Ex-believers, what made you quit your religion/cult?

I was raised Mormon.

The first things that's very important to know about the Mormon church is that they believe that they are led by direct revelation from god, and that god will never allow the 'prophet' of the church to lead the church astray. The 'prophet' is the head of the whole church, and Mormons believe he (and the prophet is always a man, because women are always subordinate to men in the Mormon church) receives revelation for the entire church and world. As you go down the chain of authority, each person is supposed to be receiving revelation for the people that are under them. So it is believed that if your bishop--who is a local congregation leader, not at all like a Catholic bishop--asks you to do something in his capacity as bishop, then that's coming directly from god.

The second thing that's critical to know about the Mormon church is that every member is very strongly encouraged to pray and ask god to confirm the truth of things. Members are told to read their scriptures (esp. the Book of Mormon) and study the words of Mormon 'prophets', and then pray about it. A warm, fuzzy feeling is believed to be the confirmation of the holy spirit that those things are correct; a lack of confirmation means that you need to pray harder, because those things are self evidently (</s>) the word of god.

Got it? Good, continuing on.

I didn't particularly want to be a missionary, but it was expected that I would become one, so I did. I did not enjoy being a missionary; I absolutely hated it. The mission president--a man that presided over a specific geographical area and group of missionaries--largely did not believe in mental health, and told me to put on a happy face. I ended up having a nervous breakdown and became suicidal. I remember being told that "the light of the holy spirit has left your eyes", and that the reason that I was suicidal was because I had sinned an allowed Satan into my heart. The solution that was prescribed by religious leaders was to pray more, study my scriptures more, bear my testimony more often, etc., and that I would be fine.

...But I knew that I had not sinned. How could it be that my religious leaders, people that were supposed to have the power from god to receive revelation for me, people that I had been promised would never lead me wrong when they were acting in their religious capacity, would be insisting that I must have sinned? What sin did they think that I had committed? (Spoiler: I'm actually high-functioning autistic, and the lifestyle demanded of missionaries was extremely stressful. That stress was what led to the nervous breakdown.) I was eventually sent to the LDS Social Services, which is a counseling org in the Mormon church; the church as a whole is very skeptical of therapists because they take a science-based approach rather than a religion-centric approach. The therapist decided that I was too preoccupied with sexual matters (which, fucking duh, I was 20, and was cut off from social interactions with people of my preferred gender while I was a missionary), and also counseled repentance, etc., along with some aversion therapy to make me feel even more shame about all things sexual.

Meanwhile, I had a psychiatrist for medication. The psychiatrist had a strictly science-based approach. He said that there wasn't any clear reason why some people would become suicidal and others wouldn't, but some medications might help.

It all eventually got me thinking: I knew that I wasn't sinning, but my church leaders--the people that were supposed to be receiving revelation for me, on my behalf--were insisting that I must be. If I've been praying about the truth claims of the Mormon church, and had believed that the holy spirit has been told me that it's all true, but the people that I believe have the gift of prophecy are completely wrong, what does this mean?

For me, the inescapable conclusion was that feelings were not a reliable indication of 'truth'.

If feelings aren't a way to know truth, then what is? Once you start studying the history of the Mormon church, the whole enterprise starts looking like a very sketchy con, and is certainly not something you would take at face value. Moreover, it turns out that all religions are relying on feelings that the religions say are from god in order to confirm that their religion is the One True Religion. Not only is there nothing that's falsifiable about belief in Mormonism, there's nothing falsifiable in religion in general.

Once you accept that, then the most reasonable answer is to say to say that either the existence of a god is unknowable with what we have right now, or that there is no god at all. I settled on the latter, although extraordinary evidence might be able to convince me.

Raised Christian. Christian is supposed to be about love and acceptance, but after all the transphobia and homophobia I saw, it was kind of over for me (sapphic)

A lot of Christians claim that there is only one God and that you will burn in Hell for not believing in their religion, which just sounds discriminatory regardless of “I’m just trying to lead sinners on the right path”. It isn’t the right path if you have to fearmonger to lead people on it.

