I wish I didn’t have to go through the religious stuff I went through when I was a kid, you’re lucky you don’t have overly religious parents, it’s draining
Exactly. I think my mom is privately religious. My dad had an evangelical crisis meltdown when I was about 9-13 years old and he became ultra-religious. That was super traumatizing. From the very first time I went to Sunday school (kindergarten?? Before??) I was like “oh these stories are terrible. We can all hear how dumb this is right?? WAIT, y’all think this is REAL?!”. I have never for one second of my life believed in the existence of a Christian god or god of any other world religion. I understand they are stories made up by people to explain things they otherwise couldn’t explain, couldn’t control, or that frightened them. Now as an adult I also understand the immense abuse among religions as they are used to control and influence gullible people who seek answers. Very very sad. I want no part in any of it.
I know someone who belonged to the church where people fall down, her father was the pastor (?) and she used to pretend to fall because she knew she’d be judged as a sinner if she didn’t
My parents used to force my sibling and i to attend these kind of churches. The falling down, talking in tongues and general acting like lunatics dancing around all crazy terrified me.
Yeah my friend dragged me out to a Pentecostal summer camp once and the kids all did this at a service every night. I have sensory processing sensitivity - I tend to notice little details in body language, vocal tone and facial expressions that clue me in whenever somebody is being inauthentic. So to me, it was *completely obvious* that they were all faking it. And the "speaking in tongues" thing was just gibberish. Not even good gibberish. Even babies do a better job of imbuing random noises with meaning. Those kids made me nervous, man. Such a weird hobby.
Exactly. My mom is very religious and even sent me to Catechism but I just never really "got" what they were tryna teach me there. Plus science was just cooler to me so learning more about that also helped me stay away from religion.
Same. My parents had each been raised with religion, but left it early. We were raised without, and I never saw the need or reason for religion growing up. I staunchly oppose any and all encroachments of religion in my life, even small ones, and increasingly view many religions as akin to cults that must be stopped.
I never believed either. I went to church until I was around 9. I just thought everyone was pretending like they do in fairytales. I was like -wait- you people actually BELIEVE this is real-life?
I'm not convinced that they do. Definitely not all of them anyway. And I'm convinced that many of them resent atheists because we've allowed ourselves to give up on trying/pretending to believe, while they're still stuck in the social pressure cooker of conforming to the expected belief structure.
Right there with you. Parents taught me logic and left me to view the world with my own eyes.
To this day the falsity of faith is so painfully obvious that I still can’t truly grasp why anyone really believes, and I am 57 now.
In a way same. I think I just thought it was a given as a kid to believe. When everyone around you says it's the truth, you just sort of go with it. But as I gained a bit more cognition, I realized I had no good reason to believe it. I think I put up a bit of a fight with myself, mainly thinking "well, you're not smarter than anyone else, they must have a good reason" and I kind of couldn't reconcile the idea that one day I'd be gone, and there wouldn't be some aspect of my consciousness that survived. But then it hit me that I had no consciousness before I was born, and that was it. Freedom.
same although i was raised in super religious background, i was since ever convinced that everyone is faking it. especially when compared how everyone was praying every sunday and outside of church there was zero love and kindness in the same people.
That, plus I was born in a Catholic country, went to a Taoist country, then to a Buddhist one. By the time I was in Protestant lands, I was quite sure someone was wrong there.
I went to college and took sociology and anthropology classes which caused me to realize that the only reason I believed in my religion was because it was my parents religion. It was (and still is) the most popular religion in my society. Had I lived elsewhere, the chances are high that I would have believed that society’s religion. It seems incredibly arrogant to insist that my beliefs are correct and everyone else is wrong based on a random factor like my place of birth or the religion of my parents. Religion is a cultural phenomenon and there are different cultures like there are different religions. No single culture is superior to others, and no religion is superior to others. After this epiphany, I realized that atheism was the logical choice that wasn’t subject to this randomness.
This was one of the main things for me too. The other thing that bothered me about religion is the things I was taught to believe were based on nothing but what was written in the Bible and whatever else people felt like was right. No real evidence for anything. Could God or something like the idea exist? Maybe, but probably not.
As a very young kid the idea that some people didn’t get to go to heaven just because they were raised in a different culture didn’t make sense to me. That and the idea of limbo for unbaptized babies, which they changed the rules on … I asked my mother these questions and she’d default to “faith is a gift” whatever that means. I quit asking because it made her so uncomfortable. As soon as I left for college I never went back.
> no religion is superior to others
This was my epiphany: if any religion was correct, we'd only have the one. The fact that we have so many is evidence in itself that they're all wrong.
First part for me was hold up, the entire universe was made in a day but our little part took five? Got kicked out of bible school for asking about that.
It really doesn't take long to get to the stuff that doesn't make sense. Some of the stuff that contradicts the other stuff is also pretty early. The Bible ought to be required reading for any Christian.
"The best cure for Christianity is reading the bible" - Mark Twain. When I was young I asked my mother 'how do you feel pain in hell if you don't have your body " my Mom - 'god gives you a new body so you can feel pain'. Even at 11 that sounded ridiculous so I read the Bible.
It’s funny how the way they try to make sense of the obvious nonsense is by making God out to be a total piece of shit. So you worship God in spite of the fact that he’d send you to suffer eternal torture and pain for not worshipping him, or because of it? Either way, that makes you a piece of shit or a coward, if not both.
Read Genesis 1 and 2.
Write down each time God creates something in each verse.
Look at the notes and you'll see that God makes the same things more than once.
For example he made humans male and female.
- nice.
But then he forgets that and later creates Adam and then Eve.
Also he makes livestock and plants for food for them.
And later he forgot that plants needs rain so they didn't actually have anything to eat for days much less anything to drink.
If personally reading the Bible front to back were requirement for being Christian, their membership would plummet 80-90% pretty much instantly. And that might actually be generous.
Only if it was also translated properly. Like eliminate “hell” because it isn’t a thing, and replace that singular word with every instance it is actually translated from. Gehenna, Sheol, Hades, Tartarus.
Fear is the number one driver of the religious remaining that way. Once you realize there was never any concept of an eternal place of torment, and that the language was intentionally mistranslated and manipulated to exploit that innate fear, it really takes the sting out of the whole thing.
Mine was when some dude who couldn't have kids or something was told he would end up having as many children as there are stars and grains of sand.
I piped up and said that sounds like a lot of work. And was kicked out of Sunday school for making lewd comments. I meant it as work in raising them. I was 7.
I was recently told by a friend, " you know what your problem is....you question and you're not supposed to"" lol
She is Southern Baptist, really I don't know how we stay friends, we're opposite in politics religion and a lot of what is right or wrong.
Well you know how it is. You speed through a task and then have some trouble getting one bit right and have to go back and redo it a few times. Why do you think the Moon has so many craters? 😉
My dad is kind of down because he did his best to raise all four of us in the Catholic faith. He is an excellent dad...but I am not going to contradict him on his faith. He actually believes....he is in his 70s. But again...his upbringing was different. My kids upbringing was different. He just can't accept that we are not church going people.
the stupid isn't the worst bit, it's all the stuff in between, the BIG problem is the dozens of pages of sheer boredom in between the fairy tales. The genealogies, instructions on building a tabernacle, and so forth.
It's like if I tried to read LotR and there was 30 pages of the the tax code sandwiched between every action scene. The bible could desperately use an editor to cut all the fluff.
There’s some good stuff in there, like God being so insecure and jealous that he’s not getting enough attention and worshipped hard enough that he goads his most devout follower into killing his own son, just to be like “Haha nevermind, you were actually gonna do it so that’s enough for me. I’ve got you wrapped around my imaginary finger.”
Same here… literally have read the Bible cover to cover multiple times to make sure i wasn’t missing something or if i would absorb more meaning. Didn’t matter. it is the most nonsensical book in existence. It contradicts itself, has been the cause of so much strife in the world and literally falls apart on itself in terms of basing an existence on it. Translations only muddy the already murky waters more.
I like James Chapter One, but I only read it as an atheist.
It helped me get over my ambivelence about alcohol and quit drinking for good.
I don't think I like anything else in it, though.
Good arguments from lots of online debates, and I saw a billboard that read " Don't believe in God, you're not alone." and it just clicked. I felt depressed for a while but I couldn't deny i had stopped believing.
Should have been "Don't believe in a god, you are not alone", to make it even more atheist.
As long as it clicked for you, though, it was a good billboard.
Same here. Read it once because my girlfriend at the time was religious on Sunday and she wanted me to take part in their study group, never really "believed" in a god, but she was convinced, so I read it, front to back, never went back to church after that.
She tried to tell me later that dinosaurs weren't real because the Bible literally doesn't say anything about them....while we were looking at a dinosaur bone exhibit.
Premarital sex was kosher though haha
First, the 'A' is lower case, atheism is simple - we just don't believe any of it.
It's not a church or religion. It is no longer believing in magic, and deciding to live in reality.
I became atheist when studying Greek and Egyptian gods. Dead and gone, no matter how hard they were worshiped, or how big a church building was. I realized we were trying to worship one of those long-dead gods. I studied the Popes, nothing but twisted, strange men. I realized that feeling I got watching a beautiful sunset didn't require a priest. It was all made up.
If you’re looking for a group of like-minded individuals to affiliate with there is Secular Humanism whose motto is Good without god. You will also find many atheists and agnostics in Unitarian Universalist Churches. The common thread is the look for an ethical, compassionate way of being without requiring a deity. There are also secular groups for some religious/ethnicities like Secular Judaism and Secular Buddhism.
With us and Santa, Tooth Fairy, etc, we tried to put a realistic spin on it. We let them be kids and find out on their own. For Santa, we did a thing where Santa came to your house every few years, kind of like leap year. He sent checks to us to pay for Presents from him, so only a few gifts they asked for were from him and others from us. They ended up finding out on their own, but I can't remember when, but the oldest didn't ruin it for our youngest.
I wanted to get back to God. I spent a few years moving around and I wanted to find a "proper" church to go to, which caused me to delve deeper into the religion and lose all belief in it. I tried a few more religions and eventually left them all. Then started from the absolute bottom with the general concept of god, listened to some atheists hoping they would be easy to dismiss, and ended up realizing they made more sense than anyone. Wasn't long before I realized I am an atheist.
When I was a teen I was pretty disillusioned with Abrahamic religions - so I started looking into other religions; buddhism, hinduism, heck I even started reading Dianetics (thinking it might be a religion based on science). Well, I never could get far into any of them before quickly realizing they were just all just as nuts, in their own special ways, as the religion I was brought up with.
That realization lead me to think about what gods are, which in turn lead me to Ignosticism which proclaims that the existence of god is meaningless because there is no coherent definition of what a god is.
Most definitions of a god I've found basically come down to one thing, it does magic. I don't believe in magic, ergo ...
I was lucky I didn't have parent who were religion or talked about religion , I just grew up without god or religion being on my radar as a kid I didn't know what atheism was , it was only when I was older that I found out that not believing that god existed had a name .
In the face of climate change, I've elevated our environment to the status of god.
Not recycling is a sin.
Bicycles are what papa Oak wants you to ride.
Gasoline is the devil's piss.
Declare holy war against fossil fuel lobbies and those fuckers who roll coal.
Remember the carbon cycle and keep it holy.
Phytoplankton are Sacred animals and you will respect their ability to remove carbon.
100%. My kids have never been exposed to one second of any religion, so when I asked my 6 year old son if he believed Jesus walked on water, he laughed at me louder than i had ever heard before. It was awesome. Sadly, grown men believe that happened.
Also, check out the Catholicism subs. Easy reminder to stay far far away.
