Castiel233 Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 For me it’s the metaphysics. I simply do not believe that thinking a certain way has an impact on where you get to live after you die. It s a religion of thought apparently! It makes a virtue out of with you think and believe, but thoughts (to me at least) are randomly generated and I only have a limited about of power of what I think. Another problem is that the Bible makes crystal clear that almost everyone goes to Hell, even Christians. So it’s a rigged game you have no chance of winning even if it’s all true. The Bible isn’t so much a book of growth for the soul, more like a long winded yarn of God telling you to go fuck yourself. Then of course there are the subset reasons to reject it: Predestination makes a mockery of free will Lots of different religions (pick a card) Failure of prayer Piles and piles of counter evidence Biblical cruelty Moral Biblical inconsistencies Biblical contradictions that have to be painfully explained away Silence from History Christian’s mistreatment of non Christians historical. That they rarely misbehave now is testament they are ignorant of their holy book or are out growing it. That’s this mornings gripe out of the way with……coffee time now and my French language course…..Oh la la 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklady Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 often there is one thing that cracks the mirror with me it was when i realized that all the people i knew, and prayed for, nothing had really changed, apart from the changes that time makes happen ... I had this thought, god doesn't actually ever do anything ... hes not going to change people, hes not going to make someone a better person, or heal a dying person .. and that, my friend, was the start, one random thought ..... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreeThinkerNZ Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Because the human construct known as "god" allows suffering in the world. And the bible is nonsense. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Marty Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 I read the bible for myself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pratt Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 the bible is NOT the literal word of god, and is subjected to. interpretations AND my biological father was much kinder than the biblical god and jesus combined,,,, 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Moderator florduh Posted August 5, 2014 Super Moderator Share Posted August 5, 2014 Evidence doesn't support the claim. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roz Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 1. the utter stupidity of the roman census http://www.ex-christian.net/topic/63985-the-story-that-tax-collectors-fear-most/#.U-DOeGOTCa8 2. the bible god specifically institutionalizing lifetime slavery only for foreigners (non-Israelites) Lev. 25 3. 40k+ different major denominations all claiming they have the truth 4. the epic failures in predicting the end times 5. christians being dishonest, claiming x or y is true without any evidence (usually they say "my faith is my evidence") 6. the impossibilities of its stories (YEC, Flood, etc.) Just the list I can think off before breakfast. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Storm Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 For me, its simply that things just don't line up. If God really existed and wrote the bible and did all the things he says he would do, the world would be a very different place. An all knowing, all powerful god would be able to easily and readily make himself easily understood and his presence known. He does neither. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bedouin Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 As far as christianity goes, what has tipped the scale for me is that god would pick a time when ignorant superstitious were the norm to appear in a backwater vassal region of the Roman empire, bringing no truths about the physical universe. Surely if jesus could transmute water into wine, he could have stated, and proven something as simple as the fact that earth revolves around the sun, just for starters. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orbit Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 What Roz said, plus early Hebrew polytheism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deidre Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Once I took an objective look at the religion, I realized it breeds bigotry and fear. It instills oppression over all different groups. All of the Abrahamic faiths have this "problem." Something that occurs to you when you dump Christianity, is that what you were worshipping was an idea. An idea of who god might be. And all religions do the same thing. Just different versions. Glad we all escaped! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 The promise does not square with real world experience. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tollo Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 The reasons that tipped the scales for me: 1) The creation/flood story (if taken literally) is demonstrated to be false by the fossil record, among other things. 2) Reason #1 led me to investigate other OT stories and I found that things like the Exodus also probably didn't happen and that much if the OT is legend, consolidated myths, actually made up, or propagandized versions of history. In my opinion this makes it more interesting as literature but completely unbelievable as an "infallible" word of god. 3) It doesn't make sense that someone should get eternal paradise for knowing something and eternal torture for not knowing it. Especially for "knowing" something that is contrary to the evidence. 4) Christianity is a non-falsifiable view, and therefore it is suspect. 5) You can't succeed in Christianity. No matter how much you improve your life, your pastor will tell you you are a miserable sinner. 6) Christianity has a cult like way of making you distrust anything and everyone else. If "all truth is gods truth" as they like to say, what do they have to hide that liberal or secular professors might reveal? 7) So many things that god supposedly did in the Bible make no logistical or moral sense. 8) The laws in the bible are either breakable in certain circumstances, don't seem to have a moral basis at all, or are no-brainers that all non-Christian cultures came up with as well. Certainly not a helpful or exclusive moral guide. 