They also claim they’re trying to gently let people into God’s way or something but don’t seem so gentle when they spam “YOUR DELUSIONAL WOMEN (sic)” on trans men’s social media, or ”DELUSIONAL MEN (sic)” on trans women’s.

I believe all religions are the “true religion” and I’m polytheist.

Hypocrites, draconian believes and the fact that I never felt the so called “presence of God” or of the Holly spirit or anything really

Pedophiles

For me, it was always the gap between what I read (the gospel) and what the people around me in church believed. I don't know what book they read, but we never were reading about the same guy. The dude I read about would have never been okay with bulldozing the homeless, siccing the cops on people, conflating wealth with righteousness, and the government denying people basic rights. Jesus never would have been cool with a theocracy; following Christianity was always and only ever meant to be a personal choice between you and God. What broke me was when the SCOTUS ruled that gay people could get married, every church we visited was screaming about how they were being oppressed. I gave up on going to church, and, over time, re-examined my beliefs. Today, I identify as a Buddhist. Not a very good one, mind you, but it is something I find helpful for framing my worldly existence.

I was never a believer but I was raised by MAGA Christians. The kind that believe in the rapture and show you bad dystopian movies about it.

I tried to believe it for a long time but eventually gave up. I'm pretty sure the majority of the people didn't believe any of the mythology, they were just there for the racism and child abuse, so I tried to get away. Unfortunately the same stupid bullies have taken over the country. At least I'm not trying to see their side as tolerable anymore.

I didn't quit the LDS church, I was unofficially excommunicated for being born intersex and having a puberty not consistent with my assigned gender.

I have both sets of genitals. Both are small, deformed, and non-functional. The bishop at the time told my parents to keep it a secret and to raise me as a boy. Then puberty came along and I physically filled in as female.

It scared the ward members, it scared the bishop (different bishop than before), ajd it scared me. I didn't know what was happening, nor did anyone else in the church. From their POV, a boy just physically changed into a girl.

The common sense thing to do was to consult a qualified and competent doctor about this, yet no one in the church did that. Not even my parents. The bishop gave my parents an ultimatum. Choose between God or your child abomination.

They chose God and my parents disowned & kicked me out. The church quietly turned their backs on me. They all wanted me to just go away.

I'm older now, wiser, and in a far more stable life. I'm even an ordained Satanic minister now, and I am happy. Our congregation welcomes those who are cast out. Words and deeds are more important than your physical appearance or what's in your pants.

Edit: And before any LDS members respond with attempts to get me to rejoin, don't bother. I no longer believe in gods, afterlives, and magic. Plus I will never rejoin the religion that cast me out for the crime of existing.

The final nail in the coffin for me was looking at a world map and thinking about other religions. These people here were raised on this religion, and they believe wholeheartedly that they are right. But, I also believe that I am right. Everyone believes their religion is right, and that belief is solely based on what you were exposed to in your region. Doesn't that mean it's all bullshit? Only one belief can be right. Religion is shaped by the culture of the land, and if the culture changes, so does the religion. With all the changes to each religion over time, that means the original beliefs are gone, or the original "correct" religion is gone. I suppose a current one could be the correct one. It's just infinitly likely that there is no god since religion is formed by those in power instead of an actual god contacting the people of the world.

Spending time away from it. I was raised as an evangelical Christian and I was fully bought into it. I'd had doubts but was always able to explain them away or suppress them. All it took was not going to church every Sunday for me to finally stop believing.

Because I was raised in such an extreme "all or nothing" way, I wasn't able to fall into a sort of half belief like what I imagine most Christians in America believe who only go to Church on Christmas and Easter. But I think younger people are starting to identify as agnostic or atheist in those scenarios.

There are more specific steps to it, but that's the majority of it was just getting away.