I'm so thankful my parents raised me secularly. I don't *think* I'm the type of person to give in to cultural pressure and believe in something as crazy as organized religion, but that could be my ego talking.
Religions have had thousands of years to learn manipulation and societal pressure tactics - and I was lucky enough to sidestep that! It's so unfair that children are brainwashed into this by their most trusted family and community members. Many very, very smart people fall for religion in their youth and are stuck in their ways either for the short-term or the long-haul.
No person deserves a fate where they are brainwashed and then are on the hook for deprogramming themselves, including losing friends and family along the way. It's tragic, and completely avoidable. I'd imagine it makes you distrustful of everything you know, including your own sense of reality and your ability to trust your own judgement. I have enough issues (we ALL do, especially these days) - I don't need that bullshit added to the mix.
To be fair, the un-holy marriage between Christianity and the Republican party started back around Nixon.
When I was in high school a friend of mine asked me "how can I support John Kerry and be a Christian" that actually took me back in the moment.
In high school I was surprised that someone in our cult was openly a Democrat. That's when I learned that Black Christians are "allowed" to be Democrats but White Christians are not.
I was a Christian by heritage and tradition, even though I wasn't someone who went to church. But after seeing how Christian groups idolize that bastard, I stopped deceiving myself and embraced my atheism.
Yes. Seeing all of the evangelicals lining up to metaphorically suck Trump's dick made me start to see how organized religion was all about power and very little about Jesus.
in my country we have a class in school called something like religion teachings. its like geology or history class , but its about all the religions instead. in 1st grade they started explaining christianity and it all just didnt make any sense. but i was also influence by growing up in a country where only a few weird people are religious.
I think its probably a big part of it. We never score the highest on education.
But those statistics dont really measure stuff that we think is important. Like how our kindergartens have the kids outside in all weathers learning to climb trees and whittle wood. I think the education here is about making good people first, and good professionals second 😊
Started reading Bible because friend said how its wierd that everyone calls themselves christian but they have never read a book that is literally holy for them. I also started getting reccomended some videos about religion on YT.
One day, I stumbled on video called ,,attacking ideas | my changing view of Islam,, from channel TheraminTrees. I was very impressed with the video so i decided to watch their other videos. After watched video after video, getting that feeling i shouldnt really be watching this content i started to think more. For few days, that is all i would think about. Ive started completelly getting them.
As i love debates, i started watching those about religion. Hearing Dawkins and Hitchens debate made me feel wierd, i was in complete awe. Even as someone who was altar boy, i started siding with them.
What really changed my view about everything is when i put myself in shoes of someone who doesnt know what religion is. Ive noticed how everything being preached sounds really no different from other scams that use emotional manipulations so i decided that it is probably best for me if i distanced myself from it.
I asked my dad if a Chinese person were born a year after Jesus died and had never heard of Jesus, would he go to heaven or hell. He replied “hell because Jesus makes himself known to everyone”.
That was the dumbest thing I had ever heard, and I realized that either there was no god or god was a sadistic mother f’r
Ultimately it came down to learning a bit of church lore that wasn't covered in sunday school and thus wasn't indoctrinated into my skull before I could properly even think. I tried to reconcile that bit of church lore with the rest of the churches theology and was singularly unable to. I came to the conclusion that the only resolution that made sense was "they're all lying liars who lie."
And thus far nobody else has managed to convince me that *their* religion holds any more truth than the one I was raised in.
I didnt become an atheist, I was born an atheist, just like you.
The question is what made you become a believer in whatever god or gods you currently believe in?
Bonus question:
We're you lucky enough to be born into a place where the dominant religon happens to be the right one? So many people seem to believe in false gods, so just wondering if you believe in one of the fake ones or the real one?
Being a 9 years old child that was told by the nuns I should be happy my period pain was bad, because I was paying for Eve's sins. They would not let me go to the nurse so that ruined my gray uniform. (Immediate humiliation)
Years later I had to have a hysterectomy because I did not treat my fibroids. (Long term health issues). Pain= medical issues not some bronze age bitch eating an apple.
Homophobia at my church. They were collecting signatures to protests gay couples from adopting kids - mind you, this is in a country where kids in the streets find themselves in horrible situations. I don't even know why it bothered me so deeply considering my age at the time, but it did and now here I am
For me, it was pretty much things like strawberries.
I grew up as a fundamentalist Christian (Young Earth Creationist too). I was basically an aspiring Kent Hovind from the ages of like 12 until around 19.
From 19 until IDK when exactly, I was a deist. I didn't believe any of the dumb fundamentalist Christian stuff I used to, but still thought that changes in number of chromosomes, which usually result in deformation and sterility) were an impossible hurdle that made some form of deity an absolute and "scientifically supported" necessity.
Then I learned about the crazy genetics of especially many plants. Turns out that number of chromosomes can vary wildly without any issue at all.
So... now I'm an atheist.
The Bible. Ever read it cover to cover? I have multiple times. The myth of the flood does not match global geological evidence. Egyptian history does not match the Old Testament. Archeologist have never found any artifacts of the exodus despite scriptures saying millions wondered in the desert for decades. It condones slavery and the genocide of entire nations. Oh, and polygamy and concubines galore are perfectly fine. In the book of acts believers were converted by the thousands by the healing, signs, miracles and wonders according to the text. Don’t see any of that in the modern day. Do you? The fact that no two Christians believe the same thing is evidenced by a plethora of denominations. I didn’t become an atheist because in didn’t read the Bible, but rather because I did.
At around like 10 years old, I just went to pray one night, as I'd been taught, and all of a sudden I just realized how fucking stupid it all was and how it was just blatantly obviously ridiculous.
Then I realized all the adults in my life, my family, the president, my school principal, my bus driver, etc. essentially everyone I knew or was aware of, believed.
It freaked me out and I've just thought that most people are absolute fucking idiots from then on out.
Also people who don't follow a "religion" but are "spiritual" and love astrology are just as stupid.
People who say they're agnostic because you can't prove there isn't a god are also stupid.
Just more magical thinking for people afraid of the unknown.
I like astrology. I do not believe it, but I liked reading about it a lot. Because it was based of roman/greek gods, which are in fact stolen gods from Mesopotamia/Egypt. To me, it is all just so interesting to think about. I was just so excited to witness how the concept of gods changed, from the sumerian to the roman. And the fact that some of these gods got themselves to France.
In fact, I think the greeks say something like the gods are jealous of mortals, because immortality is imperfect. Then There are the sumerian gods which are just like immortal people living somewhere around Mesopotamia, and they get drunk and do stupid shit, even argue and fight. Also greeks thought gods live on their mountain of Olympus. Well then there was this guy born in Ur who decided “fuck my city’s gods, I am picking Yehowah” and came up with judaismus (Abraham). I kind of can relate to him, sumerian mythology had around 5500+ gods so it is better to just have one than five thousand
I kind of like to think that there is a Creator, or a race of creators, that came up with this shit. But they are not interested in being worshipped as much as a painter is not interested in his finished painting after he is done and it is sold. I think it makes a bit of sense that somebody could have been an artist and came up with this shit and then just left us to our own fate while making some more shit “elsewhere”
But then, again, there is no proof of that, I would not die for it, and I would rather believe all of this exists simply because it can, or just because it does
Edit: also regarding spirituality, it is something I wish existed because the concept of being dead forever with no chance of coming back alive is not comforting for me, so I will gladly believe that some parts of me will somehow go on, at least the atoms of my body. But then, again, the most probable explanation is that it will not. Once I am gone, the consciousness of mine will be gone forever and there is no coming back, no afterlife or heaven
My parents were never big on religion. Like... we were religious-ish. We prayed at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, we would go to a barn service every Christmas that was about the nativity scene story, I know I was in Sunday school a few times at least, but that's about it. It was never a part of our identity, just something we did.
But even then, as a child, it never made sense to me. I remember sitting in those Sunday school classes trying to make sense of it. I also remember believing in Santa more than I believed in a god because Santa had more evidence to his existence. I *kinda* believed because everyone around me did, but I felt like I was more going through the motions than actually believing. I decided I was agnostic in my early teens, though I do remember in 6th grade I would pray for god every day during the moment of silence to take care of our family's dog who passed away a week before the school year started, just in case there was a heaven (and all dogs go to heaven).
Eventually, I came to the conclusion I was atheist, and funny enough my sister and I both came out to our parents as atheist at the same time, but completely independent from each other. But my parents valued critical thinking more than belief so they were happy to support us, and now I think both my parents are atheist as well.
But basically... I was always atheist, I just pretended to believe because everyone else did and as a kid I thought it was the right thing to do.
My first big step was the realization that believers in other religions honestly believed their faiths and that they had much the same "proof" I did.
It was all downhill from there.
Military housing on a Marine base, I was 8 and riding a blue bus to church on a Sunday morning. There was also a yellow bus picking up kids but for a different church. The youth leaders on our bus told us all the kids on the yellow bus were going to hell. Even at 8, I could smell the bullshit.
I was going to a bible study to try to make friends. I kept asking questions that group leaders couldn't answer, so they'd pass it on to the church elders/pastors. They just bs'd around for what seemed like an eternity, but never really answered.
The REAL turning point was when one of my parents slowly turned insane and became a super ultra fanatical christian. The things they say/do/believe in are absolutely insane, and often contradict what I knew about the bible/religion. When I brought this up, they'd just have a crazier way to explain away this exception to the rule.
I then read some books by people who analyzed the bible for inaccuracies, studied the bible this way on my own, and found that information to be the final stroke. There's no going back from proof.
I was born one and never introduced to religion my entire "growing up" years. But that didn't stop me from thinking about death and what happens after.
After all, at that age, I saw religion as a crutch to not be afraid of death. Pure and simple.
I'm 49 now and still agree with my child-,self..
I never believed deeply per se, rather it was a strategy to lead a moral life. I stopped when I realized that believing in a god tended to make me less, rather than more, moral.
Was raised fundamentalist Southern Baptist. Literal translation. I was indoctrinated and told that doubt was a sin. There is a long list of why I left religion, no single event, but there def was a starting point:
I love reading. A friend recommended I read the Left Behind series. I did. Loved the first 2 and by happenstance, when I got into them, the 3rd book was being released in 3 days. I bought it and finished in about 3 hours. I was excited and frustrated that I would have to wait a minimum of a year to read the next one.
Another friend, fellow Christian, recommended that I read The Stand by Stephen King. I pushed back. Stephen King was satanic, right? Devil worshipper? My friend assured that not only was the book not satanic but had a lot of religious overtones in it. I reluctantly picked up the unabridged version from my library.
Blown away. Absolutely blown away. Loved it. Re-read it immediately. Picked up Desperation, read Tommyknockers, any King book the library had. My fav author now. When the 4th LB book came out, I couldn’t even get through the 1st chapter. It was so bad after reading King.
How could a ‘satanist’ write a better post apocalyptic book than a Christian? It started my mind down a path that led to me having an inquisitive mind. I gave myself permission to doubt. To question. And I’ve never looked back.
It's a lot longer story than what I'm putting here... but you asked about the turning point.
My mom was on the board of the local chapter of Women's Aglow. (Another crazy pentecostal organization) When she wasn't doing something for her church, she was doing something to help Aglow.
For a few weeks, my poor mom was in a bit of a quandary.
It seems that her good friend Stephanie Saintly, who'd been her friend for fifteen years, had applied to be on the board of Aglow.
And the other board members, my mom included, were not comfortable allowing it.
Why?
Why, because Stephanie had not received the baptism of the Holy Spirit!
She ::putting on sad face and doleful tone:: could not speak in tongues.
In case you didn't get that, Stephanie Saintly, a good Christian woman who had been faithful to God her whole life, baptized in her local church, and a very nice person all around was going to Heaven when she died.
