What made you turn to/away from religion?

[browngrl]

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I saw this on Reddit and I started to think about what has turned me away from religion. I have always found religion interesting and have done a lot of reading and have tried out several churches/temples to see if one was right for me. At some point every religion I studied started to feel "wrong" to me. Some religious ideas even appalled me. Sometimes I did find some good things in the religions I studied but there was always something that seemed mean spirited/cruel/silly to me. I find that I can not just accept the good parts of a religion without also being forced to condone the parts I feel are wrong - and I just can't accept that. Now I am still interested in religion but I can not believe in God at all. For me, the tipping point in my study of Christianity was the story of Abraham and his son. I just can not find it in my heart or mind to worship a God that would dare ask someone to sacrifice his son.

On the other hand, I have two friends who have turned to religion. In both cases the people lost a child and found solace in religion and now are really quite religious.

If you have ever changed your ideas about religion - what made you turn to or away from religion or God?

edit: I can't seem to get the image from reddit on this page - here is the link: http://imgur.com/YXlYY

[freejoytoo]

I used to have faith that there was some kind of God out there, if not the Judeo-Christian one. When I started taking Philosophy classes I started to really think about this, and the idea of a soul made less sense to me. As I got older the concept of God made less and less sense to me and I didn't see why the Christian God should be given more respect than Greek gods of myth and legend. I didn't have any bad experience with religion, apart from people trying to convert me, and I still love singing hymns and the ritual of prayer but I don't believe in it.

[E Street Fan]

I can't see your image, but I can answer the question. I remember being as young as four or five and thinking the concept of God/the Holy Trinity/Jesus didn't make sense. It made as much sense to me as Santa or the Tooth Fairy, both of which I knew didn't exist at the age of five.

I knew lots of fundy types growing up, and most of them were flaming hypocrites. But they had more stable lives than my extremely dysfunctional family did (I desperately wanted stability), and the impression I got from nearly everyone was that nonbelievers were low-class, uneducated, lazy, and so on. I grew up in Kansas, mostly, and I don't remember meeting a single person who identified as agnostic or atheist. The nonChristians weren't any more open to nonbelievers than the fundies were, although that may have been for self-preservation, in retrospect.

When I was 27 or so, I read a book about international adoption whose author, a Ph.D married to an M.D., is a pretty avowed atheist. So that ended the idea that nonbelievers were dumb, lazy undesirables. Then when Harold Camping started his BS last year, I realized that I wasn't even on the fence anymore as far as god. So I started to identify as an atheist. It feels right and I don't foresee ever changing.

[debrand]

I was a naturally spiritual(or maybe just weird) child. Accepting the presence of a higher power was never an issue for me. Sometimes, I worried that Christianity was not THE religion and that worried me. WHat if I got it wrong? Everyone can't be right.

As I got older, doubts began to seep in but Christianity has an amazing ability to prevent its faithful from thinking too deeply. For instance, in the New Testament there are several verses that seem to indicate that questioning too deeply is wrong.

17 For Christ didn’t send me to baptize, but to preach the Good News and not with clever speeches and high-sounding ideas, for fear that the cross of Christ would lose its power. 18I know very well how foolish the message of the cross sounds to those who are on the road to destruction. But we who are being saved recognize this message as the very power of God.

Message: if Christianity seems incorrect or doesn't make sense, you are on the path to destruction. There are a lot of verses like this in the New Testament. And although I won't put down anyone who gains comfort from their faith, Christianity does have a built in defense mechanism from keeping its followers from asking too many questions or having too many doubts. And yes, I know that there are Christians who deal with doubt and don't mind questions. However, many Christians(and I am not overestimating the adjective many) uses verses like the ones by Paul to justify not questioning or stopping other people from asking questions.

This caused me a lot of concern especially because I've always been told that I overthink everything.

When my son reached twenty-one, he quit college, and married his girlfriend. I wanted him to continue with school and I was disappointed. That led me to consider how god treats his children. If we disappoint god and don't repent, he sends us to hell-to an eternity of torture. Think about that. Hell is torture, forever. It doesn't end. What kind of ass would set up such a system? For finite crimes, you get an eternity of torture.God is supposed to be the ultimate father but who would model their parenting after him?

Once I started really questioning hell-not just having doubts- my faith slid away. And although I hung on to it with both hands, desperate to retain my beliefs, it just left.

