Any Defining Moments?

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

Is there any moments in particular that stand out, or any defining moments when you realized that it was pointless to ask questions about the bible to pastors/others, and decided to figure it out on your own? Besides the fact that I already knew I understood the bible loud and clear, I was extremely uncomfortable, as my questions were hoping that my interpretation was wrong. I had questions about genocide, and I was told that I'm "trying to follow my standards, and not gods". Besides the fact that I am morally superior, his answer didn't help me. So I asked my pastor more questions.

 

The defining moment for me was when I realized that I knew more about the Bible than my pastor. You'd think it would be the other way around, I was still 14/15. So I went to 2 other pastors to get the same results. I was like wtf? so I figured, I guess I am going at this alone. Then I realized, what the hell am I doing? I am just following this text because I am afraid of burning in a place that I have no clue if it exists. It took me a while of not going to church to stop ignoring my logical side. I meandered through other religions then got to where I am now, an agnostic, possibly might become an atheist. Not because my knowledge of god changed, but because the more I see believers, the more I want to be an atheist, to be as far away from being like them as is possible.]

 

But yeah, the incident where I knew more about the bible than the pastors pretty much did it for me, it put the nail in the coffin that already had enough nails in it, and my questions continued to mount, but no longer against me supporting an evil invisible dictator

[Moxie]

Jeez, where do I begin??

I grew up in a strict fundamentalist christian church (Church of Christ).

I knew more of the Bible than the church leaders as well. I knew I didn't believe the church teachings after I observed the members laughing about other people going to hell. Several of the church members basically played fast and loose, getting drunk on weekends, tuning in to sexually explicit videos and music for entertainment, and generally acting like they didn't care if they went to hell.

I was ostracised from the church for NOT participating in these things.

I did some in-depth Bible study at a secular university, where I was intrigued by the writings of John Spong. Other than that, the major defining moment for me was the hypocrisy.

[Shyone]

I think I know what you are looking for: That particular moment when it hits you, and efforts to unknow this or undo this are doomed to failure.

 

My conversation with my pastor was defining. It's not that he said anything wrong, or that I suddenly realized anything. It was more that I felt he knew that I was losing my faith.

 

Sometime later, while praying, it all came crashing down and I was alone talking to myself in the middle of a church service. No gods were listening. This was after I had already studied the bible, history and other things, and I was practicing medicine. I knew the truth; it just didn't seem to matter until I realized emotionally that there was no one on the other end of the prayer.

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

Shyone, interesting. What sealed the deal for me spiritually is when i looked for other religions, no one seemed to pick up the phone or at least be checking their answering machine up there. Eventually, I realized that all the things I did (rituals, holidays, etc...) to renew faith seemed empty, and then I realized, what's the point? I lost the possibility to go back to religion. The fear of hell lingred for a while, but it wasn't powerful enough.

[luvless]

My defining moment came as I was researching the Bible when I found that Paul had never met Jesus in the flesh, that he met him in the spirit. Having done research of other beliefs like Mormonism, I realized that the writings of Paul were no more "god inspired" than Joseph Smith writings and vision of the angel. That did me in right there, that one man that never spoke with Jesus took it upon himself to set up the whole structure of most Xian churches today. It was fairly recent and sealed the deal for me.

[Spike Spiegel]

For me, it was when I realized that the "Holy Ghost" I caught was just me trying to imitate the crazy people around me. I also saw that many of the older adults in the Pentecostal church I was attending with my mom led this very dead-end sort of lifestyle. When it's all about the hereafter, there's no real motivation to make this plane of existence count for anything. Most were blue-collar types, and the few "young people" that I knew that attended college wouldn't go outside of our hometown so that they could stay close to their "home."

 

Also, an objective reading of the Torah helped. I guess God wants us to rape and conquer other civilizations while proclaiming His eternal love and mercy, huh?

[ShallowByThyGame]

I was reading about Muslims, who I knew about but had not thought about much other than they would probably christian if they read the bible, but this time I thought about them I realized they would say the same thing about me. How could any religion be right? What's the point of trying to understand the bible when millions of people think you should be trying to understand the Quran? The only answer that made any sense to me was that it was all mythology invented by humans.

