A Few Questions for X-Xtians

[Logikos]

Hi all,

I know that there are lots of people here who were brought up as Christians, have been Christians in the past, and some have even been involved in Christian apologetics before leaving Christianity.  For those of you who fall into the general category of "ex-Christian":

How did your disbelief come about?
Were there any main reasons in particular that caused initial doubts?
What are the main reasons you would give against Christianity now (if these are different)?
How would you describe your worldview now?

Logikos

[You might be thinking that I have ulterior motives for asking these questions, but please understand that I'm just interested in your stories and thinking through your reasons against Christianity for myself.  I'm not going to respond to any reasons given here unless you'd like my opinion on them (in which case we can discuss things on separate threads to avoid taking this thread off topic).]

[Davin]

How did your disbelief come about?

My disbelief came about from "rebooting" my beliefs and starting over fresh with the concept of only believing in things that have reasonable evidence. This then led to only accepting things as true as far as we as humans understand them and I dropped beliefs from my life.

Were there any main reasons in particular that caused initial doubts?

A lot of things didn't fit with what could be tested, verified and predicted. Also, all beliefs in a god have at least one premise that one must accept as true without reasonable evidence.

What are the main reasons you would give against Christianity now (if these are different)?

Same thing; no reasonable evidence.

How would you describe your worldview now?

I describe it as mine. More specifically: If I am to accept something as true, there must be reasonable evidence to support it. Speculation is fine and dandy, but it must be held separate from things I accept as true.

[Whitney]

How did your disbelief come about?

Years of thinking about if my religious views made sense or not and adjusting my views as I realized they didn't make sense; over time that took me to a point where it no longer made sense to call myself a presbyterian; no longer made sense to call myself non-denominational; no longer made sense to call myself deist; no longer made sense to call myself agnostic...

Were there any main reasons in particular that caused initial doubts?

The concept of hell just didn't jive with an all loving god; so that was a pretty main reason.

What are the main reasons you would give against Christianity now (if these are different)?

There is no reason to think it is true without first accepting that it is true.  Not to mention that the bible itself is full of immoral concepts and contradictions even if you read it liberally.

How would you describe your worldview now?

freethinking humanist

[Evolved]

How did your disbelief come about?

Slow progression.  I was raised Roman Catholic, went to church on Sundays, went to religion class one day a week.  I doubted my beliefs since I was young.  I remember asking my mother when I was 8 or 9 years old whether she would feel silly spending all the time that she did devoted to her religion if she found out that none of it was true.

Education probably played the most active role in the erosion of my beliefs.  The more biology, physics, chemistry, and (particularly) anthropology and psychology concepts that I was introduced to, the more I found religious beliefs incompatible with scientific fact.

Were there any main reasons in particular that caused initial doubts?

As above, education in the sciences.

What are the main reasons you would give against Christianity now (if these are different)?

Christianity, like all religions, is an exclusive club full of members that can't see beyond their own group.  They can be rather insightful about the flaws in other religions, but fail to see those same flaws with their own.  Basically, you have a bunch of people who have been brilliantly suckered into following the rules and regs of a bunch of patriarchal old farts.

The worst of it right now is the political power that Christians hold in the United States.  Don't think for a minute that Christians don't want to force other people to live the way that they want them to.  It's always been about force and coercion, it just wears different masks at different times.

How would you describe your worldview now?

I believe there is no God, there is absolutely no reason to believe in God, and believing in God holds you back.

[philosoraptor]

How did your disbelief come about?
I always had a really big hangup with the Problem of Evil.  And then I realized...it's only a problem if you believe in God.  I couldn't believe that God would wipe out the whole world in a flood, destroy entire cities with fire and brimstone, but that he had some secret, unknown reason for allowing atrocities like the Holocaust to happen.   Also, I think evil has a specifically moral connotation that bad does not.  Can you call a hurricane evil?  Not really.  But there are people out there who think natural disasters are a manifestation of God's disappointment.  To me, this just didn't make sense logically, and I've always been a seeing is believing kind of person on top of that, and well, you just can't see God.  

Were there any main reasons in particular that caused initial doubts?
My answer to this runs along with what I said above, mostly, but I also had problems with the way religion in general tends to subjugate women.  And the fact that no one could ever really give me a reason why Christianity was right, but Judaism, Islam, or other theistic religions were not.

What are the main reasons you would give against Christianity now (if these are different)?
Again, the same as above.  But also the overwhelming hypocrisy.  I can't endorse any group that claims God loves all, while at the same time condemning homosexuality, abortion, suicide, etc...  

How would you describe your worldview now?
Existentialist.  I believe we are ultimately alone in the universe, and that only we have the power to create meaning and order in our lives.  I believe we define our own morals through our actions, and that there are no moral or ethical absolutes, but that we should not act in a way that is contradictory to how we would have others act or treat us.  I believe there are things you don't have control over, but you do have control with how you deal with them (facticity).  I believe in taking advantage of the time we are given, because there is no guarantee you'll ever get a second chance to do it over again.

