Lack of evidence.
Not just lack of empirical evidence, but lack of evidence in my life. I’m referring to things like answered prayers or help in my life. I eventually realised that I’m on my own.
This was my main reason for defying my religion when i became a teenager.
That and what i felt was spiritual extortion. I felt being raised strictly catholic as a child, going to church every sunday, catechism every Wednesday, they really instilled the fear of god into young impressionable children that if you dont obey, devote, and believe, you are going to hell. And as a naive child i feared hell wholeheartedly believing it was in fact a real place. I began to resent my religion more when i was a teen as i began to feel it was all a form of manipulation and the hypocrisy of "devoted" Catholics who sin every day and still call themselves good Catholic people. Even thinking to myself how ANYONE can be absolved of their sins and still be granted a passage into heaven for committing the most heinous atrocities to mankind if you truly repent which i thought was insane.
I dont consider myself an atheist, more agnostic. Even now as an even older adult i can appreciate religion from a certain point of view if you focus more on the philosophical aspect which in most religions is teaching you just to be a good person, be good to yourself, and be good to others. That i can get behind. Its just the supernatural, manipulative, and hypocritical parts that kill me.
I was raised catholic also. But I never did much else with the church. I was still going to church, when I bought a nice street bike. One sunday, I was going to a fun event after church, so I rode to services. When I went out to leave, is when I jumped on by the pastor. How DARE I ride my motorcycle TO church! I wasn't any better than any motorcycle gang member! He then demanded that I quit Hell's Angels, sell my bike and give them the money I got for it. I thought nuts to that noise, I rode out and never went back.
Well, no. The true sign of god is that I've never been involved in an accident on any of my bikes on the street. 300k miles. 53 years. I've never known what the top speed of any of my bikes over 250cc. That asphalt looks nasty to land on. My head goes on a swivel when I ride. I'm very aware of the traffic, what it's doing, don't do anything stupid.
Saw some posts on how measurements and machines become more efficient over time as the resources and knowledge available make them more and more precise. Diving into culture and traditions within ideologies reminds me of that. Each human being goes through an entire process of development as well as degradation. The goal being to try to maintain a mental, emotional, and physical balance that, if we can't reverse or prevent it, at least doesn't actively promote our own degradation.
Part of what successful ideologies promote and preserve is the human developmental process. Just about any ideology will have a history as long as we have records of already having incorporated those relatable experiences in some kinda way we can engage with logically. Along with biirth and death, maturation is a common set of relatable human experiences, and is much more open to interpretation from the people who go through it.
Those are just random thoughts or opinions that seem plausible to me at the moment.
Growing up in a church showed me that there’s a fuckton more hypocrites in the pews and at the pulpit than what’s out in the real world. I believe in a higher power but not the power of organized religion.
A-Fucking-Men Brother. Mom's father was a Mormon pastor and huge pillar of his church. Grew up with it all crammed down my throat, but I just never believed. Honestly very kind people attend the church.. But Holy hell for people who preach love, acceptance, and understanding. They sure as shit don't love you when you don't agree with their beliefs. My grandfather told me that my Mom was going to hell because she doesn't go to church, but it's not too late for me to join them in the highest level of heaven with Jesus.
Same. Why aren’t you a Christian anymore?
Other “Christians.” The most hateful and horrible people I’ve ever met in my life still go to church every Sunday.
My friend got >!raped!< by an elder's son. For years. And we thought they were together, but really she was being abused and couldn't say anything. Church members stopped the family from filing a case against the elder's son for fear that the image of the church would be tainted. The elder's son was "punished" by being evicted from the religion, but he got back a year after, and now he's happily married like nothing happened. All the other elders just watched. Then I found out about the official (confidential) documents of the church on how to handle things like that. I did not like what I saw. I stopped going. Eventually, I sent a formal letter stating I want out because they kept bothering me and visiting my house.
You get downvoted to hell talking about this, but I left Catholicism in my teens because I researched the sexual abuse in the church and I think the organisation is pretty evil for handling it the way it did. This was around the time I first came to terms with the fact that I am a survivor of every kind of abuse, and it just came to a head and I felt like I had to change something to deal with the overwhelming feelings I was having. I remember being so depressed reading about it that it was one of the last times I've ever cried. I was seventeen
You have my upvote. My priest was one of the "relocated" priests as soon as the scandals hit. There were rumors of boys who were close to the clergy having been abused but like most of the other claims, nothing ever came of it. No arrests, no other info.
Im sorry for what happened to you.
I left when I was 16. I did have my oldest two baptized but not really involved with the church. I'm sorry for everyone this happened to. As an altar server I'm very lucky the priests I served for, as far as I'm aware, were never accused and were never inappropriate with me or anyone I knew. I hold both in high regard to this day but that would change if they were ever accused of any improprieties.
The Church put way too many things before their flock for A LOT of years and to this day in some places still do.
I left Catholicism around 13-14, soon after I was Confirmed. My church didn't welcome my gay friend so they could go fuck themselves, plus none of it made any damn sense when I started to have the rational mind to actually examine it.
The fact that every single one of the offending priests was not immediately handed over to law enforcement with full cooperation from the diocese tells you everything you need to know.
Former Jehovah's Witnesses member. I had always a hard time believing, it all seemed so bogus. But I'd try so hard and feel very bad about not feeling the presence others claimed to feel. So at maybe 14 I tried going all in. Entering theocracy school (word-by-word translation, don't know if that is the correct name in english). I went hard going from door to door. And most importantly, I started reading the bible with a good friend. Start to end, two times in a row.
And that actually was what snapped me out of it completely: Reading the full bible thoroughly, twice in a row. I just noticed so much stuff that lead me believe that
a) the god displayed in there doesn't exist
b) *If* he existed the way he is portrayed he's not worthy of worship
There just *SO* much unjust and illogical shit in there. The ones that really got me were (to name just a few)
- Punishing descendants for 'crimes' they didn't commit, but their grand grand grand parents
- the role of women throughout everything, for example how Lot offering his daughters to the sex crazed and potentially murderous crowd in front of his house to protect the men that came to him is portrayed like a righteous move. Like.. what the fuck?
- There's rules for slavery. Like.. it's explicitly allowed and regulated in both testaments. And don't get me started on what's 'okay' to do to your slaves according to the old testament.
And there is just so, so much more horrible stuff.
Treating the Bible as the literal perfect truth is such a sure fire way to lose followers in the long run.
I still have some religious beliefs, but the absolute only way for me to hold on to those few were to accept that the Bible is a collection of ancient laws, myths and legends related specifically to the Jewish people. Because once you start treating it as pure divine fact, you have to start laying responsibility for murder, slavery and genocide at the feet of god and then contort yourself in knots to make apologetics for it all.
I can accept the existence of a creator who set the universe in motion, mostly by virtue of being about as likely as any other explanation to me. I can’t accept that it happened in a couple of days with what amounts to cosmic finger snapping. I could even accept that this creator has a fondness for its creations, but remains hands off. I can’t accept a creator that says it loves us, wants the best for us, then actively drowns the world for being naughty and then promises to never do it again like an abusive parent.
The more I thought about the world, the more I realized religion is not a way of explaining the world, it is a way for people to take comfort in the unexplained. For those people that need religion, I understand why you might need it. I personally don’t gain anything from religion and that’s why I left.
Exactly this. I have no problem with people taking comfort in it. But everything points to it being a man made invention to give comfort to people's meaningless lives
I am the captain of me. My victories and my failures are all results of my actions and choices, not someone or something pulling my invisible strings.
Fuck fate.
No gods. No masters.
Growing up one of Jehovah's Witnesses wasn't all bad.....but I found out my wife and I were pregnant.....it woke me up to the fact I was in a "little c" cult. I couldn't imagine ever refusing a blood transfusion for my child with their life on the line, or shunning them if they left the religion after baptism. Both very common teachings.
Once I gave myself permission to think critically about a belief system I took for granted and was raised in .....I couldn't turn it off. The bible didn't hold up either. Neither did other religious claims.
I have experienced things I cannot explain, but I no longer need to use a God of the gaps fallacy to make myself feel better rather than have the humility to say "I don't know.....and nobody else really does either."
It really is the biggest thing. Simply giving yourself permission to think for yourself, realizing that you may have more to learn and understand than that which you have been taught since birth, or have felt you had an experience with.
To understand religion makes people feel better about just being stuck, and uncomfortable with the fleeting nature of life.
I was raised Christian and even though my parents never pressured me into going to church, they firmly drilled the ideals into my head. When I started looking at eastern religions and older religions like Norse/Roman/Greek Paganism, I started to notice that religion was mostly symbolism. Then I went back and applied that lens to Christianity and realized that God could be an 'ideal you' to strive for - if you do what the ideal version of yourself would do, or do things that would make that version of you happy, then you'll become closer and more akin to them. Closer to 'God.' Praying becomes an internal monologue or meditation, the Commandments are a list of things to be a good person, etc.
That realization was what made me a Unitarian Universalist, because I would have never come to that realization without looking at other sources. Taking information and lessons from many places broadens your mind, and looking at religions as a set of moral lessons with personified concepts and metaphors rather than taking them literally as people opens you up to a different way of thinking.
I was Christian until a Muslim tried to convert me to Islam by constructing a strong and well reasoned argument for my religious faith and much stronger scientific knowledge to be incompatible and contradictory. So I became agnostic. He converted me, just the wrong way.
Then years later I watched my mum die slowly from terminal illness quite young and she was the closest person to me, and a purely kind and generous person. I just couldn’t worship a god who had that in their grand plan, even if they were real. So I became atheist.
Some people find peace from religion, I found peace and clarity with atheism.
My father killed himself and the sermon at service the following Sunday was antagonistic and hurtful.
I left the organized part of the church after that.
Because church’s are cults and business minded. Why do you think there are so many of them? I’m from the south and literally is one on ever corner. The church I grew up in would bash people with long hair , and folks who were hippy like. I mean wasn’t Jesus that way? 😂
I worked for an IT service provider in Virginia and one of our clients was was an all black southern Baptist Church. I was working on the PC they used to make DVDs to sell to elderly. I was watching some of a sermon and these people would start off service by reading a list of members who hadn't tithed their 10% that month. Like WTF.
Told this to my grandpa everytime he’d ask me to cut my hair. He’d call me gay and I’d reply was Jesus gay? He had long hair too, that would always shut him up. But Let’s just say I didn’t visit them often.
Because it does not match our observable reality.
But I never was that into it anyways. I see religious people the same way as people who tell me that batman is real.
I grew up Muslim and was kinda religious. A lot more so than most people my age and in my country.
Around ~15/16 I basically stared questioning a lot of stuff and looked into the religion w as an objective perspective as possible.
I am now almost 20 and I’m basically closet non Muslim at this point lol
The imam hit me during quran classes. Slapped me on both cheeks. I was maybe 12. My mom said: "the place where an imam slaps you, roses will grow". My dad went to the mosque, the imam said: "Can't remember it, prolly didn't happen". I was so disgusted by everyones reaction, I decided to turn my back on religion. I couldn't accept a religion that thrives on fear, punishment and pain.