Bible god has too many omni's to exist. How can you be omnipotent, onmibenevolent etc and still allow suffering? Many Christians, that I know, will respond with, "But we are too limited with our human minds to understanding the workings of god." And that is my point. They stop themselves from asking further questions.

[browngrl]

I am just going to hang my head in shame - I have failed yet again to post the reddit picture.

*walks away to hide in the prayer closet*

[MissA]

I never had any real issues with religious belief in and of itself (still don't). I was bought up Catholic, although my Mom is a mellow liberal, birth-control using, thinking women-should-be-priests Catholic, and my father is an Atheist. When us kids got into our teens, we were allowed to decide whether we would continue to attend church or not. I pretty much stopped, but only because I found it dull, not because I had any bad experiences.

Throughout college I was in more of a spiritual seeker mode. I made some good friends of a wider range of religious beliefs than I had previously met, and while I did like the rituals and the communities, I was also in the process of getting a STEM degree and kept thinking "A lot of the things these people believe are kind of stupid." So I categorized myself as "Lapsed Catholic" during this period.

In my early twenties, I started getting more involved in the skeptic community, which has a lot of crossover with the atheist community. At the instigation of someone, I no longer recall who, for the first time in my life I sat down and read the Bible cover-to-cover. That was a real eye-opener. While there's a lot of good stuff in there, it is a *deeply* bizarre text. I was kind of confronted with "Boy, a lot of the things that I believe are kind of stupid." I started reading more philosophy from more religious and nonreligious backgrounds.

Then I was walking home one day and had the revelation "I don't believe in God." In all it was quite a painless process: I don't much miss belief or church. I imagine it would be a lot harder for someone who had faith as a cornerstone of their life.

[jesssnerch]

I can't see your image, but I can answer the question. I remember being as young as four or five and thinking the concept of God/the Holy Trinity/Jesus didn't make sense. It made as much sense to me as Santa or the Tooth Fairy, both of which I knew didn't exist at the age of five.

I knew lots of fundy types growing up, and most of them were flaming hypocrites. But they had more stable lives than my extremely dysfunctional family did (I desperately wanted stability), and the impression I got from nearly everyone was that nonbelievers were low-class, uneducated, lazy, and so on. I grew up in Kansas, mostly, and I don't remember meeting a single person who identified as agnostic or atheist. The nonChristians weren't any more open to nonbelievers than the fundies were, although that may have been for self-preservation, in retrospect.

When I was 27 or so, I read a book about international adoption whose author, a Ph.D married to an M.D., is a pretty avowed atheist. So that ended the idea that nonbelievers were dumb, lazy undesirables. Then when Harold Camping started his BS last year, I realized that I wasn't even on the fence anymore as far as god. So I started to identify as an atheist. It feels right and I don't foresee ever changing.

Here is the graphic in the OP:

[attachment=0]YXlYY.jpg[/attachment]

Scary, but true.

[Glass Cowcatcher]

Message: if Christianity seems incorrect or doesn't make sense, you are on the path to destruction. There are a lot of verses like this in the New Testament. And although I won't put down anyone who gains comfort from their faith, Christianity does have a built in defense mechanism from keeping its followers from asking too many questions or having too many doubts. And yes, I know that there are Christians who deal with doubt and don't mind questions. However, many Christians(and I am not overestimating the adjective many) uses verses like the ones by Paul to justify not questioning or stopping other people from asking questions.

You have no chance to survive, make your time!!! :mrgreen:

The concept of god started to just be unimportant to me when I was about 14 or 15 but I hung on in church until I was about 17 or 18. Even after I let go of belief in god, it was really hard to get rid of the assortment of other beliefs that came with that.

[debrand]

I envy those of you who lost faith at an early age. When I stopped believing, I was middle aged and still have a problem not talking to myself(praying) LOL

My youngest daughter never believed. That amazes me because we took her to church when she was young. However, she never had any deep connections with faith the way I did. I think some people are born with analytical minds and others, like myself, have to overcome black and white thinking.

[Koala]

The Bible turned me away from religion.

[alysee]

The rules. I never felt like I was going to make it to Heaven since God had all these rules that I had to follow and I couldn't follow any of them. Not for a lack of trying but I never felt good enough.

[linnea27]

My husband turned away from religion because he was raised as a Jehovah's Witness and felt that it, and by extension all religion, is a cult.

I'm sort of turning towards religion, although I don't know of any religion that would claim me. I'm developing my own "spiritual" beliefs that are based a little on what I believe to be true in my heart and a little based on the stories of various world religions. Like you, I don't think I could ever commit to a single religion because so many of them have so many awful parts, which I tend to believe were put there by man- a line of translators 2000 years long and all that.