I'll never forget the relief when I finally came to believe that the category of things that were sins but not otherwise morally wrong were things I didn't need to worry about anymore.

I don't like to say I quit, more like expanded my belief system to become a human belief system, and not exclusive to a cultural belief system.

I traveled outside my very conservative and religious country, met many different people, learned about a lot of different cultures, and their beliefs. It made me see how "limited" one type of faith can be. How blind I was to the human experiences.

So now, basically, I don't believe there's one answer to rule them all. And that's the biggest change I went through outside of the religion i was raised on.

I thought doubting God was a sin and I'd go to hell if I died with doubt in my heart, so I avoided atheist material out of fear that it was Satan working through them to tempt me to doubt.

But eventually I just couldn't resist, and figured the atheist arguments would clearly be false, and God's truth or whatever would show through and then I could always refer to that event to shake any doubts.

The first video I watched was a debate between a pastor and Christopher Hitchens.

Absolutely shook my faith to the core. For a couple days afterward, no matter how I tried to twist it, I couldn't find the fault in Hitchens arguments.

After that, I began to research the history of Christianity with a more open mind, and it became clear what a shit show the whole thing was. I became agnostic, and I suppose in a way I still am a bit, in the sense that the existence of reality itself is quite puzzling, but I can say with certainty that no religion on earth has any answers toward that end.

The church's overall support for trump and anti-vax/anti-mask positions were a strong counter to the doctrine of sanctification, especially as support tended to increase among older populations. Sanctification is central enough to Christianity to be one of the pillars that either proves or disproves it.

Hypocrisy, politicization, hellfire, and lack of community I guess.

If religion is supposed to be the opium of the masses, it should at least leave me feeling better after church. The rising ideology was naive and attracted narcissists, and there was less and less space to hold on to the original beliefs. It started looking less like a refuge from the world and more of the world. It wasn't perfect before but there was more flexibility and grace at least.

I used to attend church with a small following (50-60 members). The pastor seemed very kind at the time and still does some charitable things... But when my grandfather was dying in the hospital, he suggested that suffering brings you closer to God and any kind of hospice or pain-relief was a sin.

The next Sunday I attended, the pastor starting mocking the medical staff during a sermon, basically airing my family business and likened my family to Judas. I walked out and never came back.

Some of my family still attends his church. I saw the pastor a few years ago and extended my hand for a handshake and he walked away.

My mom and I talk about this whole situation sometimes (she attends a different church). "If you hear something at church you don't agree with, don't bring it home with you." That was her way of saying that the pastor is just a person, too. Take what you can from a lesson and apply it for good in your life.

Does it count if you live in a very religious state that has pushed religion down your throat all your life but you resisted? For me I think I was about 22 when I started to see religion as not just a personal belief, but as a tool used by power hungry men to hurt and control others. I used to respect my religious peers, now I feel sad for them, because I know that they were raised into it so hard that I can't really blame them. The sad thing is, even though I live in one of the most developed nations in the world. I am still in a part of it where criticism of religion, past not believing it, can come with a high social price.

I was a nerd, so I tried really really hard to prove logically that my religion was the correct one... and failed.

My brain started working.

I was always kinda skeptical but the event that triggered my way out was when I asked my mom how can God expect people, who were raised with other religions, to believe in him instead when they simply have no idea. She said they know about God and it’s their own fault for not believing in him. And that for me was not logical because I knew from my own experience that I only believed in God because that’s all I knew.

But it took a while for me to completely stop believing in any deity or whatever supernatural power because I kept looking for reasons why we exist. Now I don’t care for that. Sure the Big Bang is mysterious and we might never solve it but there is no sense in making things up either. Everything else can be explained by science so let’s just go with that.

If the Christian God wants me to believe in him, he should stop being so vague and contradicting. Turn the moon into cheese. Pluck a mountain out of the ground and float it in the sky. Whatever, he is almighty, he should do almighty things.

