Personal Light-Bulb Moments: That Is Why I Am No Longer A Christian!

[Learner]

In all of our deconversions, I am sure we had many "AHA!" light-bulb moments where the light-bulb clicked on, where we probably almost yelled out: "Yes!  That's exactly right!  That makes so much sense...that is why I am no longer a Christian!!"  Maybe it was some background trait of yours that went unnoticed until you deconverted, and it then became a more prominent trait of yours.  For me, I've always been the skeptic of the family....never trusting chain emails, never trusting outrageous claims and stories, always asking for sources, always questioning, always wanting to hear-out both sides of the story.  Once I deconverted, I felt SO self-realized...I felt I'd discovered who I truly was as a skeptic all along but had been suppressing out of "faith."

 

Since my own deconversion, I've had many "AHA!" moments, and I expect I will continue to have many for a long time.  But I wanted to share something that really clicked with me today.  I really enjoy listening to people on YouTube (who actually know what they're talking about) who bash the Creation Museum, Ken Ham, Dr Dino, other creationists, creationism, etc with good scientific and logical reasoning.  I was listening to a little clip by the Friendly Atheist today, and he said the following:

 

"Science is about questioning things and saying 'Oh, that's the way people say things are, but I don't know if I believe that, so I'm going to run some experiments and test if that idea is true or not.'  The Creation Museum is NOT about questioning...it's about accepting what they tell you as truth, and their truth is coming from the Bible."

 

I mean, I already knew that, but the way he said it really clicked.  That's exactly right!  I'm not a person who's just gonna believe some crap because some old book says it's so.  Science is about questioning, not blindly accepting.  (Further, why would people believe some crap that isn't even possible to empirically verify, that has not a shred of evidence to support it?)

 

What have been some of your "AHA!" light-bulb moments where something really clicked for you?

[mymistake]

God's plan failed me for the very last time about three years ago.  I had put up with a lot of God letting me down.  But the last time I had been struggling with a lot of doubt and suddenly I realized "It looks like my life was planed by nobody because that is exactly what is happening".  Trusting God really is letting nobody plan it out.  And I thought about all the other times God's plan had failed and I instantly realized how much this made sense.  God is imaginary.  My life became random crap because I let random crap run my life all in the name of trusting God.

 

 

Once I saw it there was no way to un-see it.

[Scottsman]

1) Researching the flood. The single most rediculous story ever told.

 

2) Reading that the human genome project, run by christian doctor Frank Collins, determined a literal adam and eve was impossible. Without the fall, christianity is nothing.

[Deva]

I think it was in the process of reading the transcripts of a trial in Alabama where they were trying to teach evolution in the schools. I KNEW that not only was creationism false, but the creationists were lying and twisting facts to suit them.

 

I also had one when I read "The Blind Watchmaker" by Dawkins. I knew that creationism could not be true and for the first time had some grasp of what the theory of evolution was (not really taught in school to me).

 

I have a great respect for what is true and I think that is why I cannot be any sort of Christian. "There is no religion higher than truth" as the Theosophical Society motto says. I totally subscribe to it.

 

If there is no creator God, then Christianity falls like a house of cards.

 

At the same time, or perhaps a bit later, I realized that it was impossible to be certain of salvation. That was a revelation to me.

[Lucy]

I decided that any being that was capable of creating the universe would be vastly more intelligent than Bible God seems to be. I don't know which Bible verse was the one that finally did it, but it was reading the Bible itself that caused me to quit believing.

 

I can understand calculus, biology, chemistry, etc, but Bible God doesn't seem to have a logical consistency to him.

 

There were too many issues that I felt like I was having to make excuses for. The Bible spends a lot of time going into details of silly things. I find it hard to believe the creator of the universe would think like Bible God thinks. God loves savory smells of burning fatty flesh and smiting fig trees because they are out of season. God wants to smite several generations for the crime of one person and torture Job just to see if he cracks. It seems more like a kid playing with toys.

 

I can't believe Bible God created our universe. The only way it's remotely possible is if he used some sort of cosmic WYSIWYG software kit or a pre-built game engine that did all the difficult parts for him which would mean that we're all in a software program running on Yahweh's super computer.

[rach]

When I realized I prefer non-Christians to Christians for companionship.  Then, a-ha lightbulb moment, heaven has nothing to offer me.  I'd just be with people that I hate. 

[Aiyana]

Oh, I've had many, but some of the most poignant have involved the idea of wifely submission. Just the other day (I've only been deconverted for a year), I was having an imaginary conversation in my head with a lesbian, about a husband who really wanted his wife to submit. It struck me how completely bizarre that would be to a lesbian, whose relationship was without any gender roles. And then it just hit me how completely bizarre it is, in general.

