Did you have a bad experience with your former church or religion that caused you to reject it and become an atheist?
I spent most of my life as a closet atheist, afraid of conflict if I admitted to my friends and family that I was an atheist (I'm not a good debater). I credit the people here on this newsgroup for giving me the courage to speak up. I don't post very often, but I enjoy reading the discussions. (Sally #939)
When I was in my twenties I was manning a console at the Cape Kennedy launch complex during the launch of Apollo 11. I thought of him then and wished that I could rub his nose in it. (Larry Mudinger #451)
I rejected all of the beliefs I had developed by being shown the ridiculousness of the beliefs. After my initial "eye opening" I began to question everything. To this day I still am amazed at what people will believe. (Clark Nova #474)
Still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, though.
That's only one, but perhaps the biggest that comes to mind. It takes
more than one event to really condemn an entire group. I have seen the gamut from what I would call "false charity" (see above) to downright hypocritical actions. They had a "no jewlery" policy (including wedding rings) yet the Pastor got to sport a Rolex, as it was "functional". Overt xenophobia in the ol' church really stuck in my mind (don't forget I was
an impressionable youth). These guys condemned the Catholic Church as the "Whore of Babylon", thus condemning my Grandparents to "hell".
Recently, I attended an Anglican funeral service for a friend. It seemed
to me that the Reverend (who had never met her) was more interested in winning converts than honoring the memory of a great (IMHO) woman. Sure, the last instance wasn't "my" church, yet it kind of backed up what I knew/thought about religion in general.
I could keep going on the conflicts I have had with my/various churches, but we all have better things to do. (Paul MacDonald #537)
I can remember thinking the Methodists were a bunch of hippocrites. Ohio
at the time had a referendum going on repealing the blue laws and I can remember a lot of preaching on how sinful it was to do some things on the sabbath.. It just never made and sense to me why buying gas was ok, food
at a restaurant was ok, but food at a grocery store was not ... and the attitude when you asked for an explanation !!! Because God says so was even less satisfying than "Because I said so " was from my father.
(Suzane #62)
Our priest told me I was not sincere enough and I had to try harder so I did. In the end I was feeling very very alone as everyone else in the
group seemed to have all these long and intellectual conversations with Jesus. Or so I thought they had.
After a while I started talking to this girl who I had known since we
where perhaps six or seven years old, and she confessed she never got an answer from either god, Jesus or the holy ghost either. I told her what
the priest had told me, that I wasn't sincere enough and she told me that she had been told the same thing as well.
After a couple more weeks, we discovered another student that shared our problem, and we where now three who did not get any answers from any deity whatsoever. We did not tell the priest that we had these "blasphemic" thoughts at the time, and he was convinced that everyone (except me) got answers from god when praying.
In the end I left. Hypocrites never was what I enjoyed spending time with anyway.
This is what agravates me when people like Frank the Fundie bleats that everyone gets answers if they pray. Everyone does _not_ weither he wants
to believe this or not, I never did event though I have never ever wanted anything more then get rid of the doubts I had. Instead they grew, and a few years later I said to myself, "you don't believe in a god, why pretend or try to?" so then I sort of in my own mind declared myself an atheist.
Been one ever since. (Ichimusai #769)
That proved to be too hard of a cross for me to bear and led, I
believe, to a mental breakdown on my part. I woke up one day and
my mother was a stranger to me. Oh, I knew her name, and what she
was like, but I had absolutely no emotional reaction to her. I couldn't
love her, trust her, fear her, or even hate her. I just felt a
calm indifference to her.
As you can probably guess, this had to have huge repercussions in the
emotional development of a pre-teen boy. I suspect that is why I've
always been a loner, had such a weak sex life, don't have any close
friends, don't want to have any children, etc. All because some
"fire and brimstone" Lutheran minister infected my mother with the
Hell meme. (Thank you so much, Pastor Westcott, wherever the fuck
you are.) (Carl Funk #1229)
I didn't leave the church because of a bad experience but because I
found it impossible to maintain the "suspension of disbelief" that had
made my religious faith possible. Once I began seriously examining the
assumptions on which that faith was based, I began a process that led
inexorably to my becoming an atheist.
There was no tragedy, no disappointment, no anger involved, just a bit
of sadness that I had wasted so much time on such abject nonsense. I
felt as though I had recovered from a long, lingering illness and, for
the first time since I was very small, had been restored to full health
and vigor. Even though I'm beset by some physical infirmities these
days, that attitude has not left me in the 25-plus years since I first
felt it.
I know theists would like to believe that there must have been some
terrible event or disappointment that pushed me to leave the church, but
that simply wasn't the case at all. I'm an atheist because, given what I
now understand about the nature of god-belief and religion, I cannot be
otherwise. (George Ricker #146)
Understand, that was only the start of my doubting. I did a lot of work
before finally reaching atheism. (chib)
Anyway, I just got sick of all the hypocrisy and I got sick of being told
just to "trust in God" when I would ask why people who were never told about
God got to spend eternity in hell. Yes, my old church believes this. Part
of the whole guilt trip- since you didn't tell them about Jay-sus, it's your
fault they're going to hell, you damn sinner. Even if they're eskimos, or
martians, or whatever, it's still your fault.
There's a ton more, but I won't waste anymore bandwidth. (Leo #1941)
Not that long afterwards, I was an atheist. (John Hachmann #1782)
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