[philosoraptor]

How did your disbelief come about?

My disbelief came about from "rebooting" my beliefs and starting over fresh with the concept of only believing in things that have reasonable evidence. This then led to only accepting things as true as far as we as humans understand them and I dropped beliefs from my life.

I find it very interesting that you say this, because this is essentially what Descartes does in the Meditations.  Of course his final conclusion is that God exists, because it doesn't make sense that you'd have an idea of him without him actually being there.  I don't really find that to be a reasonable conclusion, but luckily Hume had an answer for that anyway.  

[Tom62]

How did your disbelief come about?
Were there any main reasons in particular that caused initial doubts?
In my youth I was only exposed to a "milder" form of Christianity (I'm a former Roman Catholic). As a child, I hated to go to church, because it was so utterly boring (listening to Paul's letters to the Romans, etc.). I didn't understand all that mumbo-jumbo and strange rituals. In my eyes it was just all silly nonsense. That notion was enforced, when I started to read the Bible (NT). First, I found out that the Catholic and Protestant Churches had absolutely nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus. That made me loose the respect for any Christian church. The more I read about Jesus, the more I lost the "connection" of him with God. I just regarded him as someone, who was not really special and being one of the many other prophets of those days. From the NT I couldn't learn anything about God, so I had a quick look at the OT. That book freaked me completely out, because the God described in that book was evil and immoral. Nothing in that book inspired my to look for (and worship) the Abarahamic God. Over time my God "definition" became therefore vaguer and abstract, until it simply went completely away, due to it's irrelevance.

What are the main reasons you would give against Christianity now (if these are different)?
The only thing that I have against Christianity (and all other major religions) is that they don't keep their believes to themselves. I believe that faith and religion is something personal and that should stay that way.

How would you describe your worldview now?
A happy atheist.

[MehGuy]

How did your disbelief come about?

Mainly the Bible, contradictions and all, more education had an impact too.  

Were there any main reasons in particular that caused initial doubts?

Criticism of my beliefs on the internet. Sure I questioned the existence of God ever since I was very little, but I was too caught up in the emotional atmosphere of a cosmic battle between good and evil to really give it much thought, and the fear of hell really prolonged a lot of denial. I finally decided that I had enough and started to listen to other Atheists in order to deprogram me. It's been a good year or two of struggling but I finally am comfortable enough to call myself an atheist, even though to this day when I hear something from a Christian show on TV/w/e I can feel my mind getting numb and hazy, and it takes me a little while to snap out of it.

What are the main reasons you would give against Christianity now (if these are different)?

Well if the Bible is important to your faith, I guess you could read up on the contradictions and whatnot like the history of the formation of our modern Bible. I kind of shy away from things like "why would God throw everyone in Hell" but it still had more of an impact on me then I'd like.

How would you describe your worldview now?

 A person who seriously doubts the existence of God and an afterlife. A person willing to have a good time while he still exists, and if not, I don't know step out of the world if it needs to be.

[i_am_i]

My parents went to the Lutheran church every Sunday. I went to Bible school, was confirmed (whatever the hell that meant,) I attended church youth events, I even sang in the choir. But I quickly lost all interest in that when I started going through puberty and discovered music, girls and drugs.

Then in the late sixties you had these "Jesus Freaks," kids who used to be dopers who somehow got into Christianity. A couple of these people had been good friends of mine and they kept badgering me about my soul and whatnot.

Now at that time I was a total doper, a real rock 'n roll kid with no direction in life. And some of what these people said to me made me a little frightened. It must have been the drugs. But that's when I began wondering about all things spriritual. So I started thinking about my soul and all that, and finally I ended up in this weird spiritualist reincarnation psychic Helena Blavastky kind of scene and I started smelling a rat. "Says who?" I was thinking. These people were weird.

That's when I began to really scrutinize religion. I focused my research on Christianity and the history of the Bible, I found out about Constantine and the Nicean council and the more I found the more I became convinced that it was all made up, that God was just a figment of a primitive human imagination, an idea that had kept evolving and evolving, and I thought to myself, "This is ridiculous. Why should we need any of this anymore?"

I looked at all the philosophical debating that had been going on for hundreds of years about this God business, debating that had occupied some very keen minds indeed, and that's when I realised that both great minds and tiny minds were responsible for perpetuating all this nonsense, and I realised that there are lots of great bloody fools with brilliant minds. I suppose that's when I knew that I was finally free to just think for myself. After that it was as easy as taking off a dirty old shirt and throwing it away.

