Ramen666 Posted June 19, 2009 Share Posted June 19, 2009 Now that we are all ex-Christian I have noticed that people bring up many issues on why we are ex-christian's through the testimony section and we hint and reasons why we are here through posts. However I want to see in a poll what was the number 1 reason that sent you over the edge and you became an ex-Christian. For me what set me off in Junior year in High School (4 years ago) around February-March was the last time a prayer would remained unanswered and I had something to do with it. It was a time I became very bitter at this and the whole church. I got tired of them telling how to live my life, I got tired of it then one day I just searched "Christian hypocrisy" on the internet and found some startling stuff and found evilbible.com which features direct quotes from the Bible. It made me so mad, that none of this stuff was ever even brought up, that the image of God was pure when in reality was not. I felt betrayed, angry and the rest is history. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Davka Posted June 19, 2009 Share Posted June 19, 2009 Over the years, I had a lot of personal struggles. Instead of struggling quietly, I would openly voice my issues with other Christians, sometimes expressing anger and even cussing. Now, my understanding of Christianity is that when a person is going through crap, you're supposed to rally the troops and come to the rescue of the fallen soldier. But that's not what happened, ever. People would get really uncomfortable, and basically edge me out. Even if all I was doing was expressing frustration at the way the religious right was making it hard to witness to liberals, there would just be this uncomfortable silence ("holy crap, did he really just speak heresy out loud?") and then someone would change the subject. When not in a struggling place, I'd be right at the heart of the "in crowd" at church, popular and well-known. But as soon as it came out that I was willing to be honest about my internal landscape - poof! All those "Christians" became Pharisees to my Samaritan. Then one day I had an epiphany: The Church does not follow God because there is no God. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dagan Posted June 19, 2009 Share Posted June 19, 2009 I picked "experience" because it was a series of personal experiences which was the catalyst for the reaction. I'd already absorbed biblical contradictions, been bothered by the character of god and been put off by the way Christians around me dealt with those things. My personal experience was the breaking point, opening my eyes to the truth that sometimes things happen for no reason. God's hand wasn't in everything. Once I accepted that, it didn't take long for me to realize God's hand was in nothing, and there quite likely was no hand at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
godsfavoritecolor Posted June 19, 2009 Share Posted June 19, 2009 A liberal education. Described here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ephymeris Posted June 19, 2009 Share Posted June 19, 2009 The way the church treated me and others turned me off to church but I tried to keep reading and praying on my own. Reading the bible and realizing what a shit head biblegod is and the horrible demands he places on us, that's what made me quit the faith. I didn't want to be a part of something I thought was wrong. Afterwards I realized (imho) any god was a lie and I left theism all together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brought None Posted June 19, 2009 Share Posted June 19, 2009 My sexual orientation. Being raised in the Church of Christ... the environment is very homophobic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted June 19, 2009 Share Posted June 19, 2009 I picked "Other," and what my number one problem was: that I never saw God do anything in my life or any Christian's life I knew. It was just hype. I could see it was just blown-out-of-proportion advertising and the product was faulty, and missing most of its parts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♦ Fuego ♦ Posted June 20, 2009 Share Posted June 20, 2009 For me it took a trusted person lying to me about the power of God. Once I had it documented and could see it for myself that he was intentionally fibbing, and that his friends and family went along with it out of fear and devotion to this man, I had to do some serious thinking. Then after writing a bit about cults in the news, it dawned on me that I had been sucked into something like a cult. Then I looked at Christianity in general, and particularly the concept of hell and where it came from. Once I saw that it came from a silly interpretation of the city garbage dump combined with Greek and Roman religion, I finally saw through the lies. That was what finally unplugged Christianity for me. I guess you could say I "unsnapped", since "snapping" is the term for the mental/emotional triggering of religious conversion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dagan Posted June 20, 2009 Share Posted June 20, 2009 particularly the concept of hell and where it came from. Once I saw that it came from a silly interpretation of the city garbage dump combined with Greek and Roman religion Don't forget Persian! I'm pretty sure the whole lake of fire thing comes from Zoroastrianism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy Posted June 20, 2009 Share Posted June 20, 2009 The contradictions. I would hear a bible story in church one week and then next week they would say something that kind of seemed to go against what they said last week. Also the age/size of the universe didn't seem consistent with the Bible. I ignored it for as long as I could, but once I started to