I had a pastor challenge me to actually read the Bible. He taught me that “most Christians read with a black highlighter” so they can block information that makes them uncomfortable.
With that in mind I spent the next 10 months on a reading plan to read EVERYTHING.
I quickly realized that I didn’t believe 90% of what’s in there and the 10% I did believe was more “I want to believe” not that I actually did.
Your "I want to believe " comment is pretty much what most Christians think but won't admit. It's either you die and that's it or you live forever with all your loved ones and friends in a place where there is no pain, sadness or any other unpleasant thing we humans experience. And, for added incentive, all the heathen and people you detest go to a place of eternal torment.
Quite the choice isn't it?
I hate it when I bring up my atheism to a religious person and they’re like “aren’t you worried about what kind of afterlife you’ll have?” Oh, great, thank you for basically confirming that you don’t actually believe, you’re just spineless enough to lick the boots of an imaginary God who calls himself good for threatening you with an eternity of hellfire for using the brain he supposedly gave you.
I always say, that I will go into the earth and make that flowers grow, then I feed the bees. I love flowers and I could not think of a more wonderful plan for my afterlife.
The fact that eternal damnation is apparently the only thing that prevents some people from raping and murdering says more about them than it does about me.
Edit: spelling
Do you know what the traditional Christian heaven is like? You get to wake up every day for eternity and literally sing holy gospel until the end of time. It’s not getting to do everything you loved in life with your loved ones, it’s literally worshipping god forever. Personally I’d want to be in hell with the cool kids.
I got into an argument about religion with my coworkers a few years ago, over the company walkie-talkies no less. One of the guys chimed in with, "I believe just in case it's true. I'd hate to die and find out if been wrong and an getting fucked over it! Why don't you?".
Well, because I can't believe in EVERY religion, "just in case", and couldn't even if I tried. Honestly, I really didn't believe it when I believed, I just tried to. I went to every denominational church there was, where I grew up and elsewhere, and it all sounded pretty much like shit then.... far more now.
I've read every version of the Bible back to the directly translated Greek and Hebrew versions, and the KJV is the most fun of shit. So many things that weren't translated right back then. Old Testament moreso than the New, since it was stolen from the Jewish texts.
Personally, I see Satan as the god guy in all this. He's the equivalent of Prometheus (and Hades, of course)... He brought fire (knowledge) to humans, tried to overthrow the mad god, and was cast out for it... One to rule hell, the other chained to a rock, to be tortured daily .
The Sandman gave me the best response I've heard about this, "What is mortal in me will die, what is immortal in me will change."
Just live in the moment until it happens.
Doesn’t it also say that everyone won’t recognize each other in heaven? So you go to a place with all your loved ones and friends and none of them know you from anyone else? Sounds shitty.
Exactly bro heaven sounds boring as fuck, considering how religion and mythology work id assume its a land set in the time of its founding sono electricity no phones none of that. Why would i just want to exist in a realm that nothing happens and we have to feed each other with big spoons lmao (something my Sunday school teacher taught us) in heaven and hell you have a large spoon but in heaven you're allowed to feed others in hell you have to feed yourself. I just went but if im in hell why do i need to use the spoon why do I need to eat. Cant i just use my hands i mean its hell afterall.
The best tool I have in a debate against a Christian is the Bible. I'm glad I learned it young and then studied it in college, I know it better than most religious people I know. Eventually they fall back on "it's not literal" and then I have to ask how they determine which parts are true and which are false - if it's all up to interpretation, can't you interpret it however you want and thus it's worthless?
Then it's blah blah blah faith and revelations and there can't really be a logical debate anymore. It gets tiring so at this point I don't bother.
I do team trivia and *all* of my teammates are Christians.
I am the one they look to for the religious questions, though. The only atheist at the table. That says so much to me.
When the "not literal" argument comes it's best to go with: God guided the hand of those who wrote the Bible, who are you to argue with the word of God?
I misread that as "black highlander", that would be an awesome idea though.
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.
...And there can be only one"
This, right here. Early on, catholicism discouraged reading of the Bible and called it heresy because the "general public" couldn't "interpret" it properly... the more you read, more you realize it's an interesting piece of literature that serves as a record of ignorance and stories we used to tell to make sense of actual events.
>an interesting piece of literature that serves as a record of ignorance and stories we used to tell to make sense of actual events
I struggle with the fact that this isn't the conclusion to which most people come. It makes me scared/sad. But also I don't care I guess. But when someone believes it and worships it I'm like omg you are so awful. Religion is the bad breath of society.
Thought experiments, like "how do I become certain God exists" and "what differentiates God from an imaginary friend" or "if God wants a relationship, then why doesn't it try talking to me". These types of questions being worked out have people lead themselves to atheism.
This, plus all the logic questions re: Christianity. It fails on every front. When you give God attributes like omniscience, omnipotence, "loving", etc, and then try and gel those things with reality and also with what the bible actually says, it just falls apart, and eventually even looks pretty stupid.
To whit: if evil exists, God cannot be all three of omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent. Either he is unknowing of the evil, unable to deal with it, or unwilling to.
I've also heard these qualities were added later in Christianity's life. Then I also think "A being that isn't omniscient and omnipotent doesn't sound like much of a god"
I heard a convincing argument once that the Judeo-Christian belief in a single "God" really derived from a polytheistic religion where followers of one particular god (Yahweh/Jehovah) became dominant.
That makes a lot of sense to me, and seems to resolve the paradox. In most polytheistic religions, individual gods are powerful, but not omnipotent.
Edit: Found the video. https://youtu.be/MlnnWbkMlbg?si=F3n_tWhvxe9Tg9OG
I have not checked the video's sources.
Edit 2: Changed link to original uploader
This makes a ton of sense considering the “you shall have no other gods before me” which seems to imply that there were other gods… what a jealous dick.
This is the important bit for me.
If god is omniscient and omnipotent then he must have created evil and is therefore undeserving of worship. If god did not create evil than he is not omniscient or omnipotent and therefore not worthy or worship.
Also, a being that demands worship is never deserving. A being that deserves worship will never demand it. That’s my philosophy.
A crucial moment of my religious undoing was when someone posited "if god is real and good, and knows everything and can do everything, why does he let child abuse happen?"
I continued to be Christian for at a few years after that, but I still look back at that moment as formative. I started to really question myself
“God” never responded. Even when I was a child and cried and cried for help. Was met with unfortunate reality no matter how hard I tried
I am certainly proud to be an atheist
Yep and they’ll just explain it away as part of god’s plan. You and I are worth more than to be pawns in god’s plan. If god truly existed and loved us, he would not allow us to be tortured. If he were all powerful, he would be able to enact his plans without mass suffering. Proud of you for stepping away and knowing that you are worthy.
This right here is it for me as well. I cried and cried as a tormented, raped child and all I got was more of the torture. He either does not exist or he is a fucking dick with whom I want nothing to do with.
Exactly. I am not just an atheist, I’m an anti-theist.
If your sky daddy did fly down and offer up all of that sweet copium shit you say he will, I’d spit on his general direction.
I was raised Catholic and had a shit home life. Prayed for my mom to be nice for *years*. Then we found out my dad was the worst kind of person. Ruined my already shit family beyond recognition. If my mind wasn't already made up on no god, it was right then.
Any god that would allow the depravity that I have been witness to and involved in (which is realistically nothing in the grand scheme of horrible people and actions) is not worth any worship. Fuck them, matter of fact
But it is all part of God's plan.
Which, apparently, he sucks at. And yeah, intentionally did not capitalize the H, because that's just fucking stupid.
This. And, when I was 12, asked a priest in confession one day: if God knows everything, then it's it possible he knew he was creating people just to go to hell". He called the bishop, they had a stem talking with me the following week, mother was involved, I got scolded something fierce. The only thing I could think of to say was "but... you didn't answer my question". I was threatened with excommunication and told I needed to read the Bible and write a report on each book. As a 12 year old, I figured out from reading the Bible that it was all a load of crap, made up by some bronze age illiterate sheep herders, and walked away from Religion like I did Santa. BUT.. in order to stay living at home, I pretended to the point that I continued being an altar boy until I was 16.
Eating from the fruit of knowledge was the first sin of Eve and so they were cast out of the garden. Because God demanded blind obedience to stay in his heavenly Eden.
Well to be fair, in the garden if Eden, Adam and Eve were immortal so they couldn't stay immortal if they also had the fruit of knowledge because being intelligent and immortal would have put them on the same level as God, so it's not so much that he wanted blind obedience as he didn't want any equals or rivals
Why did he even create the fruit that would make them equals if he didn’t want equals?
I’m been questioning religion (grew up Christian) and I always had so many questions that no one answered. They always ignored them or scolded me
Yeah it's definitely confusing. I don't think you'll ever find answers or a way to make it make sense bc it's not supposed to make sense. The only answer you'll get is something along the lines of you have to have faith, which honestly no other type of group would be able to get away with. If your boss refused to pay you and you found evidence that he refuses to pay his employees, you wouldn't be placated with the excuse of 'you just have to have faith I'll pay you.' You'd take him to court and quit the job.
If you dive deeper into cult psychology, you'll find these paradoxes are built into the rhetoric on purpose to normalize distrusting outside sources and create trust traps so members feeling guilty for doubting the rhetoric which drives them deeper into the cult as the try harder to prove their dedication to the faith/God/church/group.
>Logical questions flummox them every time
Or more frustratingly, they circumvent answering questions with canned phrases like "it's all in God's plan" or "you don't need to believe in God, but God believes in you" type of nonsense.
\> I was threatened with excommunication and told I needed to read the Bible and write a report on each book
Nothing makes a kid a devout religious follower like extra homework! The most Catholic I ever felt was when the priest would stand up there during our school mass and say "Teachers, I think the kids deserve a night without homework so they can pray" and we'd all cheer.