It was not answering the questions that science could answer

My super religious wife cheat on me and get knocked up. Followed by all our church friends throwing her a party. All the scandals didn’t help also. So I’m done. I now consider myself an atheist.

If I'm really honest it was just because I'm a bit of a weird guy and just didn't fit in.

I mean if all church girls loved me I would've probably just ignored the illogical nature of it all, at least for a while.

I worked as a researcher and started applying the scientific method to the bible and faith, and it fell apart. before i tried to "disable" critical thinking on many issues in the bible and push those issues away. Also, I realized that my faith kept me from accepting responsibility for my actions and kept me externalizing responsibility to god and/or the devil and other people.

The question doesn't directly apply because I'm not an ex-believer, but I am sort of ex-church (attendance).

After years of praying for healing, for myself and others, and seeing nothing happen (beyond the natural healing that would have happened anyway had I not prayed for it), I prayed for someone to be healed and he died.

So that's how healing manifests through me. You aren't or you die. This seems in direct contradiction to Jesus' claim that all who follow him will do greater things than he did, which I interpret to mean at least the same as what he did, one of which was that everyone who came to him got healed.

So my church attendance is on hold for now while I work out why God doesn't want to involve me in his work. I'm still a believer, but obviously I can't preach "God heals" when my only direct evidence is that he doesn't. I'll go back when it's clear what he wants me to do.

What do you mean "ex-believer"? I still use Linux every day.

I read the Bible. I started asking questions about things in the Bible that didn't match science, I loved science (still do), but nobody wanted to answer my questions, they'd just get mad, so I started seeking information elsewhere and came across atheist or ex-religious sources who answered the questions I had. Those sources also helped me realise the damage that had been done to me mentally, which I'm still working on overcoming.

Two things started the slow 10ish year journey to atheism for me. I can't remember which happened first.

Some Mormon lads doing their mandatory missionary work knocked on our door when I was home alone. I decided, screw it, kill them with kindness. Maybe I'll convert them! After I got them some ice water, they started the spiel. It was so stupid, how could anyone believe this? Then I thought, wait, how is what I believe any more believable? That was an unsettling thought that I could never really shake.

I also challenged myself to read the entire Bible (NIV) front to back (which I did, thankyouverymuch). I already had a lot of apologetics for the pentateuch warfare, slavery, etc. but in Psalms there's a verse that basically goes, "blessed is he who dashes the babies on the rocks." And like. What the fuck is that. In what possible circumstances is killing babies okay, let alone with God's explicit endorsement? That also stuck in my head ever since.

There was a lot else in between, but years later I stumbled into a copy of The God Delusion. "Know thine enemy, right?" So I read it on lunch breaks at work. While I now know the book has a reputation for kinda bad philosophy, by the end it had tidily dismantled the last vestiges of the purely "rational" arguments to believe in God I still had. So I sat there, an atheist for the first time in my life.

The people. Family, their friends, the church people, the religious school people. Everyone. Toxic. And it took me far too long to figure out how wrong it all was and how so much judgement and hate and shame and guilt and manipulation was not normal.

None of my community raised an effective adult. But they sure tried to raise an indoctrinated subservient guilt-riddled sack of shit.

Fuck religion and fuck people who pressure it on others, especially children, and so many of them use it all as an excuse to cover the fact they are ultimately just shitty people.

Thanks to them I feel like 2 decades of my life were stolen from me and I had to relearn and grow up a lot in my 20s to get out of it.

Sure is interesting in religion how there's a neverending amount of pointing at YOUR need to change, but none of those pointing ever seem to change or improve as humans.

My mother refusing treatment for cancer when it was still in early stages, Jesus will cure it for sure

I was raised Catholic but rejected it pretty much immediately when I reached the age of reason (~13 or so).