[25YearsLater]

My personal light bulb moment was while I still believed - I had quit my church after I discovered and exposed corruption amongst the leadership, but at that point I hadn't lost my faith and was still intending to find an alternative church.

 

Then I discovered how nice it was not to have to get up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday.  The reduction in my stress levels was a real eye-opener, since suddenly I didn't have to put my Christian face on in order to interact with the people around me, and it led to me rethinking a lot of things.

[♦ ficino ♦]

There were too many issues that I felt like I was having to make excuses for. The Bible spends a lot of time going into details of silly things. I find it hard to believe the creator of the universe would think like Bible God thinks. God loves savory smells of burning fatty flesh and smiting fig trees because they are out of season. God wants to smite several generations for the crime of one person and torture Job just to see if he cracks. It seems more like a kid playing with toys.

I haven't seen the bloody thing, but doesn't the new Exodus movie actually have a kid acting the part of God?

[Geezer]

In retrospect it seems to me Christianity has two vulnerabilities that they cannot defend. The first is science, cosmology, and the laws of physics. About the only rebuttal Christianity has come up with is that God’s ways our not our ways, and God isn’t bound by such laws because God is spirit and therefore transcends our physical reality. They also note that Christianity is about faith not science. If Christianity could be proven scientifically faith, the foundation of Christianity, wouldn’t be necessary. That argument, or approach, works well on people who are wired to think in logical and rational terms, but everybody doesn’t think that way.

 

The focus on the second approach is on the faith component. Christianity is about faith, but faith in what? Most people would probably say faith in God or Jesus, but experience has shown me that most believers’ faith is really based on the Bible being the infallible word of God. They believe in God and Jesus because they believe the Bible is literally and historically true and accurate.

 

If challenging the faith of a believer is the objective, I believe disproving the Bibles infallible status is the better tactic. Most Christians sincerely believe the Bible was written by eyewitnesses. I know I did so when I found out Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John didn’t write one single word in the bible and their names were added decades after unknown agents wrote the text, that shook me up. When I found out the bible stories are based on oral tradition and their origins are unknown that shook my faith to the core too. 

 

Additionally, when I found evidence that the Jesus story was eerily similar to a number of pagan demigod stories that preceded the Jesus story by as much as a thousand years that added new doubts that I had to deal with. I eventually discovered there is a huge volume of evidence that debunks the Bible’s infallible status and its easily accessible, but few believers are aware of its existence. When they become aware of this material and investigate it that often leads them to a life changing epiphany.

[Thackerie]

I was really disturbed when I heard the story of Job in Sunday School and it made me frightful and suspicious of god for years, but I tried to believe because it seemed that everyone around me did. The actual ah-ha moment occurred when I was a freshman taking a class on the History of the Bible at a secular college. Studying the two different, conflicting genealogies of Jesus in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 made me suddenly realize that the whole thing was contrived to make the story match up with old so-called "prophecies." Also made me wonder how I could have been so stupid not to have seen it before.

[Guest Furball]

I decided that any being that was capable of creating the universe would be vastly more intelligent than Bible God seems to be. I don't know which Bible verse was the one that finally did it, but it was reading the Bible itself that caused me to quit believing.

 

I can understand calculus, biology, chemistry, etc, but Bible God doesn't seem to have a logical consistency to him.

 

There were too many issues that I felt like I was having to make excuses for. The Bible spends a lot of time going into details of silly things. I find it hard to believe the creator of the universe would think like Bible God thinks. God loves savory smells of burning fatty flesh and smiting fig trees because they are out of season. God wants to smite several generations for the crime of one person and torture Job just to see if he cracks. It seems more like a kid playing with toys.

 

I can't believe Bible God created our universe. The only way it's remotely possible is if he used some sort of cosmic WYSIWYG software kit or a pre-built game engine that did all the difficult parts for him which would mean that we're all in a software program running on Yahweh's super computer.

Yeah, as i look out into space, when i used to believe there was a god, i used to think he/she would be bigger than the petty god of the bible. If god did exist, i would think he/she would be embarrassed at how the bible portrays him/her. -what a load of non-sense

[Ravenstar]

 

There were too many issues that I felt like I was having to make excuses for. The Bible spends a lot of time going into details of silly things. I find it hard to believe the creator of the universe would think like Bible God thinks. God loves savory smells of burning fatty flesh and smiting fig trees because they are out of season. God wants to smite several generations for the crime of one person and torture Job just to see if he cracks. It seems more like a kid playing with toys.