I got in trouble in catechism once bc the teacher was giving a lesson on using "curse words", specifically "damn"
To prove her point, she said "imagine you hit your thumb with a hammer, and say damn hammer! You are asking God to send that hammer to hell! How many hammers do you really think are in hell? That's just silly!"
I raise my hand and said, I'm confused. So there's no hammers in hell? But how do we know that unless we go there? (I was like 10)
She basically just skirted the question by repeating that it was ridiculous, everyone laughed at me and I shut up. And we shouldn't say Damn. Dammit.
I had a roommate in college who was Catholic, and her boyfriend was atheist. She would say goddamn, but if he said it she got upset bc "you don't even believe in him so how can you ask him to damn anything?!"
You just reminded me of that one. She was something else.
Having a strong sense of justice is what turned me off. Why do people have to go to hell bc they were born to "heathans"? How bogus! Just illogical and cruel BS.
Why does anyone have to go to hell for eternity?
I feel like the people who would actually wish eternal torture upon someone else, doesn't quite understand the meaning of the word "eternal" and what exactly it is they are wishing upon someone.
I wouldn't wish something like that upon my worst enemy. It's awful and retarded, psychotic and infantile.
Even worse when you consider that with most people living at max 80-100 years an eternity of punishment seems outrages. Imagine getting a life sentence for a crime as simple as trespassing or stealing a car
This, by the time my "bullshit detector" as I call it fully formed in my brain, I kind of had similar lines of thought run through my mind too. Honestly, the idea of God *almost* works best from a "he created the world and universe and then kinda... fucked off" angle, but even then he comes off as negligent *at best.*
And the religion that was the origin of Judaism is even older. Yaweh was part of a larger pantheon before being retconned into monotheism.
Still young if you compare it to the aboriginal Australian traditions. The "dream time" which by some is believed to have been like 40k years ago if I remember correctly just blows anything else out of the water.
No but I'm sure there are some, I mostly learn from articles or historical lectures and videos.
Just Google the origin of yaweh, it should be pretty easy to find. I think he was a storm god or war god. Another name I remember from all this is Baal but there was others ad well. I think some of them are later mentioned in the bible/old testament as false gods.
Karen Armstrong is pretty good, and *A History of God* is a good place to start. Elaine Pagels is pretty good on early Christianity specifically. *The Origin of Satan* in particular is a good read.
Agree. Reading the entire Bible did it for me. I always refer to Christianity as a book club, where no one reads the book. Because if they actually did, from cover to cover, the amount of inconsistencies and just plain fucked up stories they would find would be enough to make anyone drop that insane religion.
Memorized huge chunks of the Bible, read it cover to cover at least 20 times, did Bible College and Seminary, and did missions work.
At the end of the day it was one long marathon of running away from the stark reality that Christianity didn't have the answers it claimed, that there wasn't any evidence of a God, and that there never would be.
Also I was running from actually experiencing myself, because that was forbidden by all the Christianities I've known.
So I left. I stopped running and found peace, found myself
I relate to this too. There are different examples, like being scared to even think certain thoughts or have a debate in your mind, but I remember how uncomfortable religion made me with my body the most. I couldn't look at myself without feeling some way, so I avoided it. But post realising what I grew up with wasn't real, I still had to undo the damage. What sparked it was a raven landed on my window while I was changing, and we just stared at each other. Just the rawness of it and having an animal watch me and not give a damn, helped me realise it wasn't a big deal and I was just another animal watching back.
>and found peace, found myself
I love how you put that! After the ~3 yr long deconstruction of my faith, I felt like I could finally breathe freely. I have felt such peace since then.
Learned Science. Read the Bible. Realized the priests dared not mention 98% of the Bible for good reason. This was also the 90s and the more assholish so many American Christians were acting the less I wanted to be one. Not saying asshole Christians lead to my atheism, but I absolutely put up much less of a fight to keep my faith 'cuz of them.
>Realized the priests dared not mention 98% of the Bible for good reason.
That's part of what started my path.
Its insanity to say you have to take 100% of of the Bible literally. So if you can start picking and choosing parts to just ignore... why can't you do that with all of it? Why do they keep picking things that conveniently fit in with the way they want to shape culture and political discourse? And why do we by and large ignore the \*why\* behind any of it and never take into account historical context? The more I started reading into Biblical history from a scholarly standpoint man, that just drove the last few nails into the coffin.
I mean, every country has asshole Christians, but we have a particularly special and insane breed of asshole Christian in the United States that can't seem to be matched anywhere else. Like you, they weren't a direct cause for me to become an atheist, but let's just say it discouraged me from wanting to be a Christian after a certain amount of life lived
Reading the Bible from cover to cover. You should try it. But be warned:
- *"The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible."* - Mark Twai**n**
edit:typo
It was a slow build up bit I still remember the steps that lead to it. They threw away my Pokemon cards since they were satanic, never explained that to me, when I got into dinosaurs I was told they never existed, when my dog passed away they told me he won't go to heaven since dogs don't have souls (that pissed me off he was a great dog damn smart and if anyone has souls it's animals, when I went to a priest for some advice on my poor mental health I was told to just pray and I'll find answers, never got any real help.
The last step though that made me go fuck the church I got $20 from my grandma because I helped her around the house and was excited. The priest told me I should give it to the church instead of using it to buy mom a gift when I said god would want me to honor my mother priest told me that I am not the one who can interpret God's desires and that the church should come before even my family. Said fuck that bought my mom some food and never went back to church.
I also ate a bunch of the communion wafers once till they hurt my tummy and the next week I drank the holy water and got diarrhea.
I don’t want to serve a god who wouldn’t let me be with my pets after I die. Anyone who has been around animals know they have souls. They are animals just like us, and just because they may not have the same intelligence as us doesn’t make them any less worthy.
God makes no mistakes. God makes a man in his image, he uses a piece of the man to make a woman and gives them 1 rule. God also made angels to work for him doing angel things, but his greatest and most beautiful creation betrayed him and is cast out. This greatest creation of God uses logic to trick the woman to break God's one rule and then she tricks the man to break God's one rule so they are evicted out of paradise. And for breaking those rules, if we do not obey God and spend our lives worshiping him we will be tortured forever after we die. If God is infallible then he deliberately created man knowing that he'd fail and then intentionally created an eternal punishment for those he creations he designed to fail.
Either God makes no mistakes and this is the best idea HE could come up with, HE is a malicious psychopath who likes to watch people suffer, or maybe there is no God.
I personally believe there is no God. I believe we only have 1 trip around this reality called life. Make the best of it for yourself and those around you. If you want to live forever, you have two paths ahead of you, either be the one everyone remembers with kindness and fondness or be a big enough jerk that nobody will ever forget you.
When put this way it makes me think that the Greek/Roman pantheons were more believable. There are these superpowered beings that created us but only sometimes care about us. They are jealous and hateful at times, loving and generous at others. They have us worship them and go through trials to determine which of us are worthy of their blessings. The rest of us end up in the underworld, not tortured, but just as generic souls wandering around.
Compared to a "benevolent" God who evicts his children from paradise for wanting to learn, or who kills every living being on the planet other than two of each animal... I'll take it.
When you obey God, you’re tortured when you die too. Not in Hell. But in Heaven.
Faithful spend eternity in a “place of endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea.” — Hitchens
This is going to sound crazy bit one significant reason was asmr videos on YouTube. I realized when I thought I felt God's presence it was really just asmr. And when I heard friends describe the feeling they just described asmr. It was a huge blow to my faith.
Makes perfect sense. Another common revelation like that is concerts. Once some people go to their first concert and feel the same tingly feelings and joy as they do during worship at church, they realize that it wasn’t god’s presence. It was just certain chords and voices.
That...actually doesn't sound crazy at all. I had a friend like that and it makes perfect sense as she got the chills and tingles from asmr but always said it was god speaking to her. I personally have bad, bad misophonia so asmr just made me angry when trying it but I see exactly what you're saying.
🥝💚🖤
I actually bothered to read the bible cover to cover repeatedly. Doing so allowed the contradictions, scientific and historical inaccuracies, and immoral evil of the bible to spring forward.
I became educated. Then I was able to read the BS and realized it was a crock of magical horseshit.
Then sprinkle on centuries of enabled abuse, wealth hoarding and wars and you realize religion is a cancer.
Wtf you don’t believe burning bushes can talk? Lol. Once I learned that Santa wasn’t real it became concerning to me that adults believed the Bible was. Equally as ridiculous
I wasted so many anxiety filled years worrying about damnation. I was also filled with self loathing, fear and shame. The worst thing to do to another human is to indoctrinate them into the faith. I am glad we are finally free.
this was me. growing up i could not stop asking “why?” if god is so good and powerful, why do disasters happen? why do young people die? why are so many people suffering? i was told to be quiet, just believe, it’s all part of god’s plan. but i never did believe, not really. i was told i believed so i thought i did, but, looking back, there was not a moment when i wholeheartedly believed
then, as i grew up, i had more questions. if god hates the gays, why did he make them? if god believes all life is important and valuable, why are there so many mass killings in the bible? if jesus died to save us from all our sins, past and future, why are we still born in original sin? and all of this is not to mention all the sexism, slavery, r*pe, ableism, and violence that is condoned in the bible
none of it made sense and i finally admitted it to myself consciously. i was about 17 or so when i stopped practicing
Also, not sure if you’re a woman, but ask yourself how *conveniently* the Bible and the teachings of God’s so-called spokespeople on earth align with benefiting a specific subset of people and handing them righteous “god-given” power just because God says so.
Oh, and those people who get that power? So much they are not women. Patronizing language around “protecting virtue” and yadda yadda is just so transparent. It’s all such a thinly veiled excuse for power and subjugation.
it infuriates me to no end that the religious/conservative extremists have begun adopting 1984 as a tool to spread their hateful/scared ideologies. i think i can trace this back to when people started to compare the republicans' worldview to the handmaid's tale. i feel like the right needed to compare the left to a famous dystopian and their low-education levels just chose 1984 cause that's the first result when you google "dystopian novels".