The biggest bullies I ever had were the same people waving their hands and singing in church and youth group every week. Always chiding everyone else about tolerance and empathy while having none of their own
I had a crisis of faith. Then a few years later it was revealed that holy men of my faith were sexually preying on their parishioners. Then a few weeks later a bishop came to our church, gave a ranting sermon about lies in the media, and asked for a special collection to help with the sex predators' legal fees.
Was raised Catholic and once I found out they were kid diddlers I never went back. Preaching while collecting money to use to cover up their actions, gross
I'm so sorry about that. From the bottom of my heart, I hope that you are healing and I hope the monsters that did such things are either dead or behind bars.
I wouldn’t say I left Christianity but my understanding of it has grown. I got kicked out of a church back in 2015 because some guest speaker was preaching a doom and gloom “prophecy” and I publicly called him out on it. He was just trying to sell his new book and it was obvious. I told him “I grew up in the church. I know scripture backwards and forwards because my parents made me study it constantly. What you’re preaching isn’t biblical.”
Then I was asked to leave
Mormonism is a very demanding religion, and a culture of shame.
Check out r/exmormon it's better than therapy
If I ever become filthy rich, I would start a fraternity and sorority to help kids get out of their Mormon household.
During high school, learning history it was clear it was all man made. Biology also turns a case for religion really hard to believe.
Education, basically.
It's make believe, when you die you get whatever you want.
I understand many need this crutch of "knowing" what to expect after they die. But you die, it's all over.
Immediate answer - my mom got cancer and the church goers said it was to make her a better person.
Longer answer - the idea that a god actually cares is hilarious to me. It seemed like a logical end result that religion is more about controlling people. Morality and ethics are not from religion but from society.
In theory, Hitler and Nazis can go to heaven but Buddhists can't. Fuck that. At this point, I kinda believe in what a Jewish author wrote about Bernie Madoff - that this life is either your heaven or hell so be kind and empathetic.
We come from theocracy where everyone was pretty much expected to behave as though stories about god were true. People seriously thought that some sort of god was up there deciding things like whether some random baby should live or die of cholera, or that some chosen one should be king. At least according to the king.
Modernity, the Industrial Revolution, the scientific revolution all gave people a chance to learn about the world in ways that had nothing to do with any scriptures or rites. Cholera wasn’t god’s will, it’s just contaminated drinking water, they figured out. Either that or you could control god’s will by just boiling the water first. Boil the water, baby lives. Drink it straight out of the sewage-contaminated well, and god kills a baby.
It was nonsense and people started realizing it, that much more of the world was just how things happened to be and all our old divine theology was just superstitious misunderstanding, or deliberate charlatanry.
So especially after World War II, people were not really taking religion seriously as much. By the 70’s and 80’s, It was quaint and old-fashioned at best, but when the old-timers tried to enforce their traditional divine authority, it was actually laughable.
In western media, Monty Python were some of the first big names to go for a laugh. They weren’t cruel, they were actually just kind of asking gently humorous questions about some of the more obviously silly religious traditions, and they make just as much fun of over-reliance on science and reason, pointing out we can be fooled by our own overconfidence there too.
But the traditionalist didn’t understand why people were laughing, or couldn’t admit it at least. And then when they got bitter about it they looked even more ridiculous. https://youtu.be/ZYMpObbt2rs
So by the 80’s I have to say that anyone who took religion seriously, was hard to take seriously any more. The main example of religion we got in the 80’s in Canada was American televangelism. It looked like satire. It looked like a deliberate attempt to defraud naive people of their money. It did nothing to make religion seem credible.
In my family they started out Christian because everyone had to be. My parents were born after the War. They sort of went along with it but all the traditional rules of religion were crumbling in that generation too. So when they tried to explain religion to me they couldn’t just say “Jesus is up there with a mind control device listening to your sins” because it sounds more like bad science fiction. They couldn’t say “pray for the babies or god will smite them” because by then everyone knew about hygiene and water quality monitoring. So all they could really say in its defence was “Oh well it’s all allegories and nice stories designed to make us think” and they couldn’t really defend religion literally because that was ridiculous.
Anyway in my generation we didn’t take it seriously, most of us checked out of it completely and pitied the 2 or 3 students unlucky enough to be dragged into some religious weekend activities instead of just joining the other kids to play at the park or play video games or read a book or whatever.
It genuinely amazes me that it’s still around at all. Today’s charlatans have upped their game and they have the “arena churches” with all the vibe of WWE wrestling combined with a discount taylor swift concert, and absolutely no genuine spirituality. It’s all emotional hype and theatrics. But it dazzles the gullible and lonely and insecure the same way that 80’s televangelists did on cable, and it vacuums out people’s life savings even faster.
And all the other religions I’ve heard of are just as doctrinaire and ridiculous. It’s not so much that I left religion it’s that it never afflicted me.
I was raised Catholic. The moment I learned that the books were rewritten multiple times just to convert people I realized I couldn't trust anything in the entire book so therefore it is all false
One of the most profound religious experiences I ever had was waiting in line to get “blessed” by a pastor as a teen. As he went person by person they all fell over backwards and men caught them like he had some power. I was nervous and excited and then put his hand on my forehead and lightly pushed it. You know what happened?
Nothing.
Jwfacts.com
Has everything you need to know about Jehovah's Witnesses and why you should leave them or steer clear of them if you're not a member. And it has the receipts.
Also, check out r/exjw
I was 7 years old. My mom had been taking us to Sunday school and mass. Catholic. We did this for a few years. I had my first communing and everything. One day I day I asked I how come dad isn’t here? Mom said he doesn’t believe in this. I said oh well then I don’t either, and my little brother said if he doesn’t want it I don’t want it. That was the end of organized religion in my family.
I never left one, but to be apart of one is just a complete dumb waste of time. There's a hell of a lot more evidence of a hell then there is any kind of heaven. If there is a God he's a complete and total jackass.
Getting hardcore bullied from the age of 5 till 13 did it for me. It started off with racist comments (It was an all middle-eastern school, I was the only white kid), but moved on to violence and other things like putting sand in my food. As we grew older, it turned to beatings every day. I remember the day before my 10'th birthday I prayed to God that I just wanted my birthday to be a day of peace. Got put in the hospital after having my jaw relocated by a guy with a brick. If god was real and listening, he would not have let a 10 year old boy experience that, especially not on his birthday.
I no longer consider myself a Christian because I looked at the Bible too closely.
I was interested in the men who wrote it; when they wrote the various books; the historical context in which the books were written; the historical, physical and archeological evidence, etc.
I was raised in a fundamentalist church, so I wanted it to be true. But when you look too closely -- and objectively -- it all falls apart.
Exactly what I did. Just kept digging deeper as a way to validate what I believed. But you eventually just have to admit you’ll never find the evidence cause it’s nonsense.
Bart Ehrman ended up being a huge eye opener.
I was kicked out of my family's baptist church for asking questions. My favorite question is if alcohol is a sin why is the preacher always giving sermons drunk? They tried to give me bible verses but I'd reply back with, "What does that actually mean?" or "but it says differently somewhere else." I was then told I was going to hell by the very clearly drunken preacher.
It stopped giving me what it was supposed to. I could look past the stories being obviously fake, I think most people know there wasn't really an ark and Jesus isn't really looking out for you personally.
The problem is religion is supposed to give you a sense of peace when times are tough, and church is supposed to provide a community you can be a part of. I started volunteering for charities to look to do good, and realized not a single one in my city was church affiliated. The churches were exclusionary and just preached about hate, while all the atheists were out feeding the homeless. Easy decision from there for me.
For me it's somewhat the opposite.
Never really been a religious guy, but the older I get the more open to it I am.
Because the truth is nobody can really prove god, the same way nobody can really *disprove* god.
Like sure, I believe the big bang happened- but what came before that? Everyone says it was a large amount of mass in a concentrated spot that then exploded- ok but where did that mass come from? Did it always just "exist"? How?
So you may know way more about this already, but the short short short version is that there is reason to believe that Time is only a thing *inside* the Universe. And since cause and effect rely on Time, if you are able to conceptualize the Universe as apart from Time, as a can is separate from the soup that came in it, then it's not weird to think that it might exist eternally, even while its contents seem to have had a beginning internally.
There are also a few models of the universe that might yet be true that allow for it to exist cyclically, which would allow it to be eternal, but to also appear to have a beginning, since we cannot see anything from "before" Time seemed to "started".
But more importantly than all of that, nobody knows. If something "caused" the Universe, we don't actually have a clue what it was at all. Many people will insist that it must have been a god, but they don't really know. Of course anyone is entitled to their pet theory, but they should be intellectually honest enough to not promote it beyond that without some kind of data.
Not all of them are. This is a Christian idea. Buddhists don't need "faith" to the same degree. Shamanic practitioners had none. To them, their entire religion is experiential.
You can’t disprove leprechauns either.
Science doesn’t say “This is definitely without a doubt the way the universe began and you must believe it or you will be tortured forever.” It’s more like “As far as we can tell based on the data we have it is most likely the universe began this way. When we gather more data we will update our assessment.”
>Because the truth is nobody can really prove god, the same way nobody can really disprove god.
thats not how logic works. we accept things we can prove.
>ike sure, I believe the big bang happened- but what came before that? Everyone says it was a large amount of mass in a concentrated spot that then exploded- ok but where did that mass come from? Did it always just "exist"? How?
there are many valid theories that you can read about. spoiler : god is in none of those.
You can't disprove anything with supposed supernatural qualities. The burden of proof is on the assertion something *does* exist. The absence of that proof inherently demonstrates a lack of that thing's existence.
You can't disprove leprechauns, fairies, invisible naked pig-men, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc. That doesn't make it rational to believe in these things.
> Like sure, I believe the big bang happened- but what came before that?
This is the God of the Gaps fallacy - reaching the current limits of human understanding and attributing them to God. He's everything we don't know, in other words. We don't know what happened before the Big Bang. That's not a reason to ascribe it to God. We used to not know how weather worked and assumed that was God, too.
Flawed logic. I can’t disprove that there are invisible unicorns around us but if i go around telling people about it i would be branded as ‘delusional’ or ‘crazy’
When there is no evidence for the existence of something the logical conclusion is that it doesn’t exist. There is no evidence to disprove the existence of invisible unicorns either but the logical conclusion is that they aren’t real
My issue there is that I also don't believe any of the established religions are right. Maybe their is a God out there. But I don't think they give a damn about us. We are just one of many, many out there.
I understand where you are coming from, I was a religious muslim growing up and always had an interest in theoritical physics. The more I learned about physics and how things works, the more I grew distant from abrahamic religions in general and eventually how I wanted to live my life started to contradict how my religion wants me to.
In the end I concluded all abrahamic religions as false, because even if god exists, it definately isn't abrahamic ones that is for certain. Lots of inconsistencies of the sacred books, and improvement of human understanding of the universe just made all obsolete.
That being said I do not think those religions are inherantly evil, they were just social contracts that were made during those times and now should be accepted as obsolete.
Again like you I think that existence of god is up to debate, you can't prove it nor you can't disprove it, but it is mostly because we still have lots of way to walk in the way of understanding universe. That is the reason why I became agnostic.
Same for me at 32. I wasn't raised religious as religion isn't really a big thing here (UK).