 

After that realization, I felt nothing in church because whenever that spiritual emotion would arise I would think to myself "all religious people feel this no matter what they worship" and I felt uncomfortable.

 

Then I drifted onto the Deist highway, and rode it all the way to Atheist Town after I finally got through the 'No Afterlife' Tunnel and made pit stops at a few Eastern Religion truck stops.

[★ Citsonga ★]

My questioning started with some of the contradictions in the gospels. For a while I was struggling with it, and everywhere I looked for answers I got arguments that simply weren't convincing. I temporarily toyed with the idea that even though the bible had flaws, perhaps the core of christianity was still true; that didn't last long, though.

 

After that I would say I had what was probably my biggest turning point. I figured that if the "fulfilled prophecies" were supposedly the strongest proof of the truth of christianity, then I should take a closer look at them. I started looking at claims of fulfilled prophecies in the gospels and then looked up the original OT texts. I had done this in the past as well, but this time around I took a closer look at the CONTEXTS in which the so-called prophecies were framed, which led me to the mind-blowing realization that a lot of the so-called prophetic fulfillments were CLEARLY FABRICATED by taking texts completely out of context. (At this point I also realized that the altered wordings of some of them were also significant.)

 

That was pretty much the death-blow to my already seriously waning faith.

[Ouroboros]

My defining moment was a morning--I don't remember when, but I do remember it was in the fall--just after my morning shower, looking into the mirror, and it just dawned on me: I don't believe. My whole body started to shake, and I had to know if I was wrong or not, so I prayed that God, if he exists, would let himself known to me. I didn't care how, it was up to God to convince me of his existence, and I'm still waiting for an answer.

[godlessgrrl]

I can think of three defining moments and one general attitude that helped lead me out.

 

The first moment was when my grandma died. I was a devout believer at the time, more moderate than I had been prior to that but still with a strong Born-Again, fundie streak. My grandma was probably the person who loved me the most when I was growing up, more even than my own parents, so losing her was devastating. My equally devout, equally Born-Again mother told me sadly that if my grandma hadn't believed properly, she was probably in hell. So for the first time I was faced full-on with the inconsistency of a loving god sending a loving person to eternal hellfire on a technicality.

 

That got the snowball rolling. The one general attitude was that I'd let it roll, without fear, and let my doubts lead me to whatever answers were true. Because I figured they'd either lead me deeper into my faith, which was no bad thing because it would make my faith stronger and bring me closer to god; or they'd lead me right out of it, which was no bad thing either, because a weak faith is not worth offering to god. Or something like that.

 

The second moment came after some time had passed. I'd left my first marriage and was in spiritual limbo-land, still marginally Christian but not quite sure, rather on the fence. The Notorious Bible-Thumping Ex™ missionary dated and dumped me, and when he was through with me I looked at his actions and attitudes and the way he justified his various pathological behaviors using religion to do it. I can remember lying there in bed one night trying to get to sleep, thinking about it, and it just came to me: "If being a Christian means I have to be like him, I'd rather go to hell."

 

I no longer feared hell, and so no longer feared losing my belief in Xianity. I dropped it and became a neopagan for awhile.

 

The third moment came after I'd wandered through paganism and didn't really know what I was; I defined myself as agnostic, but was really just a step or two away from full-blown atheism. I had an online altercation with a self-righteous Christian, and had another one of those lightning flash realizations. I saw how alike this Christian believed she and her god were, as if they were of one mind, and for some reason I suddenly understood that she was right: she and god were of one mind because god was a projection of her own mind. People don't worship a deity that really exists outside of themselves, they worship extensions of their own ego.

 

And I guess I figured, if you're just going to worship yourself anyway, why bother with the middleman?

 

I was an atheist after that.

 

And of course there were countless little turning points or questions or what have you in between, and ongoing. But those three stick out for me in particular, not sure why.

[tmanqz]

The one defining moment, happened while sitting in a charasmatic church, listening to the sermon, the same old underlying message hidden in the serman. Laced in the serman of salvation,hope,healing..... was the the sowing a seed, faithful tither,putting god first bs. After 8 years the secret little message rang like a bell. I woke up from being the mindless drone I had become.

