approach cost a lot of people big parts of their peace of mind.

Religions seem to have a unique mandate to tell you how to think, which I believe is one of their most unpleasant aspects. The only religion which doesn’t seem to do that, which instead teaches you to explore your own mind, is Buddhism, which I have a lot of respect for. But certainly anyone with a Christian background I see as having been mutilated mentally as a child, viciously attacked by priests with all kinds of pernicious ideas.

It is a long journey to free yourself from the faiths of your childhood, whether that is Christianity, Islam, or just secular materialism. It takes time to find the sources of your compassion, your own judgment and non-judgment. I don’t think anybody is wholly immune to that.