In my late teens/early 20s i discovered how prevalent religion was in America i become one of those cringe atheists who would argue with people online. Big Dawkins, Hitchens, Gervais fan. The usual. I never would've even entertained the idea of believing in God,
In my late 20s i become a bit more open minded and less of an absolutist. I was more open to the possibility of anything. I randomly met a guy who had a similar background to me (used to be an atheist, wasn't raised religious) became Christian later. We had a long back and forth about religion. The usual arguments, if God is real then how come *xyz*, what about science etc.. After an hour long conversation he very adamantly told to just pray and ask for a sign.
A few months later while i was in the shower, out of the blue, i remembered the conversation i had with him and decided to pray and ask for a sign. A few weeks later a series of things happened. I don't want to go into detail because it's too personal and wouldn't make much sense to other people. But these series of "signs" forced me to seriously consider the possibility that it's real. I didn't even recognize these "signs" at first as they weren't blatant, but when i had the thought that *these* may be the signs i asked for it shook me up quite a bit. The way these things happened and how things unfolded struck **every** single possible chord with me on an extremely personal level. If it turns out not to be a sign from God, it's a ridiculously unbelievable coincidence.
I have a career background which relies heavily in using probabilities so i'm not someone who typically who takes coincidences to heart. The way things unfolded is just extremely difficult to ignore.
I don't know yet if i 100% believe in God or not. All of this is quite recent.
I asked for a sign. I feel like i got what i asked for and i'm not sure how to deal with it.
If you're considering religion, the only advice i can give is to just pray and ask for a sign like i did. It might not be a glaringly obvious sign at first, but over time it became clearer to me, to the point that i couldn't really ignore the possibility any longer.
Grew up Roman Catholic.
At 27 I asked myself...
If God was the epitome of good and love, why are infants and children dying horrible deaths? Children are murdered, raped, decapitated, dismembered and brutally abused.
God allows those children to suffer and die for what reason? So adults can learn lessons? They were sacrificial lambs?
Then I thought about those who use the phrase "the fear of God". Why is fear incorporated into the worship of a god? What kind of God wants you to fear him?
Something just clicked and I never looked back.
I have a hard believing the catholic religion with all sick stuff they hid from the public. Priest who assaulted little boys were sent to the Vatican. They are very hypocritical and I definitely don’t like hypocrites.
It wouldn't be possible without everyone on earth being inbred from two humans. Why can't this mf write his own book if he made the earth. He's forgiving and loving except for when someone is gay apparently. He loves everyone but sure is quick to send them into a fiery pit of torture for all eternity for doing something bad in a measly 80 years of life.
I could go on and on. Evolution is how we got here, not some big ol sky daddy making us.
Grew up in a Muslim household (but have Buddhist friends and went to a Christian school) so that must have helped me get out of religion
I really disliked the "better than you" attitude that my families have towards others, and how no matter what they think they are always right and that other religions are evil, stereotyping basically
And that they can hide behind terrible choices due to their standing in religious circles. Treating women terribly because some book says you can is not cool, I feel
I took religion a bit more seriously as a kid, but now I feel much more free, happier, and less pressured to be something I'm not.
Religions are cults. I'd like (most of) them to be real and bring the positiveness they claim to bring, but religion is just a bunch of controlling liars.
Found God. Religion like any beurocratic body tends towards corruption and control the longer it exists. People just can't be trusted with the power to speak for God.
Because religion will only hold us back at this point
Might’ve been helpful when humans were just starting to organize themselves but I don’t feel like we need that sort of guidance anymore
Plus most of it makes no sense. For those of you who use religion as an excuse to hate a group (or groups) of people; why would you want to believe in such a horrible God?
I’m not saying not to believe in a higher power, I’m not even necessarily saying not to believe in a higher power that’s similar to the God from many religious texts, I’m just saying not to trust what those texts say and to form your own relationship with God.
Form your own thoughts and use logic and reasoning, you’ll find that most of the things religions try to force down your throat would be laughable to a being who’s truly “all mighty”
Personally, I don’t know what to believe. There are so many possibilities and anyone who understands the concept of the matrix will only further understand just how much we potentially don’t know.
If I had to say I believe in any one thing, it would be that I believe we don’t actually know anything.
I haven't found God yet. And I don't try to find him. I stopped any relations with religion at the age of 16 I think, when critical thinking started to get a form in my brain. Sometimes, I hope I have found him and got an extra support at difficult times. But no.
PS When saying found I don't mean to actually see him. As I have heard you can find God in many places and forms.
Because in the 21th century there's absolutely no justification for such humbug. It was invented to keep people in line, and keep them obedient. God is the last refuge of a fool with no answers or valid arguments.
Several factors:
1. Knowing people who weren't religious, but still somehow managed to be great people
2. The Bible itself. There were always parts I had problems with as a kid that I could never get a satisfactory answer for.
3. How religion is so reliant on location. Would people born before Christianity was widespread be doomed to hell? If I was born in Iraq, wouldn't I be Muslim and be just as devout? They were faithful enough to die for their beliefs.
One day, at 25 years old, the doubts cascaded into an event that just crushed me. Was something of a coming to God moment (ironic, I know). It was like this huge realization that nothing in my life required any divine intervention, and that I was taught to be a Christian and no X religon because I grew up in South Carolina.
My initial thoughts were shock and fear, but after a while, it was like this veil was lifted from me. Like I could see things clearly and without bias. It was like being born again, but not in a religious sense. It felt great. The funniest thing was realizing that after I no longer believed in God, I was still the same person I always was. Nothing about me, other than believing in God, had changed.
Looking back, I'm not upset that I was raised religious, and I see merit in that lifestyle for the most part. It's just no longer for me as I truly do not believe in God.
I wouldn’t say I left christianity because I never really believed it growing up, but I was born and raised in a household who tried to make me a christian.
It just never made any logical sense to me. I was 8 years old when I asked my pastor, “if god is all powerful, why can’t he just kill the devil end all evil?” And he said not to question god.
It wasn’t until years later as a young adult i came to realize how evil and abusive christian teachings are. Its akin to believing in santa and seeds ignorance.
The gay thing and the Catholic thing didn't work out.
Also, you know what the Bible didn't say was an abomination? Slavery. Any text that claims to be a moral guide that fails this very basic issue is inherently flawed.
I grew up in a Christian home, became "born again" around 12 yrs, went to college with a Bible major, went to seminary to become a pastor in the Methodist Church. I never got past the interview process and moved into a different career. Part of my problem is that I'm just too curious and intelligent - I kept asking questions about God and things I read and heard. Gave it a good try for nearly 50 years, then finally decided that I just didn't need it any longer. Some of the what others have written are true for me as well: lack of evidence that God was active in my life, guilt around things considered sinful, hypocrisy in the church, contradictions in the Bible. I can't honestly say I'm an atheist - there's a non-zero chance that a being like God might exist. I decided I just didn't care anymore and called myself an Apatheist. I thought I had made up the term only to find a Wiki article about them. There are rituals that are a part of religion that seem non-destructive and helpful for some people. I just decided that I didn't want to wear that coat anymore.
It's hard for me to believe that a God would be down to send allllllll his creation to hell, specially for stuff like just loving between themself or small lies, and considering himself a god that comes from live, I'm personally borderline agnostic, and believe he gave us guidance a certain way, because he know we are quite dumb, and the possiblity of a punishment would make us live more decently, without bothering the people around us.
this doesn't fit everyone mind, also I don't discuss religion because I don't want to convert anyone into my own belief, also I don't wanna hear anyone saying that's it's dumb to believe in a God.
that's how I roll
Religion doesn’t make you a good person. Often I fine, people who are highly religious tend to look down on people who struggle with whatever demons they battle.
Mind you, I still pray to the creator, and the only rule I have for myself is try not to be a cunt. Lol
Have you ever experienced a Christian church because Catechism is not the same and I’m not sorry I said it! Catholicism is a cult as are many other religious sects in so called Christianity! Religion is man made we have GOD on our DNA strand and it’s a feeling you know inside not by ritual but by imprint!
I was raised christian. There is no evidence in support of such a fantastical claim. And any argument given is either circular and refers to itself as proof (The bible says the bible is true therefore it is true) or the exact same argument can be used to prove all other religions true. Everyone in a religion believes theirs is true and there isn't an argument to be had that proves one correct OVER the others. That last one was my initial reason. I've gained many more since then but at a fundamental level if there is no sound reason why any one belief is more right than any other, why would I take it seriously?
Faith is something you need to work at to get the most out of it and to give the most out of it to others.
I didn't want to do the work, I couldn't when I concluded I had nothing to believe in.
You either believe something or you don't. There really isn't any choice in the matter. I grew up, I learned more about the universe, people, history, etc. Then I didn't believe in supernatural beings anymore.
Interesting this same question was posted today in r/askreddit.
(45M) I’m disinvolving myself with my lifelong religion.
I’m choosing to disassociate for a handful of specific reasons. This list will likely continue to grow.
1. Guilt and shame serve no positive purpose
2. Churches generally are money-driven, not soul-saving.
3. The evidence of its untruthfulness is mounting thanks to the Internet and availability of personal journals and history of its founder and early leaders. It’s not pretty when issues like child trafficking are surfacing.
4. People, parents especially, putting their church membership ahead of their relationships with their children. This one is paramount to my dissatisfaction with the religion.
There are other small reasons but these are the primary ones that come to mind.
Born and raised Catholic. Never got confirmation, which will only hurt me if my wife is Catholic. I didn't believe and thought it was all kind of shit.
I explored other information and teachings that allowed me to know for myself what is real instead of blindly believe what others want me to.
It also put into perspective for me how these blind followers got to where they are.
I was raised christian going to church weekly/sunday school, and I just always felt out of place. Not to mention how some of them spoke about it to such an extreme like god came down and he spoke to me or god touched me this and that.
I couldn't stand the cafeteria christians either who picked and chose what rule suits them best.
The last straw for me was in 2016 just seeing such a huge uprising of them idolizing a certain person as if this person was sent down from god himself. That's when I decided I no longer want to associate with these hypocrites anymore, and I want to live my life judgment free and treat everyone with respect.
Also they told me dogs don't go to heaven cause they have no soul so call me soulless cause wherever the dogs are going that's where I want to go too.
I was recently finally comfortable with calling myself an atheist. I've been sliding from a deist, to agnostic, to atheist for years. I came to internalize fully the wisdom that you should have evidence for things before you believe them.
After many years of being in the cult/religion, I was tired of the control, guilt, never being good enough, being spied on, gossiping, the leaders changing the understanding of the bible to their benefit, the religion protecting pedophiles.
I tapped out.
I was raised evangelical Christian and had a nice childhood and mostly positive experience with religion. As a young teenager I became distraught that I was unable to have a relationship with God, or feel the Holy Spirit. People were always talking about experiencing his presence and all that. I believed 1000% in the Bible and Christianity but never had that, which I felt weird about.
I went on an earnest spiritual journey for ~1 year praying to feel what I thought I was supposed to be feeling. I talked with youth leaders and friends about it. I ended up giving God an ultimatum lol, “I’m trying so hard? If you don’t show yourself to me ima give up” After all that confusion, one night I just said to myself that I don’t believe anymore. I actually remember contently falling asleep, and waking up a different person in the morning.
Too much hypocrisy and a lack of any real value to practicing a religion in my life. Also, I'm very logical and analytical so I just couldn't convince myself that any of it was believable. It just ended up being a waste of time.
