Question for Atheists who were once Theists, what "changed your mind".?

Question

FYI I am an atheist, mean this respectful and request no ad hominem attacks.

If you are a religious theist, this question really isn't met for you and your just going to be "raining on my parade" so to speak. Free country whatever. If I ask Washington Redskin fans in the NFL section why don't you support Philadelphia Eagles anymore I would think sure theres going to be the occasional "Dolphins rule!" fan,

Just an FYI, here is my question directed to redskins fans in the football category,

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070316082948AA8s36N&pa=FYd1D2bwHTHwI75mEeIySZY8Q3Sjxf8O69vZSaq1K6US_g--&paid=asked&msgr_status=

Answer 1

Well, Mayor Sean, you did it again! I got so involved in writing an answer to this that it got too long and detailed and I had to go move it to my 360 instead! Basically my progression is thus: Early life: Methodist/Catholic (bad experience but young)->Pentecostal Christian->Disillusion-> Philosophy ->Atheism/Humanism-> Wiccan->Near-Death Experience->Martial Arts (Shamanism/Native American religion, Zen Buddhism)->The Force (of a sort)->Scientific Inquiry->Current Agnostic. Oh yeah, somewhere in between the Wiccan and Zen days was some fun dalliance with a mind-expanding and weird set of systems called the Church of the Subgenius and Discordianism. These helped to open my mind. More detail in the blog, but I figured I had to let you know why my answer was so terse here!

Basically in a nutshell, the reasons are manyfold and strongly dependent on human behavioral observation, experiences with extremes and exposure to new systems of thought and practice through life experience. Thanks for the great question!

Answer 2

I started looking at the facts about evolution, the very large number of fossil remains including transitional fossil types. I also did research in to "Events" such as the flood, exodus etc that should have left both an archaeological impact and an historic impact and found no evidence; in the case of the flood it appears to be a complete impossibility to happen i.e. not enough hydrogen in the atmosphere for it to occur. I also considered the "change" in God from old to new testaments and the amounts of people that existed or will exist with out a provision for not knowing the "right" way, coupled with a single chosen people. These inconsistencies are at definite odds with a potential "creator" who was so detail oriented to design the universe.

I could go on but those are some of the major points.

Answer 3

I left Christianity as a small child, because the deity described in the Bible was evil, frightening, and certainly not a creature of love, which was what I really believed in - and, living in a dysfunctional home, what I needed.

I followed various paths as I grew up and studied many different religions. Eventually, while studying descriptions of near-death experiences given by people not raised in a Western/Christian culture (nothing like what we would desribe, but symbolic of the same things), I came to the conclusion that all spiritual ideas, such as deities, angels, demons, etc, where all metaphors.

There is something there, I decided, that we can't comprehend, and so we try to describe the indescribable by making it into metaphors we can comprehend - deities. They are symbols, a language for something for which there is no language.

So I believe in the idea behind the deities, not the deities themselves. I am a strong atheist, in that I believe there is no such thing as a deity. They are only metaphors for something much greater than a deity could ever be.

Answer 4

I'm not an atheist...more of what I consider an agnostic catholic. I was raised in the faith and throughout much of college was a very devout believer. I don't know that there was any one magical moment of awakening that "changed my mind" or made me suddenly question or disbelieve what I knew to be true. I think I just stopped FEELING it gradually. Over time, I think the hypocrisy of many people I encountered in religion (not just catholics...in fact I found them to be much less hypocritical than the more evangelical types) wears a person down. But mostly I was starting to realize that believing because I really wanted it all to be true wasn't sufficient for me anymore. I think my life would certainly be simpler if I could, but at this point I just can't. So I suppose mine is mid-crisis of faith. I'm certainly not an atheist; I just can't say for certain God exists as much as I can't say that he doesn't. One takes more faith than I posess now, and the other strikes me as awfully presumptous as well. I just don't see how I can KNOW for a CERTAINTY either way.

Answer 5

The more questions I asked, the less answers I received.

I guess the main turning point though was hearing that because my grandmother, my mother, my father....well my entire family was going to burn in hell because this all forgiving god wouldn't accept the fact that we were baptized just pissed me off. That's when I really started to dislike the whole idea, then as I got older and studied more and more I realized that I couldn't find any proof that this guy even existed other than a 2000 year old book.
I mean why did it have to Mary and Joseph that had him, why couldn't god had made himself know prior to that? Why wait so long? The whole idea is just absurd to me.

The more I looked for him the further away he got until he was just completely non existent.

Answer 6

I went to church for 15 years, read the bible, prayed. I was even a women's pastor at one point. But the more I read, the less I believed. The more I heard in church, the less it made sense. The more I researched, I began to understand that it simply wasn't true. It was hard because I really wanted so badly to believe. All of my family and friends believed. I didn't understand why I had doubts.

It was a long road for me. It wasn't that I woke up one day and said I'm an atheist! It was just a path of understanding that led me here. I must say that I am happy with the outcome.

Answer 7

I was raised Catholic and practiced until my early teens. It was around age 7 or 8, though, when the I began to see the true nature of the church and the fickle nature of God, so I turned my back on it. The few years of forced masses with my family between that time and when I stopped attending were tough, to say the least, but it was at that time that I began to examine the concept of God in general, and doubt it.

Answer 8

I was baptized a Pentecostal Holiness and remained a devout Christian for eleven years. Attending Church and Bible study twice a week. A friend invited me to her home when I was 16. Her parents were Atheists. They were the most honest and nicest people I had ever met in my life. I have never attended Church since.

Answer 9

Well what started it was when my Sunday school class (I was a teen) brought in the pictures of late term abortions to prove how God was against abortions. I started questioning things in the classes after that and a church elder asked me to leave (proving church isn't a good place for thought).
That started it and I later became a full atheist after finding no evidence for a God.

Answer 10

I started seeing gaping holes in the theory and that lead me to more investigation, which lead to more gaping holes!

You can accept one or two mistakes and contridictions in a book, but there are just so many in the bible. It eventually lost all possible credibility for me.