Did you at one point go from believing in God to not believing? If so, why?

Question

And please, I don't want to hear from the Jesus freaks who feel they need to let the world know that THEY believe in God, and KNOW he exists, and so on. The question is only for those who have gone from belief to non-belief. As for me, it was the problem of evil that did it most decisively. Also that there is just no evidence to support his existence.

Answer 1

I went to church when I was younger, and then went to a youth group all through middle school. I got into High school and started thinking about it and realized I didn't believe it. I like evolution. I really realized I didn't believe when I started reading a book that was saying,"You are here for God, to serve God, love God, follow God, God knows your purpose!" That bugs me, it seems to simple, and life isn't simple. Not to mention I don't want my life planned out for me, I want to be in control of my life. So yeah, that book, and my 10th grade biology class is what changed my mind.

Answer 2

I was raised in a very religious, christian family. I look back and feel like I was practically brainwashed (although not in an intentional evil way) - if I dared question what I was taught I was the "devil's advocate". I was surrounded by hypocrites who said and preached their "gospel" and blatantly acted differently during the week. And these were the good guys and I was going to hell??

If people want to believe and it makes them a better person - all for it! But don't you dare try and push your beliefs onto me! I KNOW I'm a good person and I've been succeeding in life now that I've disassociated myself from religion.

If something good happens to someone who believes in god it's a miracle or an answered prayer - so then what is it when something good happens to me?

I DID IT FOR ME! It doesn't make a difference and I don't think that there's a God looking out over everyone and influencing the world.

Why? It's not logical.

Answer 3

My parents took me to church every Sunday when I was growing up and until I was older, I just believed in God because I was told to. I didn't know any other way until I started seeing things for myself and asking questions, and I found that there are a lot of discrepancy's when it comes to the bible. I just feel like that if God exsisted the way they say he did, why does he let so many bad things happen to good people, while bad people get away with so much, and then the bad people can just ask for forgiveness before they die, and they will be let in to "heaven".

Also, it strikes me as odd that people can be so arrogant that they believe that their God is all powerful, and he created the universe and everything in it, but we are the only inteligent life he created.

I'm not saying I don't believe in something. I have a hard time beliving that this is all by accident. But the God concept, as it is portrayed by the church, just doesn't make any sense. I feel like the church was created to keep people in line.

Answer 4

For me, it was an interesting occurrence. I had bounced around from every protestant religion you could name when I was young and was always very inquisitive. After each sermon, I would hunt down the minister with my bible full of highlighting and post-it notes. I was eleven at this point. I had so many questions sparked by my mom's ordeal with stage 3 breast cancer when i was 8 that I needed comfort. I found that every minister that I went to could not sufficiently explain what "faith" was. I didn't want to believe in something because I somehow "knew" that it was right, I wanted to believe in something because it had to be right.
So, I went from searching in religion to philosophy. By age 15, I had read Spinoza and felt that his proof of God was definitive, but was in for a big shock. I figured out when I was about 16 that his ideas were not even positive.
Now, I believe that the concept of God exists, so He does have some form of existence, but only as much as a unicorn exists: in the mind of man. Other than that, i am agnostic.

Answer 5

I used to believe in God. I don't know what happened but the more I think about it I have thoughts about him just being a man back in time saying he was Jesus the son of god...
I really believe we came from evolution. If god created the world then where did the dinosaurs, cavemen, and the ice age come from??/
There are alot of questions unanswered. Although the christian people always have an answer. Did you hear on the news where they think they found Jesus' bones?? Now all the christian people are in a big uproar. How can they explain it now? But they always think of something to cover it, and Jesus marriage...lol.
Just my opinion.

Answer 6

Well, I think we are all born ready to accept without question whatever data we input. Then as you acquire wisdom and emotional maturity, you learn to be skeptical of claims and to look for evidence before accepting any claim.

