"Our biggest mistake: we did as we were told."

[Sandra Craft]

Wasn't sure whether this belonged here or in Religion, but since it's about the process of deconversion I opted for here:  Our biggest mistake: we did as we were told

An excellent breakdown of the actual ways that many of us who were raised Xtian lost our faith.   It all really boils down to this:

We were told to follow the evidence wherever it led, and it led us right out the front door.

Edit: Note to those who would chip in about their beliefs. Don't post them here. They will snipped and removed. This thread is about how atheists lose their religions/faith. Tank

[No one]

Most people could not locate that door with precise GPS coordinates!

[hermes2015]

Homage to my parents and others in my young life, now so long ago. I was never told to do anything; I only have myself to blame.

[Dragonia]

I love Neil Carter, everything he writes really resonates with me. Including this article that you referenced.
 It's so true, that the "better"  Christian I became, the less everything seemed to make sense. So I kept researching and studying, just knowing that God was going to step in eventually and make sense of everything for me. He was going to really use this period of doubt and questioning in my life to really strengthen my testimony! Yeah, no... he never stepped in...I never got any enlightenment on how this faith could make sense... never got anything.
I finally accepted the fact that this cosmic silence wasn't because God was teaching me or molding me or disciplining me, it was because he wasn't. there.

[Sandra Craft]

^^^  Pretty close to my experience as a kid too.  I tried very hard to accept what I was told, or at least to "fake it till I made it", assuming it would all make sense eventually, when I had learned enough.  But the more I learned, the less sense it made. 

Still, I was a co-operative kid (no boat rocker I) and I also assumed people older and more experienced than me knew what they were talking about because . . . why wouldn't they?  I'd probably still be trying to be Xtian if I hadn't finally realized that gods are supernatural and I didn't believe in the supernatural -- which was why decades of faking it was not leading to making it.  My subconscious was refusing to go along with what my conscious was grimly determined to do.

Funny thing is, it was religious people who taught me the supernatural wasn't real -- they just didn't say that their personal god was an exception.  I guess that was supposed to be obvious, but I'm the sort of person who needs every detail covered and left to my own devices I couldn't think of a single reason why Jehovah should be real but Thor, Kwan Yin and White Buffalo Woman not real.

Question:  can you remember the first thing that made you think "hey, wait a minute . . . " rather than "I'll just keep learning until that makes sense"?  My first "wait a minute" moment (that I can remember) came during the Vietnam War, when church prayers included the wish for our soldiers to win their battles and for god to spare their lives.  That's all well and good but the only way soldiers won battles was to kill more of the enemy than the enemy killed of them.  Weren't we supposed to love our enemies as ourselves?  I'd certainly never wished myself to be killed.  If we were all the children of a God whose love for us was unconditional, why didn't the Viet Cong's lives matter as much as ours?  Why weren't we praying for the war to end without any more shots fired, and for everyone to be spared?  And what ever happened to turning the other cheek that adults made so much hay about? 

[Arturo]

My Dad was always saying Church was a scam and to use my head. But he just kept going and taking me with him to church. It wasn't until he met his 2nd wife that I realised how insane fundamentals are. Like watch this video of Jay Leno talking about the mob. When he impersonates them is basically what I dealt with for years.