Atheists, what specific incident made you stop believing in your previous Religion?

Answer 1

I should make this easily copyable.

I was raised catholic, catholic schools, church, my mom sang in the chior, the preist was a family friend, etc.

About three and a half years ago my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer (even though she hadn't had a cigarette in 17 years). Over the next five months, we watched her endure what no human should, a slow, painful, degradating death. She was a woman that did nothing but good and served her god.

After that, I started to question. I read and reread the bible, researched religions, tried to find answers. My research brought me more questions than answers. The main answers I kept receiving were "god works in mysterious ways", "she was needed elsewhere", "everything happens for a reason", and my favorite was "just have faith". There were no answers, so I looked into logic instead. If there was a god, would he have made her suffer like that? If she was needed elsewhere, why was it not quicker and painless? Then I got to the religion as a whole; why should we follow a book (that we are supposed to look to as fact) that was written 400 years after the actual events? Have you ever heard the same story twice? let alone past down by word of mouth? Then I learned how jesus became known as the son of god, he never claimed to be. The catholic church decided he must have been.

I realized that religions were created in a time where people need to believe in something. The world was full of brutal barbarians that had nothing to look forward to. What better way to civilized people and give them hope than religion. They showed them that there was heaven, a blissfull place that they will go to after this life, but only if they are good. They killed two birds with one stone.

During this time of questioning, I got sick. I was in the hospital for weeks with a still unknown illness (the CDC couldn't match it to anything in their database). The doctors said if I would have been under 10 or over 50 I probably would have died.

That's when I finally admitted to myself what I had already deduced. God was made up. Now, I live my life much like before, but with differences. I now live for me and my family, not for god. I live everyday to the fullest because it could be my last (and it almost was). I don't act out of fear of punishment (hell) or hope of reward (heaven). I live for life. I live for love.

So now when I post on here, I do not try to insult religious people and imply that they are stupid, they are not. But they are gulible. They follow like I did, because they were told to. I advise people to question. But, if they question and realize that they need god (and many do), go ahead and believe in whatever you want. Just don't try to push it on me.

Answer 2

There wasn't a specific incident. I never "believed" in the first place.

Technically I consider myself an agnostic, not an atheist. They're similar, but subtle differences do exist.

My parents took me to church when I was little up through high school. I never "bought" any of it, but always assumed I was simply too young to understand, and would eventually grow into it. Kind of like trying to explain calculus to a 4 year old. I realized in my 20s that I still didn't believe in God or any of the other 'crap' I was being told. At 25, it baffles me how most people can believe in such absurdity. But to be fair, I realize that my atheist views are the minority, and I'm the "weird" one. Ninety% of humans believe in some kind of God or afterlife or other religion - so either 9 out of 10 people are living in delusion, or I am.

Either way, I don't really care. I don't feel the need to stamp out religion, but I do have issues with dangerous fundamentalist religious extremists - Christian, Muslim, or whoever they may be.

Answer 3

When I was about five years old I started thinking by myself and stopped accepting blindly everything people would trhow on me as absolute truths.

Ok, this wouldn´t necessarily turn me into an atheist and, to be honest, I don´t even consider myself an atheist. But that made me realize a lot of things and was the reason I decided not to follow any kind of religion I know.

Answer 4

There was no specific incident or moment.. It came gradually with study and research..

I started off wanting to know all there was to know regarding the bible (later I studied other religious texts) So I read the bible making notes.. Then I compared and contrasted the different section of the bible.. I found inconsistancies and outright contradictions.. Which got me to thinking "How could a book supposedly written with the inspiration of a deity contradict it self?" Which got me to thinking "If god was real wouldn;t he have the power to make it so the book he inspired would not have contridictions?"

That thought lead to others.. For instance according to the bible the planet is roughly 6,000 years old however fossils etc. show us that the planet is millions of years old.. More research and more study later I came to the conclusion that the bible was simply a work of man created to control man..

Deities have been used in every culture to explain the unknown, the deity in the bible is no different.. It is simply men trying to explain the unknown and gain control of other men through fear of reprisal..

Once deities are removed from the equation as myths everything makes sense.. So now you know it was a slow process that took years not an incident or moment..

Answer 5

I'm not an atheist but an agnostic. I never was particularly religious, although I tried to "get into" the practices of my Jewish faith. But being in synagogue and praying felt very artificial to me. It just made no sense to me. The fact that Jewish men are supposed to give thanks for not having been made a woman really rankled me--I started seeing many organized religions as misogynist.

So I stopped believing. I sort of came to the realization that we cannot prove whether or not there is a god, and if we can, we cannot know its true nature. I came to see the bible as a scary book of ugly fairy tales that no parent would want to read to her children in any other context.

Answer 6

In the early 70's I read the book Chariot of the Gods by Eric von Daniken and I became an instant believer in the existence of other worldly beings. That was the point where I turned away from organized religion. After that time, I realized that a perfect god would have no use for the severely flawed human race. It's just too preposterous.

Answer 7

It was the stopping of just believing something because someone said it was so (faith) and beginning to examine evidence for beliefs prior to adopting them. Once I did this I found out that there simply is no evidence for the existance any gods.

Answer 8

There wasn't one. I never actually believed, and through a great amount of study I figured out that it didn't make logical sense. Then, through studying other religions, I figured out that they didn't make sense to me either. I don't believe in anything for which there is no evidence, and god/s should have to provide just as much evidence as anything else would.

Answer 9

I think you'll find with most atheists it was a long process, i doubt any could say one particular incident made them stop believing (if they ever did), i certainly had no "incidents"

Answer 10

9/11.... until this happened i thought that god was the personification of all goodness in the universe

the terrorists made me realise that people actually believe that god is a physical entity

at this point i became an atheist