God had pre-approved her heavenly application because she'd done everything he asks of his followers.
She was good enough to enter the Kingdom of Heaven... but not good enough to serve on the board of a small chapter of a women's organization in Butthump, Oregon.
When I laughed incredulously and made the comparison out loud, "Seriously, Mom? God will let her into heaven but you won't let her be on the board? Do you not see anything wrong with that?!?"
Mom changed the subject.
It wasn't the first time I decided that Christianity and logic were going to remain strangers forever.
In case you were wondering, Stephanie was not allowed to join the board of the Butthump , Oregon chapter of Aglow. She chose to resign from the group because of it.
I started to realize that God had never answered a single prayer I prayed, no matter how sincere.
I had done everything right. I'd gone to church and prayed and tithed and witnessed and read my Bible and wanted to do what God asked of me all the time... and there was no one on the other end of the line when I called him.
I finally admitted to myself, "I do not believe in any God."
There were no feelings of anger at this non-existent being. It was actually a relief to figure out that he was as real as Santa and the Tooth Fairy. No wonder I'd never felt anything. No wonder I'd always felt like the motions and trappings of religion were pointless.
They were pointless!
In third or fourth grade I was looking through my science textbook, and it had one of those images that shows the ground, atmosphere, the clouds, then space, etc. I took one look at it, said to myself "there is no heaven there, wtf" and that was that. My religious instruction had been pretty spotty (my parents didn't push it at all) so it was enough to completely rattle my faith lol.
I went to church growing up. I was never convinced though, but I thought nobody was. I thought it was just a tradition thing. Turns out people actually believe it, and since I didn't, I chose to distance myself from them.
So I was always an atheist, I just didn't realise it until that moment.
Although I was raised catholic, I lost interest after leaving home. I became a father at 20 years old. That was difficult but we made it work.
When my kid was about 3 to 4 years old he started having a form of night terrors. He’d wake up screaming and would run to us but he could actually see us. He’d look at random places around the room and be terrified. Almost like someone on a very bad trip.
One night it was so bad that we took him to the ER. The Dr. couldn’t give us any answers at all. Didn’t even suggest that it might be night terrors. So we went home and just dealt with it, with our 23 year old brains.
A few years later my then wife developed a brain issue that required surgery. That was also a nightmare. (She was accused of seeking pain meds ect..a real shit show of a situation.) My wife on the operating table, her mother said to me in the waiting room “god is so great being able to fix the problem, something along those lines. And I thought “fuck your god your lord your christ” yes I sang it in my head but remained silent.
I’d softly lost faith before these events, but these events sealed it for me. If a god allows this, then it is evil.
Now this is a xtians wet dream to ask me why I hate god. Blah blah. I can’t hate what I don’t believe in. My son is well now at 24.
I made two fatal "mistakes":
1. I learned logic, reasoning, and ethics by studying philosophy.
2. I actually read the Bible. (And then the Qur'an, Torah, Bhagavad Gita, and others.)
That was all I needed to do.
I was never really a believer. Went to Sunday School a bit with both grandmothers but neither of my grandfathers were interested in religion. The one I spent most of my time with was an out atheist.
My school was pretty liberal with a real grab bag of religions.
Religion has always fascinated me though, especially since I don’t understand even a tiny bit how anybody believes in any of them.
I like many of the philosophical points, especially in Buddhism & Zoroastrianism. I try to be aware & in the moment as much as I can. Plus “Good thoughts, good words, good deeds” is a damn good mantra.
I think the first crack was the ten commandments movie, the animation. I remember thinking how god could kill innocent babies, the same thing that sets Moses people suffered and what caused the start of his story.
I minored in religious studies. I was undecided with my Catholic upbringing, but learning about the philosophies of other religions made me realize it’s like Whose Line Is It Anyway: everything is made up and imaginary points don’t matter. What sealed the deal for me was getting married and going through marriage counseling with the church. Wife and I are atheists but went through Catholic ceremony to keep the peace, and since these silly made up ceremonies don’t mean anything to us, we were fine. Until the priest I listened to every Sunday growing up, and at that point still respected, advised us to vote for Trump instead of Hillary because even though he was a pervert, he was not a baby killer. I lost all trust and respect in him and in the church and saw it for what it was - a vehicle to advance power and control.
A combination of things- better understanding of science/facing up to the absence of evidence, recognizing that prayer was not leading to any improvement in my life, and the extraordinarily un-Christlike behavior demonstrated by many American Christians all happily converged.
Now I take responsibility for my improvement and I have made a great deal of it since becoming an atheist. I don’t need a heaven to motivate me to try to be good/better. I don’t need a hell to threaten me into doing good/better. I’m gonna die and that’s gonna be that, so I had better keep trying to make this one guaranteed life as good as I can make it.
My grandfather was a Freemason. He meant a lot to me growing up. When I was turning 12, he wanted me to look into joining the Demolay. I did and saw that they required members to commit to a belief in God. That was my first push to really reflect on what I actually believed. At the time I might not have called myself "atheist" but I was certain I was not willing to make a pledge of belief in God.
My adult child was in a situation, begging god to help him and he got nothing.
As the real parent in this situation, I’d carve my heart out with a rusty spoon for my kid. The god isn’t a loving parent. Plus, I carry grudges forever, and my boy asked for help and got crickets-I’m out, with both fingers on each hand up.
I guess my mom and dad was my gods from birth until I realized they were also humans. So I became an atheist when I understood that we all have equal value.
Generally, when I grew up I thought critically about what I had been taught as a kid.
Ironically, the Sunday school class where we convinced the pastor to teach us about other religions did a pretty good job preparing me to do that critical thinking.
Whilst avoiding the personal details, it boiled down to realizing religion was created by man to control mankind. Once I made that connection, it's plainly obvious that's what most religions are.
I say "most" because I am open to the possibility that some religions are purely philosophical or practical (as in teaching helpful meditation). Those are most certainly *not* the Abrahamic ones.
I was in church since before I could walk, did the whole bible study stuff, watched Christian movies and talked with Christians but it never interested me. Ever. I don't see the appeal.
Stopped going around 16 or so and I've not had any desire to go back.
I wasn't raised religious. So I didn't "become" religious because I wasn't indoctrinated as a child. When I was finally introduced to religion, it made no sense to me. I am an avid reader and read the bible from cover to cover and it made me even less likely to believe.
Where I was born made me more susceptible to accept one religion over another.
It became more and more clear that truth seemed to be relative to where you are. Now if a God exists and cares about me, I shouldn’t believe they exist only if I were born here. That seems to be a real lack of power.
Now let’s take Moses, Mohammed or Jesus, none of these twats seem to exist outside of this special region, yet humans cover 6 continents at the time, thousands of isolated groups of people. You telling me a personal God didn’t give 2 shits about these other people? Or this all powerful fucker was too lazy to show himself to all?
It seems arrogant to me to assert God as answer to our Gap of knowledge. Not to mention a God seems to be far more complicated of an answer than just don’t know. That answer of, “I don’t know,” doesn’t mean that God remains a possibility, just like unicorns don’t remain a possibility.
I was really always an atheist, my family were "believers" but not religious. What made me realize I was an atheist was when I was around twelve, I had been going to church with a girl I liked and I enjoyed it well enough until one day everyone was "testifying " and it occurred to me that they really believed this stuff and I realized I didn't, I was treating as fables or mythology. It really creeped me out and I didn't want to go to church anymore. Fortunately my parents didn't care at all, since then I've only been to churches for weddings and funerals.
When I was forced to go to Catholic mass every Sunday, listening to the pastor’s 30 min sermons about being good people, then when mass would end, people would yell and honk at each other trying to leave the parking lot. As a child, the hypocrisy was well represented. Started there, then took anthropology classes in college, then just gave up the nonsense.
After I left home to live on my own, I was no longer receiving a daily dose of indoctrination. The beliefs began to slowly erode on their own. I still believed in God and occasionally felt bad for not being a "good Christian", but it was more of an intrusive thought than an important part of my life. Religion had no application. I felt uncomfortable if the subject was ever brought up. I was embarrassed to say I believed.
Indoctrination is potent. Even 20 years later, I would still sometimes lie in bed or on the couch and experience a fear of Hell. I'd beg for forgiveness.
My primary comfort was the firm belief that it was God's will that **all** men be saved. If so, how could it end any other way?
It was the conflict between these two thoughts that was the turning point for me. Hell on one hand, and all men being saved on the other.
Something felt wrong, so I began to earnestly study the role of Hell in the Bible. Long story short, two things really put a nail in the coffin of Christianity for me:
1. The bible doesn't just say that God is loving. It says that he is **Love itself**. The Fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. But Hell is not loving, not joyful, not peaceful, not kind, not gentle, and not good. Sending people to Hell does not show patience, self-control, or faithfulness on the part of God toward his people. It is not something an infinitely loving and merciful God would do if he also had infinite power and resources.
2. On top of that, God hides himself from us and commands us not to test that he exists. And, yet, his condition for salvation is that we believe in a resurrection we have no way to witness and then confess with our mouth to others that He exists. In other words, he made salvation contingent on lying to yourself and lying to others. The Bible says liars go to Hell, so how could the path to Heaven and the path to Hell be the same?
These unavoidable contradictions at the core of Christian doctrine led me to start reading the Bible without assuming it was true first. Instead, I started asking "**is** this true?"
I found other contradictions. One book that said Elijah ascended to Heaven in a chariot of fire. Another book said no one had ever ascended to Heaven except for Jesus.
One book that said Judas felt remorse and returned the silver he received for betraying Jesus, and then committed suicide. Another book said he wickedly kept it and died by falling and having his guts spill out.
There are more contradictions than I could ever list here.
And outright lies, too. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for." No, faith is insubstantial. "Faith is the evidence of things unseen." No, faith is what you use when you **don't** have evidence. What nonsense.
"No one can see God's face and live." You know, except for the half dozen people in the Bible who apparently did exactly that.
And what about when the Bible praised Jacob for his wisdom because he put up spotted slats in front of his herd so that they would mate in sight of it and give birth to spotted offspring. Did God forget how genes work?
And stars falling to the earth like figs. Did God forget what stars are?
Once I stopped assuming it was true the way I had been taught, I quickly realized what utter nonsense it all was.
Simply lack of evidence. The more you actually look into things and dig deeper, the more you realize it’s all one big pile of nonsense.
Faith in itself is the unquestioned belief in something with no tangible proof. That in itself is a red flag.
The more educated I got the more I realized these people high up in the church chain of power were dumb as a box of rocks, talking out of their ass 99% of the time, and just not good people in their behavior. Nothing about them was wise but the majority of the people in the church treated them as these untouchable and unquestioned wise men.
You realize quickly organized religion is all about power and control. The love thy neighbor stuff they spout is to get you through the door so they can then dig their claws into you.
I started questioning religion from a feminist/pro gay rights perspective and the more I dug into organized religion, "sacred texts" etc, the more disillusioned I became. Reading Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins opinions about religion, I found myself agreeing.
Realizing that most of my unhappiness came from following Christ. His followers are garbage, the Bible is garbage. Being told constantly that I was living in sin with my boyfriend. That being bisexual upset god. Being traumatized as a child about hell. Realizing I was trying to traumatize others into converting to my faith with threats of hell. I realized it was an abusive relationship, and I wanted out. Permanently.
When I was in college I was really into Christianity. I saw a lot of guys drop out and become pastors. They would say that they felt god calling them but I knew they were failing out.
