What happened after you left? Do you still have ties with your family? Did people bother you to try and make you come back?
I was raised Mormon.
I remember chilling in the computer lab at university when I came across someone’s Jehova’s Witness deconversion story online. It was so eerily similar to my experience that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Because it wasn’t my religion, I was able to see it the way an outsider might see my own.
It broke something inside me irreparably. Faith became a dirty word. All conservative values instantly vanished. I guess this conflict had been beneath the surface for some time but finding that story lit a match.
I mean what kind of religion needs to brainwash its members not to seek out material critical of itself? What kind of religion puts you in a room, alone, as a teenager, with a 50-year-old man who is asking you about your sexual habits? What kind of religion has billions of dollars in real estate investments? What kind of religion requires you to ring people’s doorbells and pester them about your religion? What kind of religion asks you to (despite how they phrase it) hate gay people?
I stopped having anything to do with the church after that. When it comes to integrity, I can’t pretend. I was able to hold my ground against all the creepy shit that happens when you leave a cult. And now, 20+ years later, I rarely even think about it.
Former Mormon here too. For me it was the news about the SEC fines. The church breaking the law to hide from the government and it’s members just how much money they actually have. For decades too. The reason they didn’t want people to know? Because they’d have ideas on how it should be spent. Yes, I think the hundreds of billions of dollars should be spent feeding and clothing the poor and homeless. Ya know, like that Jesus guy said, like a lot. But no, they say they need it for the 2nd coming. Cuz, Jesus is gonna need a large diversivied stock portfolio.
Since then everything else fell apart. I saw the insane number of lawsuits suing the church for covering up sexual abuse, and the church defending the abusers, not the victims. Now all I can see is a bunch of terrified, greedy old men clutching to power and lying to try to stop their members leaving in droves.
It’s such a shame too because there are genuine positives, especially as a kid. The frequent scout trips were amazing for learning practical skills and having fun. I never lacked for good role models or friends and adults would gladly mentor you if you expressed an interest in something. It really felt like a community. I haven’t found anything like that since.
What kind of religion puts you in a room, alone, as a teenager, with a 50-year-old man who is asking you about your sexual habits? What kind of religion has billions of dollars in real estate investments?
Turns out that’s pretty much all of them.
What kind of religion requires you to ring people’s doorbells and pester them about your religion?
Honestly, I weirdly respect this. The JWs/Mormons at least take their obligations from 1 peter 3:15 seriously. The vast majority of Christian denominations just kind of ignore that one.
Turns out you kinda have to ignore most of what God tells you to do, just so you don’t end up in jail. But I do respect that they’re actually more of the Bible seriously. The outcomes are worse, but they DO stand for what they believe.
I just wish they put all that dedication into something like doctors without borders or something.
The vast majority of Christian denominations just kind of ignore that one.
And thank god for that.
Oh yeah, fewer people ringing my doorbell is always better.
Indeed!
Though my doorbell is unplugged anyway lol
Turns out that’s pretty much all of them.
The evangelical / nondenominational churches are honestly the ones I like best in that regard, with owning land/businesses. They are almost never some weird real estate owning corporation behind the scenes, just a collection of locals who pooled money and built a church. I don’t agree with their religion or beliefs, but that’s different.
Good for you. Sincerely.
What made me do it was the unending stream of contradictions in the bible internally, between the Bible and reality, and between the Bible and what people say is in the bible in order to fix the other two.
It’s the old “nobody could show me why I should believe any of it”, including me. And the more I looked for answers, the more problems and contradictions I found.
I have plenty of contact with my family, my parents are both great people and it helps a lot that they’re not so much religious as that they think “its important”. My more extended family has made a few tries, I occasionally get into discussions with a few aunts, uncles and cousins, but they’re not exactly good at it. It’s just looping around the same old terrible arguments that quickly end when I ask them to show that it was Jahweh who created the universe, and not Bob.
The church made the biggest effort to get me back, but they have a financial incentive, unlike everyone else. It was an incredible pain in the ass to get removed from church rolls before GDPR.
and also the annoying “actually” constantly tyring to correct media potrayal of christians/christainity too nobody likes nagging karen for christianity.
