religious hatred

i grew up with a lot of my life revolving around both religion and its absence. my mother was an atheist and my father was a christian. they took me to sunday school when i was a foal, but we stopped going at a point.

when i moved in with my grandparents in middle school, it changed drastically — christianity was suddenly forced onto me. i had to believe it their way. i had to do exactly as they said. i had to attend church at least once a week, if not more. i hated it. i still hate it.

but there's a big difference between hating how religion is forced onto so much of the population and hating how it's forced AND calling it fake. you can believe that christianity's disgusting pervasiveness on all of usamerican society is worth fighting against without calling all religions fake and believers inherently delusional. that's pretty fucked up actually i think. maybe organized religion, conservatism and genocide is the root of the problem and not people who pray in their meantime. maybe abusive parents who force their religion on their children and use it as a scapegoat for their abuse are the problem and not people who share their religion with their kids.

despite this forced religion, i ended up christian — but not at all the way my grandparents wanted me to be. i'm queer, i say "curse words," i do and feel and think and exist in ways a lot of conservative christians despise. but i remain kind to others, i have forgiveness in my heart, i strive to help not for the thanks i might get but because others deserve that love. i listen, i try my best to never cross lines. and God almighty i will never force anyone to believe what i believe. when i have a kid of my own, they will have a choice. they can always say "no." so can my friends, so can strangers.

i also found out i had been having psychosis from a young age. and yeah my religion interacts with that, because all parts of my life do. i had psychosis even when i was agnostic. i had psychosis when i first denounced the disgusting ways i was being treated and taught. and i have it now. nothing could change that about me, i will always be psychotic. this doesn't make my religion "fake". this doesn't make my life fake, either. and no psychotic person is inherently dangerous. no mentally ill person is inherently a bad person. disabled people are still just people.

the problem is not being given a choice, not being able to say "no," not being able to be treated as human without it, having every society bend around their will. and also you maybe shouldn't drag ableism into it.

edit (3 months later, haha): i feel it's imperative to clarify that i know and understand why this happens (abuse victims have no reason to sympathize with their religious abusers), and wasn't able at the time to properly articulate that antitheism also heavily and very quickly can fall into racism, genocide apology, and religious violence.

it affects all other religions far worse than they ever could mine - as christianity is heavily tied to its historical (and modern) involvement in disgusting, vile hatred. this was meant to be written inherently from my perspective, but i shouldn't have neglected to mention this even if as an aside or footnote. i'm not a christian-based hate apologist or what have you; this post was clearly meant as the opposite - to talk about my personal experience with its horrors while also sharing my opinion on why calling it fake and using ableist language to debunk it instead of focusing on the harm christian peoples cause was particularly hurtful to me as a disabled christian.

even if it is said from a place of trauma, de-legitimizing religion in the path to dismantling the damage it can, has, and continues to cause will never fix the problem.