I haven't seen the bloody thing, but doesn't the new Exodus movie actually have a kid acting the part of God?

 

I believe it does

 

 

 

Star Trek made me question a lot.. though I didn't realize it at the time (I was pretty young when I first saw this) it did get into my psyche and helped me think of other alternatives and ways of looking at the god hypothesis. I've always loved sci-fi  

 

 

 

and this...

 

 

and this

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o14DOOlsOkY&spfreload=10

[seven77]

My lightbulb moment happened in 2012. I had prayed for a few years, asking God to reconcile the bs between my older sister and the rest of our family. She came around long enough to leave her two sons with me. During the year+ that I had them, I was very Jesus-freaky. My prayer had been answered, I supposed. I believed deeply in this loving God who listens to prayers and blesses those who follow.

 

We went to church twice a week, the boys went to kids' programs, I attended bible studies, etc. I listened to Christian radio, didn't let the boys watch certain shows and prided myself on being a good Christian. God seemed really good. Life was hard, but faith made it ok somehow.

 

Then my sister got clean and the courts decided that her boys should live with her again. I was devastated. The youngest was just shy of 3 and been with me since he was 1. I was there for all of those firsts. The oldest was very funny, smart and kind. He loved church and so did his brother. The weekend before Easter 2012, she came to pick them up. The older boy was excited to see his mom, but the little one clung to me.

 

He fought as I put him in the car, grabbed my shirt and cried. "Naaaaah Auniiiiii!" I didn't want to let go, but that was the way that things had to be.

 

I went to the Easter/Passover service the following weekend. It was the first service I had been to in almost 2 years without at least one of them. I felt incredibly empty and alone as I sat there in the main room. Everyone had family and friends. Kids were sitting on laps, babies being held in arms, all that sort of thing. It was all smiles and waves and good to see yous...

 

Except for me. I sat in the back, like a worship zombie. Up, down, mouth the words to David Crowder covers and beg the Lord to continue in His mercy. He could kill me if he wanted, yet he won't fucking put me out of misery. He answered my prayer, then reneged on his word. His supposedly infallible, loving, kind, wonderful word...

 

I realized as I was sitting there that the faith was mostly bullshit. The church I belonged to, was also bullshit. Once a month, they invite people to give testimonies. Sometimes even guest sermons. Everyone is always saying how amazing the church is, how loving the people are, how God blessed them by putting X Church (not the real name) in their lives. Isn't prayer powerful? Isn't God positive? Glory, glory, glory!

 

Yet no one comforted me in that moment. No one acknowledged my silent tears. No one asked where the boys were. No one cared.

 

A few weeks later, I had a conversation with a person that I thought was a close friend who belonged to the church. She was concerned because I hadn't been attending services. I was still going to Bible study, though. She told me pointe blank that I had invested too much in the boys and that they had been distractions, not blessings. God had told her this in prayer. Apparently, I wasn't worthy of a direct revelation of such important information.

 

After that rather callous "revelation" from a so-called sister in Christ, I lost what small grain of faith that I had left. The lightbulb had finally clicked on and flooded the world with light. My former church claimed to love people and love Jesus, but the ones I knew personally wouldn't know what real love is if it bit them on the ass. To them, love is merely an emotional state that comes from God. Relationships that aren't 1000% hyper-focused on God, Jesus and the body of the church are just distracting you from whatever it is God really wants you to do. There is no place for familial relationships or anything that is based in reality.

[BlindersRemoved]

I'm a firefighter and we went on an unresponsive call. It turned out to be a 20 year old disabled kid that was lying on the couch. I assessed him and determined that he wasn't breathing, so I picked him up and set him on the floor to start CPR. When lifting him, I noticed that he was nothing but a bag of bones and weighed less than 50 pounds. He had some type of degenerative disease and the best way to describe it is that he looked very similar to Gollum. We followed our protocols and he was transported to the hospital but didn't survive. It turns out that he had been born this way, couldn't perform anything for himself and couldn't even speak. His parents had taken care of him his entire life, having to do everything just as if he were an infant. When we left I remember thinking "holy shit, this is fucked up. What kind of loving god allows this to happen? What kind of life did this kid have?" And then I remembered that the bible says that the sins of the father are passed down. I pictured the parents in my mind and wondered "what could they have possibly done to deserve this?" This reminded me of the hell Job went through and I determined that if biblegod existed, he sure as hell wasn't worthy of being praised and worshiped.

 

For a few months after, I noticed every handicapped person, especially children and my blood would begin to boil. I guess you could say that I had a great deal of anger when I finally realized that this loving god that I had spent my entire life worshiping was a complete piece of shit. I've gotten over the anger towards a deity that doesn't exist, but I had to go through that process in order to set myself free.