For me it was the fundamental contradiction between God being both good & all powerful. If (S)he created everybody exactly the way they are, how are they to condemn anyone to hell? Some people are born incapable of communicating or understanding anything, some people are born with their wires crossed and are just evil, some are born in a time/place where they never hear “the good news”. Why would a good and loving God condemn them forever for being exactly what (S)he designed them to be?
The Christian Bible I grew up with was rife with examples of people God created and designed specifically to be antagonists so they could be punished: Cain, Pharoah, Ahab & Jezebel, Judas Iscariot, Ananias & Sapphira, The Beast & Antichrist, etc.
Why would a good and loving God condemn them forever for being exactly what (S)he designed them to be?
This is it exactly. Why even have a “chosen people” in the Israelites during the Old Testament? Why create those other people at all? Just to give random people for the Israelites to genocide like they did the Midianites/Canaanites/Hittites/10 other -ites?
And what of the world before Noah? God realizes he messed up and needs to cull all but a small handful of humans? I thought God was supposed to be unerring. Same for Sodom and Gomorrah, why allow cities to become dens of sin? Or why fear the hubris of humanity constructing the Tower of Babel (or create them with motivation to do so in the first place) if divinity remains safely unreachable to mortals?
Just way too much that doesn’t make sense.
God doesnt condemn you to Hell its you you have a choice walk the narrow path or the wide, easy one all of us are sinners, due to Adam and Eve eating the apple.
and I could argue the same for history Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung
Pharoah had multiple chances to let the Israelites go, yet he didnt Cain chose to kill Abel Judas chose the silver coins The brast isnt a human, and he was created by God but pride corrupted him
A) you don’t have a choice. Christianity teaches that our lives are deterministic, God chose who will and won’t make it into heaven. If he decided to design you to be a sinner who won’t accept him then that’s your fate.
B) Pharoah never had a chance. It wasn’t himself or the devil who made him reject God, the Bible itself that God hardened his heart and made him act the way he did. Same with Judas, he was chosen to fulfill prophesy. Sure, a different follower could have betrayed him, but it had to be someone because God decided that someone had to take the fall. He wasn’t even able to repent afterwards, even though he tried.
C) Almost everyone ever born won’t make it to heaven according to Christianity. Many are called but few are chosen—as you mentioned narrow is the path according to scripture. It also states that “many” (interpreted majority of) Christians will stand before him in judgment and be rejected because they didn’t believe in him the right way. Performing miracles and healing the sick isn’t enough if you weren’t the right denomination with the right version of the Bible.
D) the beast and antichrist are both human, one a politician and one a religious leader who team up to deceive the world
A. God made us rational beings, but our minds cannot comprehend omnipotence fully
B. Judas couldve repented, but he just committed suicide
C. Many are called, but few will respond. Many “christians” will claim to have followed Christ, but didnt. And the Bibles translations are based on literalness and how its said
for example “Libera nos a malo, Domine” can be translated as “Save us from evil, Lord” and “Please save us from Evil, Lord”
D. I thought by beast you meant Satan
Sudden realization it was all bullshit and I’d rather sleep in on Sundays. I was 7 or 8.
I was never religious, but at around that age I remember confirming/asking if Santa wasn’t real, and then immediately following up with: “And god isn’t real either, right?”
Thankfully, I have atheist parents so I got a straight answer.
As in computer programming, the laziest are the smartest (or maybe the smartest are just the laziest).
Raised protestant Christian. What made me leave the religion: 1. debating a militant atheist who asked questions I couldn’t answer 2. textual criticism and apologetics classes I took during my biblical studies course 3. intellectual curiosity. that sounds conceited but you do have to have some form of it to question everything you have been taught up until then.
what happened next is not very exciting. I worked up the courage to tell my mom and the church, stopped attending church services, and had a second puberty of sorts (many such cases!). I’m on good terms with everyone in my family, they respect my position and I respect theirs. No coercion of any kind.
I’d call myself agnostic today. I don’t 100% with absolute certainty rule out the possibility that there might be a higher power after all, but I live my daily life as if there isn’t any.
What kind of questions did the militant athiest ask that you couldn’t answer
Hopefully something terribly comedic, like: could god make his vagina so small that he couldn’t make a penis small enough to enter it?
