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Religious Residue: What Sticks After You Leave Religion

ReligionForBreakfast

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This video explores “religious residue," how religious beliefs, habits, and emotions persist after deconversion, and what psychology reveals about why religion is so hard to fully leave behind.

20 Comments

@ReligionForBreakfast Creator 5 months ago Pinned

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@metaltiger0891 5 months ago

“Let’s imagine a hypothetical woman”: proceeds to precisely describe my life 😂

@FollowerofDuck 4 months ago

a religion is cultural as much as it is spiritual, so leaving a religion feels like abandoning a cultural practice

@abdelrahmanasal9906 5 months ago

"religion installs habits , and habits outlasts the identity that installed them "

@louisjov 5 months ago

I think what a lot of people who grew up religious don't realize until after they leave is how deeply cultural religion is. Arguably for many people, religion functions first as a cultural practice and only secondly as a spiritual practice

@stellamarina4123 5 months ago

I suspect most of us here are "dones" but our fascination with religious studies is part of our residue.

@Lifeheart 5 months ago

"The deepest, stickiest parts of religion are not the docterines you learned in Sunday School. They're the things you watched you mom or dad enact over and over at a real cost since you were 5 years old." This really resonates.

@AsiniusNaso 5 months ago

Reminds me of a saying I heard: “If you’re an atheist in Madison Wisconsin, the god you don’t believe in is Lutheran”

@chrissidiras 5 months ago

"You can check out anytime you like
but you can never leave.."

The Eagles

@Vienna3080 5 months ago

I’m an exJW and the paranoia never goes away

@Frostything 5 months ago

I wonder how many of us "Dones" are subscribed to this channel in part to scratch an itch, one left over from studying our holy books and seeking to learn more about our faiths so as to grow in them.

@sweetykitty4427 5 months ago (edited)

"Are you protestant atheist or catholic atheist?"

Edit: guys its a joke not a real question, please stop commenting genuine answers 😅

@djcfrompt 5 months ago

I appreciate how you go deeper than the headline findings and always make a point to explain the full complexity. Religion is such a fascinating topic that deserves to be studied in its full depth.

@robertb6889 5 months ago

There's a study circulating about Gen Z atheists being less angry, and less anti-religion than older generations.

A big part of that, I expect, is more Gen Z were never raised religious, while the older atheists were a lot more personally affected and harmed by their religion they were raised - which is why they left in the first place.

@lampcap2 4 months ago

The funny thing is, this religious residue is what many religious people (at least christians) would say is "God's way of trying to call you back."

@jamesbest9038 5 months ago

I didn’t decide to stop being a Christian. I realized I wasn’t one.

@nyxshadowhawk 5 months ago

This idea of "religious residue" applies when converting between religions, too. I've seen so many neopagans who retain the religious schema of evangelical Christianity, which doesn't resemble that of paganism at all. It takes them a while to adopt a new religious framework.

@jefcaine 5 months ago

Sometimes I talk to my never religious friends about all my lingering guilt and anxiety and I'm shocked and a little envious at how uninterested they are.