9) Christians invariably claim that their salvation was gods blessing on them but my apostasy is something I am responsible for. I take that to mean that while the doctrine of grace is crucial to keeping everyone theoretically helpless, they don't really believe they don't deserve paradise any more than the rest of is. Just, hypocrisy. 10) Christianity stigmatizes sex in a way that does no one any good, except that it gives the church more power and control. It makes people think they'd be better off marrying a fellow cultist they barely know than dating an atheist/member of a different religion who they love and know as a best friend. 11) Along the same lines, Christianity robs people of everything that makes life worthwhile and interesting. They feed people this notion that the world is evil and broken and that heaven will be better, then they take away things like sex, relationships with non-Christians, powerful secular books, movies, music, spiritual experiences from other traditions, the experience of finding out true things about the world through science, non-Christian holidays... They also suck the fun out of things that they do let you participate in, for instance disallowing condoms and birth control, "keeping Christ in Christmas," requiring you to "critically examine" all your books and movies to see if they are "biblical," making you on your guard all the time, requiring you to awkwardly proselytize your friends and family, spend your free Sundays in cult ritual, et cetera ad nauseum. 12) The bible said faith as small as a mustard seed can perform miracles. I have never witnessed, let alone performed a miracle of any kind and my faith was certainly at least as big as a mustard seed at one point. 13) Once their was a chink in my armor of faith, Christian-speak, prayer, worship, sermonizing, sacraments etc all looked like so much nonsense. It was like the emperor's (lack of) new clothes. It grosses me out to see grown-ass individuals basking in the ecstasy of nothing whatsoever. Church grosses me out more than it bores me, and that's saying something. 13) Christianity gives super bad advice about life, especially when it comes to things like mental illness, living in poverty, civil rights issues, sexuality, dating, decision-making, etc etc. last time I was in church the pastor told us that "darkness" is in our life because of our own lack of faith and that trying to solve problems with our own judgment is the sin that brought evil into the world. In other words, it's all your fault but not your problem to solve. I think it is much more useful to approach it as: it (depression, darkness, bad luck, whatever) might not be my fault at all, it just randomly happened to me, but I'm going to take the responsibility to solve it. I could go on and on really. These are some top reasons for me. It's funny I never wanted to tell people why I believed in Christianity when I was a believer but now that I'm not I am bursting with reasons and explanations and evidence and quibbles and I will talk your ear off. Tl;dr Christianity f*cking s*cks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seven77 Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Broken promises. God never keeps his holy Word. He's a bullshit liar and a con artist. He created the world, then passes the buck onto his creations. I can't stand for that, although I once did. Plus I found my encounters with Christians to be shallow and tenuous at best. Everyone is your friend when you participate in their mutually shared delusions about talking to a dead Jew with your heart/mind, but once you decide to stop talking to yourself....they are full of fucking excuses. Can't take the real world, so they have to make a bubble to live in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chikirin Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 I see no evidence for a holy spirit. If Christiniaty is real then Christians would have the fruit of the spirit (gentleness, self control, meekness, wisdom) but instead they are always outraged and angry and demonstrate no wisdom. I have seen Christians demonstrate good behavior, but nothing I would consider supernatural. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disillusioned Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 That Christianity is true is an absurd, incoherent and unsubstantiated claim. That's all there is to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlindersRemoved Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Bible god isn't omniscient, omnipotent, perfect or loving. He sure as hell isn't worthy of being praised and worshipped. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milesaway Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 For starters, xtianity is just one claim out of many in a pointless cosmic guessing game. Second of all, had I become a xtian, it would have been an endorsement of an establishment that has ruined people's lives for ages. Even though I was relatively quiet about it, I couldn't live with myself knowing that, so I left and never looked back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amateur Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 The bible is supposed to be god's inerrant word, so all I needed was one thing that wasn't true from the bible to make it all not real, since supposedly a perfect god would not allow a single error in his book. Well, of course there are a lot of things that can't be true. But the resurrected jesus saying that he would return to earth while some of the people in the crowd would still be alive did it for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LambLedBySyn Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Heavy indoctrination as a child that forced me to actually read the bible (both OT and then NT) and seeing with a child's eyes the horribleness and the confusing nature of the so called "word of god". God was/is a terrible father and just terrible as a god in general. Realizing that people are free to make choices, both good and bad, and the so called rewards or punishments for their actions either never come or come in a way that just wasn't or isn't related to a supernatural deity watching and giving out merits and demerits for said behavior. Growing up being ostracized for being able to think on my own and have my own thoughts, opinions, and god forbid -- my own desires -- and being told that I was a horrible person for simply being who I was and essentially who god made me to