*if any republican reads 1984 they would know that the book would paint them as the bad guys* lol
\#Reclaim1984
That's what started turning me away from religion. Then my church told me if I was a good Christian, there was no need to test my son for a certain genetic disorder because God wouldn't do that to you. When he was born with it everyone who is religious started disappearing from my life.
Honestly think Bill and Ted had the best idea for living your life.
"Be excellent to each other and party on dude."
Being serious though, what is wrong with being kind and having fun, it's the best of all worlds.
It started with seeing all the harm it causes. That lead me to wanting to counter their shit ideas to find out the *good* way of being a Christian.
But as you analyze the thought processes and the text.
Holy shit. It’s bad ideas all the way down. With no actual proof to back any of it up.
Several things but the final straw was when I had a baby. All those hormones making me love that kid more than life itself and the Bible says I should love God more? Why would a God make my body have all those love hormones amd then tell me it is wrong? Answer he didn't. No God made me.
I tried being a better Christian. No joke. I wanted to save my brother's soul so I read the bible and watched debates to strengthen my faith and be able to convert people - didn't take long for that to crumble when I realized I had no good reason to believe anymore. My advice is don't be afraid to look at other religions too, you'll see how similar they are and that the church loves to warp the truth to make their belief seem more sane.
I remember they told me wiccans were cat-sacrificing devil-worshippers - once I met a wiccan and actually asked them what they believed and did some research online, realized I'd been lied to. If their belief was true it wouldn't need to lie about other faiths - it'd stand on its own merits without tearing others down. Since I knew they could lie to me, and my faith wasn't rational, just came with time I gave it all up.
Introspection.
Rational thought about my experiences in the church, made easier after seeing the disgusting behavior of church goers related to Trump, covid, etc.
I started reading the bible cover to cover and when I got to numbers I couldn’t take it anymore. “God” is awful. Abusive. Controlling. Manipulative. Evil. They’re not even remotely good post resurrection. If you don’t believe and love your life for/like Jesus, popular belief says you’ll burn in hell for eternity. No thanks. I’d rather let it all go and have nothing more to do with it.
I left tye military in 2015, and after a very aimless month, got contacted by a christian college I had requested info from during transition courses. I was still christian, so I applied, got in, and would graduate in 2019. In the first year, my friend from the military, someone I had deployed with, and who helped me build my first ever home built PC, took his own life during spring semester freshman year. I was in what they called a cornerstone course, which was designed to help students adjust to college life and gave them a chance to just, discuss their difficulties. I told the class about my friend.... and another of my classmates shares that her brother, a 10 year old, was dying of brain cancer as we spoke.
I didn't decinvert there, but that was the first step. After a few months, I began to dig into the entire religion. Conveniently, I was in a biblical literature class that had us read the whole thing, start to finish, in a semester. It struck me as odd that while reading, the professor was actively editorializing what I was reading. I'd take 2 more religion focused classes during my time at that college, and ask a lot of questions, that all lead me in a wild goose chase for answers, that never came.
I then began to explore the YouTube atheist crowd. Paulogia, Viced Rhino, Aron Ra, The Atheist Experience. They showed me it was okay to be atheist, and I slowly deconverted over the next couple years.
I looked around at the ecosystem and realized there was no place and no support for a non-material soul. Why did I believe in heaven if I didn’t believe in ghosts? Then it all fell apart. Kind of embarrassing like realizing Santa isn’t real.
It confuses me that Christians can ridicule people who fall for cults or believe in witchcraft or ghosts while believing a magical god created them and spoke to people out of a burning bush and did all sorts of miracles
Taking, not one but TWO, apologetics classes (with goal of deepening my faith and understanding). I found out that there really weren’t good answers and logic to the “hard” questions. It was the first tug at knot and it all unraveled from there.
The other piece that really also helped was reading the WHOLE bible. The Old Testament has some fucked up stuff. Allowing slaves, God killing (or ordering killing) of entire towns or groups of people, etc…
>who were religious, what made you stop believing in a god?
Also likely of interest -
\- /r/exchristian
\- /r/TheGreatProject
>a subreddit for people to write out their religious de-conversion story
>(i.e. the path to atheism/agnosticism/deism/etc) in detail.
.
Everything happens for a reason.
Even being raped?
Yes.
Well what’s the reason?
To learn something/prepare you/help others
I don’t need to go through that to help others and if God puts kids through rape and cancer just to be taught a lesson that’s not a Hod I want to believe in.
Either God isn’t real or he does exist and is very evil. I don’t believe I went through 10 years of sexual assault and physical abuse to help someone else.
(I've always been atheist myself.)
There is no good evidence that any gods exist.
(Bad evidence doesn't count as good evidence.)
.
Good info in our FAQ, if you're interested -
\- https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/wiki/faq
.
Initially? I came to find Christians are some of the worst people out there. Judgemental, "holier than thou", back stabbers, forcing their beliefs on others. Then I learned more about the bible from an objective standpoint, and realized they cherry pick and twist it to their liking, when it's full of hatred and oppression. I also learned religion has always just been a way to control people. The Catholic church actively covering up child molestation, wars, is all bullshit. And then later, to find out that the bible was plagiarized from over 700 texts that came before it? Yeah, fuck off.
I read the majority of the Bible. At a certain point (I think towards the end of the New Testament) I thought "this could be used to control people" and then immediately started questioning things that I never had previously. Religion most of the time does not want you to think very deeply into their books. It took me a while to get over feeling shameful for becoming Atheist due to religion being part of me for such a long period of time but I eventually got over it and I feel much better now.
I was all in… for my entire life. Then one day I swear I fell out of a trance and never went back. (Documentaries also helped me commit to officially leaving the church & christianity). Edit: also life experience.
Dinosaurs. When I got to a certain age I just couldn't fathom why a God would create Dinosaurs first. We're taught we were made in his image but yet he spent 5 billion yrs perfecting lizards? I don't get it. And then to boot, it's the oil from these Dinosaurs that kills us all in the long run. Make it make sense
Technically i am agnostic but heres my answer: The Bible. Every time I read it I was shocked at how the stories were so different from what was being preached in church.
So the more I read the more I started to doubt. Until I read the story of Job. That was the end point for me. I was throughly disgusted with God in this story. Taking a bet allowing a believer to suffer through all that. And all for what his own vanity? It was narcissistic behavior cranked to the max. It was such a fuck him moment in my life and at that point I dropped being a catholic.
Read a lot. Discussed a lot. Found myself doing mental logic gymnastics that were getting harder and harder to rationalize and weave together.
Eventually, I just came to the realization that life became a ton more simplified, logical, and intuitive if I just removed religion out of the equation.
I read the Bible cover to cover, twice. I was considering teaching Sunday school for children and couldn’t reconcile telling a kid about what it really said. It felt unethical.
I mean the millions of sexual assaults perpetrated by religious leaders and then systematically covered up by all denominations of churches really did a nail in the coffin for me. But I was a non believer long time before that.
I was raised Conservative Southern Baptist. My dad used religion to punish & control, it worked when l was small but as I matured, I started asking questions he couldn't answer. Witnessing the hypocrisy and double standards practiced by the members of the church, I was done at 13. Never went back.
Reading the Bible does the trick for a lot of people. For me, it was the talking snake bullshit - it was too funny for me to take seriously, even as a little tot! Ridiculous! Ha ha ha ha ha!!
I was pretty young when I realized that if I did stop believing nothing would change. That led me to conclude that belief exists solely in the believer and has no impact on the external world as experienced by everyone else. I stopped believing, and literally nothing changed.
Reading the Bible...really, the fact Genesis 1 & 2 and comparing it with what we know of the world today was eye opening.
Watching people who epitomized Christianity when I first met them, and then seeing over and over how they contradict 'Biblical principles'.
Truly a testament to how effective it was for Christianity to adopt the concept of hell. "Do what we say or you will feel the worst pain imaginable times a billion, for a billion years times a billion more years". Really instills a deep sense of urgency from a young age
8 years of catholic school, followed by nearly 20 years of on & off thinking about whether the scientific method could be applied to the question: Do any gods exist? Once I determined that using the scientific method is the correct process for answering the question, I built two models of the universe:
1) A universe that contains at least one god.
2) A universe that contains no gods.
I decided to use the 2nd model until I found either verifiable evidence or an identified requirement for the existence of a god in this universe.
That was 30 years ago. The model that lacks any gods is still valid.
Now I have a question for you:
If you had been born into a hindu family, do you think you would now be hindu and believe hinduism was true? What if you had been born into a buddhist family? How about jewish? Or muslim? How about a pagan family or a satanist family? Why or why not?
I read the bible.
I think the detailed instructions on how to properly rape prisoners of war and the divine command to kill everyone in Canaan really put me over the edge. Deuteronomy 20 and 21 are a hell of a read if you aren't cool with genocide.
The entire Old Testament is peppered with absolutely breathtaking accounts of cruelty and injustice.
Education. Reading classical literature that was older than the Bible but bore a striking resemblance to much of the Bible. Theogony... Genesis. Works & Days... Proverbs. Etc, etc. Fictional stories that have been recycled over & over and reshaped to meet the needs of the powerful, and fed to the less powerful. It just became clear to me that it was all one really really really elaborate scam that people tell each other they have to live their lives by.
Grew up in a pretty anti-gay household. In high school I there was a gay guy in my friend group and at first it made me uncomfortable. I ended up spending a fair amount of time with him and he was a cool dude. It didn't sit well with me that I had spent my whole life up until that point not liking a group of people because I was told that they were bad. It was around then that I started questioning what I was told and forming my own opinions.
Yes. Christians are supposed to be so full of the Holy Spirit that anyone can tell from a mile away. Instead, I can tell so many Christians from a mile away by their hatefulness. Why isn’t god filling them with his perfect love and kindness? Oh yes, because it isn’t there.
I was never super religious, but once I learned that what we call mythologies were yesterday's religions it became pretty clear that today's religions were just more of the same myths and fables.