investigate for myself, all kinds of problems began to show up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramen666 Posted June 20, 2009 Author Share Posted June 20, 2009 I picked "Other," and what my number one problem was: that I never saw God do anything in my life or any Christian's life I knew. It was just hype. I could see it was just blown-out-of-proportion advertising and the product was faulty, and missing most of its parts. Now that is a metaphor that I like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Franko47 Posted June 20, 2009 Share Posted June 20, 2009 I think it was seeing after a while that religion just didn't "stack up to reality" and the fact that being a Christian for a time, and knowing many Christian people, coming to realize there was nothing really "special" about them. In fact, I began to meet more people who were atheists and agnostics who seemed to have a higher sense of rational morals and kindness than the Christians. Oh, and Star Trek. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vixentrox Posted June 20, 2009 Share Posted June 20, 2009 The Bible itself was probably the biggest thing. Not just the errors and such but as I dug deeper and started to think more critically, the nature of this demonic beast I was worshiping. Yes the Bible is a wonderful tool for deconversion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OpheliaGinger Posted June 20, 2009 Share Posted June 20, 2009 For me, it was all of the above. It was a series of events that lead me to no longer believe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oddbird1963 Posted June 20, 2009 Share Posted June 20, 2009 I put "seeing Life draw out (experience)" although unanswered prayer could come in almost as a tie with it. My main gripe, just like a few others in this post, was that there was just no 'god factor' in the lives of 'god's' people. Everything could easily be explained by the real trinity: sociology, psycology and economics. The things I prayed for were not outlandish and they were prayers for things like wisdom, a sense of god's presence and, yes, a modicum of personal prosperity with the safety and future of my family in mind. Silence from above. Finally, I just had to move on to agnosticism/atheism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I Broke Free Posted June 20, 2009 Share Posted June 20, 2009 My sexual orientation. Being raised in the Church of Christ... the environment is very homophobic. Same here, I voted "Unanswered Prayers." After two years of contant prayer, I was still a boy who desired boys. I realized it was not going to change and that started me thinking... Very dangerous for a Christian. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulQ Posted June 20, 2009 Share Posted June 20, 2009 For me, it was life experiences; but if there was a single thing that pushed me over to reconsider my belief, it was a comment from a deeply religious person who said, "God helps those who help themselves." The more I heard it, the more I thought about it. A person who was capable of helping themselves really didn't need help; why wouldn't God leave those people to fend for themselves, and help the people who were not capable of helping themselves? And yet, my life experiences taught me that the people who did help themselves were much better off than those who were helpless, praying and waiting for God to help them (which he never did). So I decided to "Help myself," and recognized that God had no hand in my success after that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brought None Posted June 20, 2009 Share Posted June 20, 2009 My sexual orientation. Being raised in the Church of Christ... the environment is very homophobic. Same here, I voted "Unanswered Prayers." After two years of contant prayer, I was still a boy who desired boys. I realized it was not going to change and that started me thinking... Very dangerous for a Christian. I did constant prayer for 2 years as well pleading to God daily to heal me of my "sickness". It drove me insane. I'd pray when I awoke, pray under my breath, I'd even pray myself to sleep. It was even my birthday wish a bunch of times when blowing out the candles. When my grandmother died, during her funeral I made many trips to the restroom to pace and pray/plea. I felt God might be closer to pray to during a funeral. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
godlessgrrl Posted June 20, 2009 Share Posted June 20, 2009 I voted "Other", because my deconversion was a series of events that all sort of stacked up. I often liken the process to a row of dominoes falling - there was a single event that started the fall, and some "dominoes" were bigger than others, but at any point in the process one or more "dominoes" could have been removed and I would probably still be a Christian to this day. There were, however, significant points or events that stand out - critical turning points, if you will, those defining moments where a decision has to be made and something happens to steer things in one direction or another. The first significant event was a conversation I had with my fundie mother after my favorite grandmother died. Grandma was a very warm and loving person, in many ways a far better mother to me than my own mother ever was, and I was especially close to her, so it broke me up something awful when she died. (Still brings easy tears, over a decade later.) In a nutshell, my mom and I were talking about grandma's salvation and I remember being told the whole thing about "well we don't know what was in your grandmother's heart, only God knows that, but if she died without him she's probably in hell". I'd been taught that God was loving and merciful by nature. I'd also been taught that he