So What Made You First Start To Doubt?

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Permalink Reply by Ian Fitton on February 11, 2010 at 7:11am

The beginnings of my doubt and shift to atheism were, humorously, brought upon by my youth pastor at my old church. One of the lessons she was doing related to the whole 'faith versus works' bit, and her point of view was essentially that of faith alone. She provided an example of two men, with one being a doctor who focused his entire life on doing good for others, researching the cure for cancer, etc. while being a nonbeliever, and the other was a convict who had raped, murdered, and pretty much done the worst things imaginable. The good guy went to hell because he didn't believe in God and the convict was sent to heaven because he found God minutes before the electric chair and asked for forgiveness of his sins.

I'm pretty sure it was a convincing story for 'her', but to me, that was when all the red sirens went off. After that, I was a christian simply because of Pascal's Wager, essentially. Then when I realized the problems with that, I was agnostic, and reading the God Delusion after watching Dawkins on Stephen Colbert make a helluva point shifted me right into atheism. Subsequent philosophy classes have now made me atheist and pretty loud about it to any of my extended family or friends who have issues with it, but most of my immediate family and the friends that matter have accepted or understood why my position is how it is XD.

Even though it's been quite a few years, the evil bastard in me wants to go back to my old church and actually point out to that youth pastor that she began my descent(or ascent) into atheism, but that's pretty low, and I'd like to think that I'm a better person than that.

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Permalink Reply by Max Gerig on February 11, 2010 at 7:49am

i was never brought up with religion but in primary school when i was about 10 one of my best mates invited me to go to church with him, so wanting to spend time with my mate i went. every sunday and tuesday for 10 years.

right from the begining i didnt "feel" anything everyone around is going crazy saying can you feel god and i never did, it got to a stage where felt stupid praying and listening to sermains about how everything in life related back to god and i never understood how it did. i never heard anything i never felt anything and i eventually realised it was a waste of time and i rather be sleeping or going on a breakfast run on a sunday than sit in church listening to hogwash.

what also tipped the scales for me was my uncle, he is a paster and he lives in the lap of luxury and i never understood that. you get the poorest of the poor coming to church on sunday and giving what little they have and here is the paster who drives the top of the range merc, porche 4x4, bmw M3 convertable, lots of bike living in a 2 million pound house. it just makes no sense. My dad who is an atheist and always was, explained it to me buy saying it was just a money making scheme and after thinking about it the same way a motivational speaker makes money so does a paster. i think that was what broke the proverbial camels back

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Permalink Reply by Emily Dietle on February 13, 2010 at 9:40am

There wasn't one strong item other than the Christian bible and doctrine. The stories seemed ridiculous even at a young age and as I grew older, I discounted them completely.

Doubted all the b/s stories in sunday school. got swept in around 12. around 14 thought it was boring. 15 thought it was bogus. 16 started looking at other religions. 17,18,19 tried other religions, bogus too. 20-22 struggled with idea of no god. 22/23-25 decided no god and struggled with openness. 26,27(now) open about atheism to all but Mom & Dad.

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Permalink Reply by Rex Foulk on February 14, 2010 at 2:55pm

My disbelief started very much like yours. It took me a good 6-7 years to finally become an atheist. It started in 5th grade when I wad at a private Christian school where I was bullied constantly cause I didn't wear the bar brand clothing like them cause they were all rich douchebags. If course I never defended myself because fighting was a sin. Then in 6th grade I went to a private school were I made many friends with the "wrong crowd" and was rarely bullied. Throughout 7-8th grade I still repented for my sins and attended church but started to "fall away" when I realized that my non-religious, pot-smoking friends treated me a thousand times better than the self-righteous hypocrites in my youth group. My fear of Hell kept me religious until my junior and senior year in high school when I read the whole bible and started studying religions including Mormonism, Catholicism, Satanism (specifically Lavey's), Buddism, Muslim, etc. After about a year of being a non-practicing Laveyan I decided that Atheism made the most sense. I have been an Atheist since.

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Permalink Reply by Boo Radley on February 14, 2010 at 6:01pm

To be completely honest, I never actually believed in god to begin with. I guess that as I child I mistook people's fanaticism and irrational fear as overacting, and their "faith" as enthusiastic imagination. Religion seemed like it was somewhere between a party game and a "no girls allowed" club: "God is something you pretend to believe in because it can be fun to do so... like Santa." Or, "God is something that people use to exclude each other from games and activities because they don't like admitting that they don't have any real friends." Hmm, then again, maybe I did have it right on that second one.

Anyway, I thought that everyone understood that god doesn't really exist, and that it just was sometimes fun or comforting to pretend that he/she/it/they do/es from time to time. Starting from when I was three or so, I would make up little shrines and rituals because I needed something that I was comfortable pretending and nothing out there really fit the bill. Even for pretend, I didn't want anything to do with a god that would randomly declare things like "Ripping apart pregnant women? FUCK YEAH!!" (Hosea 13:16)

Everybody else always prayed to angry gods that I could never pretend to like, so I looked for little gods instead. I prayed to forest spirits and looked for life in the stones hidden in the hills around my house, and I made up gods of things like milk cartons and egg crates, velcro and blu-tack, puppets and computer games: things that I could have fun praying to and that nobody else ever bothered to talk to. "Oh please, Great God of Egg Crates, let the grocery store's shipments not be smashed today. My mother needs to be able to buy some eggs to bake a cake for her party tomorrow." "Please, God of Chocolate Milk, let the chocolate mix not all sink to the bottom today. I don't like it when it gets all clumped up." That kind of thing. It was all pretend. Gods were like imaginary friends: I understood that none of it was real and I had no problem with that, religion was just another thing to have fun with.