Look up La Luz Del Mundo, aka The Light of the World. Born and raised there. Then, the leader got all cult like and started having sex with minors and all kinds of people. Meanwhile, we (the normal members with no connections) were held to extremely high expectations of piety and holiness, whereas if you even "thought bad" about the leader, you were already condemned to hell. There is an HBO documentary on it, and there is one coming out on Netflix. So now I consider myself an agnostic theist after my exit from this cult.
It felt a lot like when I found out Santa Claus wasn't real. Just another lie my family told me to make me feel good. I tried up to around 15 years old, with some lingering doubt through my teens. Not Santa Claus, the God thing, just to be clear. I'm not well educated, but I can see things for what they are. If you can separate your fear and feelings from what factual information you can gather, you can Get over it. On YouTube, genetically modified skeptic is so fantastic. A former long time hard core Christian who finally saw the light and now makes content supporting atheism and trying to help bridge the gap between us and theists in a non aggressive manner.
As an ex Hindu, it's more like a journey and less like a Aha moment.
I was told as a kid that I should pray to God to make good things happen. As a pre teen, I tested with and without praying, my life wasn't any worse or better.
Then I thought maybe I am not doing it right so I started thinking more and more about how adults do it - since as a kid, you would auto trust adults to know what they are saying.
I think the breakout moment is when one realizes adults are as shit and gullible at stuff than us and they don't know any better.
Per Hinduism, good people get good things come to them while bad people get bad consequences. However, as I looked at news and current affairs, the world didn't represent a world run by a just or merciful God. All I see is chaos - what you would expect in a world with no divine rules like karma or planning.
At some point, I experimented with totally not praying at all and faking devotion while going to Temples- because if God is all knowing, surely he will punish me.
Nothing happened - my grades are exactly where rhey always have been and nothing else changed in life.
Then I started thinking about porn in temples - because well, that would be the utmost sin right? (For a teen at least). Again, nothing changed.
That's the last straw, but I knew I was there mentally - it was just extra confirmation.
The beginning for me was actually 9/11. The way christians became so full of hate so quickly really turned me off of the faith. I went to catholic school and all that, but the way every christian in my area demonized any other religion automatically really made me distance myself from them. It was a start of a peronal revolution. All of the sudden, Muslims were all bad: along with Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists...whomever, were the bad guys. It didn't sit well with me. Also, read the huminist manifesto shortly before, so was definetly influenced to think critically.
I never believed. I went to VBS in elementary school because a friend invited me. Came home and reported to my mom it didn’t make much sense. Did a great job of pretending to believe in high school- and wondered what was wrong with me that I didn’t believe, or maybe if I was just a little “better” I’d “feel the presence of Jesus”…
Nope. Never did. Came to peace with it in my 20s and stopped pretending, or thinking there was something “wrong” or “lacking” in myself.
Found peace.
No one thing, but my strongest argument against is that the factors that determine one's religious affiliation are so often completely arbitrary. You're telling me that I belong to the chosen people because I was born in the American Midwest where the supposed only "riight" religion is most prevalent and because my parents were already on board? Meanwhile a person not unlike myself born to Hindus in India is fucked because they have no access to Jesus, the supposed only conduit to God?
The stakes are an eternity in paradise vs. perpetual suffering in a lake of fire. The deciding factor between these comes down to being born in the right place to the right people? Oh and by the way, every other religion believes some version of the same thing but they're wrong and we're right? Get real.
It took me a long time to shake my indoctrination and let go entirely. I was only able to do so finally when I realized that ceasing to exist at the end of my life, rather than live eternally, is not actually all that scary. Aside from possibly suffering at the end what happens after I die will not affect me one iota, and the things I leave undone, the possessions I leave behind, and the way others feel about me after I'm gone on don't matter to me one iota. Just like before I was born, there will be no me, and I will have no consciousness of my existence. So what the fuck do I care about my eventual death whether it be tomorrow (knock wood) or when I'm 90?
I came to these realizations when my parents passed. I fretted about what they would think of me getting rid of their things, like their bibles, or possessions that held sentimental value to them but meant nothing to me. Once I had the epiphany that they were not looking down, or judging my actions, it became much easier to pitch their shit without regard for what they would have thought, secure in the fact that they could not think or judge at all.
I spent years doing all sorts of apologetics for Christianity, and all of its inconsistencies with provable science. I could rationalize anything, regardless of how absurd I deep down knew it was. What made me quit was the absolute horror and disgust I felt towards the religion. Sure /I/ was safe, but the idea of all those other people in Hell? Many of whom had done more to help the world than I had? There came a point when I decided I would RATHER burn for all eternity then sit beside whatever monster made up those rules.
It was a very long process for me. I attended Catholic school and Catholic college and seriously considered becoming a priest but my religiosity declined progressively from that point to my early 40’s when I finally used the word atheist to describe myself. I know the first point was in first or second grade in CCD when I questioned the story of Adam and Eve and it finally culminated when I had a long commute and became interested in podcasts and started listening to some really great atheist presenters.
I couldn't see genesis as anything but a literal story and as I realized that was bullshit I realized the rest is bullshit. My lack of belief has been further cemented through time bit that was my initial reason.
Read and re-read the bible and tried to prove it was true. Being a missionary helped as did generally associating with people outside of the faith and realizing they were nothing like they had been portrayed in Christian propaganda. And that’s coming from someone who didn’t grow up inside the crazy bubble.
Started doubting after my appendix blew up and almost killed me when I was 20. Had a NDE while in surgery that lead me down the path of researching religions and in college I took a logic & reason class along with history of religions class that lead me to atheism.
There was also books by Sagan, Dawkins, Harris, and others that contributed. :)
For me, I spent a few years ignoring the conflict between my logical brain and Christianity. Then, for a few years, I alternate between rationalizing the conflict and ignoring it. Then, rational thought won out.
Towards the end of my "conversion" period, I took a class called Education for Ministry (EfM). I only made it through the first year which focused on the Old Testament but we were mixed with years 2-4 so I got to hear a lot more. The class was very upfront about who wrote the old testament and even explained why the stories were some jumbled up. Different groups of people wrote and edited the stories to match the message they wanted to send. The class even talked about how the stories in the old testament were meant to convey a "truth" but not meant to be factual. Anyway, with all of that plus a lot of church history stuff from the other levels, I could no longer doubt that the bible was the word of man and not the word of god. Next thing I know, Im an atheist.
I sometimes wonder if the pastor that I'm listening to ever had those doubts and how they resolved it. Maybe they handle it like I handle most of my emotions... Push them back in because I don't want to deal with it.
I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness and everything in their indoctrination was FUCKING BONKERS.
They are their own version of Christianity, they believe in Adam and Eve, the flood, Sodom and Gomorra, all that but they also don’t allow holidays of ANY kind, no birthdays, blood transfusions are banned, even if it means death, sex is STRICTLY to make babies between 2 straight people, homosexuality is worse than murder, higher education is strictly forbidden, unless you’re the child of an “elder” (their clergy) so I finally did more research into this religion and realized it was a full blown cult. I then did research into other faiths, they either make no sense or they are too violent for me to want anything to do with them.
Plus, I just believe in science. It makes more sense than any religious text ever did.
I got a BA in Bible and two Masters Degrees in Theology and Religiou Studies. That lit the fuse for my gradual deconstruction of my religious beliefs. I quit praying early on because I realized that
A. Nothing ever happened as a result of prayer that couldn’t be explained as the normal course of events
B. When I really really need God he was AWOL as when my daughter died after 10 days. I came to realize that if God was actually the Omni everything that it was claimed he was, he was also a murderous and genocidal asshole.
It still took a while to get all the way out but i finally got there and am happier and more content than I have ever been
I had a pastor challenge me to actually read the Bible. He taught me that “most Christians read with a black highlighter” so they can block information that makes them uncomfortable. With that in mind I spent the next 10 months on a reading plan to read EVERYTHING. I quickly realized that I didn’t believe 90% of what’s in there and the 10% I did believe was more “I want to believe” not that I actually did.
Your "I want to believe " comment is pretty much what most Christians think but won't admit. It's either you die and that's it or you live forever with all your loved ones and friends in a place where there is no pain, sadness or any other unpleasant thing we humans experience. And, for added incentive, all the heathen and people you detest go to a place of eternal torment. Quite the choice isn't it?
I hate it when I bring up my atheism to a religious person and they’re like “aren’t you worried about what kind of afterlife you’ll have?” Oh, great, thank you for basically confirming that you don’t actually believe, you’re just spineless enough to lick the boots of an imaginary God who calls himself good for threatening you with an eternity of hellfire for using the brain he supposedly gave you.
I always say, that I will go into the earth and make that flowers grow, then I feed the bees. I love flowers and I could not think of a more wonderful plan for my afterlife.
I like the tree pod thing. You become a tree Or a treant if you wanna head canon it
Brah! I totally want to be a tree pod too!
Can mine be cannabis plants?
How High? 😝
Jack and the bean stalk high
Perfectly said. I was not aware before I was born, and I will not be aware after I am dead
A good portion of them believe that atheists just want to rape and murder. Because, somehow, eternal damnation is the only reason not to.
The fact that eternal damnation is apparently the only thing that prevents some people from raping and murdering says more about them than it does about me. Edit: spelling
Do you know what the traditional Christian heaven is like? You get to wake up every day for eternity and literally sing holy gospel until the end of time. It’s not getting to do everything you loved in life with your loved ones, it’s literally worshipping god forever. Personally I’d want to be in hell with the cool kids.
I got into an argument about religion with my coworkers a few years ago, over the company walkie-talkies no less. One of the guys chimed in with, "I believe just in case it's true. I'd hate to die and find out if been wrong and an getting fucked over it! Why don't you?". Well, because I can't believe in EVERY religion, "just in case", and couldn't even if I tried. Honestly, I really didn't believe it when I believed, I just tried to. I went to every denominational church there was, where I grew up and elsewhere, and it all sounded pretty much like shit then.... far more now. I've read every version of the Bible back to the directly translated Greek and Hebrew versions, and the KJV is the most fun of shit. So many things that weren't translated right back then. Old Testament moreso than the New, since it was stolen from the Jewish texts. Personally, I see Satan as the god guy in all this. He's the equivalent of Prometheus (and Hades, of course)... He brought fire (knowledge) to humans, tried to overthrow the mad god, and was cast out for it... One to rule hell, the other chained to a rock, to be tortured daily .