sent people to hell for not believing in him. It was one of those situations where the spirit vs. the letter of the law clashed, and I realized instantly the inconsistency in a god of love condemning a person who reflected his loving nature to an eternity of hellfire for not saying the right magic words. That didn't sound like love to me, in fact it sounded like petty tyranny. Christianity never sat quite right for me after that. What finally pushed me out was the relationship with the Notorious Bible-Thumping Ex (NTBX for short). I looked at who he was, how he treated me, how he treated women, and how Christianity enabled him in his misogyny and dishonesty; I realized that if being a Christian meant I had to be like him, I'd rather go to hell. Then I knew I wasn't afraid of hell anymore after that, and that I was out of Christianity for good. There were a few other major turning points in there too, things like the failure of my Christian marriage, stuff like that. And there were a lot of factors at play overall. It wasn't just one specific thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LBW Posted June 22, 2009 Share Posted June 22, 2009 I did constant prayer for 2 years as well pleading to God daily to heal me of my "sickness". It drove me insane. I'd pray when I awoke, pray under my breath, I'd even pray myself to sleep. It was even my birthday wish a bunch of times when blowing out the candles. When my grandmother died, during her funeral I made many trips to the restroom to pace and pray/plea. I felt God might be closer to pray to during a funeral. Wow, how saddening. I'm so glad you found your way out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShallowByThyGame Posted June 22, 2009 Share Posted June 22, 2009 The biggest blow for me was realizing that each religion fervently believed they were the right ones. I couldn't say I was right unless I could back it up somehow. Something didn't add up, so of course that lead me to ask questions and study world religions, and I realized how religion is a social phenomenon, not a divine one. I has always assumed the reasons why Christianity was right and Islam was wrong would be obvious, otherwise why would everyone spend so much time and money on Christianity. But there were no clear answers. It was all a big joke. The rational clarity was only found when all the supernatural was tossed in the bin. I was never a 'take it on faith' type of guy, as Einstein and other scientists were regarded as heros in my elementary school and I wanted to be intelligent like them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redbeard Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 I chose contradiction, with the contradiction being mostly biblical events versus actual history. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vomit Comet Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 I had been growing colder and colder over the years. But what pushed me over the edge was women. I was in love, and there was no way I was going to let that motherfucker keep me from making love to her. I started having horrible recurring nightmares about her going to hell, every single night, so after two straight weeks of that I'd finally had enough. I chose the love of a real woman over the love of an imaginary cosmic tyrant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neon Genesis Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 For me it was the church's ban on homosexuality. I was raised to believe homosexuality was a sin but later realized I was gay myself. None of my prayers or the psychiatrist I saw about it did anything to change my sexuality. This eventually led me to question the morality of hell, the authority of God, and the effectiveness of prayers. Sometimes I wonder if I was raised in a more gay friendly church if I would still be a Christian today, but I also can't help wondering how some people can be raised in homophobic environments and the lack of God's ability to change their sexuality leads them to believe God accepts it when it seems obvious to me that the lack of answered prayers means God isn't there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RabbleRabble Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 I voted "The character of God." The event that triggered my questioning was not specifically about the character of God, but it was still the biggest and most troubling issue for me throughout my christian life and deconversion. When I was about nine I moved out of the child's class. We were doing actual bible reading! Specifically the conquest of Canaan. When I learned that God had ordered his people to kill all of the men, women, animals, and.... babies.... I was shocked. God ordered the killing of babies? At that time the explanation given to me was that the babies were "bad seeds" and would have grown up to lead God's people astray. I accepted this with misgivings. For months afterward I had a recurring nightmare in which I was one of God's soldiers and he had ordered me to slaughter the children of Canaan. As I stood in front of the crying children huddling in terror, I realized that I couldn't do it. An angel appeared before me and told me that I had no choice and I would go to hell if I did not obey God. Then I would swing my sword and wake up crying. The issue of my own sense of morality vs. God's morality continued growing in the back of my mind throughout my young christian life and eventually when I began to question, it was the first problem I presented myself with. It got the ball rolling and opened my mind enough to take in everything that I had not allowed myself to examine before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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