I wish I could be part of a religion, but my conscience just won’t allow me to. My rationalist mode of thinking means that I find it almost impossible to accept something on blind faith. Why would you believe in one religion without evidence, when there are hundreds of other religions that have just as much of a basis in fact?
But more importantly, I find that the vast majority of religious teachings conflict drastically with my own moral and political views. This especially applies to matters of human sexuality. I’m a firm believer in the right to free sexual expression, including masturbation and pre-marital sex. But most religions, especially the Abrahamic ones, teach people to keep their natural urges bottled up inside. That’s an incredibly unhealthy mindset, in my opinion. And don’t get me started on how the Bible talks about homosexuality: let’s just say that, as a bisexual person, I do not like being referred to as an “abomination”.
I feel you. Shit like this really fucked me hard (no pun intended). The only good thing that got out of it was that it made me stop PMOing for three months for fear of divine retribution (This was in 2019 during my long absence). I will admit I did feel mentally better (but that’s a different story for a different time), but I will say that mentally scarred me quite a bit, and I only recovered in 2021/2022. My rant on sexual-related matters in 2020/2021 were because of that 'orrible mindset from some stupid ass books I read from this stupid ass cult masquerading as ‘a statement of fact’. I won’t disclose what it was just yet for privacy reasons, but I will leave you with the absolutely brilliant line “chastity is life and sexuality is death”.
But I will say that religions ARE right on matters such as internet porn.