I was raised Catholic and bought it all. I was very religious. But I slowly had doubts. The illogic of what I was buying became impossible to ignore along with the hypocrisy of the followers and priests. I was about 12 at the time.
That is where existential anguish comes in. You are suddenly aware that you are alone and without the rules that guided you. You have to deal with situational or non existing ethics and morality. You can not go to a priest and have your sins washed away. You are responsible for your actions and how you choose to live your life. In that sense it is freeing. But you have the responsibility to construct a ethos to live by. For a short while all things are possible. But it sinks in ,what a mess the world would be if the only rule was to benefit myself and nobody else really matters. (kind like corporations and we applaud that).
Not really. My parents never went to temple when I was young. My mother’s family was very non-religious, my father’s family more so, but his mother died when I was about 3. I went to Hebrew School because Hebrew School students got the good bar mitzvah slots, and my father wanted to have a big party for us, not going to be able to run a wedding. I believed because I assumed everyone did. When I got out of Hebrew school I stopped going to services - my father went to the shul often, but to run the Men’s Club, not for religion.
The cultural stuff lasted a lot longer than the god stuff. I fasted on Yom Kippur, even if I didn’t go to services, for a while and ate matzo during Passover even longer, but finally gave it up as absurd. But I’m firmly in the tradition of so many New York Jews, so I’m not even alone.
I was raised Catholic, and was reasonably devout - never missed Sunday Mass, confession pretty regularly, Catholic school from 1st to 12th grade. Then I went away to college, and realized that Sunday morning hangovers are much more tolerable without going to Mass, so I stopped almost immediately. Later I came to realize I had several philosophical differences with the church, but it really started with sleeping in on Sundays.
Never really missed it much, but it was a HUGE deal for my parents. Still is, though my father has learned if he tries to bring it up, I’ll just ignore him and change the subject.
It happened so gradually that I don’t really recall any major difficulty. My wife’s family is very religious, but only a few members of my family are. My wife herself is a believer of the non-confrontational variety, and as far as I know she doesn’t have any problem with my lack of faith. Her parents certainly suspect I’m not a Christian, but they very rarely make an issue out of it, and when they do it’s one or two comments focused on either my wife or my son. They ask things like “have you found a church to join?” or “does the little boy know what the story of Christmas is about?” They give him religious books and stuff, but honestly it’s nothing offensive or rude. If my wife decides it’s important to raise our son as a Christian, I don’t have any objections. If he decides on his own that he wants to be religious, I wouldn’t have any objections either.
I had no problem giving up the idea of heaven and salvation. Giving up the idea of hell and damnation was harder. I think it’s supposed to be, in order to scare you into holding on to your faith even after its basic tenets become laughable to you.
Once my mind was able to accept that if there was no heaven, there was also no hell, I left go of the railing and haven’t looked back since.
Kind of a big deal. I’d served on a lot of conference positions in the United Methodist Church, been a lay speaker, taught Sunday School, sung in choir. Then one day our choir director was saying this long dramatic prayer about how thankful we all were to God, and I realized how disgusted I was and left. Never went back.
On the other hand, I didn’t have any real friends in the congregation, and my family wasn’t an integral part of my daily life anymore, so as far as lifestyle was concerned it wasn’t a big deal. The only real concession I had to make was to smile and nod and change the subject when my family brought up why I didn’t go to church any more.
I thought it was a big deal at the time, but it really wasn’t.
Raised Catholic, Catholic grade school, altar boy, all boys Catholic high school, etc. My faith started to fade in high school. It wasn’t that I thought it was stupid or anything, I just didn’t believe like I used to. Given the behavior I saw Christians everyday, I thought that everyone was like this, except maybe the priests and nuns. It bugged me, but not enough to really do something about.
When I got to college I found out more about other religions. It was one thing to study them briefly in a short class in high school, it was another to actually meet and talk to a Muslim, Sikh, or Wiccan. And then I found out about atheism. It had never even occurred to me that ‘None of the Above’ was a choice. Growing up, everyone I knew was religious. It made me uncomfortable to think about not being religious. I knew how some people would respond. I went though a year or two unhappy because I was trying to hang on to what I had when I was growing up, but I knew I couldn’t.