[Lucy]

A few weeks later, I had a conversation with a person that I thought was a close friend who belonged to the church. She was concerned because I hadn't been attending services. I was still going to Bible study, though. She told me pointe blank that I had invested too much in the boys and that they had been distractions, not blessings. God had told her this in prayer. Apparently, I wasn't worthy of a direct revelation of such important information.

 

 

I'm surprised the revelation wasn't that god wants you to adopt some children or have some of your own. Trying to help children should be the goal not the distraction. That church was the distraction.

 

 

I'm a firefighter and we went on an unresponsive call. It turned out to be a 20 year old disabled kid that was lying on the couch. I assessed him and determined that he wasn't breathing, so I picked him up and set him on the floor to start CPR. When lifting him, I noticed that he was nothing but a bag of bones and weighed less than 50 pounds. He had some type of degenerative disease and the best way to describe it is that he looked very similar to Gollum. We followed our protocols and he was transported to the hospital but didn't survive. It turns out that he had been born this way, couldn't perform anything for himself and couldn't even speak. His parents had taken care of him his entire life, having to do everything just as if he were an infant. When we left I remember thinking "holy shit, this is fucked up. What kind of loving god allows this to happen? What kind of life did this kid have?" And then I remembered that the bible says that the sins of the father are passed down. I pictured the parents in my mind and wondered "what could they have possibly done to deserve this?" This reminded me of the hell Job went through and I determined that if biblegod existed, he sure as hell wasn't worthy of being praised and worshiped.

 

For a few months after, I noticed every handicapped person, especially children and my blood would begin to boil. I guess you could say that I had a great deal of anger when I finally realized that this loving god that I had spent my entire life worshiping was a complete piece of shit. I've gotten over the anger towards a deity that doesn't exist, but I had to go through that process in order to set myself free.

 

 

This makes me think of the song God's Will. http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/martinamcbride/godswill.html

 

The song lyrics seem to state that if someone much worse off than you has a strong faith in god, you should too. It always bothered me. It's like saying you don't have a right to question god's fairness if someone in a worse position than you isn't questioning it.

[Thrive]

I have always had doubts, but I blamed my own lack of faith and understanding.  There were a couple light bulb moments in the past decade. 

 

1) The contradiction of prayer and per-destination.  The circular reasoning I got lost in to explain why we would waste time praying was my first glimpse that god was sadistic.

 

2) Being surrounded by loved ones who weren't the right xtian.  Being told at their funerals that my grandparents are burning in hell just because they were born into a mormon culture.  Further proof of a sadistic god.

 

In the past 2 or 3 years:

 

3) Learning more in depth science behind evolution. Realizing that while Ken Ham made sense when I was in middle school, in reality he's an idiot.

 

4) The Epic of Gilgamesh.  I had always heard that every culture on earth has a flood story. I used this a proof of creationism and the flood for years.  So reading the Epic of Gilgamesh and realizing that, it isn't that the flood happened so every culture recorded it, but that some cultures told of local floods and others copied and varied the stories to adapt to their own stories.  This was a Mind Blown moment for me, this is where I had a flood of my own where all my past doubts bubbled back up and demanded to be examined again.

 

5) Trying to read my son bible stories and being repulsed at the violence.  Adam and Eve thrown out of Eden and all future mankind damned over 1 sin.  No forgiveness, no mercy.  Noah is not just about cute animals, it's about genocide.  The prodigal son is a lazy ass.  Joseph's multicolored robes is a story about human trafficking.  I realized that these were not the morals and lessons that I wanted my son to grow up with.

[Blood]

 

"Science is about questioning things and saying 'Oh, that's the way people say things are, but I don't know if I believe that, so I'm going to run some experiments and test if that idea is true or not.'  The Creation Museum is NOT about questioning...it's about accepting what they tell you as truth, and their truth is coming from the Bible."

 

 

The Creation Museum is about questioning -- questioning science. I call this process "inverse skepticism." Once you begin with the premise that the Bible is true, then your natural human skepticism is channeled toward anything that threatens that premise. And since science is such a broad field, the pseudo-skeptical mind can easily find a lot to question.

 

Ken Ham and company are super skeptics, just in the wrong direction, for the wrong reasons.  

[Blood]

 

4) The Epic of Gilgamesh.  I had always heard that every culture on earth has a flood story. I used this a proof of creationism and the flood for years.  So reading the Epic of Gilgamesh and realizing that, it isn't that the flood happened so every culture recorded it, but that some cultures told of local floods and others copied and varied the stories to adapt to their own stories.  This was a Mind Blown moment for me, this is where I had a flood of my own where all my past doubts bubbled back up and demanded to be examined again.

