Former "believers": what was your turning point?

[Businessocks]

I was the type of kid who walked by herself every Sunday to a little church because I loved the Bible.  I found the stories so fascinating.  I used to copy a passage each night and try to memorize it.  I wouldn't set anything on top of my Bible because that would be disrespectful.  I prayed every night.   So how did I go from THAT person to THIS person?

For me, the issue was never believing the stories literally.  I mean, even as a kid, I got that Noah's story was just a story.  I knew that I was supposed to believe that Jesus arose from the tomb, but I saw it more as another story that illustrated that God *could* do that if he wanted.  

For me the proverbial straw was this idea that God loves everyone and prayer helps.  I couldn't help but think that if I told someone starving in Africa that line, they would look at me like I was insane.  And I couldn't figure out why people would waste prayer on silly, trivial things like someone going through a divorce or a test at school when they could be using that "prayer power" for the starving, cold masses in the world instead.  Does that make any sense?  So prayer just became really ridiculous to me.  How could prayer possibly help?  If God's will is going to be done, is prayer really going to stop that?  Is there a critical number of people needed to pray for an issue before God gets off his recliner and decides he better re-think his plan of action?  

Anyway, I'm just curious what others finally got stuck on or realized the insanity of that turned them away from religion.

[Cecilie]

This doesn't have anything to do with anything, but your avatar is driving me crazy!  

[Dretlin]

I was taken to church by a family member when I was younger as well. I also had religious assemblies in school - yet - all of these had a very unconvincing feel. They're was always an under laying attitude of "you don't need to take part if you don't want to." So I chose to abstain. No one seemed to mind. I did have a small amount of fear and guilt but I was only a child and that seemed natural. Then I discovered seeing the world and universe outside of a religious context was wonderful and enlightening.

This doesn't have anything to do with anything, but your avatar is driving me crazy!  

And aye, that to.

[hismikeness]

Mine wasn't so much a turning point that turned me off to belief, but the realization that the story of how we got to where we are has everything to do with a giant explosion, expansion, accretion, lots and lots of time, and even more luck was much more poetic and beautiful to me than a God creating us from nothing. The more I explored the former, the more I realized the latter and almost everything that comes along with it, was total BS.

That, and the whole priest rape thing. That's what got me out of my religion, the above got me out of my faith.

Put me down for a vote of indifference to your avatar.  

[Tank]

Love these sorts of stories. It ALMOST makes me wish I were once a believer so I could de-convert, I did say ALMOST.

[KDbeads]

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4887&p=66139#p66139
Most of it is there  

[Businessocks]

Wow, who would have thought that a banana avatar would cause such a stir?!?!   :bananacolor:  

Thanks to those who have shared so far.  I find it fascinating to learn about other people's journeys.

[i_am_i]

I can't say that I was ever a believer, not really, but this whole God/Jesus thing did bother me when I was younger. Then, after really looking into it, I came to the undeniable and unwavering conclusion that God is made up, that humans invented God. It had been staring me in the face all along! And that settled that for once and for all.

[thelittlefinch]

I went to a lecture with my best friend called Homosexuality and Christianity under the pretense that it was some sort of progressive Christian movement that wholeheartedly welcomed the LGBTQ community. I'm not gay but my best friend is. The lecture was such a disappointment. The lecturer was some self-proclaimed "same-sex attracted male" named Guy Hammond from Nova Scotia who had a wife and kids. So basically, this guy was willing to give up his own sexual and social needs for the sake of pleasing God or Jesus.

I couldn't stop talking about how screwed up that Hammond guy was until my best friend cut me off and reminded me that the Bible and Christianity was fundamentally against homosexuality. Oh, right. Gotcha.

Something must have clicked because the Monday after, I walked into my evolutionary anthropology class with an eagerness to absorb everything and anything that contradicted all my Christian beliefs and values (I went to Catholic school for 10 years). I started really paying attention when my professor talked about Dawkins. I immersed myself in social evolutionary theories and primatology. The more I read, the more the world made sense, and the more beautiful and wonderful it seemed to me. That was something I never got with Catholicism. I suppose it was a combination of my disappointment with Christianity and my new-found fascination with the Universe that science painted for me that led me to distance myself from the religion I was born into.