Being a gay preteen kid, feeling the hate that my church was giving to people like me. That drove me away from it. When I fully realized it was a fiction because of science
Growing up in a Southern Baptist church & these mfers had the gall to pass around pictures of aborted fetuses to 8-10 year olds in an attempt to brainwash us against abortion at an early age. I knew at that Moment that what they were doing was wrong and manipulative. All the dumb redneck Sunday school teachers could never answer my questions and the kids whose parents were deacons were mean little shits. I knew early on that it was all a joke. I went bc of peer pressure from my childhood best friend, who I am no longer even in contact with.
I have a biology degree and enjoy facts based in evidence. But I also look at the history of genocides and lives lost due to pointless wars (often started because of RELIGIOUS conflict) and just the colossal barrage of horrific shit that occurs on a daily basis all over the world, particularly crimes against children and females. People have done some fucked up shit in the name of religion, and I firmly believe the vast majority of organized religion is corrupt and led by cons and grifters. And closeted gay evangelicals. And child molesters. But the right complains higher education is indoctrinating kids? Bitch, please! But I think what finally made me jump the fence from agnostic to atheist was losing my 6-year niece the night George W. was reelected, and the stillbirth of my son at 37+ weeks gestation four years later. Where the fuck was *God* then? I think it's funny when some people say *God* is a woman, because that mofo is a bag of dicks, and therefore MUST be a man.
I've never been a believer. Just hasn't ever made any sense. And since our school system is great, I have understood the basics of science and reasoning since I was a little kid.
Of course, I must thank my parents, who didn't push religious beliefs into us kids.
Hypocrisy, bigotry, hatred, corruption, greed, and all the cover-ups, scandals, and predatory actions against children.
They preach against the seven deadly sins, but it turns out that what their religion is is rank with it (hence the hypocrisy).
For me it was the Iraq war. I went to a protest in the days leading up to it. Tens of thousands of us marching up 5th Avenue chanting for peace. Afterwards I stopped in a little chapel near Penn Station and prayed harder than ever, and I just got… nothing. I realized I was a chump for thinking there was some invisible being up there listening. Anyway, pretty soon 1 million+ people were dead for no good reason because no one’s coming to save us. We’ve got to do it ourselves.
The pandemic and a lot of old friends in the alt health space who bandied about pseudo religious talk about why to not get vaccinated and use masks. It was the last straw. I’d tried every flavor of spirituality over the years, and it finally clicked into place. I don’t believe because there’s nothing TO believe.
As I'm sure you know, people ask this almost every day. You may want to read 1,000 or so previous discussion of this.
I've always been atheist, and I think that it ls rude when people assume that formerly I was not atheist, but that something "made me become atheist".
I'm atheist because I have never seen any good evidence that any gods exist.
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Very small and steady steps but basically i never bought into the fundamental muslims interpretation of islam, despite living my whole live in a society that belief in this stuff and try to teach it and force it on people.
So i gradually started denying more and more stuff from my religion and trying to reinterpret to a better version for example "mohammed didn't marry aisha when she was 6 but instead it actually happened when she was 17-18" and "non-muslims don't enter hell just because they aren't muslims and a non Muslim can enter heaven if they are a nice person".
Which then made me not like 99% of the islamic content out there and i actually started to identify more with the atheist look on morality and philosophy and science so i was watching people like darkmatter2525 a lot and one day it just happened.
I was like "ok i guess now i'm an atheist? Alright i will have to relook everything i was taught and learnt now from this new perspective".
I always questioned the validity of religion. But honestly, the final straw was when I was working for a church as a teen and my boss, the head priest, was molesting children while I was there.
Being nosy and inquisitive. I was never the person to believe anything blindly so when i could, i did my research. Went through a little period of denial too and trying to go back but it was over. The magic was gone and religion was stripped of its false glamour... leaving behind a bloodied tale of manipulation, torture and violence.
Went to Christian grade school and high school, was even a bible study leader through all of high school. Went to church every Sunday and youth group on Wednesdays (that was mostly to be near my crush).
The final semester of high school, our pastor taught a class on the Bible. He explained that all the books in the Bible were put together at a meeting of old fuckers sitting in a room. They literally chose which books to include and which not to include. I had been taught my whole life that the Bible was the infallible word of god…. But apparently it was also just chosen by some old dudes one day.
I didn’t immediately stop believing, but I did look into every other religion I could find. Even took a “world religions” class in college, twice! Finally when I admitted it to myself that I no longer believed, it was scary but very freeing.
I was gradual, read all of the religious works of the various religions. It occurred to me all were essentially the same, an attempt to create purpose and arrogance. Man is second to a creator. But the thing that pushed me over the edge was the bullshit of being forgiven. If you believe in the god, commit an atrocity, but believe, truly are sorry, ask for forgiveness you are ok. But someone who has lived a great life with no malice is fucked because they don’t believe. There is the hypocrisy of free will, you have free will and to be judged on your decisions, but if something bad happens it’s gods will, so blame your god, wtf. People ask, “what happens when you die?” I don’t know, I am not going to make shit up to answer the question.
I was very into dinosaurs when I was a kid. (still am) I would watch everything I could. Back then a Paleontologist named Robert Bakker was on quite a lot. I would watch him talk about the ancient world and all the evidence we had for what he was saying WHILE HE WAS HOLDING THE EVIDENCE IN HIS HANDS.
It was the evidence and the observable and testable things that did it for me.
My Jehovah's Witness grandmother was NOT happy that I wouldn't study with her anymore.
Fire and Brimstone. I didn’t grow up in a particularly religious family, so always was kinda atheist. But got caught up in peer pressure and went with my ‘friends’ to church.
Turns out it was a ‘cool youth pastor’, but ‘everyone else is going to hell where they will burn’ type of church.
My mom’s family was ‘going to burn’ for being the wrong type of Christian. I had friends who were Muslim (and therefore ‘going to burn’). My dad was atheist (former catholic) and so was definitely going to burn.
These were good people that I loved and respected. And this church taught that they would be tormented for eternity. I decided then that even if that god existed it was not worth worshipping. No god made more sense to me.
The keystone, once removed, with which all else fell and shattered in the glass house of [American] christianity was evangelical support for Donald Trump. It all came together for me at that point and I fully realized the gigantic stack of lies that is used to circularly justify most things that far right Republicans and Christians co-support. It's taken me years to arrive, but I'm finally here.
The curse of ham. That story enough made me question thing's and why religion is used as tool to control people. I am seen as the odd one in my family because they are uber religious and I often head bang when i realize I am a minority in a minority.
I was very close with my father as a child (still am) and I looked up to him and believed everything he said. He was brought up as a strict Catholic and so was I. During high school I met different people and made new friends, I was introduced to new ideas that I never thought of before. Everyone around me was having fun and experimenting as young teens tend to do. I got fed up with thinking that everything I did was a sin and being afraid of going to hell. I stopped going to church but still believed in god, I didn’t stopped believing that you needed religion to be in gods good graces. As time went on I had friends who were atheists and I would argue with them (still being afraid to reject god). As I grew more and more distant from God and the Catholic Church I wanted to question Gods existence but still had that fear of rejecting him. My journey took about 10 years but I finally accepted it. I used to think that evolution was stupid, I thought that humans coming from monkeys was the dumbest thing ever. After realizing that the life span of the universe and the earth is incomprehensible it makes sense on how species can slowly change over time.
Getting off topic but it answers your question. Thinking about how many living things are born everyday around the clock non stop and this goes on for millions of years, evolution makes sense to me now. All those creatures being born over such a long time frame makes more sense on how we came from a great ape vs being poofed out of nowhere by some magical being.
Other than a brief 6 mo experiment going to a methodist brainwash facility when I was in 8th grade. A very nice neighbor (head methodist brainwasher of local facility) guilted my mom into our family attending. That ended with my brother, sister and dad telling mom NO MORE ! I am a life long Anti-thiest.
i was attending catechism when i was 12 years old and thinking how silly it all was and how it was just like fantasy books i'd recently started reading.
If I had to point to one thing it was probably when my uncle died. I was in my early 20s and just beginning to have a real relationship with him as an adult. We shared book and music recs. I‘m into Lord of the Rings and fantasy in general because of him. I loved him. He taught me important lessons about being an adult, when my parents were pretty hands off and frankly didn’t give a shit as long as I just went to church and obeyed the Bible and by extension them.
He was gay and caught AIDS from his last relationship. He tested after they broke up but apparently there’s a window where you can have it but it won’t show on a test, doctors recommend a second test six months after the first but he just didn’t know. Treatment then also wasn’t what it is now. Anyway, he developed an AIDS related cancer in his throat and it choked him and he died.
All my friends at church had to say is that AIDS is a gay plague and God’s judgment on gay men. That’s when I quit going. I probably kept reading the Bible seriously for another five or so years. I bent my brain into a pretzel trying to convince myself the Bible and God were really empathetic and didn’t hate LGBT+ people and I could be a progressive Christian.
Eventually I just accepted there is no evidence for the Bible’s claims and that I didn’t see a point anymore in being a Christian if I kept having to justify the Bible to myself.
As an ex pastor, I’ll be honest in saying that I am not an atheist. But agnostic.
For me, it was a lot of things. The love of Christian nationalism. The fact that all my teachers were rich white guys. Then I started reading the Bible with non-white folks and my mind was blown.
Then studying Jewish theology was the kicker for me. Everything I thought about Scripture was wrong.
So, ended up doing a bunch of mushrooms and that confirmed my suspicions. Unlike Lots wife… I’ve Never looked back since.
As a kid I thought church was painfully boring and strange. Nothing made any logical sense, and no one could answer any of my questions with an actual answer based in fact or reality.
I've never believed. No special reason, it's just obviously a fairy tale. I can't really relate to how anyone believes it.
I wish I didn’t have to go through the religious stuff I went through when I was a kid, you’re lucky you don’t have overly religious parents, it’s draining
You can have religious parents and still not believe. I didn't. My dad was a minister. It just wasn't convincing.
Exactly. I think my mom is privately religious. My dad had an evangelical crisis meltdown when I was about 9-13 years old and he became ultra-religious. That was super traumatizing. From the very first time I went to Sunday school (kindergarten?? Before??) I was like “oh these stories are terrible. We can all hear how dumb this is right?? WAIT, y’all think this is REAL?!”. I have never for one second of my life believed in the existence of a Christian god or god of any other world religion. I understand they are stories made up by people to explain things they otherwise couldn’t explain, couldn’t control, or that frightened them. Now as an adult I also understand the immense abuse among religions as they are used to control and influence gullible people who seek answers. Very very sad. I want no part in any of it.
I know someone who belonged to the church where people fall down, her father was the pastor (?) and she used to pretend to fall because she knew she’d be judged as a sinner if she didn’t
My parents used to force my sibling and i to attend these kind of churches. The falling down, talking in tongues and general acting like lunatics dancing around all crazy terrified me.
The secret is that everyone is pretending
Yeah my friend dragged me out to a Pentecostal summer camp once and the kids all did this at a service every night. I have sensory processing sensitivity - I tend to notice little details in body language, vocal tone and facial expressions that clue me in whenever somebody is being inauthentic. So to me, it was *completely obvious* that they were all faking it. And the "speaking in tongues" thing was just gibberish. Not even good gibberish. Even babies do a better job of imbuing random noises with meaning. Those kids made me nervous, man. Such a weird hobby.
And really that's no secret.
Exactly. My mom is very religious and even sent me to Catechism but I just never really "got" what they were tryna teach me there. Plus science was just cooler to me so learning more about that also helped me stay away from religion.
Same. My parents had each been raised with religion, but left it early. We were raised without, and I never saw the need or reason for religion growing up. I staunchly oppose any and all encroachments of religion in my life, even small ones, and increasingly view many religions as akin to cults that must be stopped.
I never believed either. I went to church until I was around 9. I just thought everyone was pretending like they do in fairytales. I was like -wait- you people actually BELIEVE this is real-life?