[Sunnichick31]

Christian theology turned me away from Christianity. My mother was a Southern Baptist, and I went to a Catholic school for a few years in elementary school. I didn't get why there were differences between various religious denominations (ex-Catholics believe different things than SBs, which now that I'm older and know a bit more about the history, I do understand some of the differences a bit better). One of the main things that I didn't get was the trinity. How could God be a human and a spirit? If God was the most powerful being in the universe, why would He need to sacrafice someone else to forgive me? Couldn't he just forgive me? If Jesus was God, why did he pray to God? How could someone be forgiven and end up in heaven after murdering people just because he believed that Jesus died for him? Was God not just? Total assholes could go to heaven, but a good person who spent their lives helping others would get no reward?Anyway, I decided that Jesus couldn't be God. I still believed that Jesus existed, and still believed in stories and whatnot from the bible, but didn't call myself a Christian since I didn't believe in the theology.

Eventually in high school, I started looking into various religions, trying to figure things out. I read a little about most religions, deciding that the majority of them weren't for me (even though I do respect them.) I picked up a book about Islam (not even the Quran, jsut a copy of The Complete Idiots Guide to Understanding Islam) and before I had even finished reading, I decided that it was right for me alhumdulilah! :) (for non-Muslims, alhumdulilah means Praise God.) 3 years later, I am so happy with my choice. :)

There was a lot more going on than what I've written but this is the gist of it. :)

[Eclipse]

I was raised in a Catholic household that I used to consider to be conservative but in exposure to Catholics in the greater world have found that its quite liberal. But by the time I was 8 I was doubting the existence of God. It just didn't make sense to me that there could be a God, heaven. And the use of "man/men" in Mass to mean everyone and the pro-life stuff i had to listen to on Mother's Day at Mass angered me, even at 8 years old. Even at 8, it bugged me that women couldn't be priests. it was something I struggled with on and off but i always toed the line out of respect to my parents. I did like the rituals, marking different times of the year and different stages of life. That is something I miss. I knew it meant a great deal to my mom and not much to me. But my mom had no problem with my sisters and I being on birth control since our teenage years for health reasons and never commented when it went beyond that.

I don't have a problem with others having religious faith nor do I think it reflects on their intelligence or rational ability. I've seen intelligent and rational people have strong faith but I never have. I've been lucky to have family and friends with strong faith that haven't really pushed it on me or given me a problem about my lack of faith, especially as an adult. i will admit that I have envied those people for the comfort that religion can provide, like when someone passes away or is seriously ill.

[helloemi]

I turned to Christianity after I left my husband and was having difficulties managing my bi-polar disorder. The spiritual presence of God in my life helped me to get through this time and enabled me to take control of my life. At this stage in my life "Season" in fundie speak, I don't feel comfortable in church because I wasn't raised in that environment and I'm having difficulties finding people I can relate to, even in my very liberal church. Right now I feel more "Spiritual" than religious and it works for me.

[Terrie]

Going to a religious high school was what finally killed it for me. I went to a private Protestant high school, where I heard all these people talking about their relationship with Jesus, and how profound it was, and going "It sounds really nice. Why don't I have that?" And then they'd mentioned "And gays are evil/evolution is a hoax/How is abortion less traumatic than giving birth to a rapist's baby?" At this point, my thoughts would come to a screeching halt and I'd go :shock: :? :roll: Nor could I ever quiet that little voice inside that went "That doesn't make any sense!" when I tried to wrap my brain around Christianity. I know God is supposed to me beyond human understanding, but often I ended up with "It's not that I don't understand. It's that I do understand and it's stupid."

These days, I find that the philosophy of Buddhism makes a lot of sense to me, but the more religious branches of it still bring back that little voice.

[bananacat]

There was never some big deconversion for me. It was pretty gradual. But I think the turning point started when I was a teenager and became sexually active. I had been fed tons of gender essentialism and tons of scare stories about having premarital sex. It was made out to be some big horrible thing. And then I actually had sex and it simply wasn't the BFD everyone had made it out be. So much of what I had heard had been complete lies. This started me down the path of questioning what authority figures had told me, both religious and secular. I realized that adults don't always know more than teenagers. I also could never feel that sex in general or premarital sex in particular were just innately wrong and it was really hard for me to reconcile that with the commands of the church that insisted sex is wrong for its own sake. It was about 10 more years before I was "officially" an atheist and many other things happened along the way, but I think that's what started me down the path of questioning.