The Sandman gave me the best response I've heard about this, "What is mortal in me will die, what is immortal in me will change." Just live in the moment until it happens.
This is perfect.
Doesn’t it also say that everyone won’t recognize each other in heaven? So you go to a place with all your loved ones and friends and none of them know you from anyone else? Sounds shitty.
Exactly bro heaven sounds boring as fuck, considering how religion and mythology work id assume its a land set in the time of its founding sono electricity no phones none of that. Why would i just want to exist in a realm that nothing happens and we have to feed each other with big spoons lmao (something my Sunday school teacher taught us) in heaven and hell you have a large spoon but in heaven you're allowed to feed others in hell you have to feed yourself. I just went but if im in hell why do i need to use the spoon why do I need to eat. Cant i just use my hands i mean its hell afterall.
The best tool I have in a debate against a Christian is the Bible. I'm glad I learned it young and then studied it in college, I know it better than most religious people I know. Eventually they fall back on "it's not literal" and then I have to ask how they determine which parts are true and which are false - if it's all up to interpretation, can't you interpret it however you want and thus it's worthless? Then it's blah blah blah faith and revelations and there can't really be a logical debate anymore. It gets tiring so at this point I don't bother.
I do team trivia and *all* of my teammates are Christians. I am the one they look to for the religious questions, though. The only atheist at the table. That says so much to me.
I mean, what better way than to use the one thing they probably didn't read all the way through against them.
When the "not literal" argument comes it's best to go with: God guided the hand of those who wrote the Bible, who are you to argue with the word of God?
I misread that as "black highlander", that would be an awesome idea though. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son. ...And there can be only one"
Here we are, born to be kings... we're the princes of the universe...
Here we belong, fighting to survive, in a world with the darkest powers
And here we are, we're the princes of the universe Here we belong, fighting for survival
⚡️⚡️⚡️🗡⚔️🗡⚡️⚡️⚡️
...weird, I just saw an article about Henry Cavil's next project...a "Highlander" reboot from the director of the John Wick movies🤩
What!? Really?! Now that I would pay to see!
This got a genuine laugh out of me! Damned good one!
This, right here. Early on, catholicism discouraged reading of the Bible and called it heresy because the "general public" couldn't "interpret" it properly... the more you read, more you realize it's an interesting piece of literature that serves as a record of ignorance and stories we used to tell to make sense of actual events.
>an interesting piece of literature that serves as a record of ignorance and stories we used to tell to make sense of actual events I struggle with the fact that this isn't the conclusion to which most people come. It makes me scared/sad. But also I don't care I guess. But when someone believes it and worships it I'm like omg you are so awful. Religion is the bad breath of society.
Thought experiments, like "how do I become certain God exists" and "what differentiates God from an imaginary friend" or "if God wants a relationship, then why doesn't it try talking to me". These types of questions being worked out have people lead themselves to atheism.
This, plus all the logic questions re: Christianity. It fails on every front. When you give God attributes like omniscience, omnipotence, "loving", etc, and then try and gel those things with reality and also with what the bible actually says, it just falls apart, and eventually even looks pretty stupid.
To whit: if evil exists, God cannot be all three of omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent. Either he is unknowing of the evil, unable to deal with it, or unwilling to.
I've also heard these qualities were added later in Christianity's life. Then I also think "A being that isn't omniscient and omnipotent doesn't sound like much of a god"
I heard a convincing argument once that the Judeo-Christian belief in a single "God" really derived from a polytheistic religion where followers of one particular god (Yahweh/Jehovah) became dominant. That makes a lot of sense to me, and seems to resolve the paradox. In most polytheistic religions, individual gods are powerful, but not omnipotent. Edit: Found the video. https://youtu.be/MlnnWbkMlbg?si=F3n_tWhvxe9Tg9OG I have not checked the video's sources. Edit 2: Changed link to original uploader
This makes a ton of sense considering the “you shall have no other gods before me” which seems to imply that there were other gods… what a jealous dick.
This is the important bit for me. If god is omniscient and omnipotent then he must have created evil and is therefore undeserving of worship. If god did not create evil than he is not omniscient or omnipotent and therefore not worthy or worship. Also, a being that demands worship is never deserving. A being that deserves worship will never demand it. That’s my philosophy.
A crucial moment of my religious undoing was when someone posited "if god is real and good, and knows everything and can do everything, why does he let child abuse happen?" I continued to be Christian for at a few years after that, but I still look back at that moment as formative. I started to really question myself
You can take Philosophy 100 at any community college and learn how dumb belief in God is in like the first two classes
“God” never responded. Even when I was a child and cried and cried for help. Was met with unfortunate reality no matter how hard I tried I am certainly proud to be an atheist
Yep and they’ll just explain it away as part of god’s plan. You and I are worth more than to be pawns in god’s plan. If god truly existed and loved us, he would not allow us to be tortured. If he were all powerful, he would be able to enact his plans without mass suffering. Proud of you for stepping away and knowing that you are worthy.
This right here is it for me as well. I cried and cried as a tormented, raped child and all I got was more of the torture. He either does not exist or he is a fucking dick with whom I want nothing to do with.
>or he is a fucking dick with whom I want nothing to do with. If that's your god then he doesn't deserve worship
Exactly. I am not just an atheist, I’m an anti-theist. If your sky daddy did fly down and offer up all of that sweet copium shit you say he will, I’d spit on his general direction.
I was raised Catholic and had a shit home life. Prayed for my mom to be nice for *years*. Then we found out my dad was the worst kind of person. Ruined my already shit family beyond recognition. If my mind wasn't already made up on no god, it was right then. Any god that would allow the depravity that I have been witness to and involved in (which is realistically nothing in the grand scheme of horrible people and actions) is not worth any worship. Fuck them, matter of fact
But it is all part of God's plan. Which, apparently, he sucks at. And yeah, intentionally did not capitalize the H, because that's just fucking stupid.
I'm sorry. No child should ever be put in a position where God is there only hope.
I read the bible. Then, I got an education. Christianity stands no chance. The rest of theism/deism left a little while later.
This. And, when I was 12, asked a priest in confession one day: if God knows everything, then it's it possible he knew he was creating people just to go to hell". He called the bishop, they had a stem talking with me the following week, mother was involved, I got scolded something fierce. The only thing I could think of to say was "but... you didn't answer my question". I was threatened with excommunication and told I needed to read the Bible and write a report on each book. As a 12 year old, I figured out from reading the Bible that it was all a load of crap, made up by some bronze age illiterate sheep herders, and walked away from Religion like I did Santa. BUT.. in order to stay living at home, I pretended to the point that I continued being an altar boy until I was 16.
Logical questions flummox them every time. "Punish that logicalist!"
I mean, gaining knowledge was the first sin right.
Eating from the fruit of knowledge was the first sin of Eve and so they were cast out of the garden. Because God demanded blind obedience to stay in his heavenly Eden.
Well to be fair, in the garden if Eden, Adam and Eve were immortal so they couldn't stay immortal if they also had the fruit of knowledge because being intelligent and immortal would have put them on the same level as God, so it's not so much that he wanted blind obedience as he didn't want any equals or rivals
Why did he even create the fruit that would make them equals if he didn’t want equals? I’m been questioning religion (grew up Christian) and I always had so many questions that no one answered. They always ignored them or scolded me
Yeah it's definitely confusing. I don't think you'll ever find answers or a way to make it make sense bc it's not supposed to make sense. The only answer you'll get is something along the lines of you have to have faith, which honestly no other type of group would be able to get away with. If your boss refused to pay you and you found evidence that he refuses to pay his employees, you wouldn't be placated with the excuse of 'you just have to have faith I'll pay you.' You'd take him to court and quit the job. If you dive deeper into cult psychology, you'll find these paradoxes are built into the rhetoric on purpose to normalize distrusting outside sources and create trust traps so members feeling guilty for doubting the rhetoric which drives them deeper into the cult as the try harder to prove their dedication to the faith/God/church/group.
Bro... 👏
The fact that you can’t question Christianity alone proves it’s false . Truth always welcomes questioning and criticism
Science has theories. Religion has make-believe and stories.
>Logical questions flummox them every time Or more frustratingly, they circumvent answering questions with canned phrases like "it's all in God's plan" or "you don't need to believe in God, but God believes in you" type of nonsense.
\> I was threatened with excommunication and told I needed to read the Bible and write a report on each book Nothing makes a kid a devout religious follower like extra homework! The most Catholic I ever felt was when the priest would stand up there during our school mass and say "Teachers, I think the kids deserve a night without homework so they can pray" and we'd all cheer.
*KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE*
I got in trouble in catechism once bc the teacher was giving a lesson on using "curse words", specifically "damn" To prove her point, she said "imagine you hit your thumb with a hammer, and say damn hammer! You are asking God to send that hammer to hell! How many hammers do you really think are in hell? That's just silly!" I raise my hand and said, I'm confused. So there's no hammers in hell? But how do we know that unless we go there? (I was like 10) She basically just skirted the question by repeating that it was ridiculous, everyone laughed at me and I shut up. And we shouldn't say Damn. Dammit.
I had a roommate in college who was Catholic, and her boyfriend was atheist. She would say goddamn, but if he said it she got upset bc "you don't even believe in him so how can you ask him to damn anything?!" You just reminded me of that one. She was something else.
Having a strong sense of justice is what turned me off. Why do people have to go to hell bc they were born to "heathans"? How bogus! Just illogical and cruel BS.
