Any ex-religious people out there?Why is it you stopped believing?

Question

Please can you tell me about when and why you stopped believing as I am intrigued! Thanks

I never really believed...

Then this question doesn't apply to you....

Miss Mar…Fantastic stuff. Same as me!

Universa…Ok I see!

Reality4…_it did make sense but then you said you believed in a god and started that pretentious rambling about it not being a he or she and it is your personal god..blah blah Drop that bit and you'll be welcome round at my house any day of the week! Ha ha.

Answer 1

I never really believed... it was as an adult that I became free to express my disbelief.

Answer 2

I stopped believing in any one religion and any one spiritual path awhile ago. I came to realization for example that being a Jew is one way, and it not the only way. I came to the realization that Christianity is one way, not the only way. I came to the realization that Hinduism is one way, not the only way. I came to the realization that being Muslim is one way, not the only way. It occurred to me that each of these religions and spiritual paths have an almost schizophrenic view of God. Like God needs our worship and if we do not do it according the prescription prescribed by a particular religious group or spiritual group we would either go to hell or acquire bad karma. Also the fact that God needs or requires our worship seemed absurd...it became like a game so to speak like "trading" to get ahead. Like God is so needy and sooo jealous if we do not give the adoration required, in the exact dose prescribed we are not loving...and will therefore go to hell or be reincarnated into a hellish existence.

AND I notice that this ridiculous prescription about religion and spirituality creeps into our relationships with other people. They become based upon neediness, jealousy, expectation and obligation. Like I will trade you this if you trade me that. So 3 out of 4 marriages end in divorce as one example. It seems that we might all be better off living our relationships based upon honesty, which I think is the basis of all loving relationships. And give each other perfect freedom to be who we are, and to explore who we are in that freedom.

But I do believe in God. I believe in a God that does not have an obligation that I worship...and I do not personify God as a male or female because God for me is not a man or a woman. When there is not obligation or expectation or neediness, suddenly there is this true FREEDOM IMO, and from that freedom flows perfect love, and a friendship. It is my choice to engage this God if I choose or not. So, over the years God has become my friend, a partner. I live very much in the present, and I find that my life has become a creation based upon this friendship. I am not a victim or a martyr because I am the one making the choices. Nothing is just happening randomly TO ME.. and frankly I feel a lot more love and contentment in my life. I am not sooo judgmental of people...I mean I may not like something, or agree with something but I do not feel a need to defend it or it deter it. Hope that makes some sense?

Answer 3

I wasn't religious. I believed in God and wanted to become religious at around 15 or 16. I asked for a copy of the bible and read it. That's when I stopped believing. I'd always heard that all of the answers were in the bible, yet when I was done, I had far more questions than I started out with.

Answer 4

I used to be really religious, and honestly it only made me unhappy. To me, the only thing beautiful in life is to be happy, and I mean, not happy all the time because you need saddness and stuff to make you appreciate happiness, but when I was religious I was always asking why God did this and what could I do to make God happy. In my eyes that isnt a way to live. Now I live according to my rules and what is good and just to me (and Im not a bad person by any means). I also dont wish to believe in a God who can prey on innocent children, I mean, what is the reasoning for their suffering? Im pretty logical when it comes to thinking and learning about the history of religion and what I know about the world, the way I view things is more accurate and honestly makes me more at peace with myself and the life that is going on around me. When I realize that things just happen and my future depends on what I do, its easier to go with the flow and make the best of what you've got.

Answer 5

The final straw was about 8 years ago when a local businessman was legally stealing everythng that my family had worked for and I went to the church and asked it for help in dealing with this pious, rightous individual. After they had a meeting with this person, they came to me and said "We're sorry about what is happening but It will be okay because he is going to tith to us 50% of all that he takes from you instead of the usual 10%. So we will really pray to the Lord to take care of you." I never darkened the door of a christian church again. My family ended up on the street for about a month. This wasn't the first incident of abuse that I went through over 40 some years but it was the last. I am now Wiccan.

Answer 6

I was raised in a religious household and went to religious grade school, high school, and even college. We went to church almost every Sunday and I read many religious books. Instead of not really paying attention and just passively belonging to the church, accepting some things on blind faith and ignoring whatever religious things I wanted to ignore like most of the rest of my classmates and the other people in my church, I actually read the entire Bible more than once, and read theology books that usually only pastors and theologians read.

That lead to curiosity about why our church was so much more "right" than other Christian churches. I studied about other Christian churches and about the history of Christianity. That led to me being curious as to why Christianity was so much more "the truth" than other religions. So, I studied those as well. Along with that, I was studying all sorts of other things like psychology, world history, philosophy, literature, science, etc. I even started learning ancient Greek and Hebrew to be able to read the Bible in the original languages.

Half of the reason why I stopped believing was from study. I found things like how Christianity has changed over time, how it is not as uniquely different than other religions in history, how Christians were just as cruel and evil as non-Christians, how the so called proofs of Christianity and it's doctrines are very much open to criticism and to question, etc.

The other half of it was greater life experience. When you are young and are largely surrounded by other people who believe what you believe, it's much easier to continue believing it. My teachers and pastor would talk about how "the world" was so evil. When I got older and actually started meeting people out there in "the world", I found that many non-Christians are actually very nice, normal, good, people. I found a lot of other things that I was taught in my church did not hold up to the way things really are in life, either.

Without going on too much longer, there are more reasons than I can relate as to why I stopped being a Christian sometime in college. Much of why I was a Christian had to do with narrowed exposure. Narrowness of thought when I was younger and relied mostly on what my parents, other people in my church, and my teachers told me. Narrowness of experience when I was younger and I mostly came into contact with other Christians of the same denomination.

The idea that one religion that is mainly popular in one part of the world is alone true and that the rest of everyone all over the earth are all wrong is very silly when really examined. If there is a God or something else out there, and if that being is really good and wise and loving, I don't believe that he's interested in only 1/3 of the world's population.

Answer 7

It's a little hard to explain. The basic jist of it is, the more I thought about it, the less sense it made to me. I starting wondering why, when people had lived for thousands of years believing in and fervantly worshiping Zeus, they stopped believing in that and changed to worshiping another God. And I wondered what makes us think that the God we believed NOW in was any less of a myth than Zeus. When I read the Bible, it just seemed to me to be obviously fiction. I mean, worldwide floods, man being created from mud, woman being created from a rib, rods transforming into serpents, fire and brimestone, people turning to salt, talking/burning bushes, talking animals, angels swooping down and killing all firstborn children, people suddenly speaking different languages, virgin births, God coming to Earth in the form of a human, and then making himself die a horrific and torturous death at our hands because that's what would make him "forgive" us for sinning? Devils, demons, etc.? And all these "miracles" happened in one place, within a very short period of time, and we haven't seen hide nor hair of "God" since then.

Answer 8

A network of factors, linking together.
The biggest strand was studying the bible with care, and in depth, as I was teaching it. Eventually I couldn't teach the standard Christian line and remain honest.
Add in the history of the Christian church, the lack of agreement between Christians, the alternate hypotheses over the age of the earth and evolution, the implications of cosmology and quantum theory...

Answer 9

I think I believed once, but once you read and understand what science has to offer, religious explanations don't really make sense. Following religious teaching for me now is blindly following something that does not exist, and never really existed.

Answer 10

I traveled the world and realized how stupid it is to think that one religion is better than another.