During an intimate conversation with girlfriend Danica Patrick — Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers began discussing his Christian upbringing and how he first began to question his faith.
“Most people that I knew, church was just … you just had to go.”
It wasn’t until Rodgers was exposed to other religions as a young adult that he began to question his own.
“I just didn’t find any connection points with those things,” said Rodgers, who played football at the University of California, Berkeley. “I started questioning things, and had friends who had other beliefs — I enjoyed learning, that’s kind of a part of my life.”
“I had some good friendships along the way that helped me to figure out exactly what I wanted to believe in,” the 36-year-old said in the video. “Ultimately, it was that rules and regulations and binary systems don’t really resonate with me.”
Rodgers also said the growing threat of climate change made it hard for him to accept Christianity.
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“I don’t know how you can believe in a God who wants to condemn most of the planet to a fiery hell,” he said. “What type of loving, sensitive, omnipresent, omnipotent being wants to condemn his beautiful creation to a fiery hell at the end of all this?”
Rodgers didn’t outright come out and say that he was atheist, but a person who does not believe in the existence of God or gods pretty much puts him in that category.
“Religion can be a crutch, it can be something that people have to have to make themselves feel better,” Rodgers continued. “Because it’s set up binary, it’s us and them, saved and unsaved, heaven and hell, it’s enlightened and heathen, it’s holy and righteous … that makes a lot of people feel better about themselves.”