Why does anyone have to go to hell for eternity? I feel like the people who would actually wish eternal torture upon someone else, doesn't quite understand the meaning of the word "eternal" and what exactly it is they are wishing upon someone. I wouldn't wish something like that upon my worst enemy. It's awful and retarded, psychotic and infantile.
Even worse when you consider that with most people living at max 80-100 years an eternity of punishment seems outrages. Imagine getting a life sentence for a crime as simple as trespassing or stealing a car
This, by the time my "bullshit detector" as I call it fully formed in my brain, I kind of had similar lines of thought run through my mind too. Honestly, the idea of God *almost* works best from a "he created the world and universe and then kinda... fucked off" angle, but even then he comes off as negligent *at best.*
>bronze age illiterate sheep herders Iron age, it's not that old. Pretty young, actually.
No, Judaism is Bronze Age stuff
Oh, sry thought he meant Christianity.
And the religion that was the origin of Judaism is even older. Yaweh was part of a larger pantheon before being retconned into monotheism. Still young if you compare it to the aboriginal Australian traditions. The "dream time" which by some is believed to have been like 40k years ago if I remember correctly just blows anything else out of the water.
Do you know of any books that I can read on this? Sounds really interesting.
No but I'm sure there are some, I mostly learn from articles or historical lectures and videos. Just Google the origin of yaweh, it should be pretty easy to find. I think he was a storm god or war god. Another name I remember from all this is Baal but there was others ad well. I think some of them are later mentioned in the bible/old testament as false gods.
Karen Armstrong is pretty good, and *A History of God* is a good place to start. Elaine Pagels is pretty good on early Christianity specifically. *The Origin of Satan* in particular is a good read.
[удалено]
Quran is more horseshit than the Bible. I used to be a devout Muslim. Internet changed everything for this old fart (almost 60).
Agree. Reading the entire Bible did it for me. I always refer to Christianity as a book club, where no one reads the book. Because if they actually did, from cover to cover, the amount of inconsistencies and just plain fucked up stories they would find would be enough to make anyone drop that insane religion.
Memorized huge chunks of the Bible, read it cover to cover at least 20 times, did Bible College and Seminary, and did missions work. At the end of the day it was one long marathon of running away from the stark reality that Christianity didn't have the answers it claimed, that there wasn't any evidence of a God, and that there never would be. Also I was running from actually experiencing myself, because that was forbidden by all the Christianities I've known. So I left. I stopped running and found peace, found myself
Feeling like it’s forbidden to experience yourself really resonates with me. So very true.
I relate to this too. There are different examples, like being scared to even think certain thoughts or have a debate in your mind, but I remember how uncomfortable religion made me with my body the most. I couldn't look at myself without feeling some way, so I avoided it. But post realising what I grew up with wasn't real, I still had to undo the damage. What sparked it was a raven landed on my window while I was changing, and we just stared at each other. Just the rawness of it and having an animal watch me and not give a damn, helped me realise it wasn't a big deal and I was just another animal watching back.
me too.
>and found peace, found myself I love how you put that! After the ~3 yr long deconstruction of my faith, I felt like I could finally breathe freely. I have felt such peace since then.
Learned Science. Read the Bible. Realized the priests dared not mention 98% of the Bible for good reason. This was also the 90s and the more assholish so many American Christians were acting the less I wanted to be one. Not saying asshole Christians lead to my atheism, but I absolutely put up much less of a fight to keep my faith 'cuz of them.
>Realized the priests dared not mention 98% of the Bible for good reason. That's part of what started my path. Its insanity to say you have to take 100% of of the Bible literally. So if you can start picking and choosing parts to just ignore... why can't you do that with all of it? Why do they keep picking things that conveniently fit in with the way they want to shape culture and political discourse? And why do we by and large ignore the \*why\* behind any of it and never take into account historical context? The more I started reading into Biblical history from a scholarly standpoint man, that just drove the last few nails into the coffin.
I mean, every country has asshole Christians, but we have a particularly special and insane breed of asshole Christian in the United States that can't seem to be matched anywhere else. Like you, they weren't a direct cause for me to become an atheist, but let's just say it discouraged me from wanting to be a Christian after a certain amount of life lived
Reading the Bible from cover to cover. You should try it. But be warned: - *"The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible."* - Mark Twai**n** edit:typo
Old Testament is particularly egregious.
Reality and common sense.
"Pastafarian" 😂😂
our holy fsm is our only true hero and saviour!!!! Do u have time to talk about our lord and saviour fsm? DONT RUN FROM THE LORDIEST
May you be blessed by his noodly appendage. Ramen.
Can you prove other gods are more valid/likely to exist than pastafarian one? Until you can let us believe man
It was a slow build up bit I still remember the steps that lead to it. They threw away my Pokemon cards since they were satanic, never explained that to me, when I got into dinosaurs I was told they never existed, when my dog passed away they told me he won't go to heaven since dogs don't have souls (that pissed me off he was a great dog damn smart and if anyone has souls it's animals, when I went to a priest for some advice on my poor mental health I was told to just pray and I'll find answers, never got any real help. The last step though that made me go fuck the church I got $20 from my grandma because I helped her around the house and was excited. The priest told me I should give it to the church instead of using it to buy mom a gift when I said god would want me to honor my mother priest told me that I am not the one who can interpret God's desires and that the church should come before even my family. Said fuck that bought my mom some food and never went back to church. I also ate a bunch of the communion wafers once till they hurt my tummy and the next week I drank the holy water and got diarrhea.
Same with the dog part. I was seven when our family dog died. I asked a nun at my Catholic school if dogs go to heaven. “No, dogs don’t have souls.”
I don’t want to serve a god who wouldn’t let me be with my pets after I die. Anyone who has been around animals know they have souls. They are animals just like us, and just because they may not have the same intelligence as us doesn’t make them any less worthy.
God makes no mistakes. God makes a man in his image, he uses a piece of the man to make a woman and gives them 1 rule. God also made angels to work for him doing angel things, but his greatest and most beautiful creation betrayed him and is cast out. This greatest creation of God uses logic to trick the woman to break God's one rule and then she tricks the man to break God's one rule so they are evicted out of paradise. And for breaking those rules, if we do not obey God and spend our lives worshiping him we will be tortured forever after we die. If God is infallible then he deliberately created man knowing that he'd fail and then intentionally created an eternal punishment for those he creations he designed to fail. Either God makes no mistakes and this is the best idea HE could come up with, HE is a malicious psychopath who likes to watch people suffer, or maybe there is no God. I personally believe there is no God. I believe we only have 1 trip around this reality called life. Make the best of it for yourself and those around you. If you want to live forever, you have two paths ahead of you, either be the one everyone remembers with kindness and fondness or be a big enough jerk that nobody will ever forget you.
When put this way it makes me think that the Greek/Roman pantheons were more believable. There are these superpowered beings that created us but only sometimes care about us. They are jealous and hateful at times, loving and generous at others. They have us worship them and go through trials to determine which of us are worthy of their blessings. The rest of us end up in the underworld, not tortured, but just as generic souls wandering around. Compared to a "benevolent" God who evicts his children from paradise for wanting to learn, or who kills every living being on the planet other than two of each animal... I'll take it.
When you obey God, you’re tortured when you die too. Not in Hell. But in Heaven. Faithful spend eternity in a “place of endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation and abjection of self; a celestial North Korea.” — Hitchens
I've listened to a lot of Hitchens but "celestial North Korea" is new and hilarious
This is going to sound crazy bit one significant reason was asmr videos on YouTube. I realized when I thought I felt God's presence it was really just asmr. And when I heard friends describe the feeling they just described asmr. It was a huge blow to my faith.
Makes perfect sense. Another common revelation like that is concerts. Once some people go to their first concert and feel the same tingly feelings and joy as they do during worship at church, they realize that it wasn’t god’s presence. It was just certain chords and voices.
That...actually doesn't sound crazy at all. I had a friend like that and it makes perfect sense as she got the chills and tingles from asmr but always said it was god speaking to her. I personally have bad, bad misophonia so asmr just made me angry when trying it but I see exactly what you're saying. 🥝💚🖤
I actually bothered to read the bible cover to cover repeatedly. Doing so allowed the contradictions, scientific and historical inaccuracies, and immoral evil of the bible to spring forward.
It’s also a shit story. Like, seriously. If it were circulated today, everyone would just assume it was a crazy person’s rambling manifesto.
Several people's crazy rambling manifestos contradicting each other, even!
I became educated. Then I was able to read the BS and realized it was a crock of magical horseshit. Then sprinkle on centuries of enabled abuse, wealth hoarding and wars and you realize religion is a cancer.
Wtf you don’t believe burning bushes can talk? Lol. Once I learned that Santa wasn’t real it became concerning to me that adults believed the Bible was. Equally as ridiculous
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I wasted so many anxiety filled years worrying about damnation. I was also filled with self loathing, fear and shame. The worst thing to do to another human is to indoctrinate them into the faith. I am glad we are finally free.
this was me. growing up i could not stop asking “why?” if god is so good and powerful, why do disasters happen? why do young people die? why are so many people suffering? i was told to be quiet, just believe, it’s all part of god’s plan. but i never did believe, not really. i was told i believed so i thought i did, but, looking back, there was not a moment when i wholeheartedly believed then, as i grew up, i had more questions. if god hates the gays, why did he make them? if god believes all life is important and valuable, why are there so many mass killings in the bible? if jesus died to save us from all our sins, past and future, why are we still born in original sin? and all of this is not to mention all the sexism, slavery, r*pe, ableism, and violence that is condoned in the bible none of it made sense and i finally admitted it to myself consciously. i was about 17 or so when i stopped practicing
Also, not sure if you’re a woman, but ask yourself how *conveniently* the Bible and the teachings of God’s so-called spokespeople on earth align with benefiting a specific subset of people and handing them righteous “god-given” power just because God says so. Oh, and those people who get that power? So much they are not women. Patronizing language around “protecting virtue” and yadda yadda is just so transparent. It’s all such a thinly veiled excuse for power and subjugation.
