To all the ex-theists in this community. What drove you to leave your religion?

I was raised in a religious family, went to church every Sunday.

When I realized I had actual questions that they refused to acknowledge, I walked away. I was eight.

Example question:

Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 offer two different creation myths. Why? Is one "right" and the other "wrong"?

Genesis one: Animals created first, then people (man and woman created at the same time.) 7 day creation.

Genesis two: Man created first, then animals for man to name, then woman from the rib when god realizes he made a mistake and none of the animals are a fit companion for man. Not a 7 day creation.

Answer:

The reason for it is plain in the original Hebrew. Genesis 1 is the Elohist tradition (the Gods are referred to, in PLURAL, as Elohim.) Genesis 2 is the Jawist tradition where God is referred to as YHWH or JHVH.

Early editors took two different creation myths and mashed them together.

If you can't, or won't explain that to an eight year old... well... doesn't speak well for your faith.

hate.

specifically, there was some small LGBTQ protests that put the hatred into perspective- there were the protestors (who maybe went out of their way to be annoying and provoke things;), assholes, and everyone quietly cheering for the assholes.

it made me look at my own behavior... and I didn't want to be an asshole (or perhaps, more accurately said: didn't want to be that kind of asshole. I'm not a perfect person.). This prompted a slow slide from non-practicing through agnosticism into straight up atheism.

It didn't help that it took 2-3 years before anyone reached out to me about why I left, and then it was because my mom had asked a pastor to do just that... he didn't get it when I quote CS Lewis Mere Christianity ("That a person ought be a better person as a christain."...) I was a better person as an atheist; because I wasn't obligated to be an asshole.

edit to add: it wasn't just the LGBTQ hate. that was just the nature of the incident that brought me face to face with the ugly truth. It was easy to say, for example, that West Burroughs Baptist's aren't real christians. There's a lot of out-groups that christians hate on. hell, sometimes those outgroups are even other christians (how many wars have been started between catholics and protestants?) more contemporary, look at the hatred for refugees and asylum seekers.

hatred is a pervasive feature of Christianity.

I paid attention to the stories.

The story of Job in particular drove me up a wall.

God took everything Job loved to win a bet he already knew the outcome of. A bet he made with Lucifer.

Basically Lucifer tricked god into torturing an innocent man and god fell for it like a fuckin chump.

He either knows all and willingly tortured Job to prove a point to someone he shouldn't give a single thought toward or he got duped which shows he's either not all knowing or just a dumbass.

Education. When I was young I grew up in a Catholic household, in a city where being Catholic is the norm, in a country that is very religious and superstitious as a norm. And then I had the opportunity to go on a student exchange and get immersed in different cultures, and I realized "these people have their own beliefs, a different religion, but they have the same ethics as me." So I started leaning towards agnosticism - let everyone believe in what they want, to themselves. Years later I went to college, and had my first experience of Southern Baptist religion. That one rubbed me the wrong way. There was just so much disdain for anything different, so much "believe me because I said so". That's where I realized I didn't believe in God, or the afterlife - I believed in ethical behavior, and in being good to other humans. The rest just fell into place after that. I really like Penn Jilette's point: "I have no God, and I murder and rape all I want. And the amount of murdering and raping I want to do is exactly zero."

I could never find an answer the question: Why is my religion the one that’s real and not all the others?

So our (Lutheran) church would bring all of the kids in the congregation up to the front to discuss a theme or passage during each service. We initially had a pretty cool female pastor (who—I later found out—was bullied into leaving because she was a woman 🙃); she at one point told us that to get into heaven, we only needed to ask God to let us in. It made sense to my naive little brain.

When I was 15, some asshole temp pastor called us up and asked if we know how to get in, and I replied with what I was told; he very condescendingly said "uh, no, you need to believe in God".

I was irritated by his tone, yes, but I also hadn't heard that before, strangely. His response really disturbed me. I thought, what about people across the world who have other faiths? Or children who die before they even have a chance to believe?? You mean my amazingly kind, Buddhist Vietnamese friend is going to HELL?? What the fuck???

So I began to research alternate viewpoints online, and discovered the ways in which Christianity doesn't make sense and how it's often used as an excuse to spread hate and suffering. I just couldn't justify believing anymore.

The money-grubbing and the cultish behaviour.

So I was raised LDS, and the exmormon community says all Mormons have a "shelf"

Basically everytime you ask a question and the answer is along the lines of "we don't have the answer to everything, all will be revealed in time" we put that weird thing on out shelf. Eventually, too many things are on the shelf, and it breaks.

