How did you lose your faith? / Or convert?

[Splicer-Fox]

One of the things I find fascinating about atheists are they ways they became atheist.
Most case studies seem to point at the religious organisation driving them out.
Others just say they read the bible critically for the first time.

But if you changed religion, I would also be interested on how this happened.

I would like to know how you came to your current religious status.

[Splicer-Fox]

I decided I did not believe in God in primary school.
I think it was grade 4 or 5.

The reason was that people in school and in my family life did not behave moral or decent toward me.
I had to go to church with some of the worst people.
If there is one supernatural thing that should exist, I wish it would be hell.

I took a dive somewhere between grade 4 - 5 and found myself praying very hard.
I believed God was punishing me my whole life, and I did not know why.
Behind one of the school buildings I was hiding behind, I prayed one last time.
I told God "Your not real" as if he were standing in front of me.

I no longer had to believe God was out to get me.
Just people.

I don’t hate religion any more.
I can see the encouragement it can give people regardless of the problems it may cause.
So I find myself very interested in this powerful force in human society.

[Animew]

I decided I did not believe in God in primary school.
I think it was grade 4 or 5.

The reason was that people in school and in my family life did not behave moral or decent toward me.
I had to go to church with some of the worst people.
If there is one supernatural thing that should exist, I wish it would be hell.

I took a dive somewhere between grade 4 - 5 and found myself praying very hard.
I believed God was punishing me my whole life, and I did not know why.
Behind one of the school buildings I was hiding behind, I prayed one last time.
I told God "Your not real" as if he were standing in front of me.

I no longer had to believe God was out to get me.
Just people.

I don’t hate religion any more.
I can see the encouragement it can give people regardless of the problems it may cause.
So I find myself very interested in this powerful force in human society.

it seems christianity gave religion in general a bad name... but it’s not gods fault or christianity. people twisted the bible and used it to control people. (kings commissioning the printing of bibles)
I was born into a christian household so christianity was my default setting. but i also eventually lost my faith in god as described in the bible. but once you look past the thick slathers of propaganda in the bible you will see a far more practical text. it is a lot easier to do when looking at older bibles. O_o i mean, it went form a lot of books to one tiny little book they place on bedside tables in hotels. Now, everyone should understand how squeezing in a series into just one novel would cause some bits to be left out...
hehe, i mean do they still tell the story of Balaam’s ass even?
but like you, i first questioned the existence of god by his apparent absence and lack of interest in the evils committed against me and everyone else. ^_^" but i love how most priests would go "god is merely testing your faith with these adversities my son" but seriously why would he need to test anything if he was all knowing lol?
GOD! Y U NO LET ME USE CRIPNOTES!? щ（ﾟДﾟщ）

[jacojerb]

Most of my early years, I was mostly just a Christian out of habit. We didn't go to church often, so I slowly faded away, just praying and stuff due to it being a habit. So, I wasn't a very strong Christian, but the final nail in the coffin was my sister

My sister used to be agnostic herself, until she found this one church. It's basically just about 25 people getting together every Sunday at meeting houses and things. They take a critical look at the Bible instead of just following some priest, or so my sis said. I thought that was pretty cool. Until I went with her the one time

The first part of the... lesson? Was about preaching methods. To demonstrate this, they watched a video about some preacher preaching about how being gay is wrong... now, the message we were focusing on was how he was delivering the preaching. But the preaching itself made me very uncomfortable as well...

I didn't go there again. And a few weeks later, I got into a fight with my sis about me being gay. She said that it's a sin, but what really bothers her, seeing as we all sin, is that gays don't repent. I think I pushed a bit hard, but at the end, she said she hates me for being gay

I can't blame my sister. I blame the religion. it's something that is completely irrational. How can a way of being be a sin? Does that mean I have been doomed from the start? Or merely that I need to regret what I am constantly? Either way, that's not the god I want to worship. It brings irrational hate. Unnecessary suffering...

So I'm agnostic. I agree that most religions can neither be proven nor disproven. Thus, I accept that all religions may be right, but it's not really worth my time. If there is an afterlife, I believe that God wouldn't submit me to eternal punishment simply for following logic, if I do live a good life. I try to help people when I can, to live a good life. If I am evil in God's eyes, that's really not the God I want to worship anyway...