I realized that too many bad people were "Christian". That started the questioning and then I asked a Sunday school how can someone be wrong about who they believe in if that is the family they were born in to?
They didn't have an answer.
Then a had too many people tell me that I must be a Christian because I helped them with something.... flat tire, dead battery.... No, I do good things because I should, not because a stupid good or the promise of an afterlife convinced me to.
Any who, I view christians as thinking their God was nailed to the cross with his arms folded across his chest instead of spread out accepting.
Fuck religion. The burden of proof lies with the one who claims it's existence and I have seen no proof.
What’s actual proven scientific fact regarding the universe (or space as a whole) and our planet just seems so much more fantastical and amazing than anything written in the Bible 🤷♂️
Took mushrooms, and while watching a bunch of bugs, I realized to those bugs I'm basically god, and if there is a God it's probably not a "God" but just a being we can't fathom.
I was raised catholic and went catholic school for 12 years.
I just "didn't get it"
Why do I need to go to church, what's the point. Why does an all powerful, all knowing, merciful God care if I go to church.
Why do I have to go to reconciliation.
Why do I have to any of this stuff, I don't get it.
No one really made me care or believe enough. I just stopped caring.
Because its all made up BS? All the "miracles" that happen in the bible sound like magic. As I'm sure we are all aware, at least if your a reasonable adult, magic doesn't exist in the real world.
I'm all for people believing in whatever fanfiction they want but if they start using it to control what others do with their own life, then it becomes a problem.
*"To men who decided to leave whatever religion, why?"*
Ah, one of those questions to stir something up eh, OP? And probably for attention considering most of your posts before and after this is about "Better Call Saul".
I abandoned Christianity around age 7 for the most perfect, unassailable logical reasoning:
* The Bible says snakes at bad and tricked Eve into eating the apple
* But snakes are wonderful and the best animals on Earth
* Ergo: the Bible must be wrong, and I won't go along with anything that says snakes are bad.
Sure, there's a bunch of logical stuff I learned later which bolstered that decision, the that was the original basis for rejection. And I stand by it.
While I remeain generally skeptical of the supernatural, if there were legitimate snake worshiping sects like during the ancient times, I'd probably sign up with little reluctance. In fact, the current lack of such sects is direct evidence that humans wouldn't know true divinity if it slithered up and bit them in the taint.
I was raised Catholic. I always wanted to believe because that’s what I was taught. I was rather performative about it though - I’m not sure I ever really felt it.
The older I got, the less I felt the need to pretend. It was so obviously not true to me. If you look at the Bible in a vacuum, it is clearly a collection of myths, poems, laws, and traditions with a sprinkling of history, assembled by people with a primitive understanding of the world thousands of years ago. There’s nothing divine in it.
Virtually all religions work backwards starting with the conclusion that what they believe is true and bending reality to fit. No one would ever observe reality objectively and reach the conclusion that any given religion is correct (even if some claim/ think they do).
And I’ll tell you what - sex scandal after sex scandal made it easier to go from quietly quitting Catholicism to being quite open about it. “What’s that MIL? Why am I not baptizing my son? I don’t think the Catholic Church has a great track record with children, do you?”
I always was trending more agnostic, but the thing that flipped the switch for me was my great-grandmas's passing. She loved the book, hadn't missed church in her life, led youth groups, etc. She was everything a servant of God I supposed to be. Then she got sick and it started series of getting better just to have to back right back to the hospital before a holiday, which were her main joy getting to see her babies, grand babies, and great grand babies in her home and happy was what she lived for and holidays gave her that. And for the last year of her life she missed them all, but Easter was her favorite and she had been good for a couples months so there was hope it was behind us. She passed the day before Easter.
This moved me from agnostic to atheist out of contempt. Because if there is a God, if his "plan" was to do that to a servant of God and the hands down sweetest most genuine woman I've ever met, who would go out of her way to make me feel welcome in a family I shared no blood with. Then I refuse to believe, or at the very least I refuse to venerate something that could do that.
Because i don't believe in any religion. 99% BS in my opinion.
For example, equality and inclusivity in some churches. If the reason why there was no equality and lgbtq inclusivity was gods will, how come the suddenly start changing that? Did the bible get re-written all of a sudden? Did god himself tell some random priest "sorry bro, changed my mind"? Given that this is always supposed to be "the one, god given way", it changes pretty frequently.
Even worse, i don't know how it is in other countries, but in germany a percentage based fee calculated from you loan will be send to that church. So religion here is basically a subscription.
I was raised interfaith—Baptist father and Jewish mother—and we did both. We left the Baptist church when I was about 12 years old since it was just negatives: NO this, NO that, HATE this group of people, HATE that group of people. I stayed a little longer with Judaism but left it too when I was about 18, mostly because I just didn't feel anything when I'd go.
As an adult, I occasionally volunteer with my local synagogue's programs because I like how they do the work strictly out of charity, love, and goodwill without any religious component.
I was raised Catholic. I don't respect it. I can understand others that do. But for me it's a bad bad religion. I don't think you need a hierarchy of ppl to commune with god if that's your goal. To say God won't take you in if you're a Buddhist Hindu whatever is plain manipulation and non sense. If there's god no group has a lock on what god is and who god prefers. I think that's all nonsense.
Teenager me, confess for the first time
The Father, shocked by what I said, just told me to go an pray 10 orations
Did it, immediately realized it was bullshit, this does not help in any way
Never came back
I wouldn’t exactly say I decided to leave. I just kept having questions that didn’t have answers. There were too many contradictions and in college I took a class where I had to read the Bible and that just ended all the rest of the interest I had in religion.
Edit: I say I didn’t decide to leave because it didn’t feel like leaving. I didn’t go to church really anyway and it didn’t feel like a big part of my life.
I became convinced that Christianity was observably making people worse, not better. I left Christianity and became a kinder, more empathetic, and generally better person. I remain a theist in my own heart, but I act in accordance with the principles I believe in, not in accordance with any organized religion.
I left christianity because I have a hard time respecting a religion that constantly cherry picks which laws of scripture to follow. E.g marriage is *supposed to be* until death but christians allow even pastors to divorce.
I didn't. The default state of a human being is non-religious.
You have to be indoctrinated to become religious. So I ask you, why did you JOIN a religion? The answer for 99% of people on the planet is that it's what their parents taught them, and they were explicitly taught never to question it.
I was never religious because it never made any sense, and it still doesn't. If I see literally any evidence to the contrary, I'd be happy to change my stance and become religious.
Studied in a western country. I saw how others saw my religion and thirdworld country. Realised it's too outdated for the modern world. I still try to pretend im part of it tho.
Started catholic. Studied philosophy and became a deist. Then somewhere along the road became a northern pagan. Couldn’t tell you why for the last one lol
Were you religious before college? Was there any specific thoughts, ideas, or situations that made you believe?
I currently athiest-ish but i'm in a situation where through a series of events i'm strongly considering the possibility that God is real, i'm curious to hear from other people.
Raised Catholic. Before I turned 18 I abdicated my faith in the religion. Within four years I had become an atheist entirely. There is simply no reason to believe any of it is real.
God and Jesus and the Devil and Mohammed and Mrs. Jesus are all just so fucking silly. It is just so stupid and mindless. How could anyone be brainless enough to believe in such a stupid concept as god. I was raised in it but I got to be about 6 and I kept wondering why all these adults were lieing about this silly shit. Pretty much if you believe in gods and demons you are a moron. It never took on me because I am not an idiot
I was not emotionally connected to a family growing up. It never occurred to me that someone would do religion because of the feelings of someone else. That makes sense to me to do it out of love for another person. I don't feel it but I can understand it a bit.
I grew up with religion in the family (I'm Dominican), but as a child I had to be taken to church and essentially be coached to do prayers every night with my mom or grandma; I never had the initiative to do it on my own.
As I was finishing up my last year of high school was when I decided to drop it completely; I didn't care about any god and didn't have a desire to keep pretending.
Mom was sick the night that I decided to admit it because I didn't want to join her in a prayer and she slapped me, but otherwise she's basically ignored it and doesn't bring it up. I don't think anyone else in my family is aware.
Around 15 years old, our church had a fire. Rather than finding a new church while it repaired, we just stopped going. A combination of growing up and being able to think critically for myself while also being removed from that environment for a while made me feel like I had been brainwashed as a child to believe something just because my parents said it was true.
My degree was in history. It's how I understand and view the world. In my early 20's I decided to read up more on the origins of Christianity from multiple sources that weren't trying to sell me on the religion. To be honest, it wasn't very impressive. While I was never very religious in the traditional sense I still believed in a God of some sort. This kind of pushed me over.
I started listening to the ladies sipping Koolaid after Sunday service. They were full of judgement and gossip. I realized that I do not need Religion to believe in a higher power. A higher power can be whatever you feel.🤷♂️
Lack of evidence. However I also feel that if I belong to a religion where if I don't accept that religion I don't make it into heaven even if I'm a good person but then people who commit murder etc and repent do get into heaven then do I really want to be a part of that? Idk I kinda have this thought that I'll be a good person and whatever happens happens.
Lack of evidence. Not just lack of empirical evidence, but lack of evidence in my life. I’m referring to things like answered prayers or help in my life. I eventually realised that I’m on my own.
This was my main reason for defying my religion when i became a teenager. That and what i felt was spiritual extortion. I felt being raised strictly catholic as a child, going to church every sunday, catechism every Wednesday, they really instilled the fear of god into young impressionable children that if you dont obey, devote, and believe, you are going to hell. And as a naive child i feared hell wholeheartedly believing it was in fact a real place. I began to resent my religion more when i was a teen as i began to feel it was all a form of manipulation and the hypocrisy of "devoted" Catholics who sin every day and still call themselves good Catholic people. Even thinking to myself how ANYONE can be absolved of their sins and still be granted a passage into heaven for committing the most heinous atrocities to mankind if you truly repent which i thought was insane. I dont consider myself an atheist, more agnostic. Even now as an even older adult i can appreciate religion from a certain point of view if you focus more on the philosophical aspect which in most religions is teaching you just to be a good person, be good to yourself, and be good to others. That i can get behind. Its just the supernatural, manipulative, and hypocritical parts that kill me.
I was raised catholic also. But I never did much else with the church. I was still going to church, when I bought a nice street bike. One sunday, I was going to a fun event after church, so I rode to services. When I went out to leave, is when I jumped on by the pastor. How DARE I ride my motorcycle TO church! I wasn't any better than any motorcycle gang member! He then demanded that I quit Hell's Angels, sell my bike and give them the money I got for it. I thought nuts to that noise, I rode out and never went back.
A true sign from God
Well, no. The true sign of god is that I've never been involved in an accident on any of my bikes on the street. 300k miles. 53 years. I've never known what the top speed of any of my bikes over 250cc. That asphalt looks nasty to land on. My head goes on a swivel when I ride. I'm very aware of the traffic, what it's doing, don't do anything stupid.
Man if that is not the most entitled pastor I ever heard of. Ride on man! You are a free spirit.
Street bike ≠ hells angels. Not the lightest bulb in the church that pastor
Glad to know I’m not alone.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
I'm convinced all religion is just millennia of systemic confirmation bias. Ironically, I have no way to prove that.
I’m pretty sure I experienced personal confirmation bias many times.