[KDbeads]

How did your disbelief come about?
Lets just say once they let me have an adult bible, the regular KJB, and told me to read it, I did.  I asked questions, I was told to read my bible.  That raised more questions, to which I was told all the answers were in the bible.  So by the time I was 11 I had read that book cover to cover 6 times, OT and NT, and after the first few times I didn't need a dictionary on hand for definitions. The answers were not there.  There were so many contradictory scriptures I was having fits, no one would answer me as to WHY either.  I was just told to read the bible for answers.
At that same age I was told to pray for god to fix my legs, I did.  Nothing happened until my mother decided skating might help based on someone else with a kid who had the same problem.  I fixed my own legs with tons of effort.  Tons of therapy.  Tons of hours in blister causing boots.  No one did that for me, I did.
That same year I came home to an empty house and had my very first full blown major panic attack.  I was so sure that I was an evil kid and the rapture had taken place and I was left alone.  I was home for 2 hours by myself.  When my family came home they laughed at me.  Told me that if I had that much doubt then I was not devout enough.
That same year there was a divorce and I was placed squarely in the middle of it.  We won't go there but after those 2 years of HELL, lets just say I was certain there was no god worth praying to if he allowed horrible things to happen to innocent children.
Once I got into college, 2 years earlier than most, I met someone who changed my life in so many ways I owe who I am today in part to him.  The biggest thing he did was introduce me to people of ALL faiths, ALL religions, ALL cultures.  I learned a lot through these people, most especially from a guy who grew up in Iraq.  He could read old Hebrew, he pointed out a lot of mistakes in the translation of the KJB that all christians take for the absolute truth.  It set off a major light for me since I had doubted for years already.  He was majoring in theology and was an absolute fountain of information in so many religions, how they were the same, how they were different, etc.  He gave me a new perspective on the world.  Opened my mind.

Were there any main reasons in particular that caused initial doubts?
I read the bible, several times, that was enough for me.

What are the main reasons you would give against Christianity now (if these are different)?
I could go on for quite a while but the idea that christians are the only people who are correct and the rest of us are ignorant fools is a biggie for me.  Plus the extreme intolerance to being shown inconsistencies in their religion that give the intelligent/enlightened cause to reconsider faith in general.

How would you describe your worldview now?
Live and let live.  You don't tell me what to think, I won't tell you that you are an idiot.  I do everything I can to help within reason the unfortunate, the abused, the hungry.  I keep myself educated.

[pinkocommie]

That same year I came home to an empty house and had my very first full blown major panic attack.  I was so sure that I was an evil kid and the rapture had taken place and I was left alone.  I was home for 2 hours by myself.  When my family came home they laughed at me.  Told me that if I had that much doubt then I was not devout enough.

That sounds both frightening and your family's response sounds cruel.  I'm sorry.  :pop:

[KDbeads]

Yeah, being raised by fundamentalists was fun  Glad my mother got us out when she did otherwise I'd the a total fruitcake now!

[EssejSllim]

How did your disbelief come about?
Growing up, I wasn't very fervent (make that not at all) in my Christian beliefs. As I got older (12,13) I started to really delve into and become a more fervent, pious believer. That was when I decided I wanted to be baptized. Humorously, by the time I was baptized, I had found quite a few holes/inconsistencies/contradictions in my beliefs and was starting to doubt them. I started to really understand what Christianity actually was, and I realized that I couldn't believe in something like that.
Were there any main reasons in particular that caused initial doubts?
1.) The vast contrast between the OT God and the NT God
2.) The anti-homosexuality
3.) The fact that Christianity is just one among many religions in the world
4.) All this stuff (the events in the Bible) conveniently happened thousands of years ago
5.) Passages like those in my sig (Not to mention that the whole book of Job pisses me off)
What are the main reasons you would give against Christianity now (if these are different)?
The immorality. That's really the only issue I have with religions. For me, it's not whether or not something is supported by mountains of evidence or makes sense from a scientific standpoint. That's why I don't take stands  on things like evolution vs. creation. I simply don't care. I don't call myself an atheist, because I don't deny the existence of a god, just all the ones in the religions of the world (or an omnipotent one). I'm not a deist though, because I don't believe in a god. And I'm not an agnostic because my disbelief/belief is not based on evidence. Christianity can't be right (nor any other religion I've studied) because they are all fraught with immorality.
How would you describe your worldview now?
Freethinker. The only set of ideals I subscribe myself to are my own.

[skwurll]

How did your disbelief come about?

Well, I was always a skeptic about how there's an infinite force for good that also created everything bad, that grew and grew as I learned more about how the world works as I got older.

Were there any main reasons in particular that caused initial doubts?

The whole "Magic man in the sky" part

What are the main reasons you would give against Christianity now (if these are different)?

Well, I'm not trying to preach anti-christianity, but I just think there are better things to do with your life other than worshipping a god that doesn't exist.

How would you describe your worldview now?

Atheist, Secular Humanist, and a bit naive.

[JillSwift]

How did your disbelief come about?
Were there any main reasons in particular that caused initial doubts?
What are the main reasons you would give against Christianity now (if these are different)?

Hypocrisy among other believers suggested they had doubt, so I doubted too. Without evidence to assuage the doubt, it became disbelief. Every attempt to find evidence instead pointed me toward thinking of every tennant of every religion as an unsupported assertion. Nice sounding assertions, by-n-large, but still.

How would you describe your worldview now?

I have become very comfortable with uncertainty. I know that what I think I know may well be wrong, but the best I can do is stick with what can be currently objectively shown to be. Benjamin Franklin sums it up for me: “Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.”