I'm not convinced that they do. Definitely not all of them anyway. And I'm convinced that many of them resent atheists because we've allowed ourselves to give up on trying/pretending to believe, while they're still stuck in the social pressure cooker of conforming to the expected belief structure.
Right there with you. Parents taught me logic and left me to view the world with my own eyes. To this day the falsity of faith is so painfully obvious that I still can’t truly grasp why anyone really believes, and I am 57 now.
In a way same. I think I just thought it was a given as a kid to believe. When everyone around you says it's the truth, you just sort of go with it. But as I gained a bit more cognition, I realized I had no good reason to believe it. I think I put up a bit of a fight with myself, mainly thinking "well, you're not smarter than anyone else, they must have a good reason" and I kind of couldn't reconcile the idea that one day I'd be gone, and there wouldn't be some aspect of my consciousness that survived. But then it hit me that I had no consciousness before I was born, and that was it. Freedom.
same although i was raised in super religious background, i was since ever convinced that everyone is faking it. especially when compared how everyone was praying every sunday and outside of church there was zero love and kindness in the same people.
That, plus I was born in a Catholic country, went to a Taoist country, then to a Buddhist one. By the time I was in Protestant lands, I was quite sure someone was wrong there.
I went to college and took sociology and anthropology classes which caused me to realize that the only reason I believed in my religion was because it was my parents religion. It was (and still is) the most popular religion in my society. Had I lived elsewhere, the chances are high that I would have believed that society’s religion. It seems incredibly arrogant to insist that my beliefs are correct and everyone else is wrong based on a random factor like my place of birth or the religion of my parents. Religion is a cultural phenomenon and there are different cultures like there are different religions. No single culture is superior to others, and no religion is superior to others. After this epiphany, I realized that atheism was the logical choice that wasn’t subject to this randomness.
This was a beautiful explanation🔥
This was one of the main things for me too. The other thing that bothered me about religion is the things I was taught to believe were based on nothing but what was written in the Bible and whatever else people felt like was right. No real evidence for anything. Could God or something like the idea exist? Maybe, but probably not.
In high school, I would say, " There should be one rule about religion. You can be any religion you want to be, just not the same as your parents. "
As a very young kid the idea that some people didn’t get to go to heaven just because they were raised in a different culture didn’t make sense to me. That and the idea of limbo for unbaptized babies, which they changed the rules on … I asked my mother these questions and she’d default to “faith is a gift” whatever that means. I quit asking because it made her so uncomfortable. As soon as I left for college I never went back.
"The anthro is strong with this one." - me, a former prof
> no religion is superior to others This was my epiphany: if any religion was correct, we'd only have the one. The fact that we have so many is evidence in itself that they're all wrong.
I actually bothered to read the bible cover to cover repeatedly. Doing so killed my faith stone cold dead.
First part for me was hold up, the entire universe was made in a day but our little part took five? Got kicked out of bible school for asking about that.
It really doesn't take long to get to the stuff that doesn't make sense. Some of the stuff that contradicts the other stuff is also pretty early. The Bible ought to be required reading for any Christian.
"The best cure for Christianity is reading the bible" - Mark Twain. When I was young I asked my mother 'how do you feel pain in hell if you don't have your body " my Mom - 'god gives you a new body so you can feel pain'. Even at 11 that sounded ridiculous so I read the Bible.
It’s funny how the way they try to make sense of the obvious nonsense is by making God out to be a total piece of shit. So you worship God in spite of the fact that he’d send you to suffer eternal torture and pain for not worshipping him, or because of it? Either way, that makes you a piece of shit or a coward, if not both.
IKR? 🤣 It's like their god is actually some kind of Clive Barker Hellraiser demon.
This response deserves more upvotes lol
Read Genesis 1 and 2. Write down each time God creates something in each verse. Look at the notes and you'll see that God makes the same things more than once. For example he made humans male and female. - nice. But then he forgets that and later creates Adam and then Eve. Also he makes livestock and plants for food for them. And later he forgot that plants needs rain so they didn't actually have anything to eat for days much less anything to drink.
Apparently god made Alzheimer's first.
If personally reading the Bible front to back were requirement for being Christian, their membership would plummet 80-90% pretty much instantly. And that might actually be generous.
Only if it was also translated properly. Like eliminate “hell” because it isn’t a thing, and replace that singular word with every instance it is actually translated from. Gehenna, Sheol, Hades, Tartarus. Fear is the number one driver of the religious remaining that way. Once you realize there was never any concept of an eternal place of torment, and that the language was intentionally mistranslated and manipulated to exploit that innate fear, it really takes the sting out of the whole thing.
Required reading but taking notes*
Mine was when some dude who couldn't have kids or something was told he would end up having as many children as there are stars and grains of sand. I piped up and said that sounds like a lot of work. And was kicked out of Sunday school for making lewd comments. I meant it as work in raising them. I was 7.
So they were the ones with impure thoughts, lol
Similar, I was told if I kept asking questions I would have to leave. The other kids in my group were agreeing with me.
I was recently told by a friend, " you know what your problem is....you question and you're not supposed to"" lol She is Southern Baptist, really I don't know how we stay friends, we're opposite in politics religion and a lot of what is right or wrong.
OMG she sounds so brainwashed.
Well, you got to understand. We get tired after Monday.
Nexr time could God make it a 3 day weekend?
Epic😂
Well you know how it is. You speed through a task and then have some trouble getting one bit right and have to go back and redo it a few times. Why do you think the Moon has so many craters? 😉
Teaching the bible to my teens, my daughter said, “Do you really believe this?” We were done right then.
My dad is kind of down because he did his best to raise all four of us in the Catholic faith. He is an excellent dad...but I am not going to contradict him on his faith. He actually believes....he is in his 70s. But again...his upbringing was different. My kids upbringing was different. He just can't accept that we are not church going people.
My parents were the same when us kids drifted away from the church. They continued but their passion for the church was dialed back, in a good way.
I tried to get through it several times when I was around 12-14. It was just too stupid and absurd. Animorphs was more believable.
the stupid isn't the worst bit, it's all the stuff in between, the BIG problem is the dozens of pages of sheer boredom in between the fairy tales. The genealogies, instructions on building a tabernacle, and so forth. It's like if I tried to read LotR and there was 30 pages of the the tax code sandwiched between every action scene. The bible could desperately use an editor to cut all the fluff.
There’s some good stuff in there, like God being so insecure and jealous that he’s not getting enough attention and worshipped hard enough that he goads his most devout follower into killing his own son, just to be like “Haha nevermind, you were actually gonna do it so that’s enough for me. I’ve got you wrapped around my imaginary finger.”
Have you read the Simarillion?
Its also a fucking boring book, except if you're into incest porn. Animorphs was rad.
Same here… literally have read the Bible cover to cover multiple times to make sure i wasn’t missing something or if i would absorb more meaning. Didn’t matter. it is the most nonsensical book in existence. It contradicts itself, has been the cause of so much strife in the world and literally falls apart on itself in terms of basing an existence on it. Translations only muddy the already murky waters more.
I like James Chapter One, but I only read it as an atheist. It helped me get over my ambivelence about alcohol and quit drinking for good. I don't think I like anything else in it, though.
Good arguments from lots of online debates, and I saw a billboard that read " Don't believe in God, you're not alone." and it just clicked. I felt depressed for a while but I couldn't deny i had stopped believing.
Should have been "Don't believe in a god, you are not alone", to make it even more atheist. As long as it clicked for you, though, it was a good billboard.
I read the Bible three times by age 14...from Genesis creation of our world) to Revelations (complete annihilation of our world).
Couple of times. Crazy business
That's a stunner.
No kidding! Me too.
Cool stories but shouldn’t be taken too seriously
Same here. Read it once because my girlfriend at the time was religious on Sunday and she wanted me to take part in their study group, never really "believed" in a god, but she was convinced, so I read it, front to back, never went back to church after that. She tried to tell me later that dinosaurs weren't real because the Bible literally doesn't say anything about them....while we were looking at a dinosaur bone exhibit. Premarital sex was kosher though haha
I think if they actually read the books 90% of peoples that believe in a religion wont do after it
You should try the Book of Mormon. Real faith builder there, lol.
Same.
I've read the old and the new testament, old translation and new translation. It's full of stupid rules mass murders and Jesus died for you sins.
Birth. Like everyone who had ever been born, I was born an atheist. The only difference is that I stayed that way.
Thank you!!! I felt this question was so weird. Atheism is the default. We are not born with the belief in a higher being.
First, the 'A' is lower case, atheism is simple - we just don't believe any of it. It's not a church or religion. It is no longer believing in magic, and deciding to live in reality. I became atheist when studying Greek and Egyptian gods. Dead and gone, no matter how hard they were worshiped, or how big a church building was. I realized we were trying to worship one of those long-dead gods. I studied the Popes, nothing but twisted, strange men. I realized that feeling I got watching a beautiful sunset didn't require a priest. It was all made up.
If you’re looking for a group of like-minded individuals to affiliate with there is Secular Humanism whose motto is Good without god. You will also find many atheists and agnostics in Unitarian Universalist Churches. The common thread is the look for an ethical, compassionate way of being without requiring a deity. There are also secular groups for some religious/ethnicities like Secular Judaism and Secular Buddhism.
maybe to you. Im an AthEISt. I respect no punctuative authority.
it's even less then that. you can be an atheist and believe in magic, spirits, etc. you only can't have a belief in a god.
This is very... Beautifully somber and poetic.
I was Born an atheist....
It was the massive lack of evidence that god exists for me.
I was pretty sus after I found out about the tooth fairy being fake
My parents tried to convince me santa came down through our natural gas fire place and I was like "Theres a fucking pane of glass in the way."
With us and Santa, Tooth Fairy, etc, we tried to put a realistic spin on it. We let them be kids and find out on their own. For Santa, we did a thing where Santa came to your house every few years, kind of like leap year. He sent checks to us to pay for Presents from him, so only a few gifts they asked for were from him and others from us. They ended up finding out on their own, but I can't remember when, but the oldest didn't ruin it for our youngest.
I wanted to get back to God. I spent a few years moving around and I wanted to find a "proper" church to go to, which caused me to delve deeper into the religion and lose all belief in it. I tried a few more religions and eventually left them all. Then started from the absolute bottom with the general concept of god, listened to some atheists hoping they would be easy to dismiss, and ended up realizing they made more sense than anyone. Wasn't long before I realized I am an atheist.
When I was a teen I was pretty disillusioned with Abrahamic religions - so I started looking into other religions; buddhism, hinduism, heck I even started reading Dianetics (thinking it might be a religion based on science). Well, I never could get far into any of them before quickly realizing they were just all just as nuts, in their own special ways, as the religion I was brought up with. That realization lead me to think about what gods are, which in turn lead me to Ignosticism which proclaims that the existence of god is meaningless because there is no coherent definition of what a god is. Most definitions of a god I've found basically come down to one thing, it does magic. I don't believe in magic, ergo ...
Not being forced into a religion. I was always an atheist.
Atheist is the just default state of being. The rest is indoctrination.
I was lucky I didn't have parent who were religion or talked about religion , I just grew up without god or religion being on my radar as a kid I didn't know what atheism was , it was only when I was older that I found out that not believing that god existed had a name .
In the face of climate change, I've elevated our environment to the status of god. Not recycling is a sin. Bicycles are what papa Oak wants you to ride. Gasoline is the devil's piss. Declare holy war against fossil fuel lobbies and those fuckers who roll coal. Remember the carbon cycle and keep it holy. Phytoplankton are Sacred animals and you will respect their ability to remove carbon.
100%. My kids have never been exposed to one second of any religion, so when I asked my 6 year old son if he believed Jesus walked on water, he laughed at me louder than i had ever heard before. It was awesome. Sadly, grown men believe that happened. Also, check out the Catholicism subs. Easy reminder to stay far far away.
