What's your story?

[MommaSquid]

Since laetusatheos got us started with her de-conversion story, I thought I'd ask about the rest of you.  

Here's my story:

For years I thought there must be something wrong with me.  Why couldn’t I believe without question?  Why was I so different?  The only time I liked church as a kid was Christmas Eve midnight mass; the candles and the poinsettias, not the message.  I couldn’t share my thoughts with my family.  Mom openly criticized Dad for not attending church with the rest of the family; we never discussed his faith or lack thereof.  I was jealous that he got to stay home.  When I turned eighteen I left the Roman Catholic Church, and over a period of about ten years I read about other faiths.  Judaism, Buddhism, Wicca, New Age spirituality.  I read Marianne Williamson’s A Return to Love.  I bought a daily calendar with tips on how to get closer to Jesus.  And the whole time I felt like a fraud.  So I stopped searching and for years quietly labeled myself an agnostic.  

I knew that I had reached the end of my search after my son died.  I realized that in my grief I never once turned to the heavens and asked for him back.   I knew there was no god to ask.    

Like many of you, I wanted the fairy tales to be true but somehow I always new they were lies.  I tried to make myself believe.  It's just not possible for me to overlook all the nonsense inherent in religion.  So now I read about atheism, free-thought, and rationalism.

I'd like to hear your stories.

[Asmodean Prime]

well,

[McQ]

MommaSquid, I am sorry to hear that you have had to deal with the death of a child. It is my greatest dread as a parent.

[Jassman]

MommaSquid, that's a very touching story. I too am sorry for your loss. I think I remember reading something about this on WWGHA. Did you post your story there a long time ago?

onlyme, this thread is for posting deconversion stories. Once you acknowledge this, I am probably going to delete this post. But please try to keep the forum clean. As for your questions, if you post them in another thread I would be happy to try and answer some of them for you.

[MommaSquid]

I did post this information at the other forum, but since I'm meeting some of you here for the first time, I thought we could share some history.

McQ, thank you for your comment.  I'm sure you treasure your children, and hope you tell them that every chance you get.

onlyme, if you had paid attention to my post, you would have noticed that I questioned my faith as a child.  

I would like to hear how the rest of you came into your atheist mindset.

[McQ]

I think we can be a little more patient with brand new people posting accidently in the wrong place. It's an easy mistake to make. This forum and others aren't the easiest things to navigate when you're new to them. I've posted incorrectly in all of the forums I've ever participated in. Besides, onlyme was just responding to someone in the same post.

It sounds so harsh and ominous to say, "A warning has been given." so soon. :-)

Back to the topic at hand though. My deconversion came about due to actually studying the Bible and becoming a teacher of Christian Apologetics. I had doubts since childhood, but ignored them because it seemed comforting to believe that God was going to take care of me. I believed wholeheartedly for a period of many years before I began to really dig in and study scripture. Then it was like pulling on the thread of a sweater. The more you pull, the more it unravels. That's the way it worked for me. The more I learned, the more incosistencies and contradictions I discovered.
A good friend of mine, who is a physicist, took the time to help me get back to the rational thinking I had used as a younger person. He was very patient, as I was trying to convert him to faith. I had the full-court press on, but he was so great as a teacher that his logic and rational teaching won out. I will always thank him for his wisdom and patience.
There's more detail, but that is enough for now.

My son is currently being treated for Hodgkin's Lymphoma and I feel no desire whatsoever to pray for him, or have anyone else do the same. Beside the fact that I have "faith" in his allopathic medical treatment (that's actual western medicine!), studies do show that prayer has no effect on healing. I bring this situation up because some people would think that certain tragic events would tend to push someone back into faith, but that will not happen here. There will be no re-conversion.

[MommaSquid]

McQ, I sincerely hope your son has a favorable outcome with his medical treatment.  

Thanks for sharing your de-conversion.

[Jassman]

I have been sort of an outside-the-box thinker all my life. I was always interested in the alternate point-of-view, things that I hadn't previously considered. I regularily attended Sunday school for my entire youth but my family was never really much of a church going family. Once I was finished with Sunday school I had 2 years of confirmation. Thinking back on that time now, I remember questioning a lot of the things that we were force-fed through our workbooks. I wasn't vocal about the inconsistencies or truth stretching at that time though.