So all I have to do is listen to and obey everything my parents, teachers, and religious leaders tell me and I'll go to heaven, but, if I had been born into a Muslim family in one of the countries we were bombing, doing that would get me sent to Hell and I need to reject everything I was taught, get on a plane, randomly walk into the right church, and believe everything they tell me. Oh, and if I was like some random Chinese farmer a thousand years before planes were invented, I guess I'm just fucked. Yeah somehow I don't believe that an all-good perfectly-just god would have every soul play fucking roulette to determine what their chances in life will be of getting into heaven.

It wasn't until much later that I learned about the history of this contradiction, which goes back to a 400's debate between Augustine and Pelagius regarding original sin. Pelagius argued that it was theoretically possible, but incredibly difficult, to live a life free of sin and therefore not need Jesus' forgiveness. He was also critical of the way Christians were integrating with the Roman empire, with all the same practices but now the social climbers called themselves Christian to win the emperor's favor while otherwise doing all the same shit they would otherwise. Augustine rejected this, arguing that the Father would not sacrifice the Son unless it was strictly necessary, furthermore, Pelagius' arguments would undermine the authority of the church (this was stated explicitly). Augustine invented the concept of original sin as something passed down through generations (despite this making zero sense), cited a mistranslated passage from scripture to support it, and used that to explain how even someone who lived a perfectly innocent life deserved to go to hell. This included, of course, fetuses. It was the Church's position for a very long time that if you have an abortion, or even a miscarriage, then your baby's soul is burning in hell.

What's particularly funny to me about this is that, after Pelagius was denounced as a heretic for saying people needed to actually live virtuously instead of just relying on Jesus to forgive them, he became so reviled that people were often accused of "semi-Pelagianism." All through the Reformation, everyone was accusing each other of being "semi-Pelagians" and trying to position themselves as the true inheritors of the Augustinian tradition. It wasn't until relatively recently that anyone started saying, "Hey, maybe the Augustinian position is actually kinda fucked up."

I never really was into spirituality much and then over time I noticed Buddhism kept bumping into me and kept explaining things in more and more straightforward ways over the years so eventually I caved in and looked into it more closely and decided to practice Tibetan Buddhism because it felt more closely related to my own personal experiences and interests...it can be tricky to understand at first until you understand how all the symbolism works and then a whole world of information was opened up to me and I feel better than ever.

Those early Tibetan Buddhists really got a lot of things right from the start and still today I see science research come out suggesting the same things they figured out long ago.

From what I can tell spirituality serves an important purpose in our lives and it is to keep us mentally healthy by whatever means we wish, the caveat here is that you don't misinterpret messages and fall into bad negative paths.

At some point I realised that this almighty being that loves everyone either is not actually almighty or just a massive cunt, considering it allows unnecessary unprovoked evil like children dying a long painful death from a disease that this being also happened to create.

I was a child who had been SA'd by an adult man. The adults around me told me to pray for forgiveness. I was 12.

Years later, I went to get a visitor's pass to visit a friend at my old Christian school. They aggressively denied me entrance.

I asked the forbidden question too much. "Why?"

I learned about Gandhi when I was 12, and thought it was dumb that he would be in hell just because he wasn't Christian. Absolutely could not square that rule with the idea that "God is love". Figured it was all a bunch of bullshit.

I grew up as a Christian. When I was around 15, someone asked me "if I hadn't been born a Christian, would I be a Christian?" Considering it, I opened my Bible and immediately a verse popped out (in classic God fashion) saying "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have"

So then I felt called even more to really explore, based on that:

• 1. I couldn't currently defend my faith reasonably
• 2. If God was actually real, he wouldn't be scared of people exploring arguments against Christianity, because the faith would be based on something ultimately true.
• 3. By exploring other faiths, arguments, etc, if I returned as a Christian, I would have a much stronger faith.

The more I explored these arguments, as well as gaining a better understanding of what the Bible actually is (in a historical and literature sense), more and more of the belief system unraveled, eventually to the point I didn't call myself a Christian anymore.