[Rakuen Growlithe]

I didn't have any issue with a religious organisation. My family weren't particularly religious. My father's side are (Afrikaners so not unexpected) but we don't see them much and I'm pretty sure he doesn't believe. The only time I can recall him going to church were for funerals. One of my uncles (it's confusing though) is atheist from a Muslim background. My mother's family is Anglican so it's the really tame sort of religion that doesn't do much (though my grandfather was quite involved in the church). There's a funny joke Jimmy Carr made about Anglicans. He said it was fine to insult the Church of England because what's the worst they can do? Have a fête?

Anyway so I was in junior school when I first started to realise it was nonsense. I think the first part I realised was that everyone says "god loves you all the same" but that contradicts the Jews being god's chosen people. After that I spent some time thinking about it and realised that if god helped then those places with the right religion would do better but that doesn't happen. Egyptians, Mayans, Chinese, Europeans, Arabs were all the most advanced and powerful at a certain time and it didn't matter what they believed. I was still naive back then though and thought religion was just something nice and innocent.

I still believed religions could be respected when I went to university, even though I'd given up on that a while back. I attended the first UCT Atheists and Agnostics meeting but I already knew all the arguments they talked about (I'd thought up most of them myself, albeit not in as well-developed a form) so I thought it was useless. It was only later that I started reading more, starting with The God Delusion that I began to realise how much of a blight religion actually was. And it was about two or three years later that I started reading some atheist blogs and seeing what has happening all over the world.

[Ivic_Wulfe]

When I was in America I was placed into a Catholic Primary school for a while because it was a private institute, I asked my father about why Science and Christianity clashed on so many things. I was in Grade 2/3 at the time. It was in Grade 6 that I first fell away from Christianity because of some really messed up stuff happening in my life and no prayer I'd sent up was being answered.

By grade 8 I was constantly having religious debates with my school friends and being ridiculed at times, our school wasn't very secular. By the end of Grade 9 someone had said something to me. A very good friend after we had a long talk about God and religion. As I left I told him, "Hope I don't get hit by a car." He replied later via sms, "But what happens if you are?" It was at this point I decided to go back to Christianity.

In Grade 10 I started going to Sunday School and evening services, still heavily critical of the book and still questioning many things in it. I was confirmed into the NG Church end of Grade 11 after having what I thought was some epiphany about the love God gave. After my confirmation I didn't go to church very often. In fact about 4 months after my confirmation we had our Matric camp and they invited the church to where we were.

We had a sermon the first evening and I even saw my confessional video and realized I wasn't as "devout" anymore. During the sermon, the pastor dimmed the lights, had the band play some chilled wailing background music and said everyone should raise their hands. She then systematically had people drop their hands as she went through a chain of "Have you ever" questions which got progressively worse.

By some point I had realized I was one of two hands still raised throughout the entire matric group. I had started crying so badly there was no consoling me, I was a miserable wreck of a matric student in a miserable life with nothing to turn to, had fallen away from God and had no idea where to walk to. When the pastor told us that God would save us from these sins...I realized I had been brainwashed, that my reasoning was all wrong. God couldn't help me. God won't help me. I needed to live for me. To live for my ambitions. I mean what god rips your very being to absolute shreds in a crowd of over 200 students?

I don't hate the idea of religion, but organized religion can really go ram itself into the deepest pit of hell. If God exists no book would be able to explain him anyway. In fact it talks about it like that anyway. "God is unfathomable" in that case I revert to this, God is not loving, doesn't hate, doesn't act, doesn't do absolute jackshit because those are all human attributes that WE placed on as parameters. That argument is just for anyone saying that the Bible is the "way the truth and the life".

Anyway, those were the main reasons why I stopped wasting my time with religion in general. It wasn't so much that the church pushed me away but more to the point that I found it unnecessary for the church to go to the lengths it did to make me feel so shite about my life so that I could become devout again.

[Franky]

Last I ever attended church was when I was accepted, apart from weddings and funerals. But yeah, my entire family are conservative Christians. Some even new earth creationists.

I started understanding major key scientific subjects at that time and how to apply it in nature and engineering. The clashes in real world observation and religion started to appear and bug me more and more. Yeah I was one of those people that eventually tried to fit them together aka putting my own words in the bible. That didn't work without seriously twisting each and every sentence almost. After I extensively researched the entirety of the old testament I concluded that I will be going to hell because I can't worship this being.

Don't read the below if your easily offended.

Then things change to the 3 in 1 God in the new testament and the bigger picture became even more clear to me. The bible uses the same method mortals with finite minds use in order to make individuals obey. (There is 1 God, no other, 1 set of laws. Fear the system first, and stick to it otherwise you will receive punishment. Then it goes onto the purest example and the worst people. After that the owner wants your money to sustain this institution.)