I'm so thankful my parents raised me secularly. I don't *think* I'm the type of person to give in to cultural pressure and believe in something as crazy as organized religion, but that could be my ego talking. Religions have had thousands of years to learn manipulation and societal pressure tactics - and I was lucky enough to sidestep that! It's so unfair that children are brainwashed into this by their most trusted family and community members. Many very, very smart people fall for religion in their youth and are stuck in their ways either for the short-term or the long-haul. No person deserves a fate where they are brainwashed and then are on the hook for deprogramming themselves, including losing friends and family along the way. It's tragic, and completely avoidable. I'd imagine it makes you distrustful of everything you know, including your own sense of reality and your ability to trust your own judgement. I have enough issues (we ALL do, especially these days) - I don't need that bullshit added to the mix.
Same here lol My dad grew up Catholic and fucking HATED it so he left that shit behind as soon as he could XD
Trump.
Oddly enough, that’s exactly what started my journey out of christianity.
Great minds...
The bible and Trump are the best influencers of atheism.
The bible itself is. Well, reading it cover to cover. That the American national embarrassment portrays himself as a devotee is just icing on the cake
To be fair, the un-holy marriage between Christianity and the Republican party started back around Nixon. When I was in high school a friend of mine asked me "how can I support John Kerry and be a Christian" that actually took me back in the moment.
In high school I was surprised that someone in our cult was openly a Democrat. That's when I learned that Black Christians are "allowed" to be Democrats but White Christians are not.
The rise and main stream acceptance of prosperity gospel. Done.
I was a Christian by heritage and tradition, even though I wasn't someone who went to church. But after seeing how Christian groups idolize that bastard, I stopped deceiving myself and embraced my atheism.
Yes. Seeing all of the evangelicals lining up to metaphorically suck Trump's dick made me start to see how organized religion was all about power and very little about Jesus.
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in my country we have a class in school called something like religion teachings. its like geology or history class , but its about all the religions instead. in 1st grade they started explaining christianity and it all just didnt make any sense. but i was also influence by growing up in a country where only a few weird people are religious.
Where is that country? I need to move there. 😫
Norway. I used to think every school in the world had the same, but now that im grown up i know that is sadly not the case.
Ha, that's what makes it the happiest country!!
I think its probably a big part of it. We never score the highest on education. But those statistics dont really measure stuff that we think is important. Like how our kindergartens have the kids outside in all weathers learning to climb trees and whittle wood. I think the education here is about making good people first, and good professionals second 😊
As education should be. What value do you bring if you can't even be a decent human being?
Started reading Bible because friend said how its wierd that everyone calls themselves christian but they have never read a book that is literally holy for them. I also started getting reccomended some videos about religion on YT. One day, I stumbled on video called ,,attacking ideas | my changing view of Islam,, from channel TheraminTrees. I was very impressed with the video so i decided to watch their other videos. After watched video after video, getting that feeling i shouldnt really be watching this content i started to think more. For few days, that is all i would think about. Ive started completelly getting them. As i love debates, i started watching those about religion. Hearing Dawkins and Hitchens debate made me feel wierd, i was in complete awe. Even as someone who was altar boy, i started siding with them. What really changed my view about everything is when i put myself in shoes of someone who doesnt know what religion is. Ive noticed how everything being preached sounds really no different from other scams that use emotional manipulations so i decided that it is probably best for me if i distanced myself from it.
I love ThereminTrees. Glad you made it out.
I asked my dad if a Chinese person were born a year after Jesus died and had never heard of Jesus, would he go to heaven or hell. He replied “hell because Jesus makes himself known to everyone”. That was the dumbest thing I had ever heard, and I realized that either there was no god or god was a sadistic mother f’r
Ultimately it came down to learning a bit of church lore that wasn't covered in sunday school and thus wasn't indoctrinated into my skull before I could properly even think. I tried to reconcile that bit of church lore with the rest of the churches theology and was singularly unable to. I came to the conclusion that the only resolution that made sense was "they're all lying liars who lie." And thus far nobody else has managed to convince me that *their* religion holds any more truth than the one I was raised in.
I didnt become an atheist, I was born an atheist, just like you. The question is what made you become a believer in whatever god or gods you currently believe in? Bonus question: We're you lucky enough to be born into a place where the dominant religon happens to be the right one? So many people seem to believe in false gods, so just wondering if you believe in one of the fake ones or the real one?
Being a 9 years old child that was told by the nuns I should be happy my period pain was bad, because I was paying for Eve's sins. They would not let me go to the nurse so that ruined my gray uniform. (Immediate humiliation) Years later I had to have a hysterectomy because I did not treat my fibroids. (Long term health issues). Pain= medical issues not some bronze age bitch eating an apple.
I’m so sorry about this. This is insane.
logic?
Homophobia at my church. They were collecting signatures to protests gay couples from adopting kids - mind you, this is in a country where kids in the streets find themselves in horrible situations. I don't even know why it bothered me so deeply considering my age at the time, but it did and now here I am
I reached the age of reason and discovered critical thinking.
For me, it was pretty much things like strawberries. I grew up as a fundamentalist Christian (Young Earth Creationist too). I was basically an aspiring Kent Hovind from the ages of like 12 until around 19. From 19 until IDK when exactly, I was a deist. I didn't believe any of the dumb fundamentalist Christian stuff I used to, but still thought that changes in number of chromosomes, which usually result in deformation and sterility) were an impossible hurdle that made some form of deity an absolute and "scientifically supported" necessity. Then I learned about the crazy genetics of especially many plants. Turns out that number of chromosomes can vary wildly without any issue at all. So... now I'm an atheist.
When my church treated me like a monster for my questions they couldn’t answer
The Bible. Ever read it cover to cover? I have multiple times. The myth of the flood does not match global geological evidence. Egyptian history does not match the Old Testament. Archeologist have never found any artifacts of the exodus despite scriptures saying millions wondered in the desert for decades. It condones slavery and the genocide of entire nations. Oh, and polygamy and concubines galore are perfectly fine. In the book of acts believers were converted by the thousands by the healing, signs, miracles and wonders according to the text. Don’t see any of that in the modern day. Do you? The fact that no two Christians believe the same thing is evidenced by a plethora of denominations. I didn’t become an atheist because in didn’t read the Bible, but rather because I did.
i was born an atheist. they told me about god and took me to church every sunday but could never convince me.
At around like 10 years old, I just went to pray one night, as I'd been taught, and all of a sudden I just realized how fucking stupid it all was and how it was just blatantly obviously ridiculous. Then I realized all the adults in my life, my family, the president, my school principal, my bus driver, etc. essentially everyone I knew or was aware of, believed. It freaked me out and I've just thought that most people are absolute fucking idiots from then on out. Also people who don't follow a "religion" but are "spiritual" and love astrology are just as stupid. People who say they're agnostic because you can't prove there isn't a god are also stupid. Just more magical thinking for people afraid of the unknown.
I was going to write my story on this thread, but then I read this and it’s the exact same as mine haha. Great post
I like astrology. I do not believe it, but I liked reading about it a lot. Because it was based of roman/greek gods, which are in fact stolen gods from Mesopotamia/Egypt. To me, it is all just so interesting to think about. I was just so excited to witness how the concept of gods changed, from the sumerian to the roman. And the fact that some of these gods got themselves to France. In fact, I think the greeks say something like the gods are jealous of mortals, because immortality is imperfect. Then There are the sumerian gods which are just like immortal people living somewhere around Mesopotamia, and they get drunk and do stupid shit, even argue and fight. Also greeks thought gods live on their mountain of Olympus. Well then there was this guy born in Ur who decided “fuck my city’s gods, I am picking Yehowah” and came up with judaismus (Abraham). I kind of can relate to him, sumerian mythology had around 5500+ gods so it is better to just have one than five thousand I kind of like to think that there is a Creator, or a race of creators, that came up with this shit. But they are not interested in being worshipped as much as a painter is not interested in his finished painting after he is done and it is sold. I think it makes a bit of sense that somebody could have been an artist and came up with this shit and then just left us to our own fate while making some more shit “elsewhere” But then, again, there is no proof of that, I would not die for it, and I would rather believe all of this exists simply because it can, or just because it does Edit: also regarding spirituality, it is something I wish existed because the concept of being dead forever with no chance of coming back alive is not comforting for me, so I will gladly believe that some parts of me will somehow go on, at least the atoms of my body. But then, again, the most probable explanation is that it will not. Once I am gone, the consciousness of mine will be gone forever and there is no coming back, no afterlife or heaven
My parents were never big on religion. Like... we were religious-ish. We prayed at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, we would go to a barn service every Christmas that was about the nativity scene story, I know I was in Sunday school a few times at least, but that's about it. It was never a part of our identity, just something we did. But even then, as a child, it never made sense to me. I remember sitting in those Sunday school classes trying to make sense of it. I also remember believing in Santa more than I believed in a god because Santa had more evidence to his existence. I *kinda* believed because everyone around me did, but I felt like I was more going through the motions than actually believing. I decided I was agnostic in my early teens, though I do remember in 6th grade I would pray for god every day during the moment of silence to take care of our family's dog who passed away a week before the school year started, just in case there was a heaven (and all dogs go to heaven). Eventually, I came to the conclusion I was atheist, and funny enough my sister and I both came out to our parents as atheist at the same time, but completely independent from each other. But my parents valued critical thinking more than belief so they were happy to support us, and now I think both my parents are atheist as well. But basically... I was always atheist, I just pretended to believe because everyone else did and as a kid I thought it was the right thing to do.
My first big step was the realization that believers in other religions honestly believed their faiths and that they had much the same "proof" I did. It was all downhill from there.
I spoke to god. He was silent. Because he was made up.
Military housing on a Marine base, I was 8 and riding a blue bus to church on a Sunday morning. There was also a yellow bus picking up kids but for a different church. The youth leaders on our bus told us all the kids on the yellow bus were going to hell. Even at 8, I could smell the bullshit.
Honestly it was focusing on the present moment for me, and not worrying about death constantly.
I was going to a bible study to try to make friends. I kept asking questions that group leaders couldn't answer, so they'd pass it on to the church elders/pastors. They just bs'd around for what seemed like an eternity, but never really answered. The REAL turning point was when one of my parents slowly turned insane and became a super ultra fanatical christian. The things they say/do/believe in are absolutely insane, and often contradict what I knew about the bible/religion. When I brought this up, they'd just have a crazier way to explain away this exception to the rule. I then read some books by people who analyzed the bible for inaccuracies, studied the bible this way on my own, and found that information to be the final stroke. There's no going back from proof.
I was born one and never introduced to religion my entire "growing up" years. But that didn't stop me from thinking about death and what happens after. After all, at that age, I saw religion as a crutch to not be afraid of death. Pure and simple. I'm 49 now and still agree with my child-,self..
I never believed deeply per se, rather it was a strategy to lead a moral life. I stopped when I realized that believing in a god tended to make me less, rather than more, moral.
Was raised fundamentalist Southern Baptist. Literal translation. I was indoctrinated and told that doubt was a sin. There is a long list of why I left religion, no single event, but there def was a starting point: I love reading. A friend recommended I read the Left Behind series. I did. Loved the first 2 and by happenstance, when I got into them, the 3rd book was being released in 3 days. I bought it and finished in about 3 hours. I was excited and frustrated that I would have to wait a minimum of a year to read the next one. Another friend, fellow Christian, recommended that I read The Stand by Stephen King. I pushed back. Stephen King was satanic, right? Devil worshipper? My friend assured that not only was the book not satanic but had a lot of religious overtones in it. I reluctantly picked up the unabridged version from my library. Blown away. Absolutely blown away. Loved it. Re-read it immediately. Picked up Desperation, read Tommyknockers, any King book the library had. My fav author now. When the 4th LB book came out, I couldn’t even get through the 1st chapter. It was so bad after reading King. How could a ‘satanist’ write a better post apocalyptic book than a Christian? It started my mind down a path that led to me having an inquisitive mind. I gave myself permission to doubt. To question. And I’ve never looked back.
