Ex-believers: Did you have an 'Aha!' moment or a gradual realisation that your beliefs were false?

Question

Please explain.

Answer 1

I've been out and come back in and in both cases it was gradual. Hard to draw a line and say I believed yesterday but not today.

Religion contains a great deal of communal and cultural information, the vestiges of faith and belief are extraordinarily resilient. I would venture to say that all former persons of faith still maintain the tendency to want to believe, they just intellectually can't do it. But when the going gets tough I bet every one of them find themselves praying unintentionally.

On the way back in, the experience was quite different. The existential pang of detachment from the culture in which was raised dropped away so it was actually very easy once the cognitive dissonance involved in believing what I had previously seen as ridiculous had eroded without me even noticing.

Answer 2

Yes, when I was Mormon, I found out that Joseph Smith (the founder/first prophet of the LDS church) married a 14 year old girl when he was 38, it was then I realized that there was no way in h.ell that God would tell anyone to do that, so therefore Joseph Smith wasn't a prophet and since he wasn't, that meant the LDS church wasn't true. I went from being 100% believer to 0% believer in about 5 minutes. I had a very strong testimony before that, it wasn't wavering or anything, I had a calling at church, I had been to the temple to receive my endowment, I loved going to church, so I wasn't looking for an excuse to justify leaving the church or even doubting it. As for Christianity, it was more gradual. After I left the LDS church, I figured I would just find another church to go to, and I tried, but I just didn't feel comfortable at churches period. I decided to sit back and decide internally what I believed in instead of letting an external influence tell me what to believe. Eventually I came to the realization that I didn't believe in Jesus as the savior, that we needed to be saved from our sins, etc. It seemed rather silly to me actually. I still hold on to the belief that there is a higher being somewhere, athiesm just seems too depressing, and honestly, while Thiests can't proove the existence of their god, athiests can't disprove the existence of god/gods.

Liesel

Answer 3

Gradual.

For years I stuggled to reconcile perceived difficulties while staying within Christianity.
Was the problem lack of teaching, lack of faith, a wrong understanding of how scripture should be understood?
That Christianity itself was at fault wasn't my first assumption by a long way.

I even did a couple of courses on liberal theology, which I've never been instinctively attracted to, to see if its Christianity offered a structure with fewer "faultlines", but to my way of thinking it came with a fresh set.
In the end I was forced to the conclusion that seeing religion as an essentially human social activity made more sense, and there were too many inconsistencies to attribute both the planet and religion to an all-powerful all-good deity or deities.

Answer 4

It was a gradual moment. My doubts actually started in first grade, by the nuns quickly scared doubts out of me.

Then at around age 12 or 13, I started questioning, and gradually came to the realization that the organized religion I was being loosely raised in, was just a human invention to control the masses.

Answer 5

A gradual building of doubt and several Aha! moments. From Catholicism, to Fundamentalism, to Erstwhile Seeker, to Agnostic Seeker, to full blown Born Again Cynical Skeptic.

Praise Nothing, I'm finally free.

Answer 6

It was more gradual as I held out until the bitter end. Even now, I struggle with being jaded and hoping to be proved wrong, but every time I review a new creationist site or an apologetic site, I see common flaws and assumptions, not to mention quotes taken out of context and intentionally presented to mean something totally different than was intended.

So I remain an atheist.

Answer 7

I don't remember a moment as such, but by reading the Bible I became aware of many inconsistencies and contradictions. Also, seeing the hypocrisy within the churches I attended completely turned me off of the idea of organized religion. I won't say I'm a non-believer (actually I'm not sure) but I am not being a hypocrite or a cafeteria-style believer (i.e., believing what parts of the religion suit me at the moment).

Answer 8

Not really an aha moment just amoment where I stopped walking blindly behind the beliefs of those around me and started questioning for myself. Finding then that the path they choose was not the correct one for me I turned from a Christian to a Pagan and have been walking in my path for 19 yrs happily.

Answer 9

Well....it happened pretty fast for me. I was about ten and in Sunday School they told me that plants were created before the Sun and stars. First I thought they were wrong...but checking the Bible said otherwise. I went from a believer to a non-believer in about 2 weeks. Now I spent a couple of years not being very happy about it....but I never thought that I was wrong.

Answer 10

I don't know to be honest. When I was young I had to go to church all the time, then I moved in with my dad, didn't have to go to church, but still believed in god (not actively or anything, I just never questioned it)
I don't really know how it happened, sort of like saying when did you grow up - maybe it was one particular day more than the rest, but maybe it happened gradually....
Interesting question, but I think it was a combination of both...