What was it that made you lose faith? Was it a gradual process for you or was it sudden?
For me I was previously catholic and became an atheist very early, but I actually myself cant remember what it was that made me change. I do think that being told that being gay was a sin kind of helped me in being put off by religion but I don't think that was what did it though. But that was in the past, now I'm older and can understand the different arguments for and against religion, I am currently reading the bible and the inconsistencies, the barbaric rules and how far science has come in already disproving one aspect of the bible, creation, through evolution is what, I think, makes me an atheist today. So that's me, now I'm very curious to those that can remember what was the tipping point for you? Thanks :)
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I dumped it when I got to the point about the Israelites being God's chosen people and the apple of his eye. Haven't been back since.
I was raised Protestant, and for my family and everyone around me, god was taken for granted, just like the air we breathe. But in my late teens I came to the conclusion that my family's participation was more of a social club than bending the knee. I still believed in some spiritual guidance, but organized religion came off my list. I moved out when I was 18, and I'm a pretty independent person. For the next 20 years I was too busy partying and having a good time to be concerned about religion, even though I had not rejected it ... yet. One day I decided to read the bible from cover to cover.
That was when it all came together, that the bible was one screwed up book that did not make sense. But I still searched for something spiritual. Then about five years ago I started to see a lot of stuff in YouTube, and the debates and arguments threw the door wide open. All of a sudden my thoughts got organized, and I had no choice but to accept that I was an atheist.
@ Miss AUS
I have always been an atheist, but was forced to "fake" being saved and a believer. Would that count?
rmfr
Sure. But why were you forced to be a believer? What happened?
Miss AUS
Sorry for the delay, but last two days at work have been quite rough. This may be the only post I make tonight. We'll see.
Ready for a shortened long story?
Basically, in the State of North Carolina, during those ancient times I grew up and had to chase those pesky tyrranosaurs out of my backyard, they actually had laws that made it perfectly legal for "disruptive" students in any "classroom" setting to be disciplined with corporal punishment (physical abuse). This also included Sunday School classes. And that was where I was most disruptive, in Sunday School classes. For asking legitimate questions, I ended up getting my ass whooped by the Pastor, literally every Sunday. He would tell me mom and she would beat my ass for acting up in Suday School. In about two years, the first church actually excommunicated me, forcing me mom to find another church. The second church excommunicated me in another year. The third and last church was much more despotic in their discipline methods. In that one the Pastor made one drop their pants to their ankles, leaving only underwear, bend over, then beat the hell out of you. And if you moved, you got even more licks. To sum it up, it got to a point I would intentionally "disrupt" the Sunday School class with my questions. I was wanting to show the other "Christian" chldren how horribly these Religious Absolutists acted. Maybe it planted a few seeds...
Ultimately, it came down to also being beaten almost unconscious and raped by some of the other "Christian" chldren, I had finally grown tired of fighting and succumbed. I pretended to get saved and become a believer just to keep from being beaten by the Pastor, then me mom, then those other kids. I even memorized huge chunks of the Bible to show I was a better "Christian" than the other kids. Three ears later, I reached the Age of Minority in my father's family traditions. I was now allowed to chose whether I wanted to go to church or not. Guess which I chose?
I still had to pretend to be a believer due to me mom. Once I joined the Navy, I told me mom that I had "faked" it and had been an atheist all along.
And that is a very short version. Ask anyone here. They'll tell you how verbose I can get.
rmfr
Oh my god that's awful. It definitely was a worse time.
I know you said it has been a rough couple days, I just want to wish you well through it <3 And hope it gets better soon
@ Miss AUS
Thanks. But it was a "good" rough couple of days. Mostly hiking and driving to check out and maintain some of our equipment that monitors the Yellowstone Caldera. Just been worn out these past two days. Today I get to spend it resting in one of our equipment monitoring stations. Boring just sitting here all day with almost nothing to do.
rmfr
RE: What was it that made you lose faith?
Wanting to be a preacher and visiting every church in town. Nothing will end your faith like knowledge.
What keeps me an atheist is RELIGIOUS STUPIDITY and my ability to think skeptically and rationally.
For me it was a gradual acceptance of rational thought. I remember thinking that there was much more evidence for Santa Claus than there was for deities. At least with Santa, you can see him at stores and parades and there are presents under the tree.
@NewSkeptic:
You got that right!
