What factors turn someone into an atheist/agnostic, rather than someone who follows a religion?

Answer 1

Since religion is taught, I would say this is a backward asking of a question. But if you mean what makes people turn away from the religion they are taught, then I would say the list is too long to voice but at the top of the list would be the example set by religous followers.

Answer 2

Well, when I became an Atheist for a while (I'm not anymore, I'm an animist pagan) it was because I realized there was not a God that changed the way the world works, so how why would I bother believing in a god anyway?

This was when my mom was dying. I had gone to a church service a little before and the pastor had talked about how if God doesn't heal someone it's because their loved one's aren't praying hard enough. And this was also after having lost a dear friend of my family whose family prayed harder than any people I've ever known.

I was just sicked by Christianity and the phoniness I had seen in it. Needless to say I was very angry with the religion for a while.

Answer 3

First I'm agnostic and not atheist. I consider atheism in the same vein as theism because atheists still claim to know whether the is or is not a god, afterlife, or some similar concept.

I don't think I can point to any one thing in my life and say that is why I believe as I do.

My mother believes in a goddess and vaguely Wiccan ideas. My father is Christian but I only found out when I was about 25. I cannot recall him ever suggesting anything regarding religion until I directly asked him if he was Christian.

I went to a Unitarian Universalist church when I was little. All I can really remember are Sunday school classes dealing with anything other than Christianity and singing in the choir.

My mother taught us to question all religion but to learn about them, nonetheless (though with a feminist and anti-Judeo-Christian bias).

I struggled with religious concepts for a very long time. When I was 19 I actually called my mum from abroad and apologized because I realized I was Christian. She was cool with it.

I went through various stages which I always called "loosely Christian." I could never accept that any god would condem those who were born and raised without any concept of that particular religion. I also could only ever believe that if we were true and honest with ourselves and strived to be good people then no loving god could ever choose any sort of hell for us.

I chose Christianity because it was what I was most familiar with. I grew up in a Christian society. I have never felt any religion wrong, though.

Over time, though, I stopped trying to find meaning and answers in religion. I have come to believe that we simply can't know whether god exists or not. I also believe that such ideas, a god or no god, are a natural aspect of the human condition. We want to know but can't so we have these ideas we choose to believe.

My choice is to be agnostic. I find peace in that, I think, the same way spiritual people do in their beliefs.

Answer 4

There are so many factors that contradict the Bible or Religion that people choose not to believe in a God. Religion is based on lies and the fallibility of men.

Wars were fought to protect the faith.

The Bible was written by man and not God and most of the stories in the Bible were greatly exaggerated.

Then there is the Big bang theory and then there is the evolution theory that totally contradicts the Bible.

Therefore people become Anthiests/ agnostic

Answer 5

I don't remember ever actually believing in the God and Jesus myth, so I can't really say I was ever a christian. I was forced to go to church every Sunday, but that doesn't make you a christian. I hated waking up in the morning and listening to some old boring guy talk about mumbo jumbo.

Later, as I learned more about christianity and what terrible things people have been done in the name of God, past and present, how lame their arguments were, what terrible teachings there are in the Bible (minus the liberal message of the gospel) and how there is just no proof, I became a full fledged atheist.

Answer 6

There are probably a few things that contribute to it. It depends on a persons environment. I know a few things that affected my religious change. I found the Christians I grew up with were hypocritical and treated women bad. When I was young, I started to explore religions around me. I found one that had exactly all the things I held high. I researched it a little more and then, I converted. I know one fellow I knew switched because of his father abusing him and he felt that Christianity wasn't protecting him from his abuser, so he can't be in a religion that would expose him to that.

I believe that religious preferences are based on environmental factors, how they were raised to accept/persecute different religions, followers treated them, and their personal beliefs.

Answer 7

I am starting to think it is a driving need for independant thought. Not rebellion so much as just pure sceptical evaluation.
In other words the curse of posessing a fully functional B.S. detector that does not shut off.
I think the majority of us just never bother to make an issue of saying what we think. It seldom seems worthwhile until we are threatened. It is normally easier to simply fade through the mass of believers and live our private lives.

Answer 8

God is not a subject comprehensible by the intellect. An atheist has the feeling of pride to his intellectual resources. Since he can not go beyond the reasonings that he has, he calls himself an atheist.

It does not mean that those who are theists can understand God. The subject still is beyond the grasping capabilities of the intellect.

Yet those who call themselves to be theists, do not shrug when the topic of God is raised.

Answer 9

A person that doesn't believe that there is a supreme god becomes an atheist and a person that doesn't know if there is a god or not becomes and atheist. A person who believes in a supreme being follows a religon.

Answer 10

Logic.