Some people who want to stay in the LDS church because it makes them happy have a very strong shelf. Those who want to stay because of fear/social pressure avoid looking at anything that might need to be on their shelves.

Some common shelf items that were on mine:

Book of Mormon describes the natives having very European technology around 0 AD. They have metal swords, horses, chariots, to name a few. Yeah they just didn't.

Even in a time when it was incredibly common to be anti slavery since the Civil War was around the corner, the idea that black people were inferior to white people and should serve them was heavily recorded in the early church. And black men couldn't reach full status like a white man until 1978. They preach that God loves all his children equally... but apparently there were a few qualifiers about skin color.

How they treat women is trash.

Prophets supposedly are getting revelation from the same God, but keep contradicting each other. Most famous example is "Adam was God" theory. Most recent high profile example was a previous prophet ran a campaign called "meet the Mormons" trying to sell the idea that being a mormon was super normal. But current prophet says "mormon" is a derogatory term and a win for Satan?

The way they demand super poor people pay tithing, while holding upwards of a hundred billion in reserve for no apparent reason. They could easily end hunger in the US, and maybe even homelessness. And they would if they actually followed the teachings of the loving christ they claim to follow.

They claim that they have magical gifts, like being able to tell if people lie. Given the rapists and worse that have been high ranking members of the church, either they are liars or complicit. But given how often they defend rapists that were obviously guilty, probably just both.

I could go on for awhile... but those were my shelf items. One day it just broke and I was like... huh this is all just nonsense isn't it.

I was 14 and my parents never forced indoctrination. I considered what I knew to be reality and what I had been taught about religion just didn't fit. I put it on par with Santa.

Granted, you don't have much confidence in your beliefs at that age, so I kept it to myself for many years (as I continue to do). If the topic comes up, I'm not shy to express views, but generally keep to myself.

Raised Hindu, Primary education was enough to debunk Hinduism. Hindutva politics in India was also an important reason for leaving.

But I could have joined other religions. Probably,Reason for joining atheism was science and rationality.

I grew up in an incredibly conservative, southern baptist town. When people say there is no hate like Christian love, that’s where they were talking about. I’m not kidding when I say part of the reason I have PTSD is growing up in a place like that while being trans and queer. Every bad experience I had there is inextricably tied up with Christianity in my head, because it was a pervasive background factor in all aspects of life in a way I think that people who grew up outside of that environment tend to believe is exaggeration or at least a century in the past.

So, that’s why I’m not a Christian. I did a meandering wander through other faiths for a few years before returning to the same feeling I’d had since I was a child: this feels fake and also vaguely embarrassing to be taking part in because I don’t believe any of it. I didn’t get anything out of the social aspects of any religious stuff so I didn’t see a point in going to something like a Unitarian Universalist church, which is probably where I’d go now if I developed a social interest in religion for some reason.

Raised mormon, I think I knew for a long time I didn't think the religion was true, but the stigma of leaving was SO high I never allowed myself to consider it might not be true. Moved away for college and without family to make sure I went to church I just started skipping. My parents asked all the time and I eventually got tired of lying. I decided I needed to know for myself and half hour of google later I knew.

Raised in a family that was intermittently transient (living in renovated school bus/rv etc) in order to travel and preach. I was very devout growing up, probably terrifyingly so to anyone who wasn't in my family. For one thing, I was told and believed that I was a prophet from a young age. I didn't really believe anyone who claimed to not be a Christian was being honest- the standard line was that "atheists" and so on secretly believed, but didn't want to stop sinning (or something- the details were a little blurry).

One day, while living with a cult in West Texas, I was riding back to our campsite in the back of a pickup (with a bandana tied around my face to cut the dust), and it occurred to me that, if God were omnipotent, then he always has the option to do something else but get the same effect. So if he wanted to not kill Jesus, but still arrange things so that people had to acknowledge/accept him to avoid hell, then he could.

Omnipotence means you only ever do things because you wanted to do them.

Why this hit me like a ton of bricks, but the idea of billions of ignorant people burning for eternity didn't, I don't know. But everything else came tumbling down from that. Cue the lying, the (several years later) inadvertent reveal, sleep deprivation, harassment, years of eggshell conversation, my family skipping important events in my life, etc. etc.

Good times.

I wasn't very religous to begin with. My whole family is Christian but I was raised in such a way that Christianity was really small part of my identity, most of the time I just didn't care. Also, science was always really interesting to me. I think it was like 6th or 7th grade when I became atheist, Christianity just didn't make sense anymore because God isn't necessary.

