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Goodbye Jesus

What Killed Your Faith For Good?


Lilith666

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After years of ignoring the subject entirely, I finally decided to really figure out what I believed...I would either abandon the religion altogether or I would return to the fold and be a good little churchie. I knew I had to take a rational look at both sides...so I watched The Case for Christ and wasn't impressed. Then I turned on the laptop, googled "debunking christianity" and an hour later I was an atheist.

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I had had so many questions over a couple of years, but the final straw was a sermon against "elevating reason above the bible". I thought "THAT IS IT. This is exactly what a cult would say if they know they have no reasonable basis for people to believe." So, in fear, I prayed that God would understand my search for truth and forgive my "wandering" and show me what was right if I took a rational look at whether my religion was true or not. I spent a few days reading "Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine, and I've never since been able to believe god is real.

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I felt silly admitting that times I was sure I had experienced the holy spirit, I was just making it up. I think we're all better at "making up" experiences than we'd like to admit.

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Before that...it was one of my readings of the OT, where someone sacrificed their daughter to strangers, who raped her all night, and then they cut up the body parts and sent it to all parts of Israel, etc etc. and I threw my bible across the room, and admitted then, that even though I still believed in god, he was a total asshole and I didn't like him if he thought this shit was ok.

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I had no idea when I joined that supposedly humble group of "true believers" that I would have to throw out my reason & end up worshipping a god damned book! I never thought I would be pressured to believe the bible as infallible, gawd's word...but it happened I'm ashamed to say. The day I started seriously looking into bible contradictions, hypocrisies, cruelty in the bible & other issues that were often swept under the rug...my faith began to crumble.

It really hit me that the bible was used to justify slavery, murder the native americans, kill jews, abuse women & on & on...then abuse AFTER this life. I realized that the bible god was a nasty mother fucker....who I wanted NOTHING to do with anymore. Of course I also looked around me at the cruel & hypocritical christians & thought to myself ...I don't like these people.

 

Oh & looking at the "fathers of the faith"....those guys were ass holes. The cheated, they lied, they deceived, even against their own family members. It bothered me how men could have sex with all the women they wanted, multiple wives, concubines...etc...& they were "men of gawd" but let a woman try that....she's a harlot, whore, deserving of death, unclean when she has her monthly cycle, unclean for a longer time after having a baby girl....

Again...it just kept adding up to insanity I could no longer believe.

 

For me what ultimately killed my faith was the bible itself & the cruelty of people who believe the bible.

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Final nail for me after the coffin was almost sealed was Oedipus Rex. I took a theater class in school and many of the themes in this play were clearly later borrowed by the writers of the gospels, including the idea that a wayward son of a king would sacrifice himself to save his people, that I knew then and there the whole thing was bullshit.

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The day I realized that god is a loving, psychotic, compassionate, vengeful, caring, schizophrenic, nurturing, irrational, merciful, sadistic, perfect god, I threw in the towel.

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"god loves all his children" -- bullshit! god hates everyone, he only loves himself.

 

"god is everywhere, all the time" -- then what the fuck are churches for? why on earth should anyone go to church?

 

Catholic mass. -- what a fucking death ritual. stand, sit, kneel, stand, chant, sit, chant, kneel, eat a cracker, stand, sit. some priest droning on about the same shit week after week. the whole congregation saying the same words over and over in a monotone that just sounds like a satanic ritual. sitting on a hard wood pew like you are being punished. and the most annoying is the dead guy NAILED to the cross on the wall.

 

At some point your brain says, "this is just fucking sick". Religion just sucks the life out of you and forces you to be completely stupid. Grown ups should not have to go through this torture. I wouldn't post a picture of my dead grandma on my wall for the rest of my life so why would I want to see some dead guy I never knew nailed to the wall every week.

 

Years later I went back and read some of the bible. I never doubted that it is a cult after that.

 

For all the lurkers out there, just read the bible cover to cover. There is no god, there is only your happiness to be gained. It's just a scam, the oldest cult in history.

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I'd spent a few years tossing away Christianity piece-by-piece. As each piece stopped making sense, or questions went unanswered, I dumped it. Toward the end, I had spent less and less time thinking about religion at all, and I realized the only difference I felt was that I was no longer under constant pressure and worry that I wasn't measuring up, that my thoughts were evil, that my faith was inadequate, and that I was failing by not having the joy and peace I was supposed to have. I realized that life went on just fine without believing. I tend toward depression and worry anyway, and it was such a relief to get out from under all that and relax a little, I realized I never wanted to go back to it.

