Atheists who used to believe in God...?

Question

What was the defining moment that made you turn away?

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If your answer is going to be "because I realised it was stupid" or "didn't make sense" or something like that, explain what made you change your mind. Thanks.

david, that's a brilliant answer. Nice one.

Thanks everyone for the thought and honesty

Answer 1

Athiest means NO God
once you believe in God you know him-otherwise your an Agnostic-not truely sure

this is how I went from Jewish faith thinking there was a God to knowing him personally as my savior and best friend-there is no way I couldn not believe in him -If you met a friend-you could turn your back on him, but you could never honestly claim he doesnt exist=this is help in thought and heart to know Jesus too as a best friend that helps =I suggest praying through what I give to you-and when a wrong thought comes to your mind-this works for me-I pray inside "The blood of Jesus rebuke/take away that thought." and it goes and then I put in whatever is good honest and pure to think about =Philippians 4:4-20 (especially verse 8) prayer, peace, power & plenty more.

this is what helped me to get victory over violence even in my thought life=joy -inspite of things-it is based on Jesus promise in his love for each of us

"I love you, and ask you to repent from your sins, even one lie, Behold I stand at your heart door and knock, if you hear my word and ask me in, I will come in and become your friend." Revelation 3:19&20

so I prayed "Jesus I am sorry for my sins, come into my heart and help me, be my friend, amen."

it gave me a new begining in life and if I get off tract-I ask Jesus to forgive me for letting him down and to restore the joy of my salvation so I can help others to find the way too. Psalm 51

praying for you and help to you, David

Answer 2

I started asking genuine questions about the bible. Does god choose only one religion? If so which one? What happens to all the other sincere people who didn't pick that faith? I questioned the whole creation story, the flood. Most importantly, if he exists why doesn't he do something about the state of the world, what's he waiting for? No answer I got was decent about any of those things.

Then i considered this question - if no god existed, how would the world turn out? I came to the conclusion it would turn out just like this. If man evolved he would at first worship the elements, then give them names and personalities. We would end up with a bunch of gods - none of which can be verifiably proven to exist. There would also be good and bad in everything, which there is.

Answer 3

I was Orthdoxian Christian, but I abandoned because:
- There was no logic. Every priest says that all things depend on each other, but when I ask "Does God depend on smth? What about soul?" i never get any answer. They always say "You think too much". Here is another contradition: If I shouldn't think, for what purpose I have brain (given by God);
- I've read Bible from A to Z and found hundreds of murders (Egyptian children for example), incests, violations... Is it a really kind sacred book??
- Orthodoxian church confronts with science;
-Why does God allow terrorism?;
- Christianity doesn't teach ppl to be responsible.

Answer 4

When I was a kid I went to church, and I really liked the sign on the wall that read, "God is Love."

Then I started to read the Bible, and in shock and dismay I read about an angry, murderous, misogynist, spoiled brat of a deity. I could not reconcile the two in my head, and I decided that I really believe in Love over anything the Bible had to say. So, when the two clashed, the Bible lost. Later studies of the history of the Bible confirmed my hunch that it was a man-made document and not divine.

Over the years, my study of religions made me start to think that people's religious experiences had some interesting things in common... and perhaps all the personification of deities are mere metaphors for something bigger even than 'God', and are well-meaning but misguided attempts to define something indefinable.

I am currently a Pagan Taoist.

Answer 5

I grew up in a very Christian home. I read the Bible, attended youth groups, and prayed to God. In short, I really believed from the bottom of my heart.

Unfortunately, my mother was an abusive and manipulative woman. Whenever she would screw up, she would later say that she really wasn't saved when she did that. Then she'd go down to the altar, "get saved", and suddenly, she wasn't accountable for anything she previously did. After the 10th time of her "getting saved", I started to wonder what was going on. I saw that many Christians did the same thing. They used their religion to avoid accountability.
I took another look at the whole "religion" thing, and realized that I had some serious doubts. Over time, those doubts manifested into a full-fledged aversion to religion. I studied several other religions (wicca, buddhism, and many others), but I found that my faith in religion was shattered, and I couldn't bring myself to believe anymore. I then studied atheism, and found that it hit the mark.
Much to my "Christian" familiy's dismay, I'm an atheist, and have been for about 5 years.