Hypocrisy, all the fricking hypocrisy.

My uncle runs a Christian Megachirch and he is the worst family member I’ve ever met, narcissistic, selfish and generally concerned mostly about money. I left for college, left all the religion behind and never looked back.

God made me. It's part of His Plan™ that I'm not religious, and I apparently cannot deviate from His Plan™. Plus, Jesus already died to forgive any sins I may commit so  ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Eta: I cannot deviate from His Plan™ even tho I supposedly have Free Will™

Common sense .

Truth. I know I’m broken; but I need facts like oxygen. I don’t give a wet slap if you prove a point that shows I was wrong; hell I love that… it means I learned something or at least corrected an error in my knowledge.

So I need proof and facts. And with god I never saw it. There’s nothing there that is super natural. Joseph Smith wants us to believe in the Book of Mormon? Show us the gold plates…

Seriously, gods best plan, by which he will judge and condemn us to burn if we get it wrong; was to tell some poor shepherds and fishermen in the middle of a Roman backwater…

Yeah. No. Sorry

Raised Catholic. Around 12 years old I simply could not reconcile the idea of "God is Love" with the idea that "God sends unbelievers to eternal torture in Hell". I had just learned about Gandhi, and was like, "that guy's in Hell??". Told my mom I didn't believe in god anymore and I didn't want to go to church anymore. She cried.

I never believed. I was raised by JW. All religions seem odd to me. And I was forced to read the Bible. That alone should make anyone walk away.

Former Roman Catholic raised in a catholic family while also having gone to private Catholic schools until I was 18.

I wasn’t extremely religious after 18, and mostly began to align myself with Christianity rather than Catholicism. I was indoctrinated to never question, never doubt, and always believe because God is watching you. My catholic education and the stories of “doubting Thomas”, Job, the Egyptian plagues, Sodom and Gomorrah, and all that stuff were lessons that were deeply engrained.

One day my sibling committed suicide when I was young. He was in the hospital, and I prayed so hard for god to heal him. God didn’t, and in the viewings and funeral, Catholics would say to me “I’m sorry for your loss, we’ll be praying for you, God needed him in heaven, and God works in mysterious ways that you are too human to understand.” Whatever, I accepted it due to being deeply indoctrinated.

It took me a little over 30 years before I finally accepted that God wasn’t real. In my 20s I certainly entertained the thought, but I suppressed until as I grew older I started to become less and less religious. I constantly had the doubt in my head, the nagging feeling of why did God let suffering happen if it’s only to bring us to heaven, why did God hate homosexuals, why would God commit genocide against the people he created and loved, why would he kill indiscriminately, why did he let evil happen(like children being born with leukemia) if he was omnipotent and omniscient. Why was his divine plan so callous? Why did he let my sibling die? I prayed so very hard that god would pull the bullet from my sibling's brain and somehow heal my sibling, but it never happened - God didn't answer my prayers. My indoctrination and subconscious reacted with the normal response: suppress, don’t question, and obey. Once I finally began to separate morality and ethics from religion, accepted that I could question my religion (despite Doubting Thomas), and began unpacking the cruelties of religion did I get to a better state. I also began looking through history to eventually determine that all religion was intended to do was co-opt societies of different values, and institute control on primitive humans incapable of true critical thinking. I learned about Christmas being Saturnalia, and then it started to click that all these religious holidays I celebrated were aligned with solstices and co-opted from pagan celebrations. I learned that the traditional image of St. Nick or Santa Claus was actually marketing from Coca-Cola almost 100 years ago. I felt like such a fool.

I of course researched Dawkins, Darwin, other religions, regaled in George Carlin’s monologues about religion, and started embracing my already logical and scientific side. I couldn’t justify, even when I was in my catholic educational years, why there was a bad God of obedience in the Old Testament, and a new cool hip God of love and forgiveness in the New Testament. Why did Catholics select only certain things from the Old Testament while ignoring the rest? What caused God to stop being such an indiscriminate killer? Was it because he sent Jesus, his only begotten son, to suffer and die so that we could finally be saved and get to heaven? At that point, I concluded that religion doesn’t have answers but rather addresses the existential dread everyone faces: it gives hope, and a promise that the reason for our existence is so we can do good and get to heaven. Religion was debunked and no longer important in my life.