Thus I realized the book is written by a person not a being with infinite wisdom. a Being that should be able to correct the many wrongs. The one that sends heathens to hell because they lived in the worst conditions and never even knew about God or was born or caught in some other religion. A being that didn't understand mental disorders such as depression and the untreated result thereof. This was an individual that new less about the world than we do today. Thus a person. IMO religion wasn't ever intended to be the business it became 5000 years ago with purchasing "spells" in ancient Egyptian times. It was intended to be a set of laws that is completely outdated in today's society. So even us, our laws are more sensical than the ones an all good and powerful being wrote down before time began apparently.

[Helios_phi]

one of those people that eventually tried to fit them together aka putting my own words in the bible.

What is quite good fun, is crossing out all references to god in genesis and writing your own name in its place. It makes reading it much less boring.
I still have two bibles on my bookshelf. They are tucked quite comfortably and neatly between the Bhagavad Gita and Mien Kampf.
Another hobby I would like to take up includes visiting my local library and seeing how many rashes of bacon I could possibly hide between the pages of their copies of the quran.

[Kenjomik]

My story is a bit different (and possibly less interesting) since I’ve grown up in one of the least religious countries in the world, with no one in my family or among my friends being religious at all. As a consequence, I never went to church as a kid, except for the few times I was there in grades 1-6 as a part of our education (or when we went there to celebrate the start of our summer vacation because our school lacked an assembly hall). To me, the stories from the Bible that they told us there were just like any other made-up stories you’d hear as a kid, and I never believed that there is such a thing as a god or identified as a Christian. My parents would only go to church for traditional ceremonies like weddings and funerals and the like, and we never really talked about religion at home since it just wasn't a part of our lives.

My opinions on religion have gotten more negative as I’ve gotten older, both due to the promotion of ignorance and lack of critial thinking as well as the conservation of outdated views that affect me personally (e.g. the view on homosexuality). When you’re 15 here you traditionally go through a rite of confirmation where you make a public confession of your faith. A lot of kids still go through it, either because of tradition or because they get gifts or money from their relatives. I didn’t see the point of it so I never went through it. Last year I finally left the Church of Sweden after having been meaning to do so for several years.

[Ivic_Wulfe]

Last year I finally left the Church of Sweden after having been meaning to do so for several years.

I did not know you needed to leave officially? >_> being confirmed in the NG...do I need to send a letter of 'resignation' towards their belief in order to no longer be connected with them...

O.o I'm both being slightly facetious and am actually kind of concerned about this...NG church doesn't count against me somehow...does it? <_<;

[Kenjomik]

I have no idea how this stuff works outside of Sweden, but here you become a member of the Church of Sweden when you're baptized as a baby (which I was and which I think most people still are, because of tradition). Being a member means that a certain percetage of your income goes to the Church every year. The exact percentage depends on where in the country you live, for me it was 1% of my income. I had to fill out a form and send it to them to officially leave

Now I just pay the burial fee which basically ensures you'll get buried. In my municipality it's 0.2% of your income.

[Splicer-Fox]

O.o I'm both being slightly facetious and am actually kind of concerned about this...NG church doesn't count against me somehow...does it? <_<;

The Church itself wont do anything but the Congregation might.

I was form the Dutch reformed in Bryanston.
Some of the people in the congregation have more say than the priest does sometimes.
They have very passive ways of making you feel the hate.

Here they talk a bit about having to declare your faith or departure form the religion and the possible consequences of it:


My younger family members whom I trust know that I am atheist.
But my fathers side of the family have some zealous ones with allot of say.
I am scared I might get cut off from them.

I don't go to church any more though.
When I was in high school I just stuck around long enough to get my Red Book.
I have been given a great big golden flask with my name and church creed engraved on it as well.

[Ivic_Wulfe]

I've never had a "For being a Member of the NG Church" debit order go off from my bank account. So, I hope I'm safe.

[Animew]

Another hobby I would like to take up includes visiting my local library and seeing how many rashes of bacon I could possibly hide between the pages of their copies of the quran.

let me know what library you hit so that i can go eat their qurans... hmmm, bacon Samiches with low carb, all cellulose bread. bet it would be a hit at all the fat camps.

i'm shocked that so few furs still believe in god! what would furry jesus/mufassa think of us!?

camawn guys... hava little faith! after all:

Arceus=jesus.jpg

[Fluke]

i'm shocked that so few furs still believe in god!

Open-mindedness and religion don't play nicely. Go figure.

[Leeward]

I never lost my faith. In fact I've never had any, nor need or want for it.