Answer 6

Well, I'm not exactly an atheist, but I did used to consider myself a Christian and now I definitely do NOT consider myself a Christian.

The thing that really made me open my eyes was that I began associating with a different christian group during college. Basically, I grew up going to a Baptist church, then in college I met some people from a group calling itself the Church of Christ, (there are several different groups that use that name).

I was surprised to learn that this Church of Christ group didn't consider Baptists to actually be saved because Baptists didn't get baptized immediately after their conversion to christianity. A Baptist would usually wait a couple of months before actually getting baptized. These people believed that if you didn't get baptized right away, you weren't doing it right - and therefor you weren't a real christian.

They had some relatively compelling arguments based on scripture to support their claim. But really, it just seemed to boil down to that if someone wasn't a member of their specific group, they weren't considered saved. Any variations at all from their interpretation of the Bible excluded people from being saved, according to them.

As I considered their argument, I realized that, basically, the Baptist beliefs concerning outsiders not being saved were rather similar, (although not quite as exclusive). In fact, christianity in general pretty much was set up on that whole idea. If someone interpreted religious writings differently enough, they were considered "unsaved".

At that point, I realized that believing that someone could be damned to burn forever in Hell simply for having different ideas on religion was absolutely insane. In fact, if there were any truth to such a horrible idea, then God would either have to be horribly insane or horribly evil.

That's pretty much when I stopped calling myself a christian.

On top of all that, once I started being honest with myself, I realized that christianity had always made me feel rather miserable anyway. The part about having to try to convert other people had always bothered me for some reason I couldn't quite put my finger on. Once I gave up christianity I felt infinitely happier.

Answer 7

I got tired of making excuses for why I was suffering and others suffered. I got tired of wasting away in prayer. I did not gain any rest from praying and wondering if I was good enough. I started asking questions on why do I have to be here and other questions of why and how. I started picking up history books and books and started to reliaze why where people forced into a religion they did not want to be in, why where people murdered and killed because they didn't worship this god? I got tired of making excuses, apologize and reasons to say that god exists, and god is a loving caring being.

Answer 8

I guess it was the part in the Bible that said being gay was an abomination, and I was going to hell, blah blah blah. I knew that couldn't be true because I didn't choice to be gay. So then I started questioning everything in the Bible, and started to realize that a lot of didn't make sense, and there were a lot of contradictions. So I came to the conclusion that the Bible is BS, all of it is made up stories, there is no God, all of it was created by man to explain the universe, but now we have science, and we see that religion is just not logical.

Answer 9

I think I was about five when I still had to go to church and someone was explaining how even good people would end up in Hell. I've always had a strong sense of justice, so it pissed me off that bad people would end up in heaven and good people would have to suffer, just because they were different than me.

So I stopped believing what they told me in church. I didn't want anything to do with stuff that would crush my idealism, especially at that age.

Later, we learned about mythology. I had to read the Bible, and we put it into the context of the other tragic heroes throughout literature. That kind of cemented Bible=Mythology for me.

Answer 10

Since childhood, it was just assumed there was a god. When I looked at that assumption, I questioned it. The more I looked the more I saw other explanations for the world and the universe.

Those other explanations are much more likely and fact based than the "god did it" notion of everything.

Answer 11

I'm currently thinking of giving up my Christian faith because I struggle so much to come to terms with the cruelty of why God allowed a curse over all living things after man sinned. Curse the men for sure, but why involve every living thing.

Its making me think that the faith is fiction. A God of all power and all knowledge would have found a better way.