Finally it came to me, "RELIGION IS A BUSINESS". Product ETERNAL LIFE. Motivation natural human FEAR of DEATH.

Religion is Power, Control, and MONEY. Lots of money.

Im so glad to be done with that BS.

[Andy]

I never really asked a lot of questions to my teachers or parents or anyone. I don't mean I didn't have questions, I just kept ignoring them until they built up and built up and I couldn't ignore them anymore. Then my beliefs just fell away without much of a struggle. It was a gradual thing.

 

The only thing that came close to a defining moment was a short delay, a temporary reversal in the process one summer in high school. I was in Vatican City - Catholic capitol of the world, visiting all these churches, seeing all the history, and I thought hey this might all be real after all. Six months later it was over.

[Franko47]

A lot of things led up to a clear defining moment, but I do remember having these moments while reading and studying the Greek myths, ancient religions, as well as current faith systems and cults. Like a "wow", this is all so much bullshit, and then considering the Christian religion and all those Bible stories, and realizing that I didn't believe there were really any angels, or friendly Jesus looking down from on high, or any God who sympathized with my worries and fears and pains, and that if any of this stuff were really true there would be substantial evidence that an intelligent person could observe and experience.

[Midnight-mindwanderings]

Like a few others here, a defining moment was when I realized I'd rather go to hell with the good, honest non believing friends I had than go to heaven with my horrible family and fellow Church of Christ members. I had already believed I was going to hell (for a lot of reasons but a big one was knowing that I did not love God and Jesus more than anything) and it was a relief to be at peace with that idea. At that point it didn't matter if Christianity was true or not, I wasn't going to believe in it or live my life that way anymore. That was when I was about 16.

[Apostate Nate]

I was 18 years old and had just started college. I was living on my own for the first time and had just moved to a new town, so it was up to me to find a church. I visited a few churches around town, hoping to eventually settle into one of them. However, once I started seeing the hypocrisy in each church, I was getting fed up with it. I eventually stopped attending church altogether.

 

Even though I had become a "backslider", I still considered myself a Christian. However, even though I had been a Christian my entire life, I found my faith slipping due to my persistent questioning. I had tried re-dedicating myself to studying the Bible each several times and each of my attempts had failed. So I decided to conduct an experiment. Because I was beginning to believe that I just wasn't cut out to be a good enough Christian, I decided I would walk away from Christianity for a few months just to see what would happen. My reasoning was that if God really wanted me to be a good Christian, he would bring me back.

 

I ignored religion for a couple months. Since I had removed myself from the Christian community, my bias began to erode away. Then I started studying Christianity more objectively. I found out that many of my assumptions about God were wrong. More importantly, the silence from God since I had stopped caring about him was deafening. After another couple months, I concluded that the Christian god wasn't real.

 

That was about two years ago. I'm quite happy with the results of my experiment.

[Johnnyboy76]

Its hard for me to pinpoint one defining moment, since it has sorta been a long slow gradual process which im not exactly sure when it started. But i do remember what was probably the first thing that i questioned. My mother had always drug us to church and it was the kind with a lot of speaking in "tongues", being "slain" in the spirit, and all that crap. You all probably know the drill but the way it would go is, during a quiet moment in the service, somebody would suddenly begin to yell out gibberish. This was considered a message from god in the magical angel language called tongues. Then in a few moments, somebody else would begin to shout out the translation of this message. This translation was usually a long rambly paraphrasing of various dogma that was constantly being spouted all the time. What struck me, was that when the person was shouting out in tongues, it was always a repeating nonsense phrase that also usually sounded the same every time it happened. I began to wonder, how is it that somebody can get a long speech for a translation from something that is actually just a short repeating series of maybe three or four words? I knew enough about language to know that didnt make sense. And then there was the fact that it was usually the same person in the congregation who would start yelling out in this supposed language. This started me questioning why. And then i began to notice that at church camps and vacation bible school and whatnot, that there was always some pressure during moments that supposedly the holy spirit was upon you, for you to suddenly feel the urge to speak in tongues. The preachers and other adults encouraged any bit of nonsense syllables that someone was compelled to say. I had never ever felt any urge to speak in tongues and i began to notice that i had also never felt the presence of this holy spirit. Then i heard from a friend who i thought of as a good christian, confess that she had faked speaking in tongues and it was accepted as an actual word from the spirit. It was then that i realized that if this whole speaking in tongues thing is a sham, how much of the rest of it is? And from there, it all began to crumble under the scrutiny, as you all know that it does.