I was raised in a secular family. My mother's parents were secular Freemasons. My father was raised a Catholic and wanted to enter the priesthood but was quickly disillusioned about what happened to little boys there, and promptly became a devout atheist. I learned about Christianity and other religions from books and at school, and attended assemblies and listened to bible stories like all the other kids. I didn't believe that the stories really happened verbatim though. One of the books I had at home was "The Bible explained to Children" which explained what commandments, miracles, sins, etc. were. That was my first push towards understanding that religion was something I didn't relate to.

At first I "prayed" like everyone else at school but I had no idea what putting my hands together and holding my head down eyes closed in silence as a grown-up spoke strange words was supposed to accomplish (what can I say, I was a very pragmatic kid). Around the end of primary school I stopped the pretence and began to keep my eyes open, hands apart, and not say "Amen", although I still bowed my head out of respect (and so I didn't stick out too much).

In high school I came to hate assemblies (which were compulsory) because they mostly consisted of religious things I didn't care for and cheap "inspiration" for the week. I didn't even pretend to take part by then, but even so hardly anyone knew that I was an atheist, and I didn't bother telling anyone because it seemed stupid to deliberately make enemies, especially the pious gossipy types found in all girls' schools. I was already hanging out with the "dyke gang" (they were the nicest, most open-minded people there) and had a reputation as the weird kid, I didn't need them to pester me with threats of hell for being a heathen too. One of the people who did know (much to my regret) was my "arch-nemesis" of sorts (long story) who at some point decided to make it her mission in life to be the shepherd to my lost lamb. I put up with it by debating with her at first, but I soon realised that it was futile and told her to leave me alone.

In university I finally started to feel like I fit in with others intellectually, and it was wonderful. It was only around then that I started to realise how much religion could influence people's ability to think critically.

I don't really care whether people judge me for being secular, but I don't deliberately give them reason to by telling them unless they explicitly ask. Usually they ask what I believe in because of the Ankh I wear around my neck (again, long story), which already shows that they are open-minded enough to show curiosity, and makes me more inclined to discuss it with them.

[Raven Song]

I think I'm possibly one of the few who believe in everything...

I do believe in God, not as an entity but as figurehead... His "presence" - not in the physical term but more in a mental term - has helped several people I know of... including my friend who lost a mother and father in the space of five months...
For me, growing up, he was this awesome thing that I could pray to every time I lost something important like a pet rat - "Lord, please help me find my rat, i swear I wont steal chocolates anymore"... finds rat a few minutes later... "Thanks Lord (Sucker...)"

But it was when I was 15... I was dating the son of our Pastor... and he cheated on me... I realized if their was a God the way the bible says their was... he wouldn't allow for that, or Zane would get punished for his actions right??? well he wasn't... and it dawned on me... maybe God in the way the he is most often talked about doesn't exist...

I like Buddhism for the principles it teaches.
I like Hinduism for the respect for tradition it teaches.
I like the Muslim faith for the blind faith it teaches.
I like Judaism because they share their money with me (I'm in tight with them man).
I like Christianity for the faith it teaches too, but after seeing the Mormon way of upbringing ruin my idiot cousins, i don't respect Mormons much... also my friend was a scientologist who died from Meningitis because she "Didn't believe hard enough".

I'm not an atheist... I think I'm possibly Agnostic... but I like to believe I could be an everythingist... maybe it's because of my intense imagination that I can make anything I want real? I used to have arguments with "God" and my head would actually answer back... I had a fight with Ra once, and I felt him hug me to apologize. My imagination rocks, and that's why I also cannot commit to one belief system...

But wouldn't it be cool if the world was actually ruled by the Greek or Egyptian Gods?
That would pretty neat

[Helios_phi]

But wouldn't it be cool if the world was actually ruled by the Greek or Egyptian Gods?
That would pretty neat

No. Not really.
The Greek gods weren't really all that. Even the Greeks considered them more like an aether than physical beings. Once the Romans stole much of their gods. Things became a bit more physical.

Egyptian Gods are only conceptually cool. They would be a thousand times more brutal than Islam if they where real.

[Raven Song]

I dunno... i like the idea of Zeus running around making babies our of wedlock disguised as a cow...

and of a crocodile hippo lion thingy of doom devouring peoples souls...

or of Loki (as long as he looks like Tom Hiddleston) trying to make me kneel before him... i would do that any day...