I gave up Catholicism and am in a much better mental state now. I felt icky for decades that the Catholic Church protects their pedophile clergy (of course not all clergy are pedophiles or evil, there’s a lot of people that do really good things and I’ll always have respect for them). I no longer have fear in my heart that God is watching me. I now have love, and deep-seated morality and ethics that guides me rather than a spooky creator. It’s been liberating and I feel at peace finally.

The one thing I can’t do, however, is tell the truth to my parents. They are from a very, very religious place where religion comes first. Telling them would destroy them. Better to keep the peace rather than cause severe emotional distress in their old age which could likely impact their health. They’re thankfully not religious nut jobs, and are the exemplary kind of good religious people that help and serve others, rather than the scary conservative kind that uses their religion to oppress others. I’m glad they taught me well how to be a good person so I can make good choices - without the need for an invisible parent watching me, judging me, and threatening me with eternal damnation.

Well, my family is a weird split between Christian and Atheist. On my Dad's side my Grandmother is Christian and Grandfather is Atheist. My Dad was put through Catholic private school and hated it... he's never expressed any religious belief for as long as I've been alive. My mother's side of the family are all Protestant Christian (My grandmother on Dad's side is too she just has an extremely weird perspective on Christianity).

So, my Mother tried to raise my siblings and I as Protestant Christians. Unfortunately for her I've always loved learning about biology which brought me to knowing 'bout the theory of evolution... which contradicts Mom's Creationism. At first I was just ignoring the evolution but as life went on I was presented with a mounting body of evidence of Mom being objectively wrong about various things and occasionally deliberately lying to me. This is also with the strain of Christianity Mom's side of the family has holding that being Christian is to have a relationship with God, including that he would be responsive to prayer. I never felt it. No presence of some "higher power" or anything that I could take as being the answer to prayers to it, not even "No", no response at all.

After enough of that I had to ask myself what I believe. Being presented with science verses dogma and being told they're mutually exclusive (by the side of dogma) I chose science. Kept that decisions to myself for a few years out of fear of retaliation. In that time I learned about ethics, a little philosophy, a little physics... and the online Atheist community in-general. So by the time a family member asked me directly if I still believed in God I had pretty well made up my mind that #1: I don't and #2: if I'm wrong I certainly don't want anything to do with them. I left the second point out of my answer and told them the truth: I don't believe in their god anymore.

It took me a month or two to stop worrying that some retaliation was coming... it never did but my relatives were curious about what I did believe since it wasn't the same as what they did. I've pretty much settled on a materialist view of the Universe, I don't believe in anything that is supernatural.

Same reason I stopped believing in Santa Claus, the Easter bunny and the Tooth fairy. I grew up.

(I grew up Catholic) All throughout my Sunday schooling the inconsistencies kept popping up; when I was young I would chalk them up to 'I'll understand later' or 'as I learn more I'll figure it out', but it never happened. By the time I was in my teens I was there just to keep the family happy; I became more aware of the underlying bigotry and hate, and my disagreements with the church as an organization piled up. I distinctly remember while on the way home after confirmation that I didn't feel any different for having gone through it, and when I said it aloud, my father couldn't provide any useful guidance, I sometimes think he doubts, but won't or can't bring himself to leave. As soon as I graduated I stopped going to mass regularly, sure that I didn't want to be considered Catholic anymore, but still unsure of what I believed. In college I was a Classics major (these days I teach Latin), which is what finally killed any last vestige of faith I had. I spent a lot of time working with documents ranging in age from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the works of St. Augustine, and at every turn I saw just how deluded, how derivative, it all was. There was a sentiment throughout the classics department that went something like this: Studying these topics will either strengthen your faith and make it unbreakable, or destroy it utterly. Obviously, this applied most to Christian students, but seeing the way the religious sausage is made so-to-speak would have been enough, for me at least, to turn away from any faith. I never understood how anyone could learn all about this and still have faith, the cognitive dissonance just seemed so massive, yet I saw it happen with some of my fellow students. These days, except for weddings and funerals, I avoid going near churches.

Well, mainly because religion cut my penis (circumcised). But, TBF, religions never made any sense to me. As a kid, I was forced to go to Madrassas in my free time after school. The kids there would argue for silly reasons and the preacher would tell me to learn useless sentences in Arabic. Apparently, this God can only hear you if you tell him in Arabic. That didn't make any sense either.

When I went to a new school, in my middle school years, on my first day's break time, a group of students came to me and greeted me. They said they wanted to be my friends. Well, I thought that's cool, as I hadn't made any friends yet. Subsequently, they asked what my religion is. Well, I told them what religion I was being taught. They immediately then changed their expressions. They uttered I don't look like people of my religion. IDK why though. Anyway, these middle-school kids only befriend people of their religion. That moment made me have a disgust for religions since then. I kept my distance from these kids after that too.