[jjmennonite]

I just wanted to have fun, and all the fun things were going to send me to hell. I am in my mid 50s, raised fundie-Mennonite, then fundie-light Pentacostel and then religion-of-the-month by my misereable father, and submissive mother. I liked to party, drink and smoke pot, as a teenager. Then I was suicidal with guilt. I tried to live the straight-and-narrow way for a while, but it did not work for me. For a few years, in my early 20s I thought I was 'saved' and would get 'right with God' at some point, but was having too much fun having drinks and having sex. Then gradually I came to see how silly my biblical beliefs were.

This is a very condensed version and I had a lot of issues and angst in this journey, but I am happily spiritual now, but not religious.

[Olive Plant]

Christians turned me off to Christianity, plain and simple. They had no clue what I was going through, but they kept talking about how it was due to my own pride/ rebellion/ bitterness/ some other sin they hadn't thought of but that I needed to confess before everything could be OK. I grew up in a fairly fundie environment, and disliked some of what I saw, but there was enough good there that it wasn't a big deal. Also, I liked debating theology and that sort of thing, so if I disgreed with something, I could happily state my opinion and still remain within the fold.

But the minute people started saying: you are this, or you are that, I had enough sense to realize they were fill of shit. I knew it wasn't true. If they were lying about me, or assuming the worst based on their need to put everything in nice little Christian boxes, then they were obviously mistaken on a much deeper level. You don't make that kind of categorical error one time and one time only. Then I rememberd all the stuff I'd disagreed with over the years, and how weird it had seemed at the time, and how often I'd tried to debate those things.

[Childless]

I find myself disagreeing with Christian doctrine more and more as I get older. I don't fit in the Christian religion anymore and feel uncomfortable in churches. I've become disillusioned with the hatred, ignorance, hypocrisy, and politics that I've seen creeping into Christianity. A lot of their beliefs I would never want to teach my son, so how can I support them by calling myself a Christian? The truth is I can't.

[lilwriter85]

I was raised Catholic and was a bit devout until I was 22. I turned away from religion and a belief in a higher deity due to a combination of things. Sometime after I turned 22, family issues arose and I won't go into details, but the issues pushed me slowly away from religion. Sometime after that I started to take environmental science classes at my college and those classes pushed me more into the accepting evolution. I also read the Bible and other religious materials, which finally ended me belief in God. I'm 27 now and I'm still learning how to connect and be around friends and relatives who are believers. It can be hard. I still love and respect friends and family members who are religious.

[silverspoons]

I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school K-12. When I got to high school I really saw how materialistic and superfical the church was that we attended. I lived in a wealthy new england suburb and it was all about what clothes people wore, gossip, and big fundraisers. I had to turning points. One was I was at a fundraiser for a political candidate and a drunk guest made a pass at me. the next day he was at church and sitting behind me. I refused to shake his hand and glared at him. It didn't go over well. After that I explored other faiths, learned some hebrew, visited buddhists, bible tents, I just tried to learn as much as I could. The final straw was I had to have an emergency partial hysterectomy at 19. I was not sexually active, and it was due to a birth defect. My parish priest came inyelling at me saying that I was wrong to "choose" this surgery and not have kids. Yeah, maybe he should have seen me 24 hours early with my prolapsed uterus rolling on my dorm room floor in pain. the priest told me I had sinned and I needed to reflect and come and repent. No way!

After this I spent my jr year in college traveling and got to experience different areas of the country and faiths. I knew I didn't want to go back as a member. I still go to family events, baptisms, funerals, and weddings. I married an non-active LDS man and we raise our kids just to be good kids. We still read bible stories during easter and christmas at home.

[mockingbird]

