From the age of nine until my rebellious late teens I was raised in the Seventh Day Adventist church where not only was the bible revered as the inerrant word of God. The church's prophet Ellen G. White and her writings revealed through visions were viewed as inspired, and vital to the understanding of the bible.
After nine years I became disillusioned with its legalistic teachings, and inability to live up to God’s demands and those of Ellen G. White and subsequently left the church. After attending Calvary Chapel for a few years I settled in a Baptist Church for another three years.
The last year at the Baptist church we were studying Rick Warrens book “The Purpose Driven Life” when I began to ask questions about the God of the bible as ‘revealed’ through Warrens' book. For instance, why does God require us to worship him constantly if he was self sufficient in himself being the perfect God he is? After all, an all benevolent being that is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient doesn’t have humanities' psychological baggage. Why does God get jealous if his people choose not to worship him? Isn’t jealously a sin we are commanded not to partake in? Worse of all, why does God command to kill or himself kill those who he doesn’t like in violation of his own commandment? The pat answers of “God’s ways are not our ways” or you must “have faith” were not enough.
I began to read books like the “Age of Reason” by Paine, “The Crucifixion of Truth” by Tony Bushby and “Biblical Inerrancy” by Dennis McKensey and the scales fell from my eyes. The questioning of my faith in organized religion was shook to the core and I suffered severe cognitive dissonance for two years. I finally left the faith and found Deism as being the closest to what I felt was truth.
Deism has allowed me to throw off the chains of dogmatism, religious slavery and legalistic bondage to "revealed" texts and "prophets" in exchange for the reasoning, thinking and logical skills God gave me. I now see that "revealed" religion has been and still is the major cause of all of the world's suffering under many an oppressive regime in other countries, and a danger to our First Amendment right to freedom of and from religion in this country.