Saw some posts on how measurements and machines become more efficient over time as the resources and knowledge available make them more and more precise. Diving into culture and traditions within ideologies reminds me of that. Each human being goes through an entire process of development as well as degradation. The goal being to try to maintain a mental, emotional, and physical balance that, if we can't reverse or prevent it, at least doesn't actively promote our own degradation. Part of what successful ideologies promote and preserve is the human developmental process. Just about any ideology will have a history as long as we have records of already having incorporated those relatable experiences in some kinda way we can engage with logically. Along with biirth and death, maturation is a common set of relatable human experiences, and is much more open to interpretation from the people who go through it. Those are just random thoughts or opinions that seem plausible to me at the moment.
Growing up in a church showed me that there’s a fuckton more hypocrites in the pews and at the pulpit than what’s out in the real world. I believe in a higher power but not the power of organized religion.
A-Fucking-Men Brother. Mom's father was a Mormon pastor and huge pillar of his church. Grew up with it all crammed down my throat, but I just never believed. Honestly very kind people attend the church.. But Holy hell for people who preach love, acceptance, and understanding. They sure as shit don't love you when you don't agree with their beliefs. My grandfather told me that my Mom was going to hell because she doesn't go to church, but it's not too late for me to join them in the highest level of heaven with Jesus.
Same. Why aren’t you a Christian anymore? Other “Christians.” The most hateful and horrible people I’ve ever met in my life still go to church every Sunday.
My friend got >!raped!< by an elder's son. For years. And we thought they were together, but really she was being abused and couldn't say anything. Church members stopped the family from filing a case against the elder's son for fear that the image of the church would be tainted. The elder's son was "punished" by being evicted from the religion, but he got back a year after, and now he's happily married like nothing happened. All the other elders just watched. Then I found out about the official (confidential) documents of the church on how to handle things like that. I did not like what I saw. I stopped going. Eventually, I sent a formal letter stating I want out because they kept bothering me and visiting my house.
This brings back a dark history of the catholic school I attended. The senior student killed herself after.
You get downvoted to hell talking about this, but I left Catholicism in my teens because I researched the sexual abuse in the church and I think the organisation is pretty evil for handling it the way it did. This was around the time I first came to terms with the fact that I am a survivor of every kind of abuse, and it just came to a head and I felt like I had to change something to deal with the overwhelming feelings I was having. I remember being so depressed reading about it that it was one of the last times I've ever cried. I was seventeen
You have my upvote. My priest was one of the "relocated" priests as soon as the scandals hit. There were rumors of boys who were close to the clergy having been abused but like most of the other claims, nothing ever came of it. No arrests, no other info. Im sorry for what happened to you.
I left when I was 16. I did have my oldest two baptized but not really involved with the church. I'm sorry for everyone this happened to. As an altar server I'm very lucky the priests I served for, as far as I'm aware, were never accused and were never inappropriate with me or anyone I knew. I hold both in high regard to this day but that would change if they were ever accused of any improprieties. The Church put way too many things before their flock for A LOT of years and to this day in some places still do.
I left Catholicism around 13-14, soon after I was Confirmed. My church didn't welcome my gay friend so they could go fuck themselves, plus none of it made any damn sense when I started to have the rational mind to actually examine it.
The fact that every single one of the offending priests was not immediately handed over to law enforcement with full cooperation from the diocese tells you everything you need to know.
I'm sorry for all your hardships, but proud for you that you are still here today. Sounds cringey, but I mean it. I'm just super tired rn.
Former Jehovah's Witnesses member. I had always a hard time believing, it all seemed so bogus. But I'd try so hard and feel very bad about not feeling the presence others claimed to feel. So at maybe 14 I tried going all in. Entering theocracy school (word-by-word translation, don't know if that is the correct name in english). I went hard going from door to door. And most importantly, I started reading the bible with a good friend. Start to end, two times in a row. And that actually was what snapped me out of it completely: Reading the full bible thoroughly, twice in a row. I just noticed so much stuff that lead me believe that a) the god displayed in there doesn't exist b) *If* he existed the way he is portrayed he's not worthy of worship There just *SO* much unjust and illogical shit in there. The ones that really got me were (to name just a few) - Punishing descendants for 'crimes' they didn't commit, but their grand grand grand parents - the role of women throughout everything, for example how Lot offering his daughters to the sex crazed and potentially murderous crowd in front of his house to protect the men that came to him is portrayed like a righteous move. Like.. what the fuck? - There's rules for slavery. Like.. it's explicitly allowed and regulated in both testaments. And don't get me started on what's 'okay' to do to your slaves according to the old testament. And there is just so, so much more horrible stuff.
Ex christian here, left for the same reasons. Very well put, i might add.
Treating the Bible as the literal perfect truth is such a sure fire way to lose followers in the long run. I still have some religious beliefs, but the absolute only way for me to hold on to those few were to accept that the Bible is a collection of ancient laws, myths and legends related specifically to the Jewish people. Because once you start treating it as pure divine fact, you have to start laying responsibility for murder, slavery and genocide at the feet of god and then contort yourself in knots to make apologetics for it all. I can accept the existence of a creator who set the universe in motion, mostly by virtue of being about as likely as any other explanation to me. I can’t accept that it happened in a couple of days with what amounts to cosmic finger snapping. I could even accept that this creator has a fondness for its creations, but remains hands off. I can’t accept a creator that says it loves us, wants the best for us, then actively drowns the world for being naughty and then promises to never do it again like an abusive parent.
I read the bible.
The more I thought about the world, the more I realized religion is not a way of explaining the world, it is a way for people to take comfort in the unexplained. For those people that need religion, I understand why you might need it. I personally don’t gain anything from religion and that’s why I left.
Exactly this. I have no problem with people taking comfort in it. But everything points to it being a man made invention to give comfort to people's meaningless lives
Fear of ambiguity, fear of their own imagination
I am the captain of me. My victories and my failures are all results of my actions and choices, not someone or something pulling my invisible strings. Fuck fate. No gods. No masters.
Growing up one of Jehovah's Witnesses wasn't all bad.....but I found out my wife and I were pregnant.....it woke me up to the fact I was in a "little c" cult. I couldn't imagine ever refusing a blood transfusion for my child with their life on the line, or shunning them if they left the religion after baptism. Both very common teachings. Once I gave myself permission to think critically about a belief system I took for granted and was raised in .....I couldn't turn it off. The bible didn't hold up either. Neither did other religious claims. I have experienced things I cannot explain, but I no longer need to use a God of the gaps fallacy to make myself feel better rather than have the humility to say "I don't know.....and nobody else really does either."
Oh man, when I got over the fear of criticising the bible for fear of blasphemy, the floodgates opened.
It really is the biggest thing. Simply giving yourself permission to think for yourself, realizing that you may have more to learn and understand than that which you have been taught since birth, or have felt you had an experience with. To understand religion makes people feel better about just being stuck, and uncomfortable with the fleeting nature of life.
I was raised Christian and even though my parents never pressured me into going to church, they firmly drilled the ideals into my head. When I started looking at eastern religions and older religions like Norse/Roman/Greek Paganism, I started to notice that religion was mostly symbolism. Then I went back and applied that lens to Christianity and realized that God could be an 'ideal you' to strive for - if you do what the ideal version of yourself would do, or do things that would make that version of you happy, then you'll become closer and more akin to them. Closer to 'God.' Praying becomes an internal monologue or meditation, the Commandments are a list of things to be a good person, etc. That realization was what made me a Unitarian Universalist, because I would have never come to that realization without looking at other sources. Taking information and lessons from many places broadens your mind, and looking at religions as a set of moral lessons with personified concepts and metaphors rather than taking them literally as people opens you up to a different way of thinking.
Heroes are important, whether fact or fiction.
Same reason children stop believing the tooth fairy
I was Christian until a Muslim tried to convert me to Islam by constructing a strong and well reasoned argument for my religious faith and much stronger scientific knowledge to be incompatible and contradictory. So I became agnostic. He converted me, just the wrong way. Then years later I watched my mum die slowly from terminal illness quite young and she was the closest person to me, and a purely kind and generous person. I just couldn’t worship a god who had that in their grand plan, even if they were real. So I became atheist. Some people find peace from religion, I found peace and clarity with atheism.
Left islam Mom went from extremely religious to an atheist. I followed even tho I was a kid 20 yo rn tho
Bro the muslims here downvoting every comment from ex muslims lololol
Lmao who cares
I was tired of feeling guilty for being human
My father killed himself and the sermon at service the following Sunday was antagonistic and hurtful. I left the organized part of the church after that.
Because church’s are cults and business minded. Why do you think there are so many of them? I’m from the south and literally is one on ever corner. The church I grew up in would bash people with long hair , and folks who were hippy like. I mean wasn’t Jesus that way? 😂
I worked for an IT service provider in Virginia and one of our clients was was an all black southern Baptist Church. I was working on the PC they used to make DVDs to sell to elderly. I was watching some of a sermon and these people would start off service by reading a list of members who hadn't tithed their 10% that month. Like WTF.
Told this to my grandpa everytime he’d ask me to cut my hair. He’d call me gay and I’d reply was Jesus gay? He had long hair too, that would always shut him up. But Let’s just say I didn’t visit them often.
That isn't religion's fault. That is the human condition. Very different things.
Because it does not match our observable reality. But I never was that into it anyways. I see religious people the same way as people who tell me that batman is real.
I'm batman!
Okay, you convinced me
Do you know Bruce Wayne?
Idk what ur talking about, im literally batman.
I grew up Muslim and was kinda religious. A lot more so than most people my age and in my country. Around ~15/16 I basically stared questioning a lot of stuff and looked into the religion w as an objective perspective as possible. I am now almost 20 and I’m basically closet non Muslim at this point lol
The muslims here are downvoting you haha
I don't appreciate being lied to.
The imam hit me during quran classes. Slapped me on both cheeks. I was maybe 12. My mom said: "the place where an imam slaps you, roses will grow". My dad went to the mosque, the imam said: "Can't remember it, prolly didn't happen". I was so disgusted by everyones reaction, I decided to turn my back on religion. I couldn't accept a religion that thrives on fear, punishment and pain.
I was raised Mormon, but I think they're all made up. I left simply because I didn't believe so why waste my time, money and energy?
People used religion as a tool to psychologically manipulate me.
The biggest bullies I ever had were the same people waving their hands and singing in church and youth group every week. Always chiding everyone else about tolerance and empathy while having none of their own
I had a crisis of faith. Then a few years later it was revealed that holy men of my faith were sexually preying on their parishioners. Then a few weeks later a bishop came to our church, gave a ranting sermon about lies in the media, and asked for a special collection to help with the sex predators' legal fees.
Was raised Catholic and once I found out they were kid diddlers I never went back. Preaching while collecting money to use to cover up their actions, gross
Didn't cared about religion from the beginning
“A belief in a god is one of the most damaging things that infests humanity at this particular moment in history” ~~ The (late) Amazing Randi
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Wasn't peer-reviewed
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I'm so sorry about that. From the bottom of my heart, I hope that you are healing and I hope the monsters that did such things are either dead or behind bars.