 

 

Well done. I would only add that a real "local flood" need not have occurred to have inspired that part of the Gilgamesh story. Kind of like how I hear people 

say that Behemoth and Leviathan were based on real animals -- no, they were mythological creatures, monsters that had supposedly lived in the primordial age but were overcome by the hero/god archetype (Marduk/Baal/Yahweh/whoever). 

 

We are so well trained to think of the Bible as "historical" in every sense that it is hard to shake this conditioning. 

[bdp]

I remember when I first realized that there are no eyewitness accounts to 'the resurrection' in the bible - all that happens is women find an empty tomb.  Conceding a truth to the story of the women and the tomb, all down through history everyone has had to someone else's subjective experiences and second hand accounts to believe in a resurrection that went unwitnessed and clearly never actually happened.  It was a real thunderbolt.

[Blood]

I remember when I first realized that there are no eyewitness accounts to 'the resurrection' in the bible - all that happens is women find an empty tomb.  Conceding a truth to the story of the women and the tomb, all down through history everyone has had to someone else's subjective experiences and second hand accounts to believe in a resurrection that went unwitnessed and clearly never actually happened.  It was a real thunderbolt.

 

Robert M. Price said that his suspicions were raised when he learned in seminary school that the crucifixion in Mark is merely a cento of verses from Psalm 22. But the real shocker, he said, was recognizing that Matthew's version supplements Mark with ... eyewitness testimonia? No, another cento of verses, this time from The Wisdom of Solomon. So there was no historical memory of the crucifixion -- the central dramatic episode of the religion -- in any Christian text, only old Bible verses ripped out of context. Shocking when you stop and think about it. 

[♦ ficino ♦]

I remember when I first realized that there are no eyewitness accounts to 'the resurrection' in the bible - all that happens is women find an empty tomb.  Conceding a truth to the story of the women and the tomb, all down through history everyone has had to someone else's subjective experiences and second hand accounts to believe in a resurrection that went unwitnessed and clearly never actually happened.  It was a real thunderbolt.

Yes, and a lot of confusion among those accounts over whether they encountered the risen Jesus in Galilee, or whether they stayed in Jerusalem and encountered him there, and where the disciples went after they all received the Holy Spirit, etc.

[★ Citsonga ★]

I remember when I first realized that there are no eyewitness accounts to 'the resurrection' in the bible - all that happens is women find an empty tomb.

 

Even that can't be verified. We don't even know if those women existed or if Jesus existed or if there was a tomb that had been emptied. The entire story could very well be fiction.

[Deva]

This is an interesting thread. I guess our different personality types caused us to latch onto certain things. I am one of those types that are supposed to uphold traditions. I am inclined to join groups as well. What is "tried and true" has meaning. And let's face it, Christianity has been around for a long time.

 

So, it took a lot of thinking, research, life experience and "seeing" the world to truly convince me that Christianity was nonsense.  I have always had a black and white view of life and its either "this is the most important thing in the world or its complete nonsense". I finally came down decisively on the "nonsense" side of it.  But it took me about 45 years.

[outofeden]

2 things:

 

1. The Bill Nye/Ken Hamm debate

2. I looked up all 44 "prophesies" in the old testament that supposedly foreshadow Jesus IN THEIR CONTEXT (listed from an About.com page). It took a super long time but...

 

NOT ONE made sense, in context.

 

For example, Zechariah 13:

 

2 “On that day, I will banish the names of the idols from the land, and they will be remembered no more,” declares the LordAlmighty. “I will remove both the prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land. 3 And if anyone still prophesies, their father and mother, to whom they were born, will say to them, ‘You must die, because you have told lies in the Lord’s name.’ Then their own parents will stab the one who prophesies.

4 “On that day every prophet will be ashamed of their prophetic vision. They will not put on a prophet’s garment of hair in order to deceive. 5 Each will say, ‘I am not a prophet. I am a farmer; the land has been my livelihood since my youth.[a]’ 6 If someone asks, ‘What are these wounds on your body[b]?’ they will answer, ‘The wounds I was given at the house of my friends.’

 

That last verse is often linked to Jesus' pierced hands, and is just one "proof text" claimed about Jesus' foreshadowing in the Jewish scriptures. But the actual prophecy is about false prophets lying to cover up the fact that their parents stabbed them while denying they ever were prophets. (Not sure how these prophets give this explanation after their parents oblige to stab them to death, though).