At least I showed up!
(emphasis is mine)
I grew up gay in a very religious Pentecostal family in Texas, so I can relate to your experience tremendously. I continuously struggle with the MANY contradictions in the bible, but have attempted for years to rationalize them out of fear of death and hellfire. For me personally, it was reading Ayn Rand's books that started me to push more towards rejecting my faith.
Thanks for that :) From what I know Texas is a very religious place so it must've been hard for you to come out in both ways, that's very brave.
Could you by chance tell me what books they were that turned you? I looked it up and she has quite a few but they don't outwardly tell if it's a religious or atheist book. Well at least not the ones that popped up from my google search lol
@AUS
Hey there, Little Lady. Good to see you still hangin' with us! *grin*... I know I'm a little late to this one, but I will try to give you my shortened version.
Even though I was raised in a Baptist/Methodist household and was surround by various other denominations in a small town community, none of the religious/bible teachings ever made much sense to me. Difficult to say exactly WHY, but I just always knew somewhere deep inside me instinctively that the whole thing was just somehow..... "off". Too many things simply did not add up. However, by the time I became old enough and a bit more educated, that deplorable seed of heaven/hell and "NEVER question God" had been firmly implanted in my psyche. Had it not been for that, it is very likely I would have left religion as long ago as my mid to late teens. Sadly, it took me over forty years to finally flush that nonsense down the toilet. But, hey, better late than never, I suppose. *chuckle*
Ummm.... Just had an idea. I recently wrote a rather lengthy telling of my "breaking away" story. (It is in three parts, by the way.) Basically, really too long to put out here on the forums. But I could PM it to you if you like. It is a considerably more detailed explanation of how I got to where I am now. Just let me know if you are interested. *smile*...
Sure :) I'd love to read it
Ayn Rand is an atheist, and her books definitely reflect that. All her books have made a tremendous impact on my life and world view. I was first introduced to Ayn Rand in High School. My 9th grade English teacher had the class read Anthem, a novelette that she wrote. Anthem's dismal portrayal of collectivism and mysticism on the individual really struck a cord with me. Afterwards, I went to the School library and found another of her books, The Fountainhead. Again, I found being pulled more towards her views on Individualism. Then I read We The Living, her first novel, and Rand once again captivated me with a tale of collectivism's effect on the individual. Finally, I read the magnum opus of her works, Atlas Shrugged. Her final novel was the clearest articulation of her philosophical ideals, which she later named Objectivism. Her passionate defense of the individual and his own happiness as the greatest moral purpose in life is what first started pulling me away from my faith. As a former catholic, I don't need to remind you of the church's beliefs that living for your own sake and happiness is a sin, and that you should instead work for the happiness and well being of others (though of course that's a contradiction in itself), as well as the constant feeling of guilt you are supposed to feel for your existent because of Jesus Christ's sacrifice for your sins. Rand was the first person in my life to tell me (in her writing) that my life was my own, and that the good was to live and love it.
I was raised a catholic in Ireland but I was always naturally skeptical of things. 90% of schools in ireland are catholic including the school i went to so all my friends were religious. There was one child who was from a non-believing family and she got picked on quite a lot. I got in trouble a lot for asking questions but nothing serious ever happened. It was in my teens when trouble started happening because my friends became fervently religious and for some bizzare reason they started to confront protestants and other faiths. I became wary of this so to protect myself i acctually ended up brainwashing myself into the faith. I remained devout for a number of years but i discovered richard dawkins and this gradually caused me to leave religion.
Just read all the stories and wanted to share mine.
In my country (Belarus) religion has been traditionally Orthodox Christianity. Although there is also a sizeable Catholic minority.
My mother was a Christian, I got baptized one month to the day after I was born.
I'd never been interested in religion, but at the age of 14 I got a serious joint disease and ended up in a wheelchair. For a young girl like me severe pains and inability to walk was very depressing, and some nurses in the hospital I was in started to talk about Jesus and religion, brought me some books and magazines. Of course I succumbed to this pressure. After rehabilitation I was dealing with depression and panic attacks, and I was praying all day long in my hospital ward. The nurses called me "that christian girl". I remember clearly that even when any doubt arised in my mind, I was just afraid because otherwise I could burn in hell or suffer as a consequence of my sinful thoughts. Now I realize that many believers supress logical and rational thinking in their heads just in fear of omnipresent God who will punish them. Just as I did.