Looking back, I knew what I was going to happen, I just didn’t want anything to change with my parents & other people I knew. I should have just gotten it over with. I was right too, my mom went nuts. She still bugs me about it, asks me to pray, etc.
It was a very big deal. Very painful. When God is supposed to be the one person who will always love you, will always be there, who will make everything work out ok in the end, that’s a lot to give up.
As a truth-seeking Christian with doubts, my faith was very important to me. I intentionally distanced myself from religion so I could find out whether I would still believe it if I were just encountering it for the first time. The answer turned out to be “no.”
On the logical side, well, Occam’s Razor. On the personal side, I finally concluded that a god who knew me and loved me would communicate with me in a way I would understand. While it was very painful to give up my imaginary friend, it was also a comfort to realize that I had not been forsaken; I had just been talking to myself.
Thank you for summing up my feelings so precisely and in so few words. Do you mind if I plagiarize your post when explaining myself to my believing friends and family?
I’m flattered. Feel free.
I don’t even know if I’m an apostate or not.
My mother’s family was Lutheran; my dad’s family Catholic. So it’s not that I was never aware of the whole God thing, it just never took with me. About the closest I ever got to religious teachings were Sunday School (read: free babysitting for the two or three times my parents did go to church when I was little), and the occasional meaningless prayer (i.e., “Now I lay me down to sleep” or “God is Good, God is Great, Holy Shit, Let’s Eat” (or whatever that one was)). But as far back as I can remember, prayers were on a par with the Pledge of Allegiance … just word-soup repeated by rote for reasons I couldn’t fathom.
Anytime I can remember being ‘taught’ things from the Bible I just remember complete confusion. I can recall as a small child not being able to reconcile the story of Adam and Eve with pretty much anything. It took me years to figure out where dinosaurs fit in the whole equation.
So I’d say I pretty much deflected any religious indoctrination naturally … it’s just how I’m wired … so when I reached the age of reason I’d realized that I didn’t need to rack my brain anymore over trying to make sense of myths.
I was raised in a fairly liberal Jewish household - more culturally Jewish than anything else, though we did keep kosher, and my sister and I were sent to Hebrew school. I just … never bought it. I honestly can’t recall a time when I believed that there was a god, or that the stories we were being taught had any real value.
It got hard around the time I was supposed to be studying for my Bar Mitzvah. My parents wanted me to do it, and I didn’t. After many shouting matches, I eventually got out of it by doing, of all things, a book report on a secular Jewish history text.
Incidentally, I kind of think that growing up in a Jewish household in a majority-Christian country is fine preparation for atheism. 
After all, your family already believes that most of the people around you who believe in the Invisible Sky Monster are wrong. What’s a few more?
I was raised Methodist so at church I didn’t get any of that fire and brimstone fear of God. I felt an enormous amount of comfort in my beliefs. I felt like if nothing else good happened to me in life at least God loved me and watched out for me. Because of this I wanted to be the BEST follower. In order to do that I threw myself in to studying the Bible.
Studying the Bible is what made me completely lose all faith in the god of my religion. After that I started studying different religions thinking God was still there, but the Bible/Christians didn’t quite have it right. Rejection after rejection after ridiculously fervent studying is what made me lose my faith in all forms of spirituality. It broke me. I wanted so bad to have a god to believe in, to feel that comfort again. I went through such a depression, felt like everything I believed in was a lie. It about killed me.
I can’t help feeling I was brainwashed. I hate the word but that’s the only one I can come up with. I want to not feel that way, but you can’t always get what you want. I am still so bitter, but I’m working on it. I’ve learned by studying Buddhism that gods aren’t really necessary and that the comfort and love I wanted were there all along, I just have to find them by looking within.
Or hell maybe that’s a bunch of bullshit too, but it feels right.