[lunaticheathen]

The one moment that always stands out in my mind is when I beat the crap out of the boy in fundie school for trying to molest me. I looked around at the teachers, students, and they all looked at me like I did something wrong! It made me think, wow, if this is how christians act, do I want to be one? Is this how christians are supposed to act?

So I studied the bible on my own, since I couldn't trust anyone "in authority" any longer. I was in trouble for defending myself, and the would-be groper wasn't facing anything. I couldn't think that this was right, at all. Then I found the lies from Abraham's god to Adam and Eve, and the piles of misogynism. That's when I threw the book across the room and cursed that god for the evil creature he is told to be, and evicted him from my mind.

I had doubts before, but that moment was the real turning point.

[Guest Valkyrie0010]

Not sure if this counts but it happened today

 

I was having a conversation/arguement with a family member of mine about a argument that blew up between me and a fundy in my family.

I will spare you the details. But I realized.

I would almost rather burn, then be so afraid on matters of God. Then to not be able to deal with argument about religion. Another realization hit me, almost my entire family is like this.

 

I can't be like them even I were a believer and not a extreme extreme doubter who can't call himself a Christian, yet doesn't now enough to say its bunk.

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

Also, an objective reading of the Torah helped. I guess God wants us to rape and conquer other civilizations while proclaiming His eternal love and mercy, huh?

Well yeah! He wanted us to love it up on the conquered in ways they won't enjoy it

 

As for mercy, I don't know how to mock at that one.

 

I read the entire OT in both english and in hebrew, the two are definitely not the same, nor is english a translation of the Tanakh, but an extremely maltranslated version. It isn't due to difficulties in translation either, its mostly dogma related. For example, everywhere where you read "evil" in the OT, its supposed to be destroy/destruction/destructive behavior. Boy was that a revelation.

 

All very interesting defining moments btw.

 

I didn't learn about the biblical parallels until I researched paganism. The OT "history" of creation through Noah seems like a bastardization of babylonian myths that weren't meant to be history but to be taken allegorically. Does that, perhaps, say anything about the bible? It believes allegory as literal historical truth? Yes, yes it does.

[HRDWarrior]

I can't say as though I had a defining moment persay, but more like a variety of pastors who just made me shake my head and go "wtf?" I had two really good pastors in my life as far as their knowledge of the bible - the first was when I was a young kid (5-~10) and the second was as a young adult (very early 20's). Both of them did a great job of really challenging your knowledge of things, both knew Greek and Hebrew and had read the bible accordingly. It was especially beneficial with the second pastor since by then I was old enough to really understand and learn. He also challenged people to look into things for themselves, not to take his word on it - additionally, he was pretty well versed in world history.

 

However, while both of them really challenged me, neither made my faith in the non existent god any stronger - if anything, the more I dug into it, the more I saw through all the lies and bs that had been thrown at me in between there and afterwards. Although I may have been on my way out from the time I got in, once I really started digging into the bible, and then tried other churches (that pastor had moved) and realized just how superficial it all was (and how unknowledgable the people were) I quit going to church on a regular basis. After that, being left to my own devices much of the time I relatively rapidly moved to liberal christian, to buddhist/christian, to agnostic/buddhist, to agnostic, to atheist (overall about 7 years from full blown fundy to atheist).

 

If there were any defining moments when talking to a pastor, it actually would have been the second one mentioned above - he was counseling my mother when she and my father were having serious issues (abuse) and he told her that she had to stay with my dad no matter what, even if he beat her to death. This was backed up by the deacons/elders in the church. That just did NOT sit with me no matter what, thankfully my mom didn't like it much either...