I think yes
I was baptized as a protestant Christian and also hat my confirmation when I was young, but I have been an atheist for long time.
I left as soon as I started to work, as I needed to pay more than 500€ church taxes per year. After I left, I didn’t have to pay that amount anymore, that’s about it.please go to a church that doesnt try to steal all your money (probably a catholic one)
I think the amount of tax you pay in the catholic church is the same in Germany. Also I prefer to live without any gods, it has been 130 years since the age of enlightment.
I think you dont pay anything in Catholic Churches
Then you are probably not very familiar with church law in Germany
where im from you dont pay anything
is it different in germany?
I was already really good at not believing in literally every other religion around the world, so I asked myself what made the religion that I was raised in any different?
How did I know I was lucky enough to be born into the right faith? If I had been born elsewhere, wouldn’t I just feel the same way about whatever religion is worshipped there? And so is that the infidel’s fault that they were just born in the wrong place, with no one to tell them that they had it wrong? Or perhaps would they think the same about me?
And so if our religion truly was the right one, why didn’t our supposedly omnipotent deity just make everyone else born into societies that worship it, or render infertile anyone who didn’t? Or if someone else’s religion was the right one, with a similarly omnipotent deity (or deities), why was I born here?
Pastor’s son. Almost became a pastor, too. “Led my first person to Jesus” door-to-door around 7 years old. It was an adult man, I walked him through the “Romans Road” and the prayer for salvation.
It took mushrooms kicking my ass in Amsterdam to finally shake it all.
I was 10 (IIRC) when I though:
- God knows the future.
- Therefore God knows that Adam and Eve would eat the forbidden fruit.
- Therefore God is either a liar and doesn’t see the future or a bastard that knew exactly what would they do and wanted to punish them.
- In either case, why worship it?
And the next step was understanding that it was a fictional character.
Adding to all those, another realization I had during mine was that if a god was real and that god created the universe and all things and all the rules then they could have also set up the rules in any way they wanted. And they chose the system where they had to murder their own son and eternally torture anyone who didn’t do a certain thing or believe a certain thing, but also created people that physically couldn’t ever do those things due to where they were, their abilities, the luck of who might teach them or not, etc. etc.
That’s a wild set of tangled, complicated, cruel and utterly deranged and sadistic set of rules and punishments if you could literally create anything and any system you wanted.
If I was to design a board game and I made the rules where if you don’t do exactly what I want I get to torture you forever and everyone starts with random skills and items and 90% of the people that play don’t get to hear the rules first or even know there are rules and there are also thousands of alternate rules books and people saying their game is the correct real one and saying you have to do their rules, but you have no way of knowing which is real or not. If I did that I’d be ridiculed and mocked and no one would ever buy my game.
Parts of the Epicurean paradox. This is what also drove me from christianity.
Raised nondenominational Christian. Started having questions and exploring other belief systems in high school. Parents always made me attend church, initially with them and then said I just had to go “somewhere” once I got my own car.
The pastor at my aunt and uncle’s church discussed some Christian guy who did his Master’s thesis on the deck of cards (face cards) and something something something the queen represents the mother of harlots, don’t yolk yourselves with sinners, etc. Made no sense, never went back. I was in my early 20s. Around this time, I was strongly considering various Eastern religions, specifically Islam and Buddhism, but couldn’t get a foothold in either.
Fast forward to about 5 years ago (mid 30s) and I had a client who was extremely Atheist and made several good points against God that made a lot of sense. Started looking further into Buddhism and found the Secular Buddhism podcast. There’s an episode where he basically says God is real if you believe in him but that doesn’t affect reality. Decided right then that I was done. Been a Buddhist atheist ever since.
The middle path is the best path.
I was raised in a lutheran family and had to go to church until I was a teenager.
It was always so boring from the beginning so it never had a hold on me and I remember thinking something along the lines of “If I was god I would be so pissed off that I have to listen to this shit (horrible singing and people sucking ass) every week.”
From that day on I made a pact with god that if he exists, I will never bother him cause hes got enough people screaming for his attention like a bunch of toddlers.
