Any atheists out there tonight that once were Christian or agnostic?

Question

What led you to your current disbelief?

Answer 1

It first started with my inability to accept the Bible. Read Old Testament and listened to Fundamentalists tell me to accept it literally. It is impossible for me to accept the outrageous things (Egyptian magicians turning rivers to blood after Moses did it) as well as the morally abhorrent things.

As a Catholic I was always taught in terms of parables. However, if I'm willing to take one story as a parable, why not all of them. Why must Jesus actually have saved us. Can't he just represent redemption, without physically dying for our sins.

So here I am. I like my Catholic roots. I've examined other religions and a few doctrines -- Baptism of Desire -- really stand out to me as good things -- albeit arbitrarily determined, as most things in any religion are. I also like that Catholicism has accepted evolution so long as a divine soul has been "inserted into humanity at some point".

However, I'm having a hard time accepting religions in general with my new beliefs. Why would a passionate God allow such suffering in the world? It's all part of his plan? Tell that to the child who lost both parents in a car accident. Tell that to the women who lost a child in a gang-land shooting. Tell that to the millions of people crippled by such God-given diseases as cancer and Alzheimer's. A favorite quote of mine from The Poisonwood Bible: "God works it is very well known, in mysterious ways. There is just nothing you can name that He won't do, now and then. Oh, He will send down so much rain that all his little people are drinking from one another's sewers and dying of the kakakaka (similar to dysentery). Then he will organize a drought to scorch out the yam and manioc fields, so whoever did not die of fever will double over from hunger. What next, you might ask? Why, a mystery, that's what!"

I still classify myself as Catholic in terms of ideal religion, but in actuality, I'd call myself an Atheist or if I must accept a God: deist. God created the universe and let it go from there.

Answer 2

I was a christian for most of my life. There was a time in my life when I was homebound for a few years. During this time I did a lot of reading. I read books about slavery, the holocaust, war, and life experiences. I also watched a lot of tv programs about the same subjects. During this time I also learned more than I had ever known about the cosmos, archeology and science in general. I also read some works of philosophy. I decided that if there is a greater being of some kind either it does not have the powers usually attributed to god or it just simply does not care about human kind. I know for a fact that the god of the bible does not exist.

Answer 3

Atheism is not something that is stumbled on in the dark or in a blinding flash. To achieve rationality is a developmental process that has to overcome the mindless programming that has been shoved at you since childhood. I'm amazed that I started asking the right questions when I was eleven and even more amazed that I was able to take the "because" answers of religion with a jaundiced eye at such a young age. Still it took three more years before I called myself an agnostic and three hard years more before being to call myself an Atheist. Happy about it? Sometimes I envy delusionalists who think they are going to end up in some cosmic Disneyland when they die, instead of the void on non-existence, but in the end, I'm happy I do not live in the delusional haze that seems to keep them anesthetized to reality.

Answer 4

I read the book of Genesis when I was 9 years old and realized it must only be a metaphor. Later on I read the rest of the Bible and realized there are some truly horrible things in there.

I checked out some of the other major religions and decided that none of them are right for everyone. Each one taken individually is the only truth, but collectively, it's impossible for all of them to be the truth. Logic led me to conclude that man created religion and everything that comes with it, for good or for ill.

Answer 5

For allot of these people it is just an excuse for non-commitment. We all have had times when we were uneasy about choices in life and found alternatives. At first we really don't believe much in the alternative either, but the more we contemplate it, the more we talk about it, it becomes real. We convince ourselves over what could be a long period of time. I have been down the road. I have had many enemies and many people who feared me. Once I became a Christian and began to see God work in my life by experience. Once you experience something and that experience never fails you, confidence in that relationship develops. The Bible says that the devil has blinded these people and the sad thing is the only one who will suffer the consequence is the person who won't take the time to seek the truth.

Answer 6

Not atheist, not exactly agnostic but i might as well be. I am an ex christian and here is what happened, about two years ago i met my blood relatives, they argued that thier sect of christianity is right and everyone else whould go to hell. I was a believer at the time and have never seen such appaling behavior, to top it off, after i left Odessa Tx they sent me a nasty letter saying i was a thief and a liar and i needed Jesus. Extremly insulted i decided that christianity wasnt right for me, I remebered reading the Te of Piglet, went to research Taoism, and my deconversion was complete after i read a website from another ex christian

http://www.jesusreligion.com

Answer 7

I was raised reading the Bible, and my mom taught me to read at 5 by having me read from the Book of Matthew. My parents were of extraordinary character, but that had nothing to do with mythology.
I read somewhere that rudimentary hind limbs appear briefly in the embryos of whales and dolphins, and I said "Lord, what were you thinking?"

Truth is, he may have done things that way; but the god that Christians worship is too small to tolerate such an idea. If there is a God it is one that is far greater than what they can imagine, and one that does not have a huge ego problem.

Answer 8

I used to be Catholic, but I turned to atheism when I realized so much contradictory teachings in the bible, and when I realized "god" never had answered any of my questions. My understanding on human psychology also led me to my disbelief.

Answer 9

Thank God for Atheists! If it weren't for their disbelief, the Church wouldn't be out there trying to drum up business!

Answer 10

I was a catholic. I first just stopped going to church because it was fake. churches just wanted the money. I then had time to realize that most prayers went unanswered. so now I'm a happy atheist with no unrealistic expectations in life.