I also went to a bible camp for three consecutive summers, age 12-14. I was surprised at that time how many of the people I considered "bible-thumpers", people who never questioned a single thing in the bible and were very conservative in even trivial issues like swearing. Me and my friends were a far cry from a lot of those people. In fact I think the only thing I could really agree on would have been the existence of a god.

Also, in high school, when we were taught the theory of evolution -- preceded by a strong disclaimer "This is just a theory. It may not be true!", I was very surprised that some people I knew rejected evolution outright because it conflicted with their faith. I saw it as a fairly ingenious explanation of how life could have diversified.

I went through a long time of just never thinking about religion. I'm not sure if I really thought of myself as a Christian as early as 6 months after my confirmation because they were thoughts that just never entered my mind. If someone were to ask me if I were a Christian, I probably would have said yes but that would be the extent of me even acknowledging religion that day.

In March of 2005 I stumbled across an essay entitled "Why I am an Atheist" by Martin J Burn (the English Atheist -- english-atheist.co.uk) and was very interested. I began reading almost all of the content on his website which led me to other websites. Essays by Dan Barker and many other authors, and the Christianity: Bogus Beyond Belief website (horrible site design, excellent content).

It was about the entire first week of March that I was so obsessed with reading all of that stuff that it was all I did on my free time. After school I would just read and read until it was time to go to bed. I think I considered myself an agnostic on the first night and an atheist about six days after. It didn't take me long to get comfortable with the "atheist" label (I've noticed this is rare from reading other deconversion stories). I've devoted a pretty good chunk of my time to educating myself with online reading ever since then. Looking back on this, I see that it was inevitable from my life's very beginning that religion would not be able to keep me.

[Court]

When I was younger, my family wasn't big on church, but my mom thought it was good for us and made us go until I was thirteen. But many of my friends were die-hard christians by that time, so I skipped sermons and went to the youth group every week. It started as a social thing, but I eventually started to actually swallow the crap. I was a born-again until about age 15 or 16, when I started to actually read the bible and discovered the ignorance and bigotry within it. I read C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity and found it unconvincing. It scared me to doubt it, though, so I just stopped looking, afraid I would run out of faith entirely. I eventually gave up christianity, but didn't even consider giving up the idea of god altogether. Out of habit, I would tell people I was christian if asked, but I never went to church. I told myself I just didn't believe in christian politics, but I knew that it was more than that.
Somehow, the summer before college, it just kind of hit me that I didn't believe in god anymore...I picked up Sam Harris's The End of Faith shortly thereafter, and instantly felt like my life was validated. I realized that I wasn't the only one, even if I was in the minority. I also got comfortable with the atheist label very quickly, Jassman, and didn't ever consider myself agnostic. It was a slow process only because I didn't really pursue it in high school...I was afraid of what I would find.
I am immensely happy with my life now, though, and I feel like I've found something much more than religion. My doubts about it don't hound me anymore and the only negative has been that I simply cannot tell my family yet. But I know that's only a matter of time.

[Asmodean Prime]

I can't point to one specific event.  As a child, I attended meetings at the Friends (Quaker) church in San Francisco with my father, prior to his death, when I was 11.  I also attended Lutheran church with my mother and step-father, and was later confirmed in that church, when 13.

I do remember being puzzled at the differences between the two.  The Lutherans separated the children from the rest of the flock.  Children were encouraged to remain in their own space.  The sermons followed the traditional protestant formula of pastor/flock.  On the other hand, there was no minister that I was able to discern at the Friends church.  There was a separate childrens area, but children were allowed to move freely wherever they felt most comfortable.  I often spent time in my father's section.  They would gather in a very large circle.  Most of the time, it appeared that they were in silent contemplation, or prayer.  At times, individuals would speak out...this was not at all like an evangelist setting...there was no dialogue, per se, no "Praise Jesus moments" or emotional outbursts.  

Why?  Why the differences? If we were worshipping the same god, why have two churches?  Why were children treated differently at the two?  Why were the sessions so vastly different?  Without going into too much detail, after my father's death, all of my siblings were reunited, and lived with my step-father and mother.  Prior to my father's death, my sister had been living in a Catholic girls school/orphanage for a couple of years.  Once reunited, I found out about Catholic rituals from her...again with the differences...why?  When 12, I began a study program at the Lutheran church, resulting in my confirmation.  My pastor attempted to persuade my mother that I would someday be a fine pastor, and encouraged her to guide me in that direction.  Apparently, my memorization and oratory skills were the main criteria...for the seeds of my doubt were beginning to blossom.  I stopped attending church when I was 14.