[Ivic_Wulfe]

I dunno... i like the idea of Zeus running around making babies our of wedlock disguised as a cow...

and of a crocodile hippo lion thingy of doom devouring peoples souls...

or of Loki (as long as he looks like Tom Hiddleston) trying to make me kneel before him... i would do that any day...

Right..."Kneel"

[Helios_phi]

trying to make me kneel before him... i would do that any day...

1392532416049.jpg (28.19 KiB) Viewed 2813 times

I really don't need to think of that.

[Contrast]

I dunno... i like the idea of Zeus running around making babies our of wedlock disguised as a cow...

Don't forget the whole swan debacle. I still can't figure out why Leda would say no to a god but jump at the chance to do it with a bird. :/

[Leeward]

[Raven Song]

I dunno... i like the idea of Zeus running around making babies our of wedlock disguised as a cow...

and of a crocodile hippo lion thingy of doom devouring peoples souls...

or of Loki (as long as he looks like Tom Hiddleston) trying to make me kneel before him... i would do that any day...

Right..."Kneel"

[Raven Song]

I dunno... i like the idea of Zeus running around making babies our of wedlock disguised as a cow...

Don't forget the whole swan debacle. I still can't figure out why Leda would say no to a god but jump at the chance to do it with a bird. :/

well that obvious:

[KinkInZA]

I am mostly Christan for the family sake, on my fathers side of the family 3 of his sisters all got married to pastors but I did become atheist after the hole 3some thing in the prayer room with my cousins and getting shunned by the entire family. That in its own wouldn't have been so bad but because it was for my uncles birthday party there were some church elders also present that made things absolutely miserable and it was them that insisted to the family to send me to a particular christian indoctrinated psychologists, yes!! even the church has its own version of sphyco therapy .And after all that hate and humiliation I was forced to lie about sexuality and religion I hated Christianity for a long time in my life because of this. When I started working some of my Indian co-workers introduced me to Hinduism and later some other co-workers tried to teach me about Muslim and out of curiosity I started also studying philosophy and metaphysics .
In the end I learned only one thing, that it is all about what one chooses to believe (trust in) .
for some it is science
for some it is one of the many religions in the world
for me its all about which perception suits my needs at a particular time that I will believe in or not at that time .

[Splicer-Fox]

A church is a place where a sacred promise between 2 people is made.
They will only love each other and belong to each other.

A church is also a place where the dead are remembered mourned and honoured.
The place where people will get closure and comfort.

A threesome in a church is like insulting the sacred bonds of marriage and then pissing on their graves.
I am sure the elders felt like they were directly insulted.
In fact it seems like an act of Satanism and desecration.

[Raven Song]

A church is a place where a sacred promise between 2 people is made.
They will only love each other and belong to each other.

A church is also a place where the dead are remembered mourned and honoured.
The place where people will get closure and comfort.

A threesome in a church is like insulting the sacred bonds of marriage and then pissing on their graves.
I am sure the elders felt like they were directly insulted.
In fact it seems like an act of Satanism and desecration.

I dunno... the last time i was in church the lesbian priest lady from the Anglican church seemed only to happy to oblige with any requests made of her...

some churches are more open than others...

it also depends on what kind of threesome we speak of... i played a threesome of tennis this weekend and it was wonderful.

[Helios_phi]

A church is a place where a sacred promise between 2 people is made.
They will only love each other and belong to each other.

A church is also a place where the dead are remembered mourned and honoured.
The place where people will get closure and comfort.

A threesome in a church is like insulting the sacred bonds of marriage and then pissing on their graves.
I am sure the elders felt like they were directly insulted.
In fact it seems like an act of Satanism and desecration.

Na, definitely not satanism, not really even desecration.

Let us not forget that church is also a place to commit symbolic cannibalism.
It's also a place to drink pretend blood and fake talk in imaginary, made up languages.
The sacred church is also a place to molest the innocent and have bum sex with underage boys.
The church is also a place that enriches its self by separating gullible idiots from their wallets through shame and guilt.
A holy place that teaches intolerance with a fictitious tomb of horror that they have the audacity to call the "Good Book"

[Leeward]

imaginary, made up languages.

Technically, all languages are made up, at least initially. It is only their widespread use and understanding that makes them more "valid" than Klingon or Elvish. But then that raises the question: what about "dead" languages which are no longer widely spoken, such as Latin? Well they existed in widespread usage at some point, so they must be somewhat more deserving than those that were in use only in fiction.

But even so, the phrase "made up language" makes no sense, since all languages are made up of arbitrary words and syntax. A possible exception would be a language that consists entirely of onomatopoeias and unambiguous body language, but that would be caveman speak.