No Traumatic Experience Necessary For me to Leave Christianity

Hubble Pic from NASA Goddard.

I'm sure as a believer it might be easy to think that all the ex-Christians left because of some sort of abuse or trauma or other bad experience in the church.  For me, this couldn't be farther from the truth.  I had wonderful, meaningful, loving, beautiful experiences in the Presbyterian church. The minister was a close family friend. She was kind and loving and nurturing. Same with the youth group leader.

The only bad experience I had was gradually realizing that all my religious experience was just as easily explained as my imagination. Discovering that my beliefs reinforced themselves by making me feel the good feelings during prayer, worship, etc. When I found out that I could feel the same emotions as prayer when I imagined an intimate conversation with a close loved one.

Because once I realized that these experiences of bliss and joy and closeness to God could also be experienced in my imagination, it became painfully clear all my religious experiences were exactly that. The explanation was so much simpler. All the evil in the world now made sense. The absurdities of the OT, which so plainly conflict with observed reality melted away.

The world is simply as we see it. Rigid, unbreaking laws of physics resulting in beautifully complex structures and behaviors. No need for external interference, so why carry it along? I could write:

$$ F + G = ma + G $$

But the G is pointless. It has no bearing on the results of the equation, so we might as well drop it. It adds complexity to the model with no additional explanatory power.

$ F = ma $ for me.

…  Ok, $ F = \frac{dp}{dt} $ because that works better near the speed of light.