It wasn't until a few years had passed (I was probably six or seven at the time) that I realized that people out there genuinely DO believe that there's an invisible voyeuristic, racist, misogynistic, generally horrible old man sitting somewhere up in the clouds who hates you and thinks you're a horrible person, demands that you pray to him constantly and kill people who call him a different name than you do, and that you send people who claim to represent him 10% of your income forever. The idea was just so absurd that I couldn't wrap my head around it. Why? Why would you want that in your life? Why would you try so hard every day to hate people because someone else said that some magical creature told them that's what you're supposed to do? If you wanted someone imaginary to talk to, why not make it fun and personal? I just didn't understand it, but the realization of people's dependance on their imaginary friend baffled and scared the crap out of me. Mine were imaginary friends and I understood that they were such. Though I spoke to them, they never spoke back. To have an imaginary fried that tells you what to do, and is such a jerk about it... that was just creepy to me. To this day, that still bewilders me.

To be honest, I still far prefer the Egg Crate and Chocolate Milk Gods and such to others I've come across. If I regress and decide I want imaginary friends again someday, I'm going to talk to them. Now those are some guys who can get shit done. ;P

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Permalink Reply by Angela on Friday

I pray to the cable gods for my internet to not go out! LOL

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Permalink Reply by Meggan Dominytus on February 18, 2010 at 9:13pm

I was three and had spent the night with some friends of my dad. They got up to go to church before breakfast and took me with them. I had never been to church. I was very hungry and everyone lined up for "juice and crackers". I wanted some too and they said no God doesn't want you to have any yet. This didn't make sense with what my parents said about God, namely that he loved little kids. So I figured "what kind of god wouldn't let a little kid who was hungry have some juice and crackers?" That was the first seed of doubt. Of course it was a very long time before I became an atheist, but that first incident went a long way towards my views on Christianity.

I went through a period of being scared of going to hell though, thanks to some classmates who told me I was because I was never baptised. As a child, Christianity just never felt right. I remember looking at the sky and thinking in all of galaxy Hell and Heaven were it??? Then it dawned to me it might just be a lie. I wish I had been a little faster to drop all magical thinking. That didn't happen until I read George Smith's book about six years ago. I finished the book and thought "well crap, I guess I am an atheist."

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Permalink Reply by Suzanne Watts on February 21, 2010 at 11:26pm

I was raised in a strictly Protestant home. I was "saved" at the age of 4 maybe? By the time I was about 12 I had started to realize that there were holes in the story. I think the one that really got me was the idea that people who had never heard of Jesus would burn in hell just like those who had heard and rejected him. I said to my mother that a just god would never do that; he would make allowments for those people. She gave me some story about "God making himself known to everyone" that I still don't understand to this day.
From there I started trying to rationalize other parts of Christianity. When that proved impossible I ended up here: aggressively agnostic.

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Permalink Reply by Gilberto Rivera on June 2, 2010 at 1:43pm

Unanswered prayers. Not only for myself, but all the misfortunate people out there in the world who have lost their battle with disease. They've prayed. Victims of hunger, war, crime. Innocent and guilty, specially the innocent ones. They've prayed. I really hate it when the reply is; God acts in mysterious ways...
And you say your God is all mighty, all powerful, all seeing? Bullshit.

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Permalink Reply by M. B. Keene on June 2, 2010 at 1:50pm

It's a funny thing, I stopped believing in Jesus' teachings after watching Zeitgeist. Looking back, it wasn't the best documentary and it had more than its fare share of holes and misinterpretations, but it acted as a seed for thoughts to come.

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Permalink Reply by La Gaya Sienza on June 7, 2010 at 4:32am

I started doubting when I started seriously reading biology and science when I was much yonger. I actually tried to discuss my concerns with a priest. He told me not to read. It would "destroy my faith", he said. That guy did more to destroy my faith than any book. His answer was so shocking to me that I could no longer take people like him seriously. I kept reading and came across Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. I found that book so compelling as an explanation for how we became what we are that I went on to read all of Dawkins' books. Then, along the way I read Dennet and Harris and Hitchens. I read about the origins of the bible and other religious books. Finally I couldn't believe I had once even entertained the idea that all that religious crap could have any truth to it at all. It was scary at first to realise that I was not here for a purpose. That this was the only life I was going to get. But it was also liberating after a while. No guilt about sex or fear about death & hell. I was free to live in a way that brought fulfilment. I was free of the cognitive dissonance that had plagued me as a rational being. I realised it was up to me to make this life the best I could because there would be no second chances - this was not a rehersal for anything. I realised I could be a morally good person without religion. I came to realise that it was enough to be good just becasue it was good to be good. I also saw the extent to which religion is really about power and control and its own self perpetuation. I now feel so disgusted with religion I almost want to vomit when I see those idiotic street preachers or those Southern folk doing silly jigs and going gaga in their churches. Crazy stuff. And priests molesting children. middle eastern lunatics flying panes through buildings. It's all so pointless and wasteful. Thank goodness I left religion. I wish our whole species could leave it. The world would be a better place and the likes of me could get on with our lives unmolested by fanatics.

Rob

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Permalink Reply by Paul T. Bennethum on June 7, 2010 at 12:36pm

Well, at least that priest showed you "the light". The biggest weapon organized religions have is the relative ignorance of it's followers. Christian clergy don't call their believers "a flock" for nothing. Just like sheep being rounded up for slaughter they blindly follow along to their doom.

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