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For me it all happened so fast. While I was like everyone that has the pre-deconversion stuff that goes on for years, going from true believer (without question) to full blown atheist was no more than three months. So it would kind of be like me driving a car at 100 miles per hour toward a cliff and asking me when was the exact moment that I'd no longer be able to stop in time. The exact moment I became an atheist was while reading http://www.whywontgodhealamputees.com/ . But the time which I had simply crossed the line of disbelief and realized there was probably no un-seeing behind the curtain, well that we probably about a 5 to 7 days into finding youtube atheism. I was watching hours upon hours a day of The Atheist Experience, Evid3nc3, DarkMatter2525, Purplfox, and Laci Green. So again, yeah no magic moment because it was just happening too fast, but one of those folks would get the credit for pushing me over the edge.

I frequented that site in my deconversion process. I consumed so much random material by the time I actually stopped to think about what my stance was I wasnt a believer anymore.

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For me, it was realizing that the babble wasn't as reliable as christians said it was. I questioned how we knew that the books in the bible were actually god's word, as Catholics and Orthodox Christians had different books in their bibles. I was always taught they were false because they aren't in our bible, but that didn't really hold up for me. I eventually found a website with a collection of christian theology articles in it (the name eludes me at the moment) that convinced me that the bible does not need to be infallible to be authoritative or true. Of course, all this liberal Christianity is what eventually killed my faith for good, though I did not admit that I didn't believe until later.

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Suffering. That's it really. A truly compassionate god would not allow it to the extent that I've witnessed. For some, this life is hell, it's cut short or they live in despair due to the premature loss of loved ones. Face it some people are born to suffer. It's all they'll ever know and absolutely nothing they had control over.

 

And then you have self-centered Christians who believe God answered their prayer for a new home (Praise Jesus, God gave us favor and our bid was accepted by the owners!!!) while children fade away into their bones from disease or starvation in poverty stricken countries when their only hope is to make it on their own.

 

Yeah, I'm glad your god answered your prayers and gave you favor for your new home while nearly 16,000 children died today from hunger-related causes.

 

How's that for an "all-loving" god's priorities?

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I actually toyed with the idea that I was one of the predestined damned

 

OMg! I went through this thought process too! I decided that god didn't talk to me because he had already determined I was not predestined. "Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated." That was a huge turning point for me.

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I actually toyed with the idea that I was one of the predestined damned

 

OMg! I went through this thought process too! I decided that god didn't talk to me because he had already determined I was not predestined. "Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated." That was a huge turning point for me.

 

That's the ultimate evil of religion right there. Convincing good people they're damned simply because they can't hear an imaginary man talk to them.

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  • 1 month later...

For me it all happened so fast. While I was like everyone that has the pre-deconversion stuff that goes on for years, going from true believer (without question) to full blown atheist was no more than three months. So it would kind of be like me driving a car at 100 miles per hour toward a cliff and asking me when was the exact moment that I'd no longer be able to stop in time. The exact moment I became an atheist was while reading http://www.whywontgodhealamputees.com/ . But the time which I had simply crossed the line of disbelief and realized there was probably no un-seeing behind the curtain, well that we probably about a 5 to 7 days into finding youtube atheism. I was watching hours upon hours a day of The Atheist Experience, Evid3nc3, DarkMatter2525, Purplfox, and Laci Green. So again, yeah no magic moment because it was just happening too fast, but one of those folks would get the credit for pushing me over the edge.

Very similar to my experience. I started with a realization that I had been ignoring for years, all the inconsistancies in the bible, and decided to try to objectivley look at them and see if they could be resolved. I thought there would be a few dozen or so...boy was I wrong. After the first 500 I found that I knew I couldnt answer, I started watching alot of deconversion youtube, and Atheist as well. I read Josh Mcdowell and Lee Strobel and tons of others, then looked up the rebuttals, and found so much evidence against Christianity, I was overwhelmed, and embarrassed that I had never even noticed it beofre. Whole process before I admited, "in my mind at first because I couldnt say it out loud", that I was atheist, took about 4 months. Tried to hide it for 3 months before "coming out" to my wife.

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The final straw? Reading a children's bible to my kid. I had already started seriously questioning my faith and all of the Christian things I had been taught, but when I started reading the stories out loud, it all just seemed more and more ridiculous. And I started to feel very uncomfortable sharing these stories with my son. Then he started asking questions, and I really didn't want to lie to him. I found that the best way to answer his 'whys' was to say that no one really knows.