Then over the next decade I went back and forth exploring alternative denominations in Christianity, as well as other religions (Daoism, Buddhism, Judaism), especially as I still felt a "spiritual pull" / intuition in a lot of situations. So it took me a really long time to separate that intuitive sense of direction from the belief system around the Holy Spirit specifically, and learn where trusting that intuition is effective, and where it can be misleading. That's been the most complex part of all of this.

I still enjoy exploring other belief systems, components of Christianity, and connecting with whatever that intuition is occasionally, as I do think there is a lot there for human psychological and emotional health that Western modernity sorely lacks. (I suspect this hole in our culture is why a lot of fundamental US Evangelism has flourished btw)

But that's how I lost my faith - God gave me the push I needed :P

At about the age of 8 I could tell that Catholicism was evil. So that was it for me. Lots of specific things but just evil overall.

As a kid religion seemed like make believe, still I followed it and thought of myself as Catholics into early adult hood. Eventually I just started referring to myself as an atheist.

Learning about the world, in school and by reading humongous amounts of books when I was a kid and preteen. I eventually realised that "nah, I don't believe that." and that was that.

That's the sanitised version lol. A number of those books were by Erich von Däniken, unfortunately, and that simply "overwrote" Christianity in my young and impressionable science-fiction loving mind. Luckily I continued learning and not TOO long after I realised that was bullshit too and in the process I also actually realised why religion doesn't make sense to me.

tl;dr: HP Lovecraft made me atheist

I never believed, I was told I had to be christian or I would go to hell.

I read the Bible. I watched the way believers treated others, and learned how they saw the world. I realized how poorly adjusted I was for interacting with anyone besides other believers. I left the church and learned how to become a better person. It was a tremendous amount of humbling work, and frankly, I'd rather have learned it earlier.

I went to a Church school.

Many experiences over many years. My own curiosity and love of learning really helped save me. But for me it was all made to finally click together by psilocybin.

The hypocrisy and manipulation made it impossible to worship with them next to me.

I graduated from oral Roberts University and was full in. But the leaders of the small church were more interested in holding power rather than helping people. Fox News had an article with a headline stating blue eyed people were smarter than brown eyed. Being Latino, I was annoyed at the article and started to question why I even thought that the right wing evangelical establishment cared about me. I was just used for the financial support and votes.

In college we had to take a certain number of bible classes. Senior year took one on the history of the old testament or something like that. Course compared the texts to older texts from nearby regions and it's all basically plagiarized. This was somehow supposed to bring us closer to god, but for me it did the obvious and was the straw that broke that particular camel's back.

They weren't very kind to my family.

Adulthood makes you realise that there is no such thing as justice. Our lives are lived dancing in the palms of the Monetarists looking to make a quick buck. There is no karma and life is suffering as slaves to the elite.

If god exists, there should be no slavery, rape and wars.

Bad shit happened. When I asked why, the answers were lame. When I accused god of being an asshole, the defenses were the very definition of not even being wrong.

I had waited a long time to have any kind of personal experience of God, and finally gave up. Like they said, the holy spirit was supposed to work in you, I prayed for it and looked for it for a long time. Since it didn't appear, no reason to excuse the problematic passages or shitty people.

I just gave it up 1 day. No life changing event, no bad experience, just a shift in perspective happened, and I basically realised that I did not really need a god. I still practice some things which were part of my religious activities (donating, or serving others), but that is more of general good citizen thing rather than being religious

I consider myself someone who is always in search of truth.

When I realized evangelical Christianity has some hardcore lies and hypocrisy, I left it.

I did eventually find my way back to a more traditional version of Christianity that is interested in truth and love.

Took me until my 20s to reconcile my atheism. Maturity, i guess.

I read the whole bible as an adult.

But the discipline that took, probably shows that I was starting to think more deeply about things

They tried too hard to make me join, but instead I got annoyed

Haven’t. Curious on the experience of others.