This is me too. Once I worked out that the Easter Bunny and Santa weren’t real God didn’t stand much of a chance.
It took a while. I was trying to find answers to questions that I had about Christianity, and in the course of researching those questions, I discovered that organized religion, no matter what flavor, is a lie from start to finish.
I very gladly dropped it like a hot rock at that point.
It was a long, hard process of gradual decay.
Heck, when I was 17 I seriously thought about becoming a priest!
Life happened to me, I guess. All my religious friends/family talked about ‘God’s plan’ and purpose to life etc etc. What I noticed is that there didn’t seem to be any purpose. When I voiced these concerns I would be told OH YESSSS there is a purpose! You just don’t see it.
But life kept going on…and no purpose that I could see. All the while I kept up my childhood interest in science…plus degreed in Math and started devloping the tools to pick apart old logic that I had been given whilr growing up.
My doubts kept growing and growing and this was hard on me. Finally, one day, I had enough and challenged God (which I know you are NOT supposed to do! 
) and told him that I was losing my faith and that I needed SOMETHING to go on. That I actually was in very real doubt of his existence and, if he existed, was in peril and needed SOMETHING to come back.
I waited and waited for several months…nothing. Not a damn thing. This made me angry and so I did blasphemous things, I guess, to provoke him. Negative attention better than none I guess…
Nothing.
I soon realized I needed to ‘grow up’ and face facts…that there is no God.
That was about 15 years ago. Today I am pretty much at peace with my atheism. I do look back with some nostalgia for how I used to view the world…but I see it as that nostalgia for the comforting beliefs of a child.
I didn’t really care about it, which is why I left. It didn’t resonate with me. As a child, I believed because I was raised to do so, but as I became my own person it just didn’t stick. I came out as an agnostic to my parents when I was 15 in a pizza restaurant.
What’s hilarious is that last week I came out to them again in another damned restaurant as a Zen Buddhist and my dad said “… so you don’t believe in the Lord Almighty?!”
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, Dad. I always assumed there was a huge amount of denial in that one (he honestly thinks I don’t go to church because they have it too early in the morning and I’m lazy) but dude. Frankly I’d think he’d be glad I’m now interested in some brand of religion, but I doubt he sees it that way.
So no, it wasn’t a big deal for me. It was a huge deal for my parents and continues to be.
I think my parents took us to church because they thought they were supposed to. I never liked it, it was boring and the kids in sunday school were lame. Sitting through the adult sermon was worse than school, because at school you could at least learn something. The Special Message the preacher gave took all of 10 minutes, then 50 minutes of singing and kneeling and getting in line for the worst brunch ever. I mean really, ONE glass of wine and a chunk of dry bread? Gross! Then one day I just figured out that it’s all some kind of special club people join to feel a sense of belonging, and I never felt that. I don’t remember when I finally said I just don’t want to go to church any more, but we stopped going. I’d even gone to a bunch of church camp functions, I never fit in there either.
Rhodes, I grew up in Utah and I’ve seen your situation come up more than once in my life. I’ve had friends who would confide in me that they no longer believed, but still had to put on appearances (and go to church every week!) otherwise they would be ostracized by their family and friends. Of course, they could tell ME because I’m some sort of godless heathen :rolleyes: but I can keep my mouth shut at least.
I was raised Russian Orthodox, and it never really took. While I enjoy the singing, the incense, and the ornate iconography, garments, and architechture i never “got” the whole purpose. I spent quite a time searching and trying out other religions, none of which stuck either. Eventually i realized that either there is no god, or that it is something so alien and beyond our comprehension that there is no point in trying to communicate or placate it. It would be like bacteria worshiping myself. Currently I’ve contented myself with the belief that while there certainly is a whole lot of stuff we don’t understand, I’m hopeful that in time we will. That’s good enough for me, and If I die ( hey science is advancing at a remarkable rate and I’m young) then I’ll find out when I get there what happens. I don’t feel the need to make a declarative statement that when we pass that’s it. I’m content with not knowing, it just isn’t relevant.