A child may not question what he is told, when some adult in a position of authority tells him there is a god or a bunch of gods in the sky watching him. But as he aquires more mental ability he will begin to ask questions, to himself or to others, such as why that one particular god rather than several gods or a whole committee or pantheon of them? Doesn't the story of the judge who will examine your good and evil acts look like just another version of Santa Claus keeping a list and checking it twice, to see if you've been naughty or nice?
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I will now question anything and everything, especially the things you are not supposed to question. I aim to discard all beliefs of all kinds and replace belief with formation of conclusions on the basis of evidence studied by reason.
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When your mind is cleansed of belief you find you are free as you never were before. You can now make choices and accept responsibility for your choices. This is called growing up. And it works for me.

Answer 7

I was young when I believed he existed. It was unconditional for me and my family. Then a whole family that had devoted their lives to the christian belief just got into drugs. My mother turned into a crackwhore, and I never had a father to begin with. My little brothers and I ended up on the streets selling weed, coke, Ice, all that stuff. Then the faith just fell from me. I began wondering, why would a god who loves all of us, let this happen? Besides, I believe that physical evidence is necessary for me to believe such a being exists.

Answer 8

Yes, it was a combination of genetics and environment.
I have always valued logic over emotion so genetically, I'm sure i was predisposed to not believing.

I studied science my whole life, so my childhood belief in god was quite shaky by high school, I was already an agnostic. Then in college, I studied comparative religions and eastern religions in detail. Then more years of thinking about the bible (and it's flaws), evil, the nature of the universe, the falsifiability of a being that can never be detected in any way, etc.. made me a confirmed atheist/nihilist.

Answer 9

Hahaha, Jesus freaks...I guess I am one of those, even thoough I am not a freak...I just share the gospel. But I will give you evidence, not testament, because that is what you are looking for. I hope you won't get too mad at me giving evidence FOR his existence...maybe that will help.

My dad is a scientist, a rather renowned scientists. He gives lectures all over the world. He is also a doctor. And a Christian. Many people think that science and religion are mutually exclusive. But many of the most renowned scientists in the world believe differently.

These scientists told me that there is a certain point when you realize that everything in the Bible really is true. Now, the Bible is not a science textbook, its not there to explain our existence. That is why there is so much doubt. But God gave us intelligence, so we can learn more about his world, and he doesn't have to have us read about it.


Evidence has recently been gathered that countless years ago, there was a big flood. Maybe not one that covered the whole Earth, but that is certainly probable. Does that remind you of any Bible story?

Also, in the Bible, the waters came first, after light, darkness, the sun and the moon. Water was the first creation on Earth. Doesn't science teach that in the beginning, the Earth was covered in water?

Finally, think on this. Imagine for a moment that Jesus was a fraud. He certainly existed (even athiests agree on that), but the people who are non believers think he was a fraud. Well, if he was a fraud, how did he convince billions of people throughout history to believe in him, and thousands while he was alive? It takes more than a man just saying, "I am the Son of God" for people to believe he is, even Christians, who at that time were waiting for a Messiah. They needed miracles, signs that shows he WAS the Son of God. Those signs are explained in the Bible, but if you don't believe them, just think on that. Jesus must have done many powerful and miraculous things to convince to many people, some of them extrememly intelligent humans, to believe in him? It was the signs, and the Holy Spirit inside of them, making them believe even though evidence shows that they should be skeptical and disbieving.

I hope you don't get mad at my Christain views. That is not the way to go. We are not freaks, just sharing our views the Christian way...that' not so bad. If there wasn't a question on what you believe in, we wouldn't answer so Christian like. But the heart of many of these questions are.
Thank you.

Answer 10

Yeah, I only believed in him when I was really young. (6-12. Before 6 I had no concrete "belief" in anything). Then, as I grew up, I realized the many inconsistencies (and the major one being that the Bible could of been written by anyone with a pen, with nothing else really proivng otherwise). That, with the evils of the world and injustices, which I espeically felt when my mother died of cancer when I was 12 (she was 40), really destroyed any "god" in my eyes.

In summary, I figured out there was no proof of him, and that ruined in entirely for me. The injustices and evils of the world just added insult to injury.