I was raised pretty mainstream Catholic (not extremely liberal but not conservative either). Right now my problems with the Church have to do more with the Vatican/official Church than beliefs. I have always been spiritual in a way and although I have questioned always returned to what I would consider "basic" faith. What I really started to question in the past year or so I blame on being educated at a social-justice-focused Jesuit college. I decided that while I do believe in the basic theology of Catholicism I think many positions on social issues (premarital sex, abortion, PRESCRIBING BIRTH CONTROL TO OTHER PEOPLE [sorry that one makes me stabby], etc.) are wrong/outdated/hurtful. I have also relaxed a bit in general which is nice for me: I am a "Hermione" type person and it is very easy for me to get caught up with rules. For example for years I would only go maximum five above the speed limit while driving and would freak out if I ever went above. So I used to become almost obsessively guilty about really little things with my religion, like that I didn't have the perfect "BFFs with Jesus" relationship (not as big in Catholicism but some people still talk about it), that I forgot to pray while walking down the aisle after communion, didn't go to confession during Lent (I hate confession and so do my parents so we never went, but occasionally I would freak out about it), etc. I remember when we first learned about the Beatitudes (blessed are the...) I thought the "poor in spirit" one was about people who didn't have super strong, 100% sure beliefs. I was in second or third grade and was disappointed when I learned it was describing people who were humble, because I thought I wasn't a good enough Catholic and had hope for a minute that Jesus knew there were people like me. Like I said I have always had "core" beliefs, but when it came to more nitpicky things I have always kind-of simultaneously obsessed about them and not really believed in them/been bothered by them. I always under everything thought it should be simpler but I guess just kind-of accepted that it wasn't. (Though at the same time somewhere in there I also learned that questioning is good and believed that if you were really meant to be in that faith if you questioned you would come back to it with a stronger faith. God could handle your questions.) Sometime in the past year one of my childhood friends said something about how she went to Mass but was a "bad Catholic" because she didn't believe in any of their positions on social justice things, and that was kind-of the "ding" in my head that that is okay and from there all the Vatican's-social-positions and obsessive parts of my faith just went. I was happier because I didn't let myself obsess about if I ate half an hour before Mass would I go to hell, etc. and I was allowing myself to believe what I really believed. So now I believe more of like the basic tenants of Catholicism, and in general that what matters is Jesus' two commandments, Love God and Love Others and that Jesus wouldn't judge people the way the Church is doing now. While my friend's comment was what made it okay (in my mind) for me to change, my questioning came from just a more general awareness of social problems and how the Church's stance didn't really seem to match up. Like at my Catholic undergrad the biggest club was the Gay Straight Alliance yet they would tell us officially that the GSA could not host events that promoted "the gay lifestyle" and "becoming gay". All of the Jesuits who taught at my school were pretty liberal and accepting so I usually got the feeling this was just toeing the party line. I had to wonder why they would do that when they were in a position to change the church* - they were being hypocrites. Once I saw this as hypocritical I started to see myself the same way too and that I didn't really believe some of the things I'd been taught, like that it's wrong to "act on" homosexuality (you might be born that way but sucks for you, to engage in any sexual/romantic actions with a same-sex partner is a sin!! is basically the message I got from my church).

*The Jesuits have a history of rebellion so I was so hoping they would speak out against the birth control crap. But no.

I haven't been to Mass in about a year, maybe year and a half, besides at home with my family. I'm not sure if I want to go back not really because I don't like it (I like the rituals) but I don't know if I want to associate myself with a church whose current political actions I don't agree with. I think I might check out if we have a liberal Episcopalian church maybe. Or just make the rounds at all the fundy churches around here for kicks. We have a lot.

Edit: On women priests. This is one reason why I am thinking about checking out an Episcopalian church rather than a liberal Catholic one (not sure how well that would go anyway since there is only one Catholic church around here, though I could always try it). When I was little I thought that if I was a boy I would have been interested in becoming a priest and thought being a nun would be boring so it wasn't really fair :lol: While I don't want to be a priest anymore and there are other issues I'd like to see resolved first (obviously all at once would be nice) it's just like one more thing to add to my growing "problems with the Vatican" list.

[delilahdog11]

Applying critical thinking skills to the bill of goods I was being sold by following a Christian lifestyle. I felt like I had to check my brains and natural instincts at the door, in order, to follow the Christian doctrine. It made me uncomfortable. I am getting my masters in microbiology and I still struggle with accepting evolution. Not really, but it took me awhile to realize that I had been lied to when my religion told me evolution never happened and all the data collect to support the theory was fabricated. I also didn't want to become a submissive wife and mother. I also got fed up with the guilt of being a sinner. I wanted to reveal in pleasure without feeling like a horrible person.

[The Archivist]

Bigotry turned me away from religion. The certainty that one is "right" and all others are "wrong." Some are "saved" and some are not. Some are "chosen" and everyone else is just chattel. It's bullshit. It's an excuse to dehumanize and devalue other people, and there is nothing Christlike or godly about it. Just plain old boring monkey social hierarchies, yawn, dressed up in fancy supernatural packaging.