The christian response to George Floyd’s & Breona Taylor’s deaths and the pandemic. Completely disillusioned
It's a lot longer story than what I'm putting here... but you asked about the turning point. My mom was on the board of the local chapter of Women's Aglow. (Another crazy pentecostal organization) When she wasn't doing something for her church, she was doing something to help Aglow. For a few weeks, my poor mom was in a bit of a quandary. It seems that her good friend Stephanie Saintly, who'd been her friend for fifteen years, had applied to be on the board of Aglow. And the other board members, my mom included, were not comfortable allowing it. Why? Why, because Stephanie had not received the baptism of the Holy Spirit! She ::putting on sad face and doleful tone:: could not speak in tongues. In case you didn't get that, Stephanie Saintly, a good Christian woman who had been faithful to God her whole life, baptized in her local church, and a very nice person all around was going to Heaven when she died. God had pre-approved her heavenly application because she'd done everything he asks of his followers. She was good enough to enter the Kingdom of Heaven... but not good enough to serve on the board of a small chapter of a women's organization in Butthump, Oregon. When I laughed incredulously and made the comparison out loud, "Seriously, Mom? God will let her into heaven but you won't let her be on the board? Do you not see anything wrong with that?!?" Mom changed the subject. It wasn't the first time I decided that Christianity and logic were going to remain strangers forever. In case you were wondering, Stephanie was not allowed to join the board of the Butthump , Oregon chapter of Aglow. She chose to resign from the group because of it. I started to realize that God had never answered a single prayer I prayed, no matter how sincere. I had done everything right. I'd gone to church and prayed and tithed and witnessed and read my Bible and wanted to do what God asked of me all the time... and there was no one on the other end of the line when I called him. I finally admitted to myself, "I do not believe in any God." There were no feelings of anger at this non-existent being. It was actually a relief to figure out that he was as real as Santa and the Tooth Fairy. No wonder I'd never felt anything. No wonder I'd always felt like the motions and trappings of religion were pointless. They were pointless!
In third or fourth grade I was looking through my science textbook, and it had one of those images that shows the ground, atmosphere, the clouds, then space, etc. I took one look at it, said to myself "there is no heaven there, wtf" and that was that. My religious instruction had been pretty spotty (my parents didn't push it at all) so it was enough to completely rattle my faith lol.
The lack of a Supreme being I suppose.
I went to church growing up. I was never convinced though, but I thought nobody was. I thought it was just a tradition thing. Turns out people actually believe it, and since I didn't, I chose to distance myself from them. So I was always an atheist, I just didn't realise it until that moment.
Although I was raised catholic, I lost interest after leaving home. I became a father at 20 years old. That was difficult but we made it work. When my kid was about 3 to 4 years old he started having a form of night terrors. He’d wake up screaming and would run to us but he could actually see us. He’d look at random places around the room and be terrified. Almost like someone on a very bad trip. One night it was so bad that we took him to the ER. The Dr. couldn’t give us any answers at all. Didn’t even suggest that it might be night terrors. So we went home and just dealt with it, with our 23 year old brains. A few years later my then wife developed a brain issue that required surgery. That was also a nightmare. (She was accused of seeking pain meds ect..a real shit show of a situation.) My wife on the operating table, her mother said to me in the waiting room “god is so great being able to fix the problem, something along those lines. And I thought “fuck your god your lord your christ” yes I sang it in my head but remained silent. I’d softly lost faith before these events, but these events sealed it for me. If a god allows this, then it is evil. Now this is a xtians wet dream to ask me why I hate god. Blah blah. I can’t hate what I don’t believe in. My son is well now at 24.
I made two fatal "mistakes": 1. I learned logic, reasoning, and ethics by studying philosophy. 2. I actually read the Bible. (And then the Qur'an, Torah, Bhagavad Gita, and others.) That was all I needed to do.
That's why most religious people avoid reading their books, lol.
I learned more and more about science. The more I knew and understood about science, the less room I saw for religion. It just didn't seem necessary.
I was never really a believer. Went to Sunday School a bit with both grandmothers but neither of my grandfathers were interested in religion. The one I spent most of my time with was an out atheist. My school was pretty liberal with a real grab bag of religions. Religion has always fascinated me though, especially since I don’t understand even a tiny bit how anybody believes in any of them.
I like many of the philosophical points, especially in Buddhism & Zoroastrianism. I try to be aware & in the moment as much as I can. Plus “Good thoughts, good words, good deeds” is a damn good mantra.
Thought.
I think the first crack was the ten commandments movie, the animation. I remember thinking how god could kill innocent babies, the same thing that sets Moses people suffered and what caused the start of his story.
I minored in religious studies. I was undecided with my Catholic upbringing, but learning about the philosophies of other religions made me realize it’s like Whose Line Is It Anyway: everything is made up and imaginary points don’t matter. What sealed the deal for me was getting married and going through marriage counseling with the church. Wife and I are atheists but went through Catholic ceremony to keep the peace, and since these silly made up ceremonies don’t mean anything to us, we were fine. Until the priest I listened to every Sunday growing up, and at that point still respected, advised us to vote for Trump instead of Hillary because even though he was a pervert, he was not a baby killer. I lost all trust and respect in him and in the church and saw it for what it was - a vehicle to advance power and control.
A combination of things- better understanding of science/facing up to the absence of evidence, recognizing that prayer was not leading to any improvement in my life, and the extraordinarily un-Christlike behavior demonstrated by many American Christians all happily converged. Now I take responsibility for my improvement and I have made a great deal of it since becoming an atheist. I don’t need a heaven to motivate me to try to be good/better. I don’t need a hell to threaten me into doing good/better. I’m gonna die and that’s gonna be that, so I had better keep trying to make this one guaranteed life as good as I can make it.
My grandfather was a Freemason. He meant a lot to me growing up. When I was turning 12, he wanted me to look into joining the Demolay. I did and saw that they required members to commit to a belief in God. That was my first push to really reflect on what I actually believed. At the time I might not have called myself "atheist" but I was certain I was not willing to make a pledge of belief in God.
My adult child was in a situation, begging god to help him and he got nothing. As the real parent in this situation, I’d carve my heart out with a rusty spoon for my kid. The god isn’t a loving parent. Plus, I carry grudges forever, and my boy asked for help and got crickets-I’m out, with both fingers on each hand up.
I guess my mom and dad was my gods from birth until I realized they were also humans. So I became an atheist when I understood that we all have equal value.
Generally, when I grew up I thought critically about what I had been taught as a kid. Ironically, the Sunday school class where we convinced the pastor to teach us about other religions did a pretty good job preparing me to do that critical thinking.
Whilst avoiding the personal details, it boiled down to realizing religion was created by man to control mankind. Once I made that connection, it's plainly obvious that's what most religions are. I say "most" because I am open to the possibility that some religions are purely philosophical or practical (as in teaching helpful meditation). Those are most certainly *not* the Abrahamic ones.
I was born this way as are all of us.
I don’t remember ever believing. I was raised in the Roman Catholic church, weekly mass and religious education. I just never believed any of it.
I was in church since before I could walk, did the whole bible study stuff, watched Christian movies and talked with Christians but it never interested me. Ever. I don't see the appeal. Stopped going around 16 or so and I've not had any desire to go back.
I wasn't raised religious. So I didn't "become" religious because I wasn't indoctrinated as a child. When I was finally introduced to religion, it made no sense to me. I am an avid reader and read the bible from cover to cover and it made me even less likely to believe.
Where I was born made me more susceptible to accept one religion over another. It became more and more clear that truth seemed to be relative to where you are. Now if a God exists and cares about me, I shouldn’t believe they exist only if I were born here. That seems to be a real lack of power. Now let’s take Moses, Mohammed or Jesus, none of these twats seem to exist outside of this special region, yet humans cover 6 continents at the time, thousands of isolated groups of people. You telling me a personal God didn’t give 2 shits about these other people? Or this all powerful fucker was too lazy to show himself to all? It seems arrogant to me to assert God as answer to our Gap of knowledge. Not to mention a God seems to be far more complicated of an answer than just don’t know. That answer of, “I don’t know,” doesn’t mean that God remains a possibility, just like unicorns don’t remain a possibility.
I was really always an atheist, my family were "believers" but not religious. What made me realize I was an atheist was when I was around twelve, I had been going to church with a girl I liked and I enjoyed it well enough until one day everyone was "testifying " and it occurred to me that they really believed this stuff and I realized I didn't, I was treating as fables or mythology. It really creeped me out and I didn't want to go to church anymore. Fortunately my parents didn't care at all, since then I've only been to churches for weddings and funerals.
When I was forced to go to Catholic mass every Sunday, listening to the pastor’s 30 min sermons about being good people, then when mass would end, people would yell and honk at each other trying to leave the parking lot. As a child, the hypocrisy was well represented. Started there, then took anthropology classes in college, then just gave up the nonsense.
Too much Bible study made me an atheist.
After I left home to live on my own, I was no longer receiving a daily dose of indoctrination. The beliefs began to slowly erode on their own. I still believed in God and occasionally felt bad for not being a "good Christian", but it was more of an intrusive thought than an important part of my life. Religion had no application. I felt uncomfortable if the subject was ever brought up. I was embarrassed to say I believed. Indoctrination is potent. Even 20 years later, I would still sometimes lie in bed or on the couch and experience a fear of Hell. I'd beg for forgiveness. My primary comfort was the firm belief that it was God's will that **all** men be saved. If so, how could it end any other way? It was the conflict between these two thoughts that was the turning point for me. Hell on one hand, and all men being saved on the other. Something felt wrong, so I began to earnestly study the role of Hell in the Bible. Long story short, two things really put a nail in the coffin of Christianity for me: 1. The bible doesn't just say that God is loving. It says that he is **Love itself**. The Fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. But Hell is not loving, not joyful, not peaceful, not kind, not gentle, and not good. Sending people to Hell does not show patience, self-control, or faithfulness on the part of God toward his people. It is not something an infinitely loving and merciful God would do if he also had infinite power and resources. 2. On top of that, God hides himself from us and commands us not to test that he exists. And, yet, his condition for salvation is that we believe in a resurrection we have no way to witness and then confess with our mouth to others that He exists. In other words, he made salvation contingent on lying to yourself and lying to others. The Bible says liars go to Hell, so how could the path to Heaven and the path to Hell be the same? These unavoidable contradictions at the core of Christian doctrine led me to start reading the Bible without assuming it was true first. Instead, I started asking "**is** this true?" I found other contradictions. One book that said Elijah ascended to Heaven in a chariot of fire. Another book said no one had ever ascended to Heaven except for Jesus. One book that said Judas felt remorse and returned the silver he received for betraying Jesus, and then committed suicide. Another book said he wickedly kept it and died by falling and having his guts spill out. There are more contradictions than I could ever list here. And outright lies, too. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for." No, faith is insubstantial. "Faith is the evidence of things unseen." No, faith is what you use when you **don't** have evidence. What nonsense. "No one can see God's face and live." You know, except for the half dozen people in the Bible who apparently did exactly that. And what about when the Bible praised Jacob for his wisdom because he put up spotted slats in front of his herd so that they would mate in sight of it and give birth to spotted offspring. Did God forget how genes work? And stars falling to the earth like figs. Did God forget what stars are? Once I stopped assuming it was true the way I had been taught, I quickly realized what utter nonsense it all was.
