Religion is people. You can belong to a congregation and broadly share their beliefs, even accept the historicity of a Jesus figure, but still reject the idea of a biblical "God"

This is something a lot of atheists raised in a Christian tradition struggle with, especially in America, where Christian Nationalists have made it an all-encompassing social system. Religion is about ordering the world and our relationships with each other. A *lot* of non-god things fit that bill

Not sure I agree with that. Religion seems very "God-ish" to me, and about an idea not about people really. Thanks for answering though.

So he's not completely full of shit, he was just being an asshole by using it as a weapon against someone he assumed it applied to. Let me see if I can do better, as an ex-christian. When you move out of religion, you do a lot of "unpacking." Realizing your religion caused you to view... /2

The world in a certain way. For example, my sect of Christianity taught that humans are inherently bad, and hopeless, and only god can help. ...that comes with a lot of baggage. Lack of self respect, sellf esteem, guilt over things you shouldn't have to be feeling guilt about, etc. /3

See, in the process of losing your religion, you experience true freedom for the first time. You're no longer bound to the hopeless ways you were told the world was. This is just one example. The way the bible sets up god/authority as inherently abusive isn't great either.

To the point: a christian atheist is someone who believes there is no god, but their thinking is still structured around christianity. Maybe an atheist woman who still subconsciously feels subservient to men, because of the patriarchal structure of her church, as another example.

Oh wow you're an ex-Christian, what a unique and unprecedented worldview, thank you for sharing I too was once a teenager and grew out of my Christian upbringing. But then I decided to formally study religion because I clearly had a lot to learn So big insight here for you: there's other religions

There are religions that do not have anything like a Christian God. There are religious believers who do not accept literal interpretations of scriptural poetics. And there are Christians—not former Christians, not fake Christians, but Christian-ass Christians—who do not believe in a literal God

So we are talking about two different things: Your personal experience is someone whose worldview is founded in Christianity, and your rejection of religion is rooted in this. You mean Bible, Jesus, Jehovah, etc. And there are Christians, practicing and faithful, who do not believe in a God-being

It sounds like you were raised in a specific Christian culture and haven't thought much about what other religions believe. Religion is fundamentally a relationship of people to each other and the world, and that only sometimes has a "god"