If You ever believed in god....Why did you stop believing?

Question

what made you lose your faith?

Answer 1

Like most people, I was socialized by my parents into my religion just as they had been socialized by their parents before them. My mother, specifically. I was raised in Christianity, bible school, all that. There were a few things I could never reconcile, the worst of the lot being Paul's Misogyny. If I recognized the Bible as the word of god, then I had to recognize that I was somehow less simply because I was born female. I would have to recognize 1 Timothy Chapter 2 verses 11 and 12. "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." Paul justifies this with verses 13 and 14. "For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression." My only salvation, according to Paul in verse 15 is "Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety." I did not commit this sin. I had nothing to do with it, even if I acknowledge Adam and Eve as the first humans. Yet here I am, punished for it? Even after the son of god died on the cross for everyone's sins to be forgiven?

A friend of mine said something that changed the way I look at my beliefs and religion. "You can't pick and choose what you want to believe out the Bible or the Torah or the Koran or whatever scriptures you believe in. You either believe in all of it or you don't really believe in your religion."

This is a truth that can't be denied. I either believed the Bible was the word of god or I didn't. If I rejected the Bible, I rejected god. It was hard and took about two years, but I finally rejected Christianity. My "faith" didn't come from a choice I made, it came from the fear I was taught to have as a child. I was afraid of hell and didn't want to go there. My "love" of god and Jesus came from my desire to be accepted by my peers.

After I rejected Christianity, it took me another few years to look through the belief systems the world offered and find one that suited me. What made this hard is that I didn't know what I wanted or needed from a religion. I'd always thought in terms of "salvation", in terms of "going to heaven" and "serving god". I thought that would make me "happy".

Happiness is an unreasonable goal in a lifestyle. You can't be happy all the time, just like you can't be sad or angry all the time--even if it feels like it. What I wanted was inner peace, peace within myself. None of the Abrahamic religions could offer me that because they're all severely patriarchal. I would have to accept that I am less than I am. Worse, I would have to accept that I had to be saved from myself. I believe and I've always believed that the only thing that can "save" me or remove my own suffering is myself. That is the very core of my faith. That's how I chose Buddhism.

I could have remained an Atheist, but that didn't bring me to my goal of inner peace nor did it help me define a morality or a method of getting what I want. Buddhism, particularly Zen Buddhism, defines exactly what I think.

"If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha. If you meet the Patriarch, kill the Patriarch. If you meet the Teacher, kill the Teacher. Free of everything, you are bound by nothing. Live the life that is given to you." Zen Masters Lin Chi & Seung Sahn That, specifically, is what brought me to Zen.

Answer 2

The same thing that happened with Santa Claus. I realized the flaws of Christianity and no longer saw a "perfect" god. I could have lived with an imperfect god (the Greeks did, after all), but the hypocrisy of Christians claiming that a perfect god would be so sadistic or impotent enough to create an imperfect world just bugged me. Add to this that a good person who doesn't believe is supposedly sent to Hell, even if he's a better person than most Christians.

But it was not just the hypocrisy. That turned me away from organized religion and the interpretations of man. As I looked around, the concept of an intelligent, active god struck me as silly. No one was really answering my prayers. I only heard what I wanted to hear--much like a Ouija board. The "word of God" was actually the word of man.

So, I sought God...actually, any god. Nothing jumped out at me. If there is a god, then he's doing a good job of hiding and doesn't really want to be worshipped. And if that's the case, I won't bother him.

Answer 3

Here are some things that contributed:

- There have been thousands of religions, all of which make claims which contradict the others. Given this, only one can be correct. It's extremely unlikely that any given religion is the correct one, therefore it's silly to choose a specific one.

- When viewed in a social context, it's very easy to see that religion and the idea of a god could have been made up to satisfy social needs of the time. If god didn't exist, we would need to create him.

- Scientifically speaking, the idea of a god is extraneous.

- Where did god come from?

Answer 4

I lost faith in the CHRISTIAN God as a small child--age six--, when they told me that animals didn't have souls, and that no matter how good a person you were, if you didn't accept Jesus as your Savior, you were going to burn. I didn't understand; if God made me, why was Jesus the Son of God? And if God mad the world and everybody in it, why would he condemn some for some piddly little reason no matter how good they were?

I would burst into tears at church, burst into tears whenever my parents tried to read the Bible to me, and I guess they just didn't know how to deal with me. So my parents stopped taking me to church.

I decided--at six--that if God were really like that, then I'd rather go to Hell, because the Devil takes everybody. And if people like my friends were going to be there, then Hell couldn't be that bad of a place. That doesn't mean I started doing bad things--I decided I was already disqualified from entrance into Heaven for my punishable offense of questioning the will of God, so I just stopped thinking about it.

Answer 5

I lost my faith and stopped believing in God when my 18 month old daughter died. Everyone kept telling me "everything happens for a reason" and we weren't supposed to question what God does. Well, I did question and I could see no reason for my baby to die. I went through many years feeling angry and mad at God and I was miserable. I now have God back in my life and yes, now I do believe that "everything happens for a reason" and we are not to question God. We must have faith and I am at peace now, and actually after all these years, I do understand why God chose my baby to take to heaven as one of his Angels.

Answer 6

Because I found too many contradictions in the Bible and because I watched the behaviour of those who say they believe.
Christians say God can do anything but they don't even believe that themselves.
God could fill a room with money if He wanted. God could stop all the evil in the world, etc.....but when He doesn't do their bidding they make excuses that "It's just not His will".
The Bible says ask and you shall receive. Logic???????

Answer 7

sin could stop one from believing due to guilt. people sometimes underestimate God's love and thinking because of what they have done, God might not accept them anymore so they stop believing....

the wrong way of believing in the Lord also could cause people stop believing. there are people treating God as a wishing well. they continous to believe as long as they get what they prayed for but when God choose not to answer their prayers due to their own good. they thought God is angry or neglecting them, and they stop believing.

there are also lots of other reasons .....

Answer 8

In the beginning, my belief as a Hindu was the pictorial and sculptural representaion of idols but, the knowledge imparted by my parents as everything is same but these are all for us to identify him and keep in mind easily. I believed my parents, so believed god as they told at that point of time.

Then learned there are other beliefs also. Some of them are

1. Believing in god without any quality as no color, shape smell but only name (Muslim belief)
2. Believing in god as Father or Jesus and some verities of the same.

The similarity of the above is both believes in one ultimate creator, destroyer and nurturer.

3. Aethiesm. No belief in god or any power above us.
4. Do not know whether god exists or not.
5. Many gods(higher beings) who lives at higher realms with more ability and power and influence on us and nature but not creator/destroyer of the universe. They like us born with universe and exists all along with all but undergoes changes like anything else in this world.

Any of the above is proved as exists/do not exist by my ordinary senses? No. So do I believe in god? Yes as a fifth option. Probably it can exist like micro-organisms and when compared to that higher beings, we may be a working organism in that higher body. It is also an imagination. No proof. I never stopped believing god...my belief got evolved from one fixed mindset to the possibility of many......
I still have faith in Dharma ...which is right view, right understanding, right action, right livelihood, right speech, right concentration, right contemplation and right samadhi.

Answer 9

I never stopped believing in God. I stopped going to Church, I didn't want to hear about abortion or politcal views from the pulpit anymore, and the molestation scandals have reinforced that opinion. I am not, not believing in the message, just the messengers.

Answer 10

I never stopped believing in God. I stopped believing in the existance of the devil. Hell doesn't exist.

I have faith in God because God is all there is. We are all God. We just have to remember that.