[teifuani]

You could look at my story and see a few different turning points, but for some reason the one that sticks out the most was when I was in the bookstore with my friend who's Pagan. I was telling her about how recently I hadn't felt connected to the god or goddess at all lately, and her response was this flippant "Oh, I'm sure once you pick up your Buckland's again it'll come back." For some reason in that instant I saw her as no different than the Christians I'd grown up with, and my belief started falling to pieces. Then there was Beltane. The day hadn't been that great to begin with, and then I picked flowers, went to the chapel, lit candles, and prayed; the only thing I got was a burnt finger and an increased sense of misery. Plus this one time I was walking in the parking lot and all of a sudden realized that if mind=brain then an afterlife was impossible.

The seeds had already been in place before all this happened, though; it really started with my psychology class. The professor tended to revel in putting down religion and superstition, especially (Time Lord knows why) astrology, which I was really attached to at the time.

[TheFish]

I always found something to be disconcerting about going to church. I remember from a very young age I rejected the idea of prayer. I would attempt to force myself to do it, only to find myself wondering why I was wasting my time. However, while I didn't pray, as a child I spent a great deal of time articulating ideas in my head (and I still do). That, to me, was much more productive and enjoyable than prayer. Not to mention more realistic.

Despite this, I still considered myself to be a Christian, albeit a very liberal one. I believed in the core values, and held on to the main beliefs -- the divinity of Jesus, the omnipotence of God, and so on. I always had the disconcerting feeling while I was at church, but I could never pinpoint exactly what it was. Then I took a religions class in high school.

Learning about the other religions in the world, the thought struck me: what if I was born in India? Or in Iran? Or what if I was born in Ancient Greece? It was at that point that I realized that my Christianity was cultural, and not spiritual. At that point, I became a spiritual agnostic -- I still held the belief that there was something, but I understood that all of the attempts that men had made to explain it were false.

I remained an agnostic for a few years. Within the last year (I'm 21 now), I have become a full-on atheist. I used to be under the impression that atheists were just as arrogant as the Christians I rejected; I did more research into what atheism actually entailed and why people were atheists and I realized how wrong I was. I understood that atheists "know" that there isn't a God, just as they "know" there isn't flying purple unicorns or fairies. Based on our understanding of the natural world, there is no God. If we open the possibility that there could be a God, why not open the possibility to any ridiculous idea? It makes no sense. That's how I was convinced of atheism.

Since then, I've fine-tuned my understanding of my (lack of) beliefs. More recently, I give credit to Sam Harris to really redefining how I understand atheism. It is not a "thing", but really a lack of a "thing". For example, Christians are atheists in regards to Islam; however, they do not need to openly profess their atheism in this regard. He's right when he suggests that the word will eventually fall out of practice; when all of the religions die out, what will there be to be an atheist about?

Good topic. I'm glad that I was given the opportunity to share my story.

[KebertX]

Santa Clause. No joke, if my parents wanted me to believe in God, they should not have told me the 'Santa lie'.

I suppose I was born with a scientific mind. When I was 6 I hid a web cam, pointed it at the tree, and recorded all of Christmas eve/morning. Sure enough, my experiment proved, Mom was eating the cookies and setting up presents.

So, I always questioned the fairy tales I was told, even when everyone demanded they were undeniable facts. Everytime I learned something in elementary science, I KNEW that we had a way of finding answers that the Bible didn't.

So, now I understand that God is imaginary, but I still believe in Karma and Reincarnation (Buddhist). I'm learning more every day, so it is concievable that I could give these up. I'll let you know if I reach a turning point away from my current religion.

[xSilverPhinx]

I was never actually a believer, it's a weird thing, but I believed in the concept of god, but not in god itself (I think it's mainly due to religious influences in school, since I grew up in an atheistic household, before my mother was 'born again'.) We had bible classes in school, where I would take in some of the more plausible stories as history and the others as fables. I would read a lot of fairy tale and fantasy books at a young age and didn't distinguish between those and most of the bible in assessing whether they were real or not. To me most of the bible was another collection of fantastic fairy tales.

