People Who Turn Away

Top reason why people turn away from religion: Unsavory followers.

Obviously, there are members of every group that are embarrassing. People in your family, people on your team at work, people in your classroom, people in your city/state, people in your political party, people in your country, people in your gender, and of course and most of all, people in your religion.

People who turn away from religion and/or faith are not repulsed by how courageous and admirable Moses was, or offended about how loving and amazing Jesus was, or disgusted about how respectable and gentle Mohammed was. Not at all! How could they be? That is not what people who turn away are worried about.

They are worried about how repulsive it is for people who claim to be religious kill innocent people in the direct name of God. They are offended by how judgmental many religious leaders and followers are to everyone. These people are disgusted how hypocritical and harmful religious speakers' words are to many others.

It is not hard at all to see why people turn away from religion and faith. Although, I don't find this to be an excuse.

For me personally, if I do not like something or find something a little off, I do research on the subject. If you grow up around a family who claims to be Christian, and you see nothing but negativity and bad influences, why not research exactly what being Christian means, instead of taking your family's bad example as truth? Why not read the Bible yourself? You can NEVER take anothers' opinion & word as your own if you don't look into exactly what it means for you.

Every American on television reality shows are an embarrassment to me as an American citizen, but I definitely wouldn't want a non-American person to watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians and think all Americans are like that family. That is most definitely a FALLACIOUS hasty generalization.

You cannot accurately judge an entire faith based on the limited followers you run into in your life. You cannot judge it based on the people you know + the people you see on TV & in the news. You must find things out on your OWN, because if you don't, aren't you just a clueless follower yourself?

For me, it's difficult to know that others connect me to the type of Muslim that I definitely don't agree with on most levels. That is why I try to avoid the label Muslim if possible, and prefer saying that I practice Islam, or follow Islam. Unfortunately, others connect bad things to the word "Muslim" (and "Christian," etc) and that really is a shame, because it's very far from facts. When people do their OWN research about faiths, they see it in a whole new light.