 

I started looking for some information about Jesus from a historical perspective. I wasn't looking for anything pro-Christian or anti-Christian, but wanted to find a neutral, objective source. I actually found one that did the trick (on Netflix, who'd a thunk it??) It didn't argue for or against the existence of Jesus, but explained where he might have been from, the places he may have gone, and the political situation of the time. Then I started looking for the pro-Christian and anti-Christian arguments on the Internet. (That is what eventually led me here.) I finally faced the gymnastics of logic that I constantly had to struggle with to believe all of the Christian doctrine... and the Christian doctrine lost.

 

If Jesus was a real person, I think he was a guy who was disgusted with the way the people in power treated the weak and vulnerable people of his day. I even think he bucked the religious establishment for taking advantage of the believers. I think he was probably executed to shut him up. But I think that all of the miracles and hocus-pocus attributed to him was made up by people trying to sell a story. Unfortunately, I think a lot more people throughout history have used that story to make a profit for themselves at the expense of others.

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Early in my journey I actually downloaded a free book that puts many of the thoughts and reasons for deconversion in a easy to read narrative I recommend it: Check it out at truthdriventhinking dot com

 

To your original question, I had an actual clear moment sitting in my recliner that I can mark as the time I actually said to myself, "Holy Crap! It is all fake! I have been living for a lie!" That moment occurred after I spent the evening reading much of the historical evidence and scholarship on early "god" myths and realizing that the jesus myth was just another version. For me that explained everything and it also collapsed everything. Although by that time I had already rid myself of most all xtian trappings but was holding on to the possibility that jesus was at least a "real" god and I could still refer to myself as a christian. After that moment life changed and I was "free".

 

I also must give credit to the streaming "freethought radio" channel. freethoughtradio dot com That was my first real exposure to atheists. I remember thinking, "wow, they sound normal, friendly, and more reasonable than I would have thought. I think I will hang and listen for a while." And here I am!

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Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman, and a lot of soul searching led me to deconvert in August 2007. I went from believing in the abrahamic god, to believing in a deist god. Watching this video by Philhellenes in July 2010 was what made me an atheist.

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I don't know that it was something specific but a bunch of things from hearing that religion was to provide comfort, to learning about the historical background of the Bible, studying history in college, meeting and becoming good friends with people I was told were terrible (atheists, pagans, homosexuals, etc), liking things that I'm not supposed to, rejection from the church for being who I am, seeing my parents go through hell when dad lost his arm.

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When the Santa myth was exploded, God was collateral damage. I didn't have much faith anyway, since God was invisible and didn't talk to me; he was practically nonexistent. At least Santa left presents and appeared in department stores, though the number and fakeness of Santas raised suspicions. But when the parents came clean about Santa it was all over but the residual fear. I was about six I guess. By twelve or thirteen the maybe-I'm-wrong fear was gone. I mentioned something once about not believing in front of my mother and quickly learned that was something I should keep to myself. That's what I have done, more or less, in the forty years since. But Mom and Dad know. Everybody knows, but I don't think they talk about it.

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The clincher for me was 9-11-2001 and remarks made by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell soon after. This is why I say, 'every time a Christian opens their mouths, they prove by their own words their god does not exist.'

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After years of spiritual angst because I never experienced or felt ANYTHING from the christian god, I read the bible to understand. I got through Genesis 3, and declared Abraham's god an evil fucktard unworthy of worship.

 

I was 14.

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When I studied religious history, and the creation and evolution of the bible, it became obvious that none of it was true in any literal sense. It also became obvious that all of it had a totally human ancestry.

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It was back during my college days. I was sitting in an Ethics class and I considered myself a liberal Christian at that point in time. Theistic evolution, gays are cool, Hell is an allegory, you know the story. Anyways, it was close to the end of the semester, and the entire class had up until this point endured a hard core fundamentalist Christian in the class. He was from Africa, so maybe a refugee or something. I feel bad for him today, since I'm sure he, or his family, was converted by missionaries at some point. Either way, he would always interject this opinion into a class that was always open for honest and tolerant debate between various topics. Relativism, humanism, etc...we all had good class debates over each topic. But this dude would always come in and lay this giant mind turd on everyone and talk about how only God can impart morality, Jesus is the only true way and so on. His constant preaching drew the ire of even some of the open Christians in the class.

 

So as I was sitting there, listening to this guy talk about how only Christianity can impart morals the professor asked, "Do you think Christianity's morality has changed over the years? Christians repeatedly argued for slavery during the Civil War." The guy instantly shut up and couldn't think of an honest answer, though later he tried to pipe in with talks about the New Covenant.

 

Anyways, that started me thinking about the moral teachings in the Bible, at which point I began studying it in earnest. After concluding the Bible was filled with some horrific mandates, I moved on to much of the science behind evolution, Big Bang etc...which just further solidified my disbelief.

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