It's a weird thing though. When I got older (7 to 9 years old), I started to believe in a personal god, but never practiced any religion. I would pray for a certain toy I wanted and things like that because people around me prayed and said it worked. At that time I had not really been exposed to the psychological belief validating trap that the more indoctrinated get pulled into (the answer to prayers is either "yes", "no" or "wait" and that you shouldn't pray for things that are absurd or unnatural... :raised:  I would also project spirits everywhere, even onto nonliving or previously living things. I would set my sandwich aside before eating it until I was convinced that god had eaten the sandwich's spirit during almost every lunch break at school.

This strange period didn't last very long though, by the time I was 10 I was an atheist, it's like whatever weird belief in the christian god just dissipated on its own and made little noise in my life.

[skwurll]

For me, it would have to be the unanswered prayers during the downward spiral into depression and self-loathing that was my early teen years.

Long story short, my parents almost divorced (again) and were fighting a lot, my house burned down and we were homeless for a bit, and I had suffered a betrayal from a close friend. It was about here I realized my prayers were not being answered, my life sucked, I was pretty close to carrying out my suicide plans. I felt like God was laughing at me as I struggled. Eventually, I started wondering if God even existed, he never answered me, he never once helped me. I decided that God didn't exist, that heaven and hell were all just make-believe.

From there on out I decided to really enjoy my life, because I know that there's nothing waiting for me after it, I feel a great sense of freedom. I can make my own decisions, the only person I have to answer to is myself. I can say no to evils because of my conscience, not for fear of divine punishment, and if I want to be friends with someone of other religious faith, I can just hang out with them, I don't have to try to convert them to christianity.

I guess the main thing about me feeling better was having someone to blame for everything wrong. No longer was it the invisible man in the sky who caused me to fail, I could take closure in the fact that I could decide whether I succeeded or failed. If I failed, it was MY fault, and only I could fix it. Before, I had thought God was causing me to fail, and I could do nothing about it. Now I know it is MY determination and MY effort that has gotten me where I am today, and it is MY perseverance that will bring me success, not divine interference. I really needed the feeling of control over my life.

Really, life is so much easier when you don't let things control your feelings. For every reason to frown, there's two to smile.
Every time life throws a punch at you, hit back. Stand up to the challenge and kick it's ass. I realized that the obstacle people have the most trouble with is themselves, but once they overcome themselves, they're unstoppable.

I'm probably ranting off on a tangent right now, but it's 4 am in the morning and I'm tired.

[Tank]

For me, it would have to be the unanswered prayers during the downward spiral into depression and self-loathing that was my early teen years.

Long story short, my parents almost divorced (again) and were fighting a lot, my house burned down and we were homeless for a bit, and I had suffered a betrayal from a close friend. It was about here I realized my prayers were not being answered, my life sucked, I was pretty close to carrying out my suicide plans. I felt like God was laughing at me as I struggled. Eventually, I started wondering if God even existed, he never answered me, he never once helped me. I decided that God didn't exist, that heaven and hell were all just make-believe.

From there on out I decided to really enjoy my life, because I know that there's nothing waiting for me after it, I feel a great sense of freedom. I can make my own decisions, the only person I have to answer to is myself. I can say no to evils because of my conscience, not for fear of divine punishment, and if I want to be friends with someone of other religious faith, I can just hang out with them, I don't have to try to convert them to christianity.

I guess the main thing about me feeling better was having someone to blame for everything wrong. No longer was it the invisible man in the sky who caused me to fail, I could take closure in the fact that I could decide whether I succeeded or failed. If I failed, it was MY fault, and only I could fix it. Before, I had thought God was causing me to fail, and I could do nothing about it. Now I know it is MY determination and MY effort that has gotten me where I am today, and it is MY perseverance that will bring me success, not divine interference. I really needed the feeling of control over my life.

Really, life is so much easier when you don't let things control your feelings. For every reason to frown, there's two to smile.
Every time life throws a punch at you, hit back. Stand up to the challenge and kick it's ass. I realized that the obstacle people have the most trouble with is themselves, but once they overcome themselves, they're unstoppable.

I'm probably ranting off on a tangent right now, but it's 4 am in the morning and I'm tired.

 Thank you for sharing your thoughts, they made me smile and cheered me up.