As I became aware of history, my faith continued to shrivel.  When I became aware of the Holocaust in detail, I finally wrote my first paper declaring the end of my faith.  I was 15.  I became a completely obnoxious atheist in my teens, slashing and burning all who would disagree.  I have mellowed with time, but can still be provoked.  It is difficult living as an atheist when surrounded by people that have such little knowledge about their own faith, but are willing to wield it like a sword of condemnation, while sheathed in a veil of love.  The hypocrisy offends me deeply.  I enjoy the company of atheists.  Most have given significantly more thought to the "big" questions of the universe and existence than faith based believers.  I do not actively seek dialogue with believers of any sort, though if mannered, will converse with them.  As soon as the statements become about "you" as opposed to "I", the dialogue comes to an end.  There are Christians and other types of believers that are able to behave with appropriate respect for others' opinions and beliefs, but they seem to be a shrinking minority.  I do single out Christians and Muslims, as their concern with my salvation as opposed to their own, separates them from many others belief systems.  The arrogance of that approach can infuriate me, but more often than not, amuses me.

[Big Mac]

I always was sort of skeptical and even when I wanted faith something deep inside me told me I was following a rabbit in a hole. When I was in Basic training, I remember watching footage of Fallujah and thought to myself: "What kind of God would allow his children to kill each other over a piece of dirt that has fossil fuel in it? Why would he let people do that to one another like a pack of hyenas?" and then I started seeing the Atheist Guy flashes on Newgrounds and they brought up good points. Why would God kill alot of children in the great flood? Children are sinless, right? How could God just let little babies and kids and pregnant women get iced like that? Then I realized the contradictions in the bible. It is far from infallible.

[MommaSquid]

Thanks for sharing your stories.  

Group hug :!:

[Amor Fati]

I don't know if the way in which I was raised was typical, but by today's standards it would seem odd.  My family was christian, supposidly Methodist, but really more deist than anything else.  I never attended church past the age of five (thanks to my Dad) unless I was in high school and trying to hook up with a loose thumper.  Besides saying a prayer at holiday dinners, God or Jesus were hardly mentioned in my house.  I grew up with a set of platstic dinosaurs and a healthy respect for the wonders of science while watching Nova and Wild America.  

Though i was always rather free spirited, as all only children are, I never really questioned the existence of god until college.  I stumbled into philosophy as a course of study, for a while going into buddhism,  and rigorously questioned my beliefs. It wasn't until an auto accident that triggered a serious existential crisis that I honestly sought the brutal truth about myself and the world (thanks to heavey doses of Nietzsche).  

In the end, we alll seek explanations for how we got here.  I studied evolutionary theory and physics from the philosophy of science, and found as many rational answers as I needed.  Once god is no longer needed to explain the wonders of the universe, for me there's no good reason to believe that such a being exists.  Couple this with the complete failer of the traditional arguments for god's existence (from Aristotle and St. Aquinas), and I can be fairly certain that god is, in the end, a fairytale.

[Aullios]

I spent the first 15 years of my life as a devout Roman Catholic.  I had a pretty sheltered childhood... I didn't go out with friends much or anything like that; I mostly just stayed at home with my parents and trusted what they told me as fact.

Then, fall 2002 I started college (as a high school junior).  I had to live on campus, as part of a special program for high school students who made the early leap to college.  Here, I lived with people who I could relate to and talk to about anything.  I was exposed to many different faiths and ideas for the first time in my life.

One of the early thoughts I had while shaking off religion was that if so many people had so many different ideas about religion, I had to be missing something.  I spent a lot of time pondering the fact that 2/3 of the people on the planet aren't even Christian, much less Catholic.

Then during my senior year of high school (sophomore year of college...) I took physics and had my second atheist epiphany: "If the universe works so magnificently governed by only the laws of physics, why is a god even necessary?  Therefore, if a god didn't have to exist, he must not exist."

I never even thought about being agnostic, to be honest.  For me, it was all or nothing.  God doesn't exist because there's no reason for him to exist.

[Court]

I never even thought about being agnostic, to be honest.  For me, it was all or nothing.  God doesn't exist because there's no reason for him to exist.

That sounds like me. I actually hadn't even heard the term "agnostic" until after I deconverted. I was pretty apathetic about the whole subject for a number of years, though I wouldn't have described myself as agnostic.