be. Trying my absolute best and winning the gold in the mental Olympics to understand how and why a god that supposedly only has our best interests in the world could have created both good and evil and only punishes humans for the evils he originally created. Suffering from depression and dealing with numerous other issues whilst desperately searching for relief and comfort only to be told that all my problems stemmed from my own misdeeds/lack of faith/not being good enough/ etc. and finally reaching a breaking point where I was saved by a few precious people in my life, NONE of which who shared the belief in a so called deity and wondering how could such people be so kind and understanding when I had been told that they would be the most deplorable of creatures simply because they had less faith than I did. The way I was treated by people who I call family, who I looked up to, who claimed to have reached a higher plain of understanding and shared none of their "knowledge" with others seeming to enjoy looking down on others and watching them suffer only to rub salt in fresh wounds telling poor lost souls that they are the cause of their own suffering and they can do nothing to fix it and must rely on a power that could choose not to help them at all. I could go on and on about the many chinks in my faith armor, but the final straw that finally broke the camel's back as they say was the deaths of people very close to me who, in my eyes and in the eyes of others, SHOULD have been spared/saved/healed but were not only to have people add insult to injury by blaming me for it or suddenly changing their opinion of god's work. From that day on, I walked away and I've never looked back because if I did, I could only either see life as being meaningless or god being a dick with the added bonus of life still being meaningless in the end. Neither of those options looked good or healthy. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreeThinkerNZ Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Heavy indoctrination as a child that forced me to actually read the bible (both OT and then NT) and seeing with a child's eyes the horribleness and the confusing nature of the so called "word of god". God was/is a terrible father and just terrible as a god in general. Realizing that people are free to make choices, both good and bad, and the so called rewards or punishments for their actions either never come or come in a way that just wasn't or isn't related to a supernatural deity watching and giving out merits and demerits for said behavior. Growing up being ostracized for being able to think on my own and have my own thoughts, opinions, and god forbid -- my own desires -- and being told that I was a horrible person for simply being who I was and essentially who god made me to be. Trying my absolute best and winning the gold in the mental Olympics to understand how and why a god that supposedly only has our best interests in the world could have created both good and evil and only punishes humans for the evils he originally created. Suffering from depression and dealing with numerous other issues whilst desperately searching for relief and comfort only to be told that all my problems stemmed from my own misdeeds/lack of faith/not being good enough/ etc. and finally reaching a breaking point where I was saved by a few precious people in my life, NONE of which who shared the belief in a so called deity and wondering how could such people be so kind and understanding when I had been told that they would be the most deplorable of creatures simply because they had less faith than I did. The way I was treated by people who I call family, who I looked up to, who claimed to have reached a higher plain of understanding and shared none of their "knowledge" with others seeming to enjoy looking down on others and watching them suffer only to rub salt in fresh wounds telling poor lost souls that they are the cause of their own suffering and they can do nothing to fix it and must rely on a power that could choose not to help them at all. I could go on and on about the many chinks in my faith armor, but the final straw that finally broke the camel's back as they say was the deaths of people very close to me who, in my eyes and in the eyes of others, SHOULD have been spared/saved/healed but were not only to have people add insult to injury by blaming me for it or suddenly changing their opinion of god's work. From that day on, I walked away and I've never looked back because if I did, I could only either see life as being meaningless or god being a dick with the added bonus of life still being meaningless in the end. Neither of those options looked good or healthy. *Hugs* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sybaris Posted August 6, 2014 Share Posted August 6, 2014 I've never found any compelling reason to subscribe to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blau1976 Posted August 6, 2014 Share Posted August 6, 2014 I got bored with Christianity. I was bored at church, kept looking at the clock, wishing I was elsewhere. I don't want to hang out with a bunch of people who belittle others because they aren't sharing the same beliefs. I got tired of people telling me I'm a loser with God and that I was born flawed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antix Posted August 7, 2014 Share Posted August 7, 2014 A combination of things: 1) I found the majority of xians to be assholes and very materialistic 2) Even though I am conservative, I have issues with guns where most xians think guns are cool and it is ok to shoot people 3) Answers to prayer did not exist 4) Televangelists and also the ministers and priests catering to those who are wealthy 5) Some odd things in the Bible, especially the old testament: king sacrifices his daughter, telling the Israelites to kill everyone 6) Having gay friends who are genuinely very nice people and having no Xian friends who are sincerely nice 7) Fail to comprehend why God would let people be born in India in massive poverty and let them go through life without ever having a new shirt or a meal out and then sending them to hell for not beliveing in him Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sdelsolray Posted August 7, 2014 Share Posted August 7, 2014 What Are The Primary Reasons You Are Not A Christian? Because I value intellectual honesty, rational thinking, emotional maturity, reality, human empathy and balance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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