For atheists who were raised in a religious tradition, was there a slipping away with greater understanding of

Question

logic, history, and science or was there an event or events ( learning something specific, seeing something, etc) that made you reject it? If so, what was the breaking point for you?

Answer 1

Comparative Theology 101 did it for me. There's nothing quite like looking at your religion from an outsider's perspective to make you see how ridiculous it is.

Answer 2

Both... I started making friends from other religions or of no religion around the same time that I began to realize the hypocrisy of the majority of the people in my church. While my Christian friends were telling me I was going to hell my athiest, HIndu, and Wiccan friends were earnestly discussing with me the possible aspects of God. While my Christian friends got so drunk on Saturday night that they couldn't remember who they slept with and came to Sunday school hung-over, the others talked with me about the impact of science on religion & visa-versa. It didn't take me too long- only three long, lonely years- to figure out that I could not keep calling myself Christian if 1) I no longer believed in the basic pillars of that belief system and 2) I didn't even want to be associated with other Christians anymore. I am actually not atheist- just sort of an agnostic deist (I do believe there is some kind of God, but I'm as yet undecided on the details). I did a lot of research- I not only read the Bible, but also holy texts from other religions. As I'm a Biology major in college, I have done plenty of research pertaining to the Theory of Evolution, though that to me has less to do religion than most people try to make of it. And don't get me wrong, I have nothing against any particular religion and I am well aware that there are many Christians who really do live moral and loving lives, but I am much happier and healthier where I am at in my spiritual journey now.

Answer 3

Well, I am not an atheist, although many would probably call me one because I don't follow the Hebrew god anymore.

I was raised in a "Christian" home, where I was subjected to all the indignities inherent with living with a bunch of hypocrites and outright liars. Their bible is full of contradictions and falsehoods, and they don't even try to mask their belief that everyone who doesn't believe as they do is simply too ignorant to know what it is that they should be believing, and deserving of all the torment of hell that the "loving god" they try to shove down others throats will visit upon the unbelievers.

The whole concept of "original sin" is ludicrous at best. Babies are evil?

THEN, look at the things the Christians do to everyone else in the name of a "loving god". Wars, genocide of entire civilizations, and all this incessant blather about how they are the only ones who have it right and everyone else is going to hell.

So no, there wasn't any one "breaking point" for me. It is an ongoing thing.

Answer 4

My family has always been somewhat-religious (and by that, I mean we celebrated the big holidays- that's about it).

I don't remember exactly when the breaking point was. It must have been when I learned of Evolution, and the issues science has with the bible.

It has given me a different outlook on life, though. I definitely look at religions differently now, and I see things often where I say to myself, "I can't even begin to understand how someone can truly believe that." Not to be disrespectful to any religions or anything.

Answer 5

Seeing the parts of the world surviving very with out religions.
After growing up Baptist and going Sun morning Sun night and wen night; I was fed up with the fire and brimstone attitude.
After leaving home and trying to find a spot I fit in and not finding it,
I stopped and read the Bible and a number of other religions and found nothing I agreed with. So agnostic atheist is the answer for me. I make more sense to me than praising a deity that never answers!!!!!!!!!!!...............

Answer 6

I was raised Catholic, but expelled from Catholic school when my parents were divorced. That was fine with me, because the nuns never liked any of the questions I had. I wasn't supposed to question anything. I was supposed to believe, and I couldn't do it. So much of what they said flew in the face of reason.

When my mother remarried, it was suddenly ok for me to go to Catholic school, but by then I had spent too much time in public school and I didn't enjoy the verbal and physical abuse I received at the hands of the nuns. Finally, I punched a nun in the face. She had hit me with a yardstick because I didn't know what 7 x 8 was. I was expelled again. I was also beaten at home for hitting a nun (and calling her a "f----ing b---ch"). I was nine years old at the time.

After that, I had no respect for religion whatsoever, and as a gifted student, I turned my attention to astronomy and law. These were my hobbies. I went to secular private schools, and upon graduation I fell in love and got married. We started a family, and I tried to raise our children Catholic, in a kindler, gentler way. One son loves it, and is religious; the other is not. He studies medicine and Egyptology in his spare time, and has no time for religion. One day, that son told me that he had been searching for other people who felt the same way as he did, and had discovered Secular Humanism. When I looked into it, I was overjoyed. When I felt that joy, and knew that my thoughts and feelings were shared by others, that was the breaking point.

Lisa
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/secularhumanism/

Answer 7

Critical thinking. Once you realize that the person who is telling you with such authority that they posses ultimate truth is just another person like yourself, possibly a much less intelligent person, you realize that perhaps they don't actually know anything that you don't. My education in science certainly didn't hurt anything. Once you see how actual knowledge is gained and tested its hard to accept stories that have little or no basis in reality, and even harder to believe in miracles. If things like that happened, there is no reason why they wouldn't be happening today, and no reason why we couldn't study them.

Answer 8

The more I learned, the better developed my reason became, the less rational faith was. Without logic, the truth value of a fact is unknowable, and logic indicated that there was no deity.

Answer 9

I am not an atheist, but I don't believe in a personal monotheistic God, which usually gets me lumped in with them (and I couldn't ask for better company).

My breaking with the Bible and the Qur'an has largely to do with reasons internal to both. After spending years of my life searching for wisdom in their pages, I realized that what they had to offer paled in comparison to the violence, misogyny, and slavery they espoused. Their model of God portrayed the fashioner of the Universe as someone who wanted to keep humanity dumb and ignorant, a plaything in a garden. Our first sin was inquisitiveness in the world of Jehovah/Allah. That runs directly counter to all that I value. The Biblical God is not worthy of humanity and is, to my mind, a spiritual abortion of the worst kind.

With love,

Lazarus

Answer 10

I was able to think clearly at age 6. Despite my parents inflicting their cultism on my until I moved out as an adult, their religious malarky never stuck then or now.

My parents and their religion couldn't answer my questions when I was 6, and they're LESS able to answer them now. I've never been a believer.


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