I actually sat down and read the Bible after my youth group got dissolved so they could charge us $$$ and I found it odd ppl who tell you not to be greedy were trying to get money out of kids.

2020 convinced me that there is no god, then I got interested in philosophy and that was that.

An Omni merciful creator that condemns to an eternity of punishment, also just general observation about reality

According to my parents I was questioning God in year 5. So I guess because it doesn't make sense? But also, if this God actually existed (The Jewish God) I absolutely wouldn't want to follow him.

I am 58, I have a vague memory of being lied too about Father Christmas , being told thays not true even though I was assured he was originally and then thinking the same thing about god (catholic family) but figured out for myself that it was bullshit. Doesnt take much ciritcal thinking, even as a kid to realise that.

I had to LARP for a bit but stopped the nonsense of church etc when I was allowed too as a young teen. Reading more widely after that you get to see some of the utter horrors caused by religion and release how toxic they are.

An example, lived in Cambodia many many years ago and a bunch of evangelicals wouldn't let locals use a water well until they "converted". A constant reminder of the toxic nature of religion.

I was raised as a Catholic, went to private school K through 12, and even wanted to be a nun when I was around 12. I bought into it 100%.

First started questioning the sinfulness of same-sex love because I was having feelings for my best friend in high school.

I was taught that questioning was a sin, but even that didn't make sense to me because my intellect is a gift from God, so why would it be sinful to use it?

So I started to allow myself to question things, but continued going to church and believing through my 20s. I just cherry-picked which teachings to keep and disregard.

Sometime in my 30s, thanks to the internet, I was exposed to people like Dan Barker and Sam Harris. I was living in Michigan at the time and also started listening to a local podcast called Reasonable Doubts (highly recommend).

All of that combined helped me realize atheism made the most sense, though it was several months before I learned to embrace the term.

Noah got all the animals on the ark??? Yeah ok my 2nd grade brain called bullshit.

I was part of the Knights of Columbus in the Catholic church (the funny hat AND sword guys). I had been a Catholic for years, they gave a good pitch about whole life insurance and charity, and I was naive. We did a blood drive and pancake breakfast, honestly life saving stuff that was super easy to do. I asked them "why don't we do this every month and make it easy for people to remember to do". They said "that's too much work" and "let's not get overly ambitious". That's when I realized it's all for show, they didn't want to actually help people, they wanted to self promote. I decided to dive into my work as a neurodiagnostic tech and just lead a good life and actually help people instead of do the church thing.

Others did a great job with their points; for brevity's sake, I'll only cover what I experienced & was not said: lots of hate, judgment, belittling, and generally speaking "weird shit" that one couldn't get away with if engaging with people of high value, worth outside of church.

To subject yourself to church is to subject yourself to all, to become subservient. Specifically Judeo-Christianity is the religion of slaves. The ones who behave are good little bitches who get walked all over by the others, they're also held to higher standards because "they know better", "strong Christians", whatever praise or wording to encourage compliance. The ones who misbehave, are arrogant/mean, or seek to seize power & influence over the other members. If they're called out for not being Christian-like, oh well, they "made a mistake", "we're all human", "they don't know better", "only God can judge", every excuse in the book to overlook their (repeated!) bad behavior. Now as a 28 y/o lifelong Christian...how can I have a relatively good grasp on being a good person & a 50+ y/o lifelong Christian be a domineering, gossiping piece of shit?? Explain that to me. Because yes, everyone makes mistakes, but a lifestyle comprised of mistakes & being a bad person isn't very impressive to me. I was treated with more respect by complete strangers than I ever was at my church. I was consistently treated as sub-human, I was always subject to the highest levels of scrutiny, contempt, and scorn. That's pretty messed up.

Now that I'm gone, if they want so badly to criticize some piece of shit, I guess they can look in the closest mirror. There's lots of material to work with.

@Lanky_Pomegranate530
I was raised in a somewhat skeptical environment but had been drawn to Christianity by a charismatic bullshit artist.
A new girlfriend was interested in me & asked me to explain my beliefs. As the words were coming out of my mouth, I felt like such a gullible, credulous moron. Something about saying it out loud rather than just thinking or hearing it popped the illusion. Like waking from a weird dream.
Unintentional street epistemology. Still together 37 years later.