I response to the endless witnessing on this so called atheistic board by the religious and to yet another religious thread by Curtis, I ask," how did you turn away from religion"?
For me I was raised a Catholic, I went to masses and attended Catechism classes ,got communion and confirmed. But I had already began to have questions. The teaching often made no sense and were full of contradictions. I knew the church was protecting priests who were buggering young boys . I also could see the nuns could be brutal. Their transgressions were routinely covered up. I was taught the church was supposed to be perfect. How could it permit such horrible thing to occur? More ,how could they cover it up at the expense of young ,formative lives?
One of my faves was when the church decided it was no longer a sin to eat meat on Friday. I thought it was dumb idea to have such a rule, but I abided by it. Now it was OK, What about all the people being fried