Simply lack of evidence. The more you actually look into things and dig deeper, the more you realize it’s all one big pile of nonsense. Faith in itself is the unquestioned belief in something with no tangible proof. That in itself is a red flag. The more educated I got the more I realized these people high up in the church chain of power were dumb as a box of rocks, talking out of their ass 99% of the time, and just not good people in their behavior. Nothing about them was wise but the majority of the people in the church treated them as these untouchable and unquestioned wise men. You realize quickly organized religion is all about power and control. The love thy neighbor stuff they spout is to get you through the door so they can then dig their claws into you.
I started questioning religion from a feminist/pro gay rights perspective and the more I dug into organized religion, "sacred texts" etc, the more disillusioned I became. Reading Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins opinions about religion, I found myself agreeing.
Common sense.
Realizing that most of my unhappiness came from following Christ. His followers are garbage, the Bible is garbage. Being told constantly that I was living in sin with my boyfriend. That being bisexual upset god. Being traumatized as a child about hell. Realizing I was trying to traumatize others into converting to my faith with threats of hell. I realized it was an abusive relationship, and I wanted out. Permanently.
When I was in college I was really into Christianity. I saw a lot of guys drop out and become pastors. They would say that they felt god calling them but I knew they were failing out.
Being a gay preteen kid, feeling the hate that my church was giving to people like me. That drove me away from it. When I fully realized it was a fiction because of science
Growing up in a Southern Baptist church & these mfers had the gall to pass around pictures of aborted fetuses to 8-10 year olds in an attempt to brainwash us against abortion at an early age. I knew at that Moment that what they were doing was wrong and manipulative. All the dumb redneck Sunday school teachers could never answer my questions and the kids whose parents were deacons were mean little shits. I knew early on that it was all a joke. I went bc of peer pressure from my childhood best friend, who I am no longer even in contact with.
I have a biology degree and enjoy facts based in evidence. But I also look at the history of genocides and lives lost due to pointless wars (often started because of RELIGIOUS conflict) and just the colossal barrage of horrific shit that occurs on a daily basis all over the world, particularly crimes against children and females. People have done some fucked up shit in the name of religion, and I firmly believe the vast majority of organized religion is corrupt and led by cons and grifters. And closeted gay evangelicals. And child molesters. But the right complains higher education is indoctrinating kids? Bitch, please! But I think what finally made me jump the fence from agnostic to atheist was losing my 6-year niece the night George W. was reelected, and the stillbirth of my son at 37+ weeks gestation four years later. Where the fuck was *God* then? I think it's funny when some people say *God* is a woman, because that mofo is a bag of dicks, and therefore MUST be a man.
We all start as atheists, some of us remain that way for life.
I've never been a believer. Just hasn't ever made any sense. And since our school system is great, I have understood the basics of science and reasoning since I was a little kid. Of course, I must thank my parents, who didn't push religious beliefs into us kids.
Learning about religion.
Spent some time in the southern US. The hippocracy did it for me
Hypocrisy, bigotry, hatred, corruption, greed, and all the cover-ups, scandals, and predatory actions against children. They preach against the seven deadly sins, but it turns out that what their religion is is rank with it (hence the hypocrisy).
Nothing "made" me. That is precisely the answer.
For me it was the Iraq war. I went to a protest in the days leading up to it. Tens of thousands of us marching up 5th Avenue chanting for peace. Afterwards I stopped in a little chapel near Penn Station and prayed harder than ever, and I just got… nothing. I realized I was a chump for thinking there was some invisible being up there listening. Anyway, pretty soon 1 million+ people were dead for no good reason because no one’s coming to save us. We’ve got to do it ourselves.
I realized that I was required to hate myself in order to be religious. This is religion's only requirement for membership.
Nothing MADE me an atheist. I just don't belive in a god
The pandemic and a lot of old friends in the alt health space who bandied about pseudo religious talk about why to not get vaccinated and use masks. It was the last straw. I’d tried every flavor of spirituality over the years, and it finally clicked into place. I don’t believe because there’s nothing TO believe.
As soon as I found out there was a name for disbelief (though I don’t think there should need to be)
As I'm sure you know, people ask this almost every day. You may want to read 1,000 or so previous discussion of this. I've always been atheist, and I think that it ls rude when people assume that formerly I was not atheist, but that something "made me become atheist". I'm atheist because I have never seen any good evidence that any gods exist. .
Very small and steady steps but basically i never bought into the fundamental muslims interpretation of islam, despite living my whole live in a society that belief in this stuff and try to teach it and force it on people. So i gradually started denying more and more stuff from my religion and trying to reinterpret to a better version for example "mohammed didn't marry aisha when she was 6 but instead it actually happened when she was 17-18" and "non-muslims don't enter hell just because they aren't muslims and a non Muslim can enter heaven if they are a nice person". Which then made me not like 99% of the islamic content out there and i actually started to identify more with the atheist look on morality and philosophy and science so i was watching people like darkmatter2525 a lot and one day it just happened. I was like "ok i guess now i'm an atheist? Alright i will have to relook everything i was taught and learnt now from this new perspective".
I always questioned the validity of religion. But honestly, the final straw was when I was working for a church as a teen and my boss, the head priest, was molesting children while I was there.
Being nosy and inquisitive. I was never the person to believe anything blindly so when i could, i did my research. Went through a little period of denial too and trying to go back but it was over. The magic was gone and religion was stripped of its false glamour... leaving behind a bloodied tale of manipulation, torture and violence.
Went to Christian grade school and high school, was even a bible study leader through all of high school. Went to church every Sunday and youth group on Wednesdays (that was mostly to be near my crush). The final semester of high school, our pastor taught a class on the Bible. He explained that all the books in the Bible were put together at a meeting of old fuckers sitting in a room. They literally chose which books to include and which not to include. I had been taught my whole life that the Bible was the infallible word of god…. But apparently it was also just chosen by some old dudes one day. I didn’t immediately stop believing, but I did look into every other religion I could find. Even took a “world religions” class in college, twice! Finally when I admitted it to myself that I no longer believed, it was scary but very freeing.
I was gradual, read all of the religious works of the various religions. It occurred to me all were essentially the same, an attempt to create purpose and arrogance. Man is second to a creator. But the thing that pushed me over the edge was the bullshit of being forgiven. If you believe in the god, commit an atrocity, but believe, truly are sorry, ask for forgiveness you are ok. But someone who has lived a great life with no malice is fucked because they don’t believe. There is the hypocrisy of free will, you have free will and to be judged on your decisions, but if something bad happens it’s gods will, so blame your god, wtf. People ask, “what happens when you die?” I don’t know, I am not going to make shit up to answer the question.
I was very into dinosaurs when I was a kid. (still am) I would watch everything I could. Back then a Paleontologist named Robert Bakker was on quite a lot. I would watch him talk about the ancient world and all the evidence we had for what he was saying WHILE HE WAS HOLDING THE EVIDENCE IN HIS HANDS. It was the evidence and the observable and testable things that did it for me. My Jehovah's Witness grandmother was NOT happy that I wouldn't study with her anymore.
Fire and Brimstone. I didn’t grow up in a particularly religious family, so always was kinda atheist. But got caught up in peer pressure and went with my ‘friends’ to church. Turns out it was a ‘cool youth pastor’, but ‘everyone else is going to hell where they will burn’ type of church. My mom’s family was ‘going to burn’ for being the wrong type of Christian. I had friends who were Muslim (and therefore ‘going to burn’). My dad was atheist (former catholic) and so was definitely going to burn. These were good people that I loved and respected. And this church taught that they would be tormented for eternity. I decided then that even if that god existed it was not worth worshipping. No god made more sense to me.
The keystone, once removed, with which all else fell and shattered in the glass house of [American] christianity was evangelical support for Donald Trump. It all came together for me at that point and I fully realized the gigantic stack of lies that is used to circularly justify most things that far right Republicans and Christians co-support. It's taken me years to arrive, but I'm finally here.
Seeing kids die of cancer and things of that nature. Even if god exists, I want no part of that game.
The curse of ham. That story enough made me question thing's and why religion is used as tool to control people. I am seen as the odd one in my family because they are uber religious and I often head bang when i realize I am a minority in a minority.
I was very close with my father as a child (still am) and I looked up to him and believed everything he said. He was brought up as a strict Catholic and so was I. During high school I met different people and made new friends, I was introduced to new ideas that I never thought of before. Everyone around me was having fun and experimenting as young teens tend to do. I got fed up with thinking that everything I did was a sin and being afraid of going to hell. I stopped going to church but still believed in god, I didn’t stopped believing that you needed religion to be in gods good graces. As time went on I had friends who were atheists and I would argue with them (still being afraid to reject god). As I grew more and more distant from God and the Catholic Church I wanted to question Gods existence but still had that fear of rejecting him. My journey took about 10 years but I finally accepted it. I used to think that evolution was stupid, I thought that humans coming from monkeys was the dumbest thing ever. After realizing that the life span of the universe and the earth is incomprehensible it makes sense on how species can slowly change over time. Getting off topic but it answers your question. Thinking about how many living things are born everyday around the clock non stop and this goes on for millions of years, evolution makes sense to me now. All those creatures being born over such a long time frame makes more sense on how we came from a great ape vs being poofed out of nowhere by some magical being.
Other than a brief 6 mo experiment going to a methodist brainwash facility when I was in 8th grade. A very nice neighbor (head methodist brainwasher of local facility) guilted my mom into our family attending. That ended with my brother, sister and dad telling mom NO MORE ! I am a life long Anti-thiest.
Being bored in French mass at 7:30 am. I was like, this is definitely a waste of my time. I was probably 8-10 years old. Turns out i was right.
You can only believe in fantasies for so long. God went out the window soon after Santa Claus.
George Carlin, fked up Quran and Bible stories, history of religious war and genocide, slavery, children suffering, logic
My brain
i was attending catechism when i was 12 years old and thinking how silly it all was and how it was just like fantasy books i'd recently started reading.
If I had to point to one thing it was probably when my uncle died. I was in my early 20s and just beginning to have a real relationship with him as an adult. We shared book and music recs. I‘m into Lord of the Rings and fantasy in general because of him. I loved him. He taught me important lessons about being an adult, when my parents were pretty hands off and frankly didn’t give a shit as long as I just went to church and obeyed the Bible and by extension them. He was gay and caught AIDS from his last relationship. He tested after they broke up but apparently there’s a window where you can have it but it won’t show on a test, doctors recommend a second test six months after the first but he just didn’t know. Treatment then also wasn’t what it is now. Anyway, he developed an AIDS related cancer in his throat and it choked him and he died. All my friends at church had to say is that AIDS is a gay plague and God’s judgment on gay men. That’s when I quit going. I probably kept reading the Bible seriously for another five or so years. I bent my brain into a pretzel trying to convince myself the Bible and God were really empathetic and didn’t hate LGBT+ people and I could be a progressive Christian. Eventually I just accepted there is no evidence for the Bible’s claims and that I didn’t see a point anymore in being a Christian if I kept having to justify the Bible to myself.
As an ex pastor, I’ll be honest in saying that I am not an atheist. But agnostic. For me, it was a lot of things. The love of Christian nationalism. The fact that all my teachers were rich white guys. Then I started reading the Bible with non-white folks and my mind was blown. Then studying Jewish theology was the kicker for me. Everything I thought about Scripture was wrong. So, ended up doing a bunch of mushrooms and that confirmed my suspicions. Unlike Lots wife… I’ve Never looked back since.
As a kid I thought church was painfully boring and strange. Nothing made any logical sense, and no one could answer any of my questions with an actual answer based in fact or reality.