Reasons to Leave Christianity

Writing something like this has been swimming around in my mind for a couple years now. Although I try to stay away from pushing people towards one side of the fence or the other on matters of faith, I recently discovered a children’s ministry page detailing why kids should believe in the Christian deity. There’s a lot of material out there pushing people into the faith, on giving them reasons to stay in that faith even when they can’t keep it anymore. Only a few materials exist which push back against this, mostly written by people who never even believed in the first place.

Of course, a simple blog post can’t contain all of my thoughts on why people should not keep their Christian faith. My own reasons for leaving have filled up several long, boring posts. In fact, the vast number of topics that come to mind on this make it difficult for me to organize them. I can’t write effectively about all of this because I have no good way of ordering my thinking. One topic can easily relate to several others, which creates a rabbit’s warren of tunnels to sink one’s mind into.

Over the years, I think I still feel pushed to writing something about this because of conversations I’ve had with other people who left Christianity. Many of them have told me that they only stayed because of the empty promises – this was even after knowing them to be empty. Those same empty promises become a source of pain and suffering for long after leaving the faith. Worse, many still in the faith twist the proverbial knife for no other reason than their ignorance of how it hurts others. Just recently, I had to inform one Christian that trying to win back souls on my blog is the moral equivalent of selling booze at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

It should have been obvious.

The list of reasons I give here is by no means exhaustive. Instead, it’s an outline of my thinking. I’m putting it out here because doing this helps me order my thinking a bit.

Reasons to Leave Christianity:

1. Its predictions aren’t reliable.

2. It began as a regular death cult.

3. Believing people are worthless can really hurt others.

4. It requires special exceptions for dealing with reality.

5. The comfort it offers is illusory.

6. Trusting the Bible means trusting ancient writers more than people alive today.

7. Leaving Christianity doesn’t make you hopeless; recovering from its promises does.

These are the ones I can think about off the top of my head.
There are plenty of others I’ll think of once I publish this. But it’s a start. If there’s anything crucial I’m missing, let me know in the comments.