So anyway now we catch up for a beer every few months to blow off some steam and he gives me the next weeks lotto numbers as a thank you
I used to be super religious. I even studied to be a priest. Married a super religious lady. Then like five guys I went to seminary were in jail for pedos. Last one hit too close. It devastated my faith. Then my wife cheated on me. We had a lot of catholic friends. When she got pregnant they threw a party for her and turned their back on me. That was enough of that. I’m now an Atheist. Christianity is a cult. Not just one denomination. All are cults. Fuck that.
People have been vocal about me being an atheist. My health is not well. Talked to my mom about death. Pretty much she told me she would give me a catholic funeral even if I don’t want it.
One thing I can tell you. Women all are looking for that good Christian man. So I’ve been single since the. I had a fling with someone after the divorce but I think that was a mistake.
Still not over my piece of shit wife. Catholic friends refer to her as my wife. Not my ex. Married for ever thing.
Honestly I miss going to church and involved with everything. But never going back to that. Amen
I hope you can make peace with all that stuff man, being pushed out of a community you can’t actually escape is true pain
I think I was 16. I got to the point where I couldn’t convince myself I believed in a magic man in the sky anymore. My mom was upset with my decision but she understood. She since has lost her faith I believe.
Raised catholic, did religious ed, catholic high school, made to go to church every week and on holy days of obligation. Then I went off to college, and dutifully got up the first sunday and went to church. While I was mumbling along with the Nicene creed, I thought, “But I don’t believe this stuff; in fact, I disagree with most of it.” I left quietly before the creed was over, and never voluntarily went back. I guess realizing I’m an atheist helped. 😄
Mine was from Christianity, US evangelical flavour. It happened in stages, but really in the end I just stopped going to religious activities.
What made it happen? A lot of things at each of those aforementioned stages, but the most common theme was other Christians. They just were overwhelmingly awful.
I grew up in the Church, so it was all I knew. Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, Wednesday nights, youth groups (extra brainwashing sessions from a special church leader for kids) once a week, etc. The only thing outside of religious activities was school, and thankfully I was in public school.
I grew up curious and questioning, which the religious leaders did not always appreciate, but because I was serious about understanding things, I was given a lot of early “apologetics”, which I understood to be attempts to prove the unprovable, and quickly came to realise that the point was to take things on faith… don’t prove, believe. And for that, I needed a “religious experience”.
Evangelical churches are good at manufacturing believable religious experiences, so eventually I had what I believed was one. This was the first thing to go when I “deconstructed”, realising that this experience wasn’t supernatural, it was manufactured. Once that was gone, the rest was easy to mentally deconstruct and all that was left was the social.
The social took longer, but I was in the US south, so everything revolved around church activities for me and there wasn’t a clear alternative. What encouraged me to cut ties though was my sense of justice. I accepted a lot of the “christ” teachings like loving your neighbour and providing for those less fortunate, caring for those who can’t care for themselves like the sick, children and those struggling in other ways, and Christians just seemed to only care for those who were close to them, not everyone, and especially didn’t care for very specific groups.
This got very clear with the rise of the alt-right political movement in the US and especially when Covid-19 hit… all these people who claimed to care about their neighbours wouldn’t do the bare minimum to help. For the few years before this I was already in a “missionary” mindset: I was attending these religious activities in order to help these Christians be more christ-like. At that point though, I realised it was a lost cause. These people didn’t want to be christ-like, they wanted to “win”. So when covid came and nothing around me locked down, I locked down myself, stopped attending everything, and moved out of the US entirely as soon as I could. My own parents wouldn’t wear a mask, or even spend time outside to spend Christmas with our kids, and were so deep in the far-right rabbit hole that it made it easy to move. So many people revealed they were just hateful shells, their insides rotted away and either I didn’t notice or they never were filled to begin with.
It was sad, but I have a much more fulfilling life now. If you are looking for resources or community to kind of get some confirmation that you’re not alone, the freedom from religion organisation is pretty good for some things… but can be a bit too much so I recommend just dipping in for specific things you’re thinking about. I found things in that community well after deconstructing and used it to put terms to what I experienced. Like the word deconstructing wasn’t a word in my lexicon until well after the fact.
Good luck!