But later I began to feel that God wasn't responding to any of my prayers. And more and more doubts and questions came into my mind. After I recovered and with the development of the Internet I learned that there's an option to be an atheist.
Several years after I threw out all the icons and magazines.
Now I wish I had done it earlier. Because I spent much time praying when I should have tried to find solutions to my problems.
Anyway there's much less fear and guilt in my life, I'm a happy heathen :)))
Well at least they only got 10 years. Some people who post here had 50+ years "invested" into this non-sense.
I was lucky, I was raised in an extremely progressive Christian community that made it very easy for me to reject it at the start. I'm always impressed that people can reject this stuff after being indoctrinated as a child and holding the view for decades, which pretty much describes the average user of the Atheist Republic. You guys are my heroes.
Oh my goodness. Don't I know it. I suffer in awful pain in lower back to tippy toes. I am on four different kinds of pain killers and all they do is make the pain tolerable. But the pain is still there, nagging away. And yes there is the depression from suffering the pain and walking/hiking makes it worse. Especially for someone like me who has been used to being pysically active all the time. Of course, I knew I would pay for all the injuries I suffered in the car accident that killed my family, but I was hoping it wouldn't hit until my 70s when I am retired.
I hate seeing such things strike children. Even our twin daughters had a mild form of lukemia, but the doctors were able to eradicate easily. That is another fact I always had against religions and their deities. If these deities were supposed to be so damned good, why would they allow children to suffer such horrible diseases? And the only answer they could give was "mysterious ways." Mysterious my ass. More like a sadistic psychotic sociopath.
I hope you are now doing better. Me, with old age coming for me, I doubt it. Doctors are still unsure of what is causing my pain. I keep telling them that a lot of the pain is probably due to the fact that my back has been "officially" broken in the same region four times, within the L3-L4-L5-S1 region (lumbar). And I love hearing the Religious Absolutists telling me I am a testament to power of God in that I am still able to walk. Then I try explaining it is more like Mind Over Body with the attitude "I refuse to admit I am handicapped, although I am."
Hang in there, Me Lady. It will get better.
rmfr
OK, so for me, deconversion was a very slow, gradual process. This comment will be quite long, so get comfortable.
Background before the process started: Late 2015-Mid 2016
I had heard so much about this growing, mysterious, and supposedly evil thing called “atheism” that was astonishingly resistant to the Church’s constant attempts to snuff it out, and which I had previously been led to hate for a few months in late 2015 due to the fact that many of these mysterious people opposed forced school prayer and supported abortion (btw I was also briefly a conservative). I still find it hard to imagine that the concept of living godless was once so alien to me... it just feels so weird that I once resented and despised the very community that I am now a part of. Anyway, here is how it happened:
November 2016
After having heard so much about this undying godless menace, I finally decided to look online and see what everyone at church was talking about. So I looked up “atheism”, and in the image search, I found a wide variety of atheist memes, a lot of which were from this very website, and helped me overcome my fear of secularism in public schools. Now, I was quite understandably offended by some of these memes at first, but not too long afterwards, I came across a particular quote that really had my head buzzing with questions: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he able and willing? Then where did evil come from? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
When I first saw this, I thought, “Hmmm... that’s actually a good question.” I looked online for answers, but of course, I found no satisfactory ones.
Late January or Early February 2017
A few months later, there was a Sunday church service that I attended where they told us about the Hell that all non-Christians are allegedly sent to for not believing in God. Now, I was already quite familiar with the concept, but now that the seeds of doubt had been already been sewn, it caused me to question even more.
April 2017
Last April, I came across this atheist and somewhat antitheistic blog site called thinkandverify; here is the link: https://thinkandverify.wordpress.com
This is what caused me to start losing my faith, as I was so moved by its sound logic and insightful, empowering humanist views that really showed me the flaws in religion, although at first I was, of course, a little suspicious of whether or not the Bible actually had flaws in it, and was a little irked by its criticism of Islam (oh, and did I forget to mention that I had previously shifted to liberal in light of Trump in mid-late 2016?) More on the Bible and non-Christian religions later...
May 2017
Months later, I read the Bible and did research on other religions, both of which caused me to really start becoming disillusioned. However, the internal battle within my mind was not over yet, and the last vestiges of my brainwashing still remained; I was still afraid of Hell.
