To the ex-believers, do you think you were just going through the motions when you lived as "believer"?

Question

I understand you call yourself an ex-Christian makes you more credible because it makes you look like you have all the answers to say that Christianity is false because you went through the motions, and went to church every Sunday for umteen years, thus the ex-Christianship right? You studied the Bible all those years, and you talked to the wall all those years, yet one day had a rude awakening that it was all false! Doesn't the fact that you are now an "ex-Christian" ruin your credibility as an atheist because you are kind of like a tossing confused person that has had no real solidity to anything even when you were a Christian? I mean you were talking to the wall for how many years before you realized you never really encountered the living Christ or accepted a living faith? How amazingly sad. Because if it God and the faith was initially living to you then you would know that it was in fact alive and real, correct? Why, all of a sudden the complete atheism?

I am not trying to offend anyone, just understand :) Forgive me for offending anyone !

Tri- Christ died and rose again, haven't you heard? He lives

I am not assuming that all atheists are ex-Chrisitans...I am specifically asking the atheists that used to be questions, thats why I asked the question to "ex believers"

**that used to be Christians!**

oooops

Answer 1

What you're doing is creating a scenario that makes it easy for YOU to believe that atheists as unreliable, or hypocritical, or just plain confused.

99.99% of ex-believers didn't have a "rude awakening" one day. They came to their present condition through a series of realizations. You call your faith "living" because you are convinced it's right. But that's the same phrasing I hear from non-Christian religious people. You both have a "living" faith, but they contradict each other. Of course, yours is right and theirs is wrong, which is exactly what THEY say because their faith is "living in them."

What's amazingly sad is that you cannot countenance that people can change their minds about things you consider very important. Worse, consider that there isn't a single important theologist who hasn't confessed to having doubts at some time or another. Did the their "living" faith take a nap?

It's also kind of scary that assume that those who don't think like you are deficient. I have a living faith in the power of reason.

Answer 2

I was raised in a Christian family and did not become an atheist overnight. When I was young I accepted what my parents told me about god because I didn't know any better. Just as if my parents had told me about Allah I would have be muslim.

However I remember clearly sitting in sunday school at 6 years old saying that if Adam and Eve were the first people where where would Cain and Abel find wives. I always saw the inconsistancies in the Bible but I accepted it because I figured adults knew better than me.

However as I grew older and learned that there are people all over the world who had never heard of christianity and the only reason I believe it is because I was born in the US I began to question the rationality of my belief.

Well religion doesn't stand to rational scrutiny for more than a minute or two so I quickly abondonned organized religion. I read many different philospies from the ancient greeks to the chinese, to the existentialists. I eventually decided on a spirituality that made sense to me. I still thought it necessary to have spirituality because I didn't know where we all came from.

However as I learned more about science, the theory of evolution, and the creation of our Universe I realized that really any form of spirituality is unnecessary and distracts from the beauty of life as it is, instead of having you wait for an afterlife.

So I admitted to myself that I was an atheist and that I would live my life in reality and try to live it the best I could.

Answer 3

I very much was. I asked my parents to take me to a particular church when I was five. Tried to get my friends to go all the way through high school. Went on some youth group church camp thing and thought I had a wonderful religious experience. I didn't just 'wake up' one day and DECIDE it wasn't real. After years of flaws being pointed out, I had to finally admit the Bible wasn't 100% accurate and when I studied to see what was real and not, there were more and more problems with the very philosophy.
But, even if someone was just 'going through the motions', fact is fact. But, when you do realize something you loved and believed in is based on previous lies or mistranslations, it does make you suspicious and study.

Answer 4

Cute attempt to rip on atheists, but the thing is there is no God. So, whether you are fortunate enough to get that from the beginning or unfortunate enough to have been fooled for a while, the fact that you have awoken into the light of reality makes you a far more credible person.

"Because if it God and the faith was initially living to you then you would know that it was in fact alive and real, correct?" No, there was never any God to "live in you". You were merely duped into believing what you were told to feel was what you really felt. It is quite sad to see people having "feelings" that are only suggestions, but that is how religion is propagated.

All Christians are only going through the motions because there is no God to worship, no Jesus to "love you," no heaven awaiting.

Answer 5

I am an "ex-Christian" but I do not claim to know all the answers to anything. I became an "ex-Christian" when I was around 17, when I figured out that I actually did have a choice in what I believe and I didn't have to believe what mommy and daddy told me to. What I want to know is, what brought on this rant? Are you saying that people aren't allowed to change faiths? How about when an atheist becomes an "ex-atheist"? Is their credibility ruined? People just tend to question themselves and their faiths.

Answer 6

It wasn't sudden. In fact, it was an agonizing number of years.

Transitioning from studying to being a minister of the god I was convicted, saved, and delivered by to being an atheist was not a comfortable bit of mental dissonance to go through. Yes, I was a born-again Christian, absolutely convinced that not only was there a detiy, but that it was Yahweh and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, One God, two Natures, man and divine, in three persons. Before I left, I had read the Bible no fewer than 20 times, had read the entire Summa Theologicae and "The Confessions" by St. Augustine.

I was Saved. It wasn't going through the motions, it was a life of dedication and purpose in serving the deity I believed in, and it was one of the happiest times of my life.

However, emotions do not determine the truth value of a thing; evidence and logic do. And the more I learned of Christianity, the less and less logic and evidence could be made to fit it.

Answer 7

I went through "motions" for as long as I was forced to as a child, and sat around and contemplated what some of the religions were really trying to say, trying to give "good" points and dig them free of the dogmatic dross that religion gets mired in. When I became an adult and didn't have to go through motions, I studied religions in great depth, along with everything else with an open mind comparing, contrasting... digging... thinking critically and logically. So my atheism wasn't "all of a sudden". I came to this after about 30 or so odd years of serious questioning, studying and logic. If you find that "sad" that's your perception and you're entitled to it, but I'm rather happy thank you.

Answer 8

In my case, my mother was a minister. I had no choice but to go to church and study the bible and go to church camp. It wasn't that just one day I had some awakening and turned away from the Church. I had questioned the religion since I was a child. Finally, when I had moved out of my mothers was I able to pursue the want to explore other religions. I found Wicca and it 'clicked' in my head. It felt right. So I consider myself an "ex-Christian" as you put it.

Answer 9

What do you expect when, from the day I was born, I was told I had to "talk to a wall" in order to gain entrance into Heaven and to have an Eternal life??? You can blame my parents for indoctrinating me into a hatefilled religion, than blame me for realizing I was being LIED TO.

When youre born into something and told to beleive - that is not true beleif. I never had faith - I faked it for years because I was TOLD TO.

Using your logic, I guess the next time a Christian quotes an ex-atheist, I'll be certain to let them know that their opinion lacks any merit due to their former religious appetite....

Answer 10

Why are you assuming that all people who left Christianity are now atheists? I did everything you said, and just came to realize that the Christian path did not resonate with me. I still believe in a divine spirit, just not in the way that you do. But I'm sure that means I was just "going through the motions", even though it is the doctrine of Christianity that I came to find I couldn't believe, and not the concepts. I think the concepts are just fine. They don't resonate with me, so I don't follow them, but I don't condemn them either.

Maybe if you didn't lump "us" in against "you", we - including Wiccans like myself, Pagans, Atheists, Buddhists, ANYONE who isn't Christian - wouldn't be so antagonistic. Did you ever think about that?

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