Got to agree wth that one. When I was doing my degree I was told by another student that I was going to hell because I had taken communion and not been baptised a Cstholic. I refuted his conjecture by saying "that won't be so as I don't believe in hell". this of course re-inforced his belief that I'd be playing five card stud, while downing a bottle of scotch with my old mate Old Nick of the nether regions on my demise. The reason I took the bread and wine was because I love the bells and smells of high church for purely selfish reasons; to be a part of the well-constructed sense of drama that has evolved from the simplistic devotion of a pre-Christian time.to the pinnacle of self-aggrandisement in the baroque Middle Ages.

I was really lucky. When I was very young I figured out religions was BS when they talked about the star over the crib of Jesus. Even when I was young I concluded stars don't work that way as they are not attached to the heaven firmament. So when my confirmation class instructor told us about the doctrine of the Trinity I told my teacher "Well that's just stupid" he agreed with, "I know but that's what they want us to teach you guys".

The concept that starts wanting you to believe by telling of a begining where a creator makes two children, sets them in a garden were everything is provided, sets a table of drugs, disquised as candy, installs a phallic symbole to intice the girl child to eat the candied drugs, and when the children have discovered the joys of feeling good, blames the girl child, and kicks the children out into the cold cruel world. And knowing ahead of time, what is going to happen, and then says you are to believe in me and worship me. I have got to think this is the first, and most outrageous belief.....I mean, if you can say "yeah....I'm okay with that", how can you not go for all the rest.

I suppose it was 'God made the Earth in 6 days and rested on the seventh' - Even as a small child I found that to be simply absurd.

The amount of shite shoveled at us in religious boarding school was pretty large, but here are a few stand outs:

That holding hands would lead to pregnancy. The insult to my intelligence was so outrageous that I couldn't really respect another word after that.
That I would go to hell if I wore colored nail polish, or wore a skirt more than 3 inches above my knee, or wore jewlery, or various other fashion police sins.
That my soul was in grave danger for wearing black on Fridays - this was said to me with a straight face by a faculty member who was herself wearing black on a Friday...
That I was incapable of helping anyone because I couldn't even help myself, but that they would pray for me. Still angry over that one.

"Original Sin": They shouldn't have done that. But God is all-knowing and all-powerful, so he knew it was going to happen; he must have designed them to do it--else how could he have such attributes?

God is all-loving and merciful, but he still condemned them for doing what he designed them to do.

And we are all on the hook for it. We don't get to choose, get a chance--no one's going to ask us what we would do or what we think about it. We have to suffer for what someone else did thousands of years (around 6, IIRC) ago. Something that had to have been not only anticipated but planned, by an "omnipotent", "omniscient", "all-loving", "merciful" "father".

It's so logically inconsistent that I'm kind of boggled any structure built atop it can persist...

Yeah, transubstantiation was about it. And who does that anyway? Who in their right mind would actually eat a raw piece of someone else? any organised group that embraces as ritual the regular practice of chewing down on people, after converting what was presumably a perfectly good piece of bread to begin with, has to be highly questionable from the get-go. Add to that the practice and bizarre distortion of wearing an instrument of torture and subjugation (cross) around their necks as a symbol of love and devotion, and i am long gone...

I grew up Roman Catholic. As a kid, I didn't think of it that way. But eventually reason smacks some of us in the face (thankfully) and you realize how demented it is to hang a dead guy on a torture device and pretend to eat his flesh, and drink his blood. So sick.

I supposed one that gave me a 7 or 8 years olds version of WTF? was that not going to church was a mortal sin the same as murder!

That is a good one

That Cain married outside of his tribe when we are supposedly all descendants of Adam and Eve.

Well there are many, but one that was highly consequential for me (in that it comprised 99% of what I knew about mate selection or relationships) was: "Marry a good Christian girl and everything will work out great". I suppose some would add "so long as you don't have sex before marriage".

Unfortunately I was to discover that some "good Christian girls" can have serious mental health and personality issues that cannot be prayed away. That marriage lasted 15 years, which, assuming it should have been embarked upon at all, was about 14.5 years too long. This was largely a result of the runner-up "outrageous belief" which is that "god hates divorce" and of course by extension, those who engage therein.

That is fundamentalism for you; it distorts your mental model of reality nigh to the point of uselessness, then it deprives you of any flexibility to deal with the results.

Oh my god, where do I start?

When I was a kid, I was told by my mother that we practiced Zorostrianism. My mother also frequently goes on rants about what she hears about Islamic canon.

There are more things she says, and nobody is allowed to correct her because she's completely crazy and actually believes in God, Muhammad, etc. and all of that kooky stuff.

I was also brought to church by babysitters, and my father, which was a heavy experience, because of the topic of hell.

I was bought a book on the story of Adam and Eve in elementary school, and I actually bought into it. It wouldn't be until I was red-pilled on theism in middle school by my uncle, that I would realize it was nonsense.

LOL, even protestants mock Catholic transubstantiation!

Near the end of my own addiction, I hung out with some Charismatic Catholics. I really think their nuttiness helped me see the light, I'm eternally grateful to Catholicism for leading me astray.

Hellfire and brimstone.

Having been raised Mormon, it ws that Joseph Smith (founder of the Mormon church) actually saw god and Jesus face to face.

The seond biggest lie, ws that Native Americans were actually lost tribes of Israel, and their skin was darkened bia a curse put upon them as a cruse for abandoning faith Of course modern genetics (DNA) shows that native Americans are mos tclosely related to the people of Tibet and Southern Siberia. Also the Thunder go religion of the Southwest Native Americans is almos tidentical to the religion of pre-Buddhist Tibet.

Anyway, it would take a book set of multi volumes to list all the lies, whci have been told to me.

Hates gays but puts other in men in their mouth every Sunday. #Catholics

Confession. Ratting yourself out to some priest, who is NO better--and usually worse--than you.

I've heard he tastes like chicken. ☺