As it is 95% a hereditary construct, no.
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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Yeah. I didn't use to be but now I am, and I'm very happy about it. And why? Because God guides whom He wills, I guess. 😅
That’s Awesome! How long have you believed in God and how did he meet you?
Eh, I would say about 4 or so years in earnest but by then I was already a big fan of the words of Jesus and Solomon, I just disregarded the parts that talked about God, lol. And through my now wife, although it was more circumstantial: she's Muslim but not like a preacher who "convinced me", we had even reached the middle ground of me doing the rites but not believing... and then one day it clicked. 👍
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No. It's a scam created by humans to control the behavior of other humans. And to steal their $$ with false hopes of a nonexistent "paradise".
I find it mind boggling that people still get indoctrinated into the Cults. It's sad and pathetic.
Do you think that religion as a whole is unproductive/useless? Maybe even borderline harmful?
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No. Started in a Baptist family, but Mom died while I was young and Dad was less interested in the church, so I spent most of my adolescence not even acknowledging the hard questions of life. When those hard questions did arise, and answers aplenty showed their face, I was able to pick apart things in each religion that didn't make sense in order to keep myself from falling into the easy answers offered by others. Eventually, watching my grandma suffer from Alzheimer's gave me everything I needed to know about the soul and what makes each person themselves, so I found myself wholly stuck in an atheistic and scientific worldview.
Could there be something more? Maybe, but I can't see any of the existing religions fitting neatly into our cosmos.
No. I was never raised on it and it doesn’t make sense to me. I think religions should be seen more as a cultural thing than anything else and without positions of power involved. Organized religion with any type of power is just nuts to me. Spirituality and less dogmatic things make more sense though, it’s just us trying to understand the reality we exist in. It can be fun speculation, especially when drugs are involved.
Are you religious?
No.
Why or why not?
I was raised Lutheran and went through the whole Sunday School and Catechism routine. Basically brainwashed by my parents from an early age to buy into it. At the same time, I was always a curious person and learned (also from my parents) to ask questions and be skeptical. By the time I was taking Catechism, I had started to notice the cracks in Christian mythology. Their version of the Christian Bible is outright self-contradictory in some places, and the rest of it has logical holes big enough to walk through. Eventually, I got stuck on two questions:
- What proof do you have that the supernatural exists?
- How does that evidence of the supernatural prove that your mythology is correct?
It never ceases to amaze me how many religious people just flat out don't have an answer for those questions, but damn if they don't want to bring up faith. "Faith" is not proof, and a god of the gaps argument is not useful.
I do find the study of mythology interesting and worthwhile. Various mythologies have heavily influenced society to this very day. We can still see various Christian, Jewish and Islamic mythologies having a heavy impact on modern world events. And the storytelling in many myths is interesting and tells us a lot about the issues a society was grappling with at the time the myths were created and the overlap between societies as they shared stories.
I'm also quite willing to partake in most religious celebrations. Any excuse for feasting, frolicking or fornicating seems worthwhile.
I second the no thanks on "the god of the gaps." Very very important.
I've become a healthier and happier person after embracing my ignorance. Always learn. Always seek to know more. When the the data isn't there, it's okay. One need not fill the void.
Someday, we will have an answer. Or, perhaps not. We need to sit with that as it is.
Not really. I was technically raised Christian, but [I'll be blunt here for the sake of honesty] theism as a whole always smelled like bullshit for me, since childhood.
And contrariwise to my nickname I'm not even Satanist. I played around its aesthetic in my teen years, but by then my beliefs were already "not quite a Monotheist, not quite an Atheist" already.
I don't really have a problem with religious people, as long as they aren't zealots. (The dividing line between "zealot" and "non-zealot" for me is attempting to convert me.)
And contrariwise to my nickname I’m not even Satanist. I played around its aesthetic in my teen years, but by then my beliefs were already “not quite a Monotheist, not quite an Atheist.”
Tbh i don't get why anyone would ever profess to be a satanist if they don't believe in christianity. Satan is part of christianity... make it make sense
It's probably better if some Satanist answers this instead of me, but AFAIK there are as many answers for this as there are Satanists out there.
For a lot of them Satanism boils down to a set of moral principles; e.g. embracing individualism, non-conformism and carnal desires as virtues instead of sins. It's an opposition to Christianity on moral grounds, but it says nothing about agreement/disagreement on epistemic ones. (AFAIK most of those are Atheists.)
For some Satanism is more like an instinct of opposition, internal to the individual, that pops up across multiple religions; e.g. the Set from the Ancient Egyptian religion, the Asurāḥ from Hinduism, and the Satan from Judaism/Christianity/Islamism. And it's that instinct that they worship/appreciate/support. (I'd argue those are either Pantheists or Panentheists.)
Then for a few it's like "inverted Christianity" — the epistemic beliefs are the same (there's some guy called Yahweh creating the world, he create a guy called Satan, Satan backstabs Yahweh), but the morality is flipped (i.e. worshipping Satan instead of Yahweh).
So TL;DR: it depends, but for most of them there's no belief in the epistemic claims of Christianity.
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I was very, very devout. After a long long while, I finally gathered enough courage to embrace apostasy (at no small cost). I'm much happier and healthier now.
Yes because I find it fascinating and meaningful and I'm open to new ideas.
Do you identify yourself with a specific religion or are you just generally spiritual?
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