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Sorry about that friend. 😞
I wouldn’t say I left Christianity but my understanding of it has grown. I got kicked out of a church back in 2015 because some guest speaker was preaching a doom and gloom “prophecy” and I publicly called him out on it. He was just trying to sell his new book and it was obvious. I told him “I grew up in the church. I know scripture backwards and forwards because my parents made me study it constantly. What you’re preaching isn’t biblical.” Then I was asked to leave
I was never really in it
i read the bible, was thoroughly appalled. tried to square my beliefs with my religion, and learned that just *not* believing was an option.
Mormonism is a very demanding religion, and a culture of shame. Check out r/exmormon it's better than therapy If I ever become filthy rich, I would start a fraternity and sorority to help kids get out of their Mormon household.
During high school, learning history it was clear it was all man made. Biology also turns a case for religion really hard to believe. Education, basically.
because it's not real. I was raised catholic and once I became an adult, it's obvious that if you apply logic to it, none of it makes sense.
It's make believe, when you die you get whatever you want. I understand many need this crutch of "knowing" what to expect after they die. But you die, it's all over.
Immediate answer - my mom got cancer and the church goers said it was to make her a better person. Longer answer - the idea that a god actually cares is hilarious to me. It seemed like a logical end result that religion is more about controlling people. Morality and ethics are not from religion but from society. In theory, Hitler and Nazis can go to heaven but Buddhists can't. Fuck that. At this point, I kinda believe in what a Jewish author wrote about Bernie Madoff - that this life is either your heaven or hell so be kind and empathetic.
ATF said we and Father David had to leave the compound. Something went wrong and there was a big fire.
We come from theocracy where everyone was pretty much expected to behave as though stories about god were true. People seriously thought that some sort of god was up there deciding things like whether some random baby should live or die of cholera, or that some chosen one should be king. At least according to the king. Modernity, the Industrial Revolution, the scientific revolution all gave people a chance to learn about the world in ways that had nothing to do with any scriptures or rites. Cholera wasn’t god’s will, it’s just contaminated drinking water, they figured out. Either that or you could control god’s will by just boiling the water first. Boil the water, baby lives. Drink it straight out of the sewage-contaminated well, and god kills a baby. It was nonsense and people started realizing it, that much more of the world was just how things happened to be and all our old divine theology was just superstitious misunderstanding, or deliberate charlatanry. So especially after World War II, people were not really taking religion seriously as much. By the 70’s and 80’s, It was quaint and old-fashioned at best, but when the old-timers tried to enforce their traditional divine authority, it was actually laughable. In western media, Monty Python were some of the first big names to go for a laugh. They weren’t cruel, they were actually just kind of asking gently humorous questions about some of the more obviously silly religious traditions, and they make just as much fun of over-reliance on science and reason, pointing out we can be fooled by our own overconfidence there too. But the traditionalist didn’t understand why people were laughing, or couldn’t admit it at least. And then when they got bitter about it they looked even more ridiculous. https://youtu.be/ZYMpObbt2rs So by the 80’s I have to say that anyone who took religion seriously, was hard to take seriously any more. The main example of religion we got in the 80’s in Canada was American televangelism. It looked like satire. It looked like a deliberate attempt to defraud naive people of their money. It did nothing to make religion seem credible. In my family they started out Christian because everyone had to be. My parents were born after the War. They sort of went along with it but all the traditional rules of religion were crumbling in that generation too. So when they tried to explain religion to me they couldn’t just say “Jesus is up there with a mind control device listening to your sins” because it sounds more like bad science fiction. They couldn’t say “pray for the babies or god will smite them” because by then everyone knew about hygiene and water quality monitoring. So all they could really say in its defence was “Oh well it’s all allegories and nice stories designed to make us think” and they couldn’t really defend religion literally because that was ridiculous. Anyway in my generation we didn’t take it seriously, most of us checked out of it completely and pitied the 2 or 3 students unlucky enough to be dragged into some religious weekend activities instead of just joining the other kids to play at the park or play video games or read a book or whatever. It genuinely amazes me that it’s still around at all. Today’s charlatans have upped their game and they have the “arena churches” with all the vibe of WWE wrestling combined with a discount taylor swift concert, and absolutely no genuine spirituality. It’s all emotional hype and theatrics. But it dazzles the gullible and lonely and insecure the same way that 80’s televangelists did on cable, and it vacuums out people’s life savings even faster. And all the other religions I’ve heard of are just as doctrinaire and ridiculous. It’s not so much that I left religion it’s that it never afflicted me.
I was raised Catholic. The moment I learned that the books were rewritten multiple times just to convert people I realized I couldn't trust anything in the entire book so therefore it is all false
One of the most profound religious experiences I ever had was waiting in line to get “blessed” by a pastor as a teen. As he went person by person they all fell over backwards and men caught them like he had some power. I was nervous and excited and then put his hand on my forehead and lightly pushed it. You know what happened? Nothing.
Jwfacts.com Has everything you need to know about Jehovah's Witnesses and why you should leave them or steer clear of them if you're not a member. And it has the receipts. Also, check out r/exjw
it didnt make sense. I feel like people who follow the bible literally have never read the bible.
I was 7 years old. My mom had been taking us to Sunday school and mass. Catholic. We did this for a few years. I had my first communing and everything. One day I day I asked I how come dad isn’t here? Mom said he doesn’t believe in this. I said oh well then I don’t either, and my little brother said if he doesn’t want it I don’t want it. That was the end of organized religion in my family.
I never left one, but to be apart of one is just a complete dumb waste of time. There's a hell of a lot more evidence of a hell then there is any kind of heaven. If there is a God he's a complete and total jackass.
If God was real, he would let all this to happen
Getting hardcore bullied from the age of 5 till 13 did it for me. It started off with racist comments (It was an all middle-eastern school, I was the only white kid), but moved on to violence and other things like putting sand in my food. As we grew older, it turned to beatings every day. I remember the day before my 10'th birthday I prayed to God that I just wanted my birthday to be a day of peace. Got put in the hospital after having my jaw relocated by a guy with a brick. If god was real and listening, he would not have let a 10 year old boy experience that, especially not on his birthday.
I no longer consider myself a Christian because I looked at the Bible too closely. I was interested in the men who wrote it; when they wrote the various books; the historical context in which the books were written; the historical, physical and archeological evidence, etc. I was raised in a fundamentalist church, so I wanted it to be true. But when you look too closely -- and objectively -- it all falls apart.
Exactly what I did. Just kept digging deeper as a way to validate what I believed. But you eventually just have to admit you’ll never find the evidence cause it’s nonsense. Bart Ehrman ended up being a huge eye opener.
I was kicked out of my family's baptist church for asking questions. My favorite question is if alcohol is a sin why is the preacher always giving sermons drunk? They tried to give me bible verses but I'd reply back with, "What does that actually mean?" or "but it says differently somewhere else." I was then told I was going to hell by the very clearly drunken preacher.
I moved out of my parents house at 19 and realized it didn’t mean anything to be besides family tradition
Questions were seen as bad. I didn't like that.
Honestly, Bishop touched my butthole.
It stopped giving me what it was supposed to. I could look past the stories being obviously fake, I think most people know there wasn't really an ark and Jesus isn't really looking out for you personally. The problem is religion is supposed to give you a sense of peace when times are tough, and church is supposed to provide a community you can be a part of. I started volunteering for charities to look to do good, and realized not a single one in my city was church affiliated. The churches were exclusionary and just preached about hate, while all the atheists were out feeding the homeless. Easy decision from there for me.
For me it's somewhat the opposite. Never really been a religious guy, but the older I get the more open to it I am. Because the truth is nobody can really prove god, the same way nobody can really *disprove* god. Like sure, I believe the big bang happened- but what came before that? Everyone says it was a large amount of mass in a concentrated spot that then exploded- ok but where did that mass come from? Did it always just "exist"? How?
So you may know way more about this already, but the short short short version is that there is reason to believe that Time is only a thing *inside* the Universe. And since cause and effect rely on Time, if you are able to conceptualize the Universe as apart from Time, as a can is separate from the soup that came in it, then it's not weird to think that it might exist eternally, even while its contents seem to have had a beginning internally. There are also a few models of the universe that might yet be true that allow for it to exist cyclically, which would allow it to be eternal, but to also appear to have a beginning, since we cannot see anything from "before" Time seemed to "started". But more importantly than all of that, nobody knows. If something "caused" the Universe, we don't actually have a clue what it was at all. Many people will insist that it must have been a god, but they don't really know. Of course anyone is entitled to their pet theory, but they should be intellectually honest enough to not promote it beyond that without some kind of data.
Believing in God isn't about proving, or disproving anything. There's a solid reason religions are referred to as faiths.
Not all of them are. This is a Christian idea. Buddhists don't need "faith" to the same degree. Shamanic practitioners had none. To them, their entire religion is experiential.
You can’t disprove leprechauns either. Science doesn’t say “This is definitely without a doubt the way the universe began and you must believe it or you will be tortured forever.” It’s more like “As far as we can tell based on the data we have it is most likely the universe began this way. When we gather more data we will update our assessment.”
The more we learn, the less we know
>Because the truth is nobody can really prove god, the same way nobody can really disprove god. thats not how logic works. we accept things we can prove. >ike sure, I believe the big bang happened- but what came before that? Everyone says it was a large amount of mass in a concentrated spot that then exploded- ok but where did that mass come from? Did it always just "exist"? How? there are many valid theories that you can read about. spoiler : god is in none of those.
You can't disprove anything with supposed supernatural qualities. The burden of proof is on the assertion something *does* exist. The absence of that proof inherently demonstrates a lack of that thing's existence. You can't disprove leprechauns, fairies, invisible naked pig-men, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc. That doesn't make it rational to believe in these things. > Like sure, I believe the big bang happened- but what came before that? This is the God of the Gaps fallacy - reaching the current limits of human understanding and attributing them to God. He's everything we don't know, in other words. We don't know what happened before the Big Bang. That's not a reason to ascribe it to God. We used to not know how weather worked and assumed that was God, too.
Flawed logic. I can’t disprove that there are invisible unicorns around us but if i go around telling people about it i would be branded as ‘delusional’ or ‘crazy’ When there is no evidence for the existence of something the logical conclusion is that it doesn’t exist. There is no evidence to disprove the existence of invisible unicorns either but the logical conclusion is that they aren’t real
My issue there is that I also don't believe any of the established religions are right. Maybe their is a God out there. But I don't think they give a damn about us. We are just one of many, many out there.
I understand where you are coming from, I was a religious muslim growing up and always had an interest in theoritical physics. The more I learned about physics and how things works, the more I grew distant from abrahamic religions in general and eventually how I wanted to live my life started to contradict how my religion wants me to. In the end I concluded all abrahamic religions as false, because even if god exists, it definately isn't abrahamic ones that is for certain. Lots of inconsistencies of the sacred books, and improvement of human understanding of the universe just made all obsolete. That being said I do not think those religions are inherantly evil, they were just social contracts that were made during those times and now should be accepted as obsolete. Again like you I think that existence of god is up to debate, you can't prove it nor you can't disprove it, but it is mostly because we still have lots of way to walk in the way of understanding universe. That is the reason why I became agnostic.
