My name's Jon Qing. Let me share my story with you. My parents are both catholic, where they attended a catholic school taught by nuns. This apparently had a huge influence on them, as they (especially my mom) keep religious propaganda and objects around the house (glow in the dark statue). As I was growing up, I was forced to attend church and go to catechism (ex Sunday school) where we were brainwashed. I was naive back then, with no mind or words to think for myself. In my teens, nearing the end of grade 5, I moved towns because of my dad's job transfer. At my new school, I encountered racism and prejudice, where I got into fights and trouble constantly. Being one of the only few Asians in the school, I was often picking fights because of racist remarks. However, i often got suspended/detention. This one time, my mom got really upset and through her constant henpecking and yelling (while driving extremely fast) she drove me to a small church with several small books and forced me to pray to St. Jude (hopeless cases). Another time is when I got tired of the routine and brainwashing that I finally tried to stop going to church. Note the word "try" here. I was in my early teens, and having an Asian parent you can't really rebel that much. My mom yelled at me and threatened me that I was going to go to hell. I reluctantly gave in that time, but I found ways of skipping the dreaded Sundays. I slept in (trained myself to sleep in until 2), I had plans with friends. Soon I was in high school. unfortunately, it was a catholic high school. Religion throughout grades 9-12 made me even more cynical, and the mindless brainwashing through the assembly's and "retreats" made me want to give up religion all together. I cracked down and studied hard, focusing my major in science, which was to me a true way for logic and reasoning. Science has proof and working experiments while religion was based on "faith". Again, I was one of the few Asians in the school, so there was a huge prejudice. The talk of love and peace, love thy fellow man is all crap. The concept of a god who punishes and sends you to hell also loves you? What a paradox load of bullshit. Day in and day out the same religious brainwashing was given to us over and over. The higher level religion class showed the "moral" and "ethics" of Christianity which was a total waste of time. The more I was forced to study religion and Christianity, the more I saw how irrelevant and meaningless it was. I stopped going to church and I stopped believing in God. All the fakeness, the justifications, all for brainwashing and controlling people. Even when I attended university, the reaches of religion where there. In my biology class, there were staunch defenders of creationism and ID. I realized that many catholic people I knew had the same, fake smile, fake confidence, and a you can do it attitude where they justified and bragged about their good deeds. My parents forced me and my friends to attend a lunch party with their religious friends, and it sickened me to hear how they "good" they felt for doing this or helping that. I still feel that my parents try and pressure me back into religion, but I still resist. I have my own beliefs and morals, and I don't need a book written by a group of people to tell me what is wrong/right. My best year in going away from religion was my first year in residence. I got to meet people from around the world, who had different views and ideas, but they were all atheists. Now, I finally realized what Christianity was: A crutch for people to lean on, a place where people can join in a community because of peer pressure and tradition. People are social animals, and they can be lead like lambs to the slaughter. (excuse the pun) Being social animals, human interaction is necessary to feel comfortable. I leave you with the words of Issac Asimov:
There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death...To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.
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