Papa saved me from all that by telling me the stories of Odin who made things happen for himself.

Story of my young adult life. Atheism freed me from the tears.

I never really did it honestly.

Probably happened to more than a few

When my prayers went unanswered I would belame myself for not being good enough.

So many times as a child. We were told about the starving children in Africa and so in Sunday School we would pray for them and even collect money for them. I used to pray for them at night if we did prayers with my parents before bed.

Nothing changed.

I remember with great clarity one day when I woke up with a sore ear (Sunday) there was the usual bustle to get us all ready for church etc.

Through the service it kept getting worse, I was in agony, I willed the "spirit of the lord" to come and help me I visualised the images in the windows coming down to touch my ear and make the pain go away. I focused on that happening so hard (so I would not burst into tears) when the service finished I walked out to the car and did burst into tears the next few hours were full of parents looking after me and the next day an antibiotic jab in the bum and ear drops for a while which did a lot more than all of my prayers on the Sunday.

I was less than 7 years old I pretty much got shirty on god after that. How hard was it to fix my ear?

wholly ghosted

This is my comparison to getting holy ghosted.

It’s like throw the Mother Goose nursery rhyme book in front of you and someone saying you better believe every word of this or I’m gonna blow your brains out. You say yes i believe and then that the person for not blowing your brains out and everytime you question what’s in the book you remember you’ll get your brains blown out for doing that and stop

When I want to feel the holy ghost, I just stand under a fan on a hot day and get that chill down my spine.

Nope. It was just the absurdity of it all…….The Noah’s Ark thing that began around age 9 or 10.

Very simple. In the words of George Carlin, I reached the age of reason. It was in my 20s. I quit going to church at 14, and over the next few years I came to realize what a sham it was.

No, not that any of my prayers were answered, but I left it all to the wisdom of God because what I wanted might not be in his plan.
What got me was the clarity of science and the fraud of scriptures and that still wasn't even enough.
So I'd go to church until the ignorance was too great to endure.
So perhaps there was a version of Christianity that wasn't bullshit, so I studied gnosticism and the beliefs of Cathars and other mystic heretics.
Gnosticism is like quantum mechanics for Christianity, and like quantum mechanics I couldn't get it to work for me. Obviously there's no "Gnosis" (enlightenment) in practical terms. That led to studying mysticism in general, like the teachings of Buddhism, and Sufism, still no luck.
Then at long last after looking through every millimeter of Christianity and all related subject matter I finally could call Christianity out for the BS it always was and became an atheist.
It only took me 50 years or so to divorce myself from it and even now I see things like Trump and all the Christians giving him fellatio and remember verses like "And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:" and the fear of the anti-Christ returns.
I mean Trump is a beast, but the question for Christians should be "Is he THE Beast?"
He's certainly qualified, far more so than Obama whom they accused of being "THE Beast".
But that's just post religion PTSD on my part.