My personal experience with religion is that they try to impose their views on my specifically and society generally and that I have had friends beaten or murdered by religious parents or religious authority figures.

How much more personal than "my good friend was murdered by his parents because he didn't believe in sky fairies" can you get? It seems pretty personal to me. Its also an experience and religious.

Perhaps you wanted to the topic to be "hallucinations or delusions you personally experienced that had something to do with, usually the christian, god"?

That's too bad about your friends getting killed. Care to tell a bit more information on that without going into gruesome detail? I'm just not aware of such a thing happening so often. Maybe I'm not very in touch with the world.

I also apologize for kind of catering my thread to theists. I mean, to answer my question is kind of to agree with me that Christianity is real and all that, I guess.

I'm just not aware of such a thing happening so often

I obviously cant speak for Altar and while I agree killing in the name of religion is probably a rare thing in the west, psychological / physical abuse does occur and is very common. Personally I think teaching a kid that they will burn for eternity in Hell if they don't blindly follow vague rules, or telling stories in general about how God did mass murder is child abuse. Such stuff should NEVER be told to a kid and lets be honest religion is taught young and to make the religion stick parents / priests etc tell of Gods wrath or hell to discourage people from rejecting that religion or religion in general.

So yeah while killing is probably rare in the west, there is still an enormous amounts of abuse

I don't think it's that rare in the whole planet, unfortunately several religions, practices by small groups in religions, and even individual interpretations of religions, make people to avoid scientific medicine... with damaging, and even deadly consequences.

So yeah while killing is probably rare in the west, there is still an enormous amounts of abuse

Rare in the west now; I suspect you wouldn't have to go too far back in history to find increasing instances of it in the west.... in fact a large number of deaths in Ireland, Northern Ireland and the UK mainland during the latter part of the 20th century were in part down to Catholic vs Protestant split in the region; a split which still causes violence and death in various parts of the UK. (And thats before we get into deaths caused by other religions due to things such as 'honour killings' and the like.)

Of course some might argue that the dead fair better than those who were abused by priests as children, a matter sweapt under the rug by apprently Christian organisations...

And yes, those are my 'experiances', even if they haven't directly effected me...

(For the record I attended a church from about the age of 8 until 18, towards the end I was only still going simply because it was a requirement for the social group and I had friends there. Upon leaving for Uni at 18 I left and never went back. The Church itself was fine, nice people and all that, its just looking back its sad to think that children are effectively being indocrinated and that those in multi-generational families are unlikely to ever question it...)

Thing is, even if christians don't outright kill you now (they still did 200 years ago, and the muslims still do today), they still try to enforce their belief onto you, and not rarely with borderline legal means.

I know of people who live a bit on the countryside in bavaria, which is still somewhat more christian than other places. So one day, the philister priest walks up to them and declares that their children are not to play in the garden on sunday, because that day belongs to God, and they had better be in church anyway. They bid him a good day and sent him away. Since then they're not being served any more in the bakery and are denied entering the grocer or the town's tavern. So, they have to drive to the next town because that christian hypocrite is pissed and instigates his crowd of religious bullies not to deal with the "heretics".

Similar story happened a year or two ago with some protestant hypocrite (not on the countryside, but in the city) who filed a lawsuit against people who were celebrating and dancing on Good Friday. Because, according to him, "Good Friday belongs to us". Well, fuck you, priest. Who do you think you are? How dare you be so arrogant as to say you own a day of my life and you are entitled to tell me what to do and what not to do?

In a world where there's justice, such a person would be in jail. Seeing how they're all either pedophiles or thieves (or both), they belong there anyway.

Presuming God exists, God should make fire and brimstone rain on that guy's house and strike him with lightning. In a perfect world, that is.

Oh, and then of course they pull the bells every sunday at 10. We have laws against noise pollution, and the noise they make is an order of magnitude above what the law defines as noise. It's also very clearly happening during a time which is defined as "rest period". Which is what I'm doing too, at 10 in the morning on sunday, rest.

Heck, I have to follow this law. But of course the law doesn't apply to Good christians.The law is for everyone else, only not for them. Doesn't matter if their public announcement of gathering for collective breach of their second commandment wakes me up.

The muslims aren't allowed to sing their weird chants from their mosques five times per day (and I'm happy that they aren't, heck I'd hate that...). But then, we live in a country where allegedly everybody is equal and free, and where everybody allegedly has the same rights. So how can you allow one and not allow the other?

I don't think it's that rare in the whole planet, unfortunately several religions, practices by small groups in religions, and even individual interpretations of religions, make people to avoid scientific medicine... with damaging, and even deadly consequences.

yeah, though part of the problem here is a person putting specific beliefs above those of general reason.

like, ideally, ones' beliefs should not subsume ones' sense of reason, as then a person basically has "blind faith", which is generally a bad thing.

like, blind faith does not promote understanding, but is rather (by its nature) a form of willful ignorance.

like, ideally, a person looks for true faith (like, having a reason to believe what they believe), not simply falling into an unquestioning blind faith.

similarly, it is one thing to pray for a good outcome for a heath issue, and something very different to try to use prayer as a substitute for going to a doctor.

Amen to that, samoth!

Being from Kansas, I of course adhere to the great and only correct church, the Westboro Baptist Church.

…

BAHAHAHAHAA I couldn’t keep a straight face! I seriously strained my acting skills there.

I was raised to be some form of Christian, not sure which.

Like Hodgman I felt extremely awkward in church, also not believing stories told about guys living inside fish for 3 days etc. I just figured they were for kids.

When I was old enough I did go to a sermon with my cousin once. The pastor told everyone to look down and close their eyes, and with no one looking, “For those unsure, raise your hands.”

I didn’t even know what he meant, so I guess that made me “unsure”, and I raised my hand. He had us come to the front. There were only about 7, and some of them were even crying. I had no idea what the big deal was but each of us went off with a preacher to private parts of the church to be interrogated as to why we were “unsure”. He finally clarified that it meant about the Bible and God. Suddenly I was happy to have a discussion! I was maybe 12.

Long story short, he knew he wasn’t able to answer my questions well enough about those stories I was told as a kid, and the frank fact was in his struggles I could see he was questioning his own faith.

I was raised to be Christian but I was born Atheist. It’s not a choice as some might have you believe. Falsely believing in something is not believing in something. It’s lying to yourself so that you can lie to others and blend in, but at the end of the day there is just no way to believe what you really don’t believe.

L. Spiro

Being from Kansas, I of course adhere to the great and only correct church, the Westboro Baptist Church.

People from Kansas don't know what "adhere" even means :)

Being from Kansas, I of course adhere to the great and only correct church, the Westboro Baptist Church.

People from Kansas don't know what "adhere" even means

FWIW, I am currently living in Oklahoma.

so, Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas, are not really all that far away.

but, I guess it is sort of made up for by being next to Texas.

I don't know if the WBC people actually believe their stuff, or if they are mostly just trolling people, either way...

apparently they have been denounced by the Southern Baptist Convention (among others), always a good sign...

as for the story of Jonah, I remember some arguing for the case that Jonah was actually dead when he got ate by the fish, and was then revived later (after the fish puked him back out on the beach).