Mid-July 2017
Internal battle had been won; logic and reason finally triumphed over myth and superstition, and my chains had been broken for good! From this day forth, I was free from religion once and for all. However, it wasn’t until late April 2018 that I actually told anyone or became active online. However, my mom later revealed that she knew from the very beginning, as she had been tracking my browsing activity.
==AFTER DECONVERSION==
Sometime in September or October 2017
I finally realized that being against Islam is not the same as being against Muslims.
Late April 2018
I told others about my atheism for the very first time to make myself feel better after having kept my mouth shut about it for almost a year, and created my account here on ARep soon afterwards.
May 2018
When browsing the web for info on Conservapedia (Wikipedia’s evil twin), I stumbled across RationalWiki, an ancient, more than 11-year-old wiki dedicated to skepticism, atheism, and liberalism, and which was once dedicated to criticizing and fact-checking Conservapedia. I loved it!
Late August 2018
Created my account at RW.
Mid-October 2018
Became an outspoken atheist (in other words, a “New Atheist”), especially at RW.
Early November 2018
After months of mostly just reading the news here on ARep, I really started to become active here on the forums.
"What was the tipping point for you?"
I grew up raised by Muslim parents who blindly followed the religion and just did as they were taught. They are quite loyal to their faith but the thing that got to me about the whole situation was that they had very limited information on the religion. I soon learned that they only believed and did what they did because it was passed down to them from their parents like a tradition. I was just blind faith.
The point where I realised religion was not something I could agree with is when I started to question it and was met with answers of "I don't know" more than any other answer. The fact that religious teachers and pious believers did not have answers other than "it's God's will" or that "this life is a test for the afterworld" put me off religion completely.
I'm just glad I had the common sense to question things rather than blindly follow what I was told to follow.
2018 - Really? Someone can't write their own post?
There is no sudden thing for me It's all gradual process ! I consider myself as an atheist but sometimes I believe in god when I'm in difficult situation I don't know I'm kind of suffering psychologically when I think about nothingness I feel pointless I can't accept it ! The god I believe is more like Buddhist God which is the existence itself or an energy ,etc ... Of course pretending everyday in front of my family make it worse ! But I'm trying to get used to it , And I need to understand more about philosophy I think It's helping me a lot to ask the right question .
I think it was the eternal torture part that first put me off.
Same as you , The hell and what gonna happen after life effects me a lot ...
The whole Idea of heaven and hell are made up stories. Jews did not have it. Christians stole it from Zoroastrianism and the Greeks. The original Christians were Jews. They believe in Jewish laws and that you had to be Jewish to be Christian. This idea of Heaven and Hell was one of the separating forces that moved Christian sects away from Jewish sects. It's all just made up. Mythology gone amok. Do a bit of research on it's origins and it simply fades into mythology. The more you know the sillier the idea sounds.
https://www.livescience.com/56341-where-did-satan-come-from.html
It's a silly made up story and the evidence supports this view.
https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/p/Pagels99.pdf
I was raised anglican..however my parents did not force religious belief...I just naturally, as a child, never really paid much due, or put forth any real energy or thought towards it. I talk (not out loud) to myself when I was young, and still do. I also asked god for things and prayed? (asked him) for my needs. It was not until first year psych that I decided that god, did not exist. I used my personal experience to conclude this. I read that reasoning with yourself (talking to yourself) was a natural thing that our species does that separates us from our predecessors. I realized that my reasoning got me things that I wanted/needed, and that god was batting at about zero. I scored high with that paper, and learned well, from my own abilities to reason...and never was able to find any evidence of god, other than man made belief systems. To this day, I still stand by my understanding that god is not a part of reality.
I realised it was a choice I didn't have to take, and once I started to question it, it unravelled completely and very quickly. Without the a priori mindset that it is true, as Great Hope keeps telling us, it just obviously a vapid superstition with no tangible objective evidence or any sound rational argument to support it. The more I have listened to believers and apologist over the years, the more clearer it becomes they are holding an empty bag, and the emperor has no clothes.
The tipping point was when I learned that there are thousands of religions and they all have the exact same evidence for their story. I also learned that scientists from all branches of discovery look at the evidence and come to the same conclusion. That's when it occurred to me that If you can draw many conclusions from the same evidence then you're obviously doing something wrong.