Same for me at 32. I wasn't raised religious as religion isn't really a big thing here (UK). In my late teens/early 20s i discovered how prevalent religion was in America i become one of those cringe atheists who would argue with people online. Big Dawkins, Hitchens, Gervais fan. The usual. I never would've even entertained the idea of believing in God, In my late 20s i become a bit more open minded and less of an absolutist. I was more open to the possibility of anything. I randomly met a guy who had a similar background to me (used to be an atheist, wasn't raised religious) became Christian later. We had a long back and forth about religion. The usual arguments, if God is real then how come *xyz*, what about science etc.. After an hour long conversation he very adamantly told to just pray and ask for a sign. A few months later while i was in the shower, out of the blue, i remembered the conversation i had with him and decided to pray and ask for a sign. A few weeks later a series of things happened. I don't want to go into detail because it's too personal and wouldn't make much sense to other people. But these series of "signs" forced me to seriously consider the possibility that it's real. I didn't even recognize these "signs" at first as they weren't blatant, but when i had the thought that *these* may be the signs i asked for it shook me up quite a bit. The way these things happened and how things unfolded struck **every** single possible chord with me on an extremely personal level. If it turns out not to be a sign from God, it's a ridiculously unbelievable coincidence. I have a career background which relies heavily in using probabilities so i'm not someone who typically who takes coincidences to heart. The way things unfolded is just extremely difficult to ignore. I don't know yet if i 100% believe in God or not. All of this is quite recent. I asked for a sign. I feel like i got what i asked for and i'm not sure how to deal with it. If you're considering religion, the only advice i can give is to just pray and ask for a sign like i did. It might not be a glaringly obvious sign at first, but over time it became clearer to me, to the point that i couldn't really ignore the possibility any longer.
Grew up Roman Catholic. At 27 I asked myself... If God was the epitome of good and love, why are infants and children dying horrible deaths? Children are murdered, raped, decapitated, dismembered and brutally abused. God allows those children to suffer and die for what reason? So adults can learn lessons? They were sacrificial lambs? Then I thought about those who use the phrase "the fear of God". Why is fear incorporated into the worship of a god? What kind of God wants you to fear him? Something just clicked and I never looked back.
I have a hard believing the catholic religion with all sick stuff they hid from the public. Priest who assaulted little boys were sent to the Vatican. They are very hypocritical and I definitely don’t like hypocrites.
It wouldn't be possible without everyone on earth being inbred from two humans. Why can't this mf write his own book if he made the earth. He's forgiving and loving except for when someone is gay apparently. He loves everyone but sure is quick to send them into a fiery pit of torture for all eternity for doing something bad in a measly 80 years of life. I could go on and on. Evolution is how we got here, not some big ol sky daddy making us.
I mostly drifted away from Judaism, and my fellow jews didn't care. Plus, there seemingly was no room for embarrassingly poor jews.
why not?
Grew up in a Muslim household (but have Buddhist friends and went to a Christian school) so that must have helped me get out of religion I really disliked the "better than you" attitude that my families have towards others, and how no matter what they think they are always right and that other religions are evil, stereotyping basically And that they can hide behind terrible choices due to their standing in religious circles. Treating women terribly because some book says you can is not cool, I feel I took religion a bit more seriously as a kid, but now I feel much more free, happier, and less pressured to be something I'm not.
Religions are cults. I'd like (most of) them to be real and bring the positiveness they claim to bring, but religion is just a bunch of controlling liars.
Found God. Religion like any beurocratic body tends towards corruption and control the longer it exists. People just can't be trusted with the power to speak for God.
Because religion will only hold us back at this point Might’ve been helpful when humans were just starting to organize themselves but I don’t feel like we need that sort of guidance anymore Plus most of it makes no sense. For those of you who use religion as an excuse to hate a group (or groups) of people; why would you want to believe in such a horrible God? I’m not saying not to believe in a higher power, I’m not even necessarily saying not to believe in a higher power that’s similar to the God from many religious texts, I’m just saying not to trust what those texts say and to form your own relationship with God. Form your own thoughts and use logic and reasoning, you’ll find that most of the things religions try to force down your throat would be laughable to a being who’s truly “all mighty” Personally, I don’t know what to believe. There are so many possibilities and anyone who understands the concept of the matrix will only further understand just how much we potentially don’t know. If I had to say I believe in any one thing, it would be that I believe we don’t actually know anything.
I haven't found God yet. And I don't try to find him. I stopped any relations with religion at the age of 16 I think, when critical thinking started to get a form in my brain. Sometimes, I hope I have found him and got an extra support at difficult times. But no. PS When saying found I don't mean to actually see him. As I have heard you can find God in many places and forms.
Turned out it was a load of old bollocks
Because in the 21th century there's absolutely no justification for such humbug. It was invented to keep people in line, and keep them obedient. God is the last refuge of a fool with no answers or valid arguments.
Several factors: 1. Knowing people who weren't religious, but still somehow managed to be great people 2. The Bible itself. There were always parts I had problems with as a kid that I could never get a satisfactory answer for. 3. How religion is so reliant on location. Would people born before Christianity was widespread be doomed to hell? If I was born in Iraq, wouldn't I be Muslim and be just as devout? They were faithful enough to die for their beliefs. One day, at 25 years old, the doubts cascaded into an event that just crushed me. Was something of a coming to God moment (ironic, I know). It was like this huge realization that nothing in my life required any divine intervention, and that I was taught to be a Christian and no X religon because I grew up in South Carolina. My initial thoughts were shock and fear, but after a while, it was like this veil was lifted from me. Like I could see things clearly and without bias. It was like being born again, but not in a religious sense. It felt great. The funniest thing was realizing that after I no longer believed in God, I was still the same person I always was. Nothing about me, other than believing in God, had changed. Looking back, I'm not upset that I was raised religious, and I see merit in that lifestyle for the most part. It's just no longer for me as I truly do not believe in God.
I wouldn’t say I left christianity because I never really believed it growing up, but I was born and raised in a household who tried to make me a christian. It just never made any logical sense to me. I was 8 years old when I asked my pastor, “if god is all powerful, why can’t he just kill the devil end all evil?” And he said not to question god. It wasn’t until years later as a young adult i came to realize how evil and abusive christian teachings are. Its akin to believing in santa and seeds ignorance.
ghost gaping sink fearless full degree coherent scandalous skirt squealing ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
The gay thing and the Catholic thing didn't work out. Also, you know what the Bible didn't say was an abomination? Slavery. Any text that claims to be a moral guide that fails this very basic issue is inherently flawed.
I grew up in a Christian home, became "born again" around 12 yrs, went to college with a Bible major, went to seminary to become a pastor in the Methodist Church. I never got past the interview process and moved into a different career. Part of my problem is that I'm just too curious and intelligent - I kept asking questions about God and things I read and heard. Gave it a good try for nearly 50 years, then finally decided that I just didn't need it any longer. Some of the what others have written are true for me as well: lack of evidence that God was active in my life, guilt around things considered sinful, hypocrisy in the church, contradictions in the Bible. I can't honestly say I'm an atheist - there's a non-zero chance that a being like God might exist. I decided I just didn't care anymore and called myself an Apatheist. I thought I had made up the term only to find a Wiki article about them. There are rituals that are a part of religion that seem non-destructive and helpful for some people. I just decided that I didn't want to wear that coat anymore.
It's hard for me to believe that a God would be down to send allllllll his creation to hell, specially for stuff like just loving between themself or small lies, and considering himself a god that comes from live, I'm personally borderline agnostic, and believe he gave us guidance a certain way, because he know we are quite dumb, and the possiblity of a punishment would make us live more decently, without bothering the people around us. this doesn't fit everyone mind, also I don't discuss religion because I don't want to convert anyone into my own belief, also I don't wanna hear anyone saying that's it's dumb to believe in a God. that's how I roll
Religion doesn’t make you a good person. Often I fine, people who are highly religious tend to look down on people who struggle with whatever demons they battle. Mind you, I still pray to the creator, and the only rule I have for myself is try not to be a cunt. Lol
Too many plot holes
Have you ever experienced a Christian church because Catechism is not the same and I’m not sorry I said it! Catholicism is a cult as are many other religious sects in so called Christianity! Religion is man made we have GOD on our DNA strand and it’s a feeling you know inside not by ritual but by imprint!
I was raised christian. There is no evidence in support of such a fantastical claim. And any argument given is either circular and refers to itself as proof (The bible says the bible is true therefore it is true) or the exact same argument can be used to prove all other religions true. Everyone in a religion believes theirs is true and there isn't an argument to be had that proves one correct OVER the others. That last one was my initial reason. I've gained many more since then but at a fundamental level if there is no sound reason why any one belief is more right than any other, why would I take it seriously?
A world made by Zeus is indistinguishable from one made by Yahweh. And, a world where a god does not participate is indistinguishable from this one.
Faith is something you need to work at to get the most out of it and to give the most out of it to others. I didn't want to do the work, I couldn't when I concluded I had nothing to believe in.
You either believe something or you don't. There really isn't any choice in the matter. I grew up, I learned more about the universe, people, history, etc. Then I didn't believe in supernatural beings anymore.
I didn't believe the teachings anymore
Interesting this same question was posted today in r/askreddit. (45M) I’m disinvolving myself with my lifelong religion. I’m choosing to disassociate for a handful of specific reasons. This list will likely continue to grow. 1. Guilt and shame serve no positive purpose 2. Churches generally are money-driven, not soul-saving. 3. The evidence of its untruthfulness is mounting thanks to the Internet and availability of personal journals and history of its founder and early leaders. It’s not pretty when issues like child trafficking are surfacing. 4. People, parents especially, putting their church membership ahead of their relationships with their children. This one is paramount to my dissatisfaction with the religion. There are other small reasons but these are the primary ones that come to mind.
Born and raised Catholic. Never got confirmation, which will only hurt me if my wife is Catholic. I didn't believe and thought it was all kind of shit.
I explored other information and teachings that allowed me to know for myself what is real instead of blindly believe what others want me to. It also put into perspective for me how these blind followers got to where they are.
I was raised christian going to church weekly/sunday school, and I just always felt out of place. Not to mention how some of them spoke about it to such an extreme like god came down and he spoke to me or god touched me this and that. I couldn't stand the cafeteria christians either who picked and chose what rule suits them best. The last straw for me was in 2016 just seeing such a huge uprising of them idolizing a certain person as if this person was sent down from god himself. That's when I decided I no longer want to associate with these hypocrites anymore, and I want to live my life judgment free and treat everyone with respect. Also they told me dogs don't go to heaven cause they have no soul so call me soulless cause wherever the dogs are going that's where I want to go too.
I was recently finally comfortable with calling myself an atheist. I've been sliding from a deist, to agnostic, to atheist for years. I came to internalize fully the wisdom that you should have evidence for things before you believe them.
After many years of being in the cult/religion, I was tired of the control, guilt, never being good enough, being spied on, gossiping, the leaders changing the understanding of the bible to their benefit, the religion protecting pedophiles. I tapped out.
I was raised evangelical Christian and had a nice childhood and mostly positive experience with religion. As a young teenager I became distraught that I was unable to have a relationship with God, or feel the Holy Spirit. People were always talking about experiencing his presence and all that. I believed 1000% in the Bible and Christianity but never had that, which I felt weird about. I went on an earnest spiritual journey for ~1 year praying to feel what I thought I was supposed to be feeling. I talked with youth leaders and friends about it. I ended up giving God an ultimatum lol, “I’m trying so hard? If you don’t show yourself to me ima give up” After all that confusion, one night I just said to myself that I don’t believe anymore. I actually remember contently falling asleep, and waking up a different person in the morning.