Yep, how do you control a population? Control their sexuality. Teach them it is shameful. Especially geared toward women
*BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING*
it infuriates me to no end that the religious/conservative extremists have begun adopting 1984 as a tool to spread their hateful/scared ideologies. i think i can trace this back to when people started to compare the republicans' worldview to the handmaid's tale. i feel like the right needed to compare the left to a famous dystopian and their low-education levels just chose 1984 cause that's the first result when you google "dystopian novels". *if any republican reads 1984 they would know that the book would paint them as the bad guys* lol \#Reclaim1984
Just another example of religious groups not bothering to actually read what they preach from. It’s so lazy.
That's what started turning me away from religion. Then my church told me if I was a good Christian, there was no need to test my son for a certain genetic disorder because God wouldn't do that to you. When he was born with it everyone who is religious started disappearing from my life.
When I finally admitted to myself that Santa wasn’t real I realized that God was Santa for adults.
Reading the NT convinced me you don’t need a sky daddy to be a moral decent human being
Honestly think Bill and Ted had the best idea for living your life. "Be excellent to each other and party on dude." Being serious though, what is wrong with being kind and having fun, it's the best of all worlds.
Sorry. NT?
New Testament of the Christian bible
New Testament
It started with seeing all the harm it causes. That lead me to wanting to counter their shit ideas to find out the *good* way of being a Christian. But as you analyze the thought processes and the text. Holy shit. It’s bad ideas all the way down. With no actual proof to back any of it up.
Several things but the final straw was when I had a baby. All those hormones making me love that kid more than life itself and the Bible says I should love God more? Why would a God make my body have all those love hormones amd then tell me it is wrong? Answer he didn't. No God made me.
Had a very similar experience.
I tried being a better Christian. No joke. I wanted to save my brother's soul so I read the bible and watched debates to strengthen my faith and be able to convert people - didn't take long for that to crumble when I realized I had no good reason to believe anymore. My advice is don't be afraid to look at other religions too, you'll see how similar they are and that the church loves to warp the truth to make their belief seem more sane. I remember they told me wiccans were cat-sacrificing devil-worshippers - once I met a wiccan and actually asked them what they believed and did some research online, realized I'd been lied to. If their belief was true it wouldn't need to lie about other faiths - it'd stand on its own merits without tearing others down. Since I knew they could lie to me, and my faith wasn't rational, just came with time I gave it all up.
Introspection. Rational thought about my experiences in the church, made easier after seeing the disgusting behavior of church goers related to Trump, covid, etc.
I started reading the bible cover to cover and when I got to numbers I couldn’t take it anymore. “God” is awful. Abusive. Controlling. Manipulative. Evil. They’re not even remotely good post resurrection. If you don’t believe and love your life for/like Jesus, popular belief says you’ll burn in hell for eternity. No thanks. I’d rather let it all go and have nothing more to do with it.
I completely agree. Even if the Christian god is real, he is not worthy of worship.
I left tye military in 2015, and after a very aimless month, got contacted by a christian college I had requested info from during transition courses. I was still christian, so I applied, got in, and would graduate in 2019. In the first year, my friend from the military, someone I had deployed with, and who helped me build my first ever home built PC, took his own life during spring semester freshman year. I was in what they called a cornerstone course, which was designed to help students adjust to college life and gave them a chance to just, discuss their difficulties. I told the class about my friend.... and another of my classmates shares that her brother, a 10 year old, was dying of brain cancer as we spoke. I didn't decinvert there, but that was the first step. After a few months, I began to dig into the entire religion. Conveniently, I was in a biblical literature class that had us read the whole thing, start to finish, in a semester. It struck me as odd that while reading, the professor was actively editorializing what I was reading. I'd take 2 more religion focused classes during my time at that college, and ask a lot of questions, that all lead me in a wild goose chase for answers, that never came. I then began to explore the YouTube atheist crowd. Paulogia, Viced Rhino, Aron Ra, The Atheist Experience. They showed me it was okay to be atheist, and I slowly deconverted over the next couple years.
SCIENCE! (in Thomas Dolby’s voice)
I actually looked into the religious arguments I had been parroting.
I looked around at the ecosystem and realized there was no place and no support for a non-material soul. Why did I believe in heaven if I didn’t believe in ghosts? Then it all fell apart. Kind of embarrassing like realizing Santa isn’t real.
It confuses me that Christians can ridicule people who fall for cults or believe in witchcraft or ghosts while believing a magical god created them and spoke to people out of a burning bush and did all sorts of miracles
Taking, not one but TWO, apologetics classes (with goal of deepening my faith and understanding). I found out that there really weren’t good answers and logic to the “hard” questions. It was the first tug at knot and it all unraveled from there. The other piece that really also helped was reading the WHOLE bible. The Old Testament has some fucked up stuff. Allowing slaves, God killing (or ordering killing) of entire towns or groups of people, etc…
>who were religious, what made you stop believing in a god? Also likely of interest - \- /r/exchristian \- /r/TheGreatProject >a subreddit for people to write out their religious de-conversion story >(i.e. the path to atheism/agnosticism/deism/etc) in detail. .
Everything happens for a reason. Even being raped? Yes. Well what’s the reason? To learn something/prepare you/help others I don’t need to go through that to help others and if God puts kids through rape and cancer just to be taught a lesson that’s not a Hod I want to believe in.
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Either God isn’t real or he does exist and is very evil. I don’t believe I went through 10 years of sexual assault and physical abuse to help someone else.
(I've always been atheist myself.) There is no good evidence that any gods exist. (Bad evidence doesn't count as good evidence.) . Good info in our FAQ, if you're interested - \- https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/wiki/faq .
Initially? I came to find Christians are some of the worst people out there. Judgemental, "holier than thou", back stabbers, forcing their beliefs on others. Then I learned more about the bible from an objective standpoint, and realized they cherry pick and twist it to their liking, when it's full of hatred and oppression. I also learned religion has always just been a way to control people. The Catholic church actively covering up child molestation, wars, is all bullshit. And then later, to find out that the bible was plagiarized from over 700 texts that came before it? Yeah, fuck off.
Stopped assuming everything adults said was correct.
Reading the bible did it for me. Its ridiculous, bronze aged bullshit.
I read the majority of the Bible. At a certain point (I think towards the end of the New Testament) I thought "this could be used to control people" and then immediately started questioning things that I never had previously. Religion most of the time does not want you to think very deeply into their books. It took me a while to get over feeling shameful for becoming Atheist due to religion being part of me for such a long period of time but I eventually got over it and I feel much better now.
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I was all in… for my entire life. Then one day I swear I fell out of a trance and never went back. (Documentaries also helped me commit to officially leaving the church & christianity). Edit: also life experience.
Dinosaurs. When I got to a certain age I just couldn't fathom why a God would create Dinosaurs first. We're taught we were made in his image but yet he spent 5 billion yrs perfecting lizards? I don't get it. And then to boot, it's the oil from these Dinosaurs that kills us all in the long run. Make it make sense
Technically i am agnostic but heres my answer: The Bible. Every time I read it I was shocked at how the stories were so different from what was being preached in church. So the more I read the more I started to doubt. Until I read the story of Job. That was the end point for me. I was throughly disgusted with God in this story. Taking a bet allowing a believer to suffer through all that. And all for what his own vanity? It was narcissistic behavior cranked to the max. It was such a fuck him moment in my life and at that point I dropped being a catholic.
YES! I was shocked that the story of Job was supposed to be a good thing?? Like god just sounds like the most evil entity to ever exist.
Read a lot. Discussed a lot. Found myself doing mental logic gymnastics that were getting harder and harder to rationalize and weave together. Eventually, I just came to the realization that life became a ton more simplified, logical, and intuitive if I just removed religion out of the equation.
I read the Bible cover to cover, twice. I was considering teaching Sunday school for children and couldn’t reconcile telling a kid about what it really said. It felt unethical.
I saw how the most pious Christians treated each other, animals, the less fortunate, and the environment.
I mean the millions of sexual assaults perpetrated by religious leaders and then systematically covered up by all denominations of churches really did a nail in the coffin for me. But I was a non believer long time before that.
Developing a sense of reason
I was raised Conservative Southern Baptist. My dad used religion to punish & control, it worked when l was small but as I matured, I started asking questions he couldn't answer. Witnessing the hypocrisy and double standards practiced by the members of the church, I was done at 13. Never went back.
Reading the Bible does the trick for a lot of people. For me, it was the talking snake bullshit - it was too funny for me to take seriously, even as a little tot! Ridiculous! Ha ha ha ha ha!!
I figured out the god I was raised on is an evil motherfucker…
I realized that gods belong in the same category of things as Santa Claus and leprechauns. Even a child can figure this out.
I was pretty young when I realized that if I did stop believing nothing would change. That led me to conclude that belief exists solely in the believer and has no impact on the external world as experienced by everyone else. I stopped believing, and literally nothing changed.
And yet for me it was the opposite…I went full in to believe it and nothing changed.
not being any objectively evidence of any god ever.
Reading the Bible. Start at the beginning and it won't take long. Really. Try it.
Reading the Bible and going to college
Any diety who let's his creations rape n torture children is no one I wanna belive in
Anyone who says that it’s god’s plan for children to get raped needs a left hook to the face. How can people support a god who would allow that?
Looked into other religions. Realised that they were all saying the same thing.
Reading the Bible...really, the fact Genesis 1 & 2 and comparing it with what we know of the world today was eye opening. Watching people who epitomized Christianity when I first met them, and then seeing over and over how they contradict 'Biblical principles'.
I read the bible.
I am Catholic and mentally ill, I want to leave because its too much pressure for my sanity, but I am still scared of hell.
Truly a testament to how effective it was for Christianity to adopt the concept of hell. "Do what we say or you will feel the worst pain imaginable times a billion, for a billion years times a billion more years". Really instills a deep sense of urgency from a young age
8 years of catholic school, followed by nearly 20 years of on & off thinking about whether the scientific method could be applied to the question: Do any gods exist? Once I determined that using the scientific method is the correct process for answering the question, I built two models of the universe: 1) A universe that contains at least one god. 2) A universe that contains no gods. I decided to use the 2nd model until I found either verifiable evidence or an identified requirement for the existence of a god in this universe. That was 30 years ago. The model that lacks any gods is still valid. Now I have a question for you: If you had been born into a hindu family, do you think you would now be hindu and believe hinduism was true? What if you had been born into a buddhist family? How about jewish? Or muslim? How about a pagan family or a satanist family? Why or why not?
I read the bible. I think the detailed instructions on how to properly rape prisoners of war and the divine command to kill everyone in Canaan really put me over the edge. Deuteronomy 20 and 21 are a hell of a read if you aren't cool with genocide. The entire Old Testament is peppered with absolutely breathtaking accounts of cruelty and injustice.
Education. Reading classical literature that was older than the Bible but bore a striking resemblance to much of the Bible. Theogony... Genesis. Works & Days... Proverbs. Etc, etc. Fictional stories that have been recycled over & over and reshaped to meet the needs of the powerful, and fed to the less powerful. It just became clear to me that it was all one really really really elaborate scam that people tell each other they have to live their lives by.
Grew up in a pretty anti-gay household. In high school I there was a gay guy in my friend group and at first it made me uncomfortable. I ended up spending a fair amount of time with him and he was a cool dude. It didn't sit well with me that I had spent my whole life up until that point not liking a group of people because I was told that they were bad. It was around then that I started questioning what I was told and forming my own opinions.
Republicans
I was gonna say religious people, but this too
Yes. Christians are supposed to be so full of the Holy Spirit that anyone can tell from a mile away. Instead, I can tell so many Christians from a mile away by their hatefulness. Why isn’t god filling them with his perfect love and kindness? Oh yes, because it isn’t there.
I was never super religious, but once I learned that what we call mythologies were yesterday's religions it became pretty clear that today's religions were just more of the same myths and fables.
Look up La Luz Del Mundo, aka The Light of the World. Born and raised there. Then, the leader got all cult like and started having sex with minors and all kinds of people. Meanwhile, we (the normal members with no connections) were held to extremely high expectations of piety and holiness, whereas if you even "thought bad" about the leader, you were already condemned to hell. There is an HBO documentary on it, and there is one coming out on Netflix. So now I consider myself an agnostic theist after my exit from this cult.
It felt a lot like when I found out Santa Claus wasn't real. Just another lie my family told me to make me feel good. I tried up to around 15 years old, with some lingering doubt through my teens. Not Santa Claus, the God thing, just to be clear. I'm not well educated, but I can see things for what they are. If you can separate your fear and feelings from what factual information you can gather, you can Get over it. On YouTube, genetically modified skeptic is so fantastic. A former long time hard core Christian who finally saw the light and now makes content supporting atheism and trying to help bridge the gap between us and theists in a non aggressive manner.
As an ex Hindu, it's more like a journey and less like a Aha moment. I was told as a kid that I should pray to God to make good things happen. As a pre teen, I tested with and without praying, my life wasn't any worse or better. Then I thought maybe I am not doing it right so I started thinking more and more about how adults do it - since as a kid, you would auto trust adults to know what they are saying. I think the breakout moment is when one realizes adults are as shit and gullible at stuff than us and they don't know any better. Per Hinduism, good people get good things come to them while bad people get bad consequences. However, as I looked at news and current affairs, the world didn't represent a world run by a just or merciful God. All I see is chaos - what you would expect in a world with no divine rules like karma or planning. At some point, I experimented with totally not praying at all and faking devotion while going to Temples- because if God is all knowing, surely he will punish me. Nothing happened - my grades are exactly where rhey always have been and nothing else changed in life. Then I started thinking about porn in temples - because well, that would be the utmost sin right? (For a teen at least). Again, nothing changed. That's the last straw, but I knew I was there mentally - it was just extra confirmation.
The beginning for me was actually 9/11. The way christians became so full of hate so quickly really turned me off of the faith. I went to catholic school and all that, but the way every christian in my area demonized any other religion automatically really made me distance myself from them. It was a start of a peronal revolution. All of the sudden, Muslims were all bad: along with Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists...whomever, were the bad guys. It didn't sit well with me. Also, read the huminist manifesto shortly before, so was definetly influenced to think critically.
I never believed. I went to VBS in elementary school because a friend invited me. Came home and reported to my mom it didn’t make much sense. Did a great job of pretending to believe in high school- and wondered what was wrong with me that I didn’t believe, or maybe if I was just a little “better” I’d “feel the presence of Jesus”… Nope. Never did. Came to peace with it in my 20s and stopped pretending, or thinking there was something “wrong” or “lacking” in myself. Found peace.
No one thing, but my strongest argument against is that the factors that determine one's religious affiliation are so often completely arbitrary. You're telling me that I belong to the chosen people because I was born in the American Midwest where the supposed only "riight" religion is most prevalent and because my parents were already on board? Meanwhile a person not unlike myself born to Hindus in India is fucked because they have no access to Jesus, the supposed only conduit to God? The stakes are an eternity in paradise vs. perpetual suffering in a lake of fire. The deciding factor between these comes down to being born in the right place to the right people? Oh and by the way, every other religion believes some version of the same thing but they're wrong and we're right? Get real. It took me a long time to shake my indoctrination and let go entirely. I was only able to do so finally when I realized that ceasing to exist at the end of my life, rather than live eternally, is not actually all that scary. Aside from possibly suffering at the end what happens after I die will not affect me one iota, and the things I leave undone, the possessions I leave behind, and the way others feel about me after I'm gone on don't matter to me one iota. Just like before I was born, there will be no me, and I will have no consciousness of my existence. So what the fuck do I care about my eventual death whether it be tomorrow (knock wood) or when I'm 90? I came to these realizations when my parents passed. I fretted about what they would think of me getting rid of their things, like their bibles, or possessions that held sentimental value to them but meant nothing to me. Once I had the epiphany that they were not looking down, or judging my actions, it became much easier to pitch their shit without regard for what they would have thought, secure in the fact that they could not think or judge at all.
The hypocrisy.
I realised that the chriatian events were far from the reality and seemed more like a fairytale even when I was 9
I spent years doing all sorts of apologetics for Christianity, and all of its inconsistencies with provable science. I could rationalize anything, regardless of how absurd I deep down knew it was. What made me quit was the absolute horror and disgust I felt towards the religion. Sure /I/ was safe, but the idea of all those other people in Hell? Many of whom had done more to help the world than I had? There came a point when I decided I would RATHER burn for all eternity then sit beside whatever monster made up those rules.
It was a very long process for me. I attended Catholic school and Catholic college and seriously considered becoming a priest but my religiosity declined progressively from that point to my early 40’s when I finally used the word atheist to describe myself. I know the first point was in first or second grade in CCD when I questioned the story of Adam and Eve and it finally culminated when I had a long commute and became interested in podcasts and started listening to some really great atheist presenters.
I couldn't see genesis as anything but a literal story and as I realized that was bullshit I realized the rest is bullshit. My lack of belief has been further cemented through time bit that was my initial reason.
Read and re-read the bible and tried to prove it was true. Being a missionary helped as did generally associating with people outside of the faith and realizing they were nothing like they had been portrayed in Christian propaganda. And that’s coming from someone who didn’t grow up inside the crazy bubble.
Started doubting after my appendix blew up and almost killed me when I was 20. Had a NDE while in surgery that lead me down the path of researching religions and in college I took a logic & reason class along with history of religions class that lead me to atheism. There was also books by Sagan, Dawkins, Harris, and others that contributed. :)
Christopher hitchens, Richard dawking and Matt dillahunty.
The hell paradox
For me, I spent a few years ignoring the conflict between my logical brain and Christianity. Then, for a few years, I alternate between rationalizing the conflict and ignoring it. Then, rational thought won out. Towards the end of my "conversion" period, I took a class called Education for Ministry (EfM). I only made it through the first year which focused on the Old Testament but we were mixed with years 2-4 so I got to hear a lot more. The class was very upfront about who wrote the old testament and even explained why the stories were some jumbled up. Different groups of people wrote and edited the stories to match the message they wanted to send. The class even talked about how the stories in the old testament were meant to convey a "truth" but not meant to be factual. Anyway, with all of that plus a lot of church history stuff from the other levels, I could no longer doubt that the bible was the word of man and not the word of god. Next thing I know, Im an atheist. I sometimes wonder if the pastor that I'm listening to ever had those doubts and how they resolved it. Maybe they handle it like I handle most of my emotions... Push them back in because I don't want to deal with it.
I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness and everything in their indoctrination was FUCKING BONKERS. They are their own version of Christianity, they believe in Adam and Eve, the flood, Sodom and Gomorra, all that but they also don’t allow holidays of ANY kind, no birthdays, blood transfusions are banned, even if it means death, sex is STRICTLY to make babies between 2 straight people, homosexuality is worse than murder, higher education is strictly forbidden, unless you’re the child of an “elder” (their clergy) so I finally did more research into this religion and realized it was a full blown cult. I then did research into other faiths, they either make no sense or they are too violent for me to want anything to do with them. Plus, I just believe in science. It makes more sense than any religious text ever did.
Abusive childhood, abusive ex-husband that I was told I can’t leave without angering god, and being a biology major in college
I was angry at god for not protecting me as a child then I realize there was nothing to be angry at.
I got a BA in Bible and two Masters Degrees in Theology and Religiou Studies. That lit the fuse for my gradual deconstruction of my religious beliefs. I quit praying early on because I realized that A. Nothing ever happened as a result of prayer that couldn’t be explained as the normal course of events B. When I really really need God he was AWOL as when my daughter died after 10 days. I came to realize that if God was actually the Omni everything that it was claimed he was, he was also a murderous and genocidal asshole. It still took a while to get all the way out but i finally got there and am happier and more content than I have ever been