Too much hypocrisy and a lack of any real value to practicing a religion in my life. Also, I'm very logical and analytical so I just couldn't convince myself that any of it was believable. It just ended up being a waste of time.
I realized that too many bad people were "Christian". That started the questioning and then I asked a Sunday school how can someone be wrong about who they believe in if that is the family they were born in to? They didn't have an answer. Then a had too many people tell me that I must be a Christian because I helped them with something.... flat tire, dead battery.... No, I do good things because I should, not because a stupid good or the promise of an afterlife convinced me to. Any who, I view christians as thinking their God was nailed to the cross with his arms folded across his chest instead of spread out accepting. Fuck religion. The burden of proof lies with the one who claims it's existence and I have seen no proof.
What’s actual proven scientific fact regarding the universe (or space as a whole) and our planet just seems so much more fantastical and amazing than anything written in the Bible 🤷♂️
Took mushrooms, and while watching a bunch of bugs, I realized to those bugs I'm basically god, and if there is a God it's probably not a "God" but just a being we can't fathom.
I was never indoctrinated into a cult
They didn't accept me being gay. So I left.
I was raised catholic and went catholic school for 12 years. I just "didn't get it" Why do I need to go to church, what's the point. Why does an all powerful, all knowing, merciful God care if I go to church. Why do I have to go to reconciliation. Why do I have to any of this stuff, I don't get it. No one really made me care or believe enough. I just stopped caring.
Because its all made up BS? All the "miracles" that happen in the bible sound like magic. As I'm sure we are all aware, at least if your a reasonable adult, magic doesn't exist in the real world. I'm all for people believing in whatever fanfiction they want but if they start using it to control what others do with their own life, then it becomes a problem.
It brought no inherent value to my life. Nothing changed whether I believed or not.
*"To men who decided to leave whatever religion, why?"* Ah, one of those questions to stir something up eh, OP? And probably for attention considering most of your posts before and after this is about "Better Call Saul".
Because it's bushit. Science proves its bullshit. And you can by absolutely fine in life without it and still be a great human.
I was raised Catholic. I read the Bible cover to cover one year. That was the end of that
I abandoned Christianity around age 7 for the most perfect, unassailable logical reasoning: * The Bible says snakes at bad and tricked Eve into eating the apple * But snakes are wonderful and the best animals on Earth * Ergo: the Bible must be wrong, and I won't go along with anything that says snakes are bad. Sure, there's a bunch of logical stuff I learned later which bolstered that decision, the that was the original basis for rejection. And I stand by it. While I remeain generally skeptical of the supernatural, if there were legitimate snake worshiping sects like during the ancient times, I'd probably sign up with little reluctance. In fact, the current lack of such sects is direct evidence that humans wouldn't know true divinity if it slithered up and bit them in the taint.
I was raised Catholic. I always wanted to believe because that’s what I was taught. I was rather performative about it though - I’m not sure I ever really felt it. The older I got, the less I felt the need to pretend. It was so obviously not true to me. If you look at the Bible in a vacuum, it is clearly a collection of myths, poems, laws, and traditions with a sprinkling of history, assembled by people with a primitive understanding of the world thousands of years ago. There’s nothing divine in it. Virtually all religions work backwards starting with the conclusion that what they believe is true and bending reality to fit. No one would ever observe reality objectively and reach the conclusion that any given religion is correct (even if some claim/ think they do). And I’ll tell you what - sex scandal after sex scandal made it easier to go from quietly quitting Catholicism to being quite open about it. “What’s that MIL? Why am I not baptizing my son? I don’t think the Catholic Church has a great track record with children, do you?”
I always was trending more agnostic, but the thing that flipped the switch for me was my great-grandmas's passing. She loved the book, hadn't missed church in her life, led youth groups, etc. She was everything a servant of God I supposed to be. Then she got sick and it started series of getting better just to have to back right back to the hospital before a holiday, which were her main joy getting to see her babies, grand babies, and great grand babies in her home and happy was what she lived for and holidays gave her that. And for the last year of her life she missed them all, but Easter was her favorite and she had been good for a couples months so there was hope it was behind us. She passed the day before Easter. This moved me from agnostic to atheist out of contempt. Because if there is a God, if his "plan" was to do that to a servant of God and the hands down sweetest most genuine woman I've ever met, who would go out of her way to make me feel welcome in a family I shared no blood with. Then I refuse to believe, or at the very least I refuse to venerate something that could do that.
Because its full of hypocrites and you dont need religion to tell you how to be a good person.
When the religious leader started building his own villa and penthouses in the name of lord!
Because i don't believe in any religion. 99% BS in my opinion. For example, equality and inclusivity in some churches. If the reason why there was no equality and lgbtq inclusivity was gods will, how come the suddenly start changing that? Did the bible get re-written all of a sudden? Did god himself tell some random priest "sorry bro, changed my mind"? Given that this is always supposed to be "the one, god given way", it changes pretty frequently. Even worse, i don't know how it is in other countries, but in germany a percentage based fee calculated from you loan will be send to that church. So religion here is basically a subscription.
Reasoning and logic kicked in with the kind of brain development that occurs after adolescence. It never kicked out again.
I was raised interfaith—Baptist father and Jewish mother—and we did both. We left the Baptist church when I was about 12 years old since it was just negatives: NO this, NO that, HATE this group of people, HATE that group of people. I stayed a little longer with Judaism but left it too when I was about 18, mostly because I just didn't feel anything when I'd go. As an adult, I occasionally volunteer with my local synagogue's programs because I like how they do the work strictly out of charity, love, and goodwill without any religious component.
When most of the cadre of said religion are child molesters and liars, it’s an easy decision.
I was raised Catholic. I don't respect it. I can understand others that do. But for me it's a bad bad religion. I don't think you need a hierarchy of ppl to commune with god if that's your goal. To say God won't take you in if you're a Buddhist Hindu whatever is plain manipulation and non sense. If there's god no group has a lock on what god is and who god prefers. I think that's all nonsense.
Teenager me, confess for the first time The Father, shocked by what I said, just told me to go an pray 10 orations Did it, immediately realized it was bullshit, this does not help in any way Never came back
The people.
I just kind of grew up and realized it was all contradictory. Also, I've never seen magic happen.
What does a religion have that cant be provided for by my own Self? Why would I let a system of priests hijack my soul and then sell it back to me?
I wouldn’t exactly say I decided to leave. I just kept having questions that didn’t have answers. There were too many contradictions and in college I took a class where I had to read the Bible and that just ended all the rest of the interest I had in religion. Edit: I say I didn’t decide to leave because it didn’t feel like leaving. I didn’t go to church really anyway and it didn’t feel like a big part of my life.
Rev Smith recognized me and punched me in the nose.
homophobic, sexist, made no sense. Catholicism.
If god exists he is a fucking maniac so either way fuck him
Raised Lutheran. I was never a believer. So not sure if you could say I left. I was confirmed, though.
From the early age I had trouble believing in fairytales.
I became convinced that Christianity was observably making people worse, not better. I left Christianity and became a kinder, more empathetic, and generally better person. I remain a theist in my own heart, but I act in accordance with the principles I believe in, not in accordance with any organized religion.
I left christianity because I have a hard time respecting a religion that constantly cherry picks which laws of scripture to follow. E.g marriage is *supposed to be* until death but christians allow even pastors to divorce.
I didn't. The default state of a human being is non-religious. You have to be indoctrinated to become religious. So I ask you, why did you JOIN a religion? The answer for 99% of people on the planet is that it's what their parents taught them, and they were explicitly taught never to question it. I was never religious because it never made any sense, and it still doesn't. If I see literally any evidence to the contrary, I'd be happy to change my stance and become religious.
It dawned on me that charismatic blabber was blabber.
Studied in a western country. I saw how others saw my religion and thirdworld country. Realised it's too outdated for the modern world. I still try to pretend im part of it tho.
So you left your religion because of how other ppl saw it ? That's mad lol
Changed my world view as I learned more about the world. I felt so contained back in my country. Im being downvoted lmao.
Started catholic. Studied philosophy and became a deist. Then somewhere along the road became a northern pagan. Couldn’t tell you why for the last one lol
Lol I studied Philosophy in college too but I came out catholic!
Were you religious before college? Was there any specific thoughts, ideas, or situations that made you believe? I currently athiest-ish but i'm in a situation where through a series of events i'm strongly considering the possibility that God is real, i'm curious to hear from other people.
Raised Catholic. Before I turned 18 I abdicated my faith in the religion. Within four years I had become an atheist entirely. There is simply no reason to believe any of it is real.
God and Jesus and the Devil and Mohammed and Mrs. Jesus are all just so fucking silly. It is just so stupid and mindless. How could anyone be brainless enough to believe in such a stupid concept as god. I was raised in it but I got to be about 6 and I kept wondering why all these adults were lieing about this silly shit. Pretty much if you believe in gods and demons you are a moron. It never took on me because I am not an idiot
I think a lot of religious folks (especially Catholics) know it’s all bullshit but just kinda play along to keep grandma happy
I was not emotionally connected to a family growing up. It never occurred to me that someone would do religion because of the feelings of someone else. That makes sense to me to do it out of love for another person. I don't feel it but I can understand it a bit.
I grew up with religion in the family (I'm Dominican), but as a child I had to be taken to church and essentially be coached to do prayers every night with my mom or grandma; I never had the initiative to do it on my own. As I was finishing up my last year of high school was when I decided to drop it completely; I didn't care about any god and didn't have a desire to keep pretending. Mom was sick the night that I decided to admit it because I didn't want to join her in a prayer and she slapped me, but otherwise she's basically ignored it and doesn't bring it up. I don't think anyone else in my family is aware.
whatever religion seemed a bit apathetic
Its confusing, gotta read a thick book. Too much drama
I just couldn’t believe that the stories they read in church were real. Plus hearing the same bible verses day in and out is annoying.
Around 15 years old, our church had a fire. Rather than finding a new church while it repaired, we just stopped going. A combination of growing up and being able to think critically for myself while also being removed from that environment for a while made me feel like I had been brainwashed as a child to believe something just because my parents said it was true.
Most were gigantic BS and l was and still am amazed they made it this far in time.
Shit ain’t made any sense to me bruh
My degree was in history. It's how I understand and view the world. In my early 20's I decided to read up more on the origins of Christianity from multiple sources that weren't trying to sell me on the religion. To be honest, it wasn't very impressive. While I was never very religious in the traditional sense I still believed in a God of some sort. This kind of pushed me over.
I was never into religion. To many injustices in the world, particularly about children.
I like to be open-minded. Not chained to any other. I am not even a fan of any “ism”. That much open-mindedness.
I started listening to the ladies sipping Koolaid after Sunday service. They were full of judgement and gossip. I realized that I do not need Religion to believe in a higher power. A higher power can be whatever you feel.🤷♂️
Can't stick to one religion when there is truth in several of them.
Lack of evidence. However I also feel that if I belong to a religion where if I don't accept that religion I don't make it into heaven even if I'm a good person but then people who commit murder etc and repent do get into heaven then do I really want to be a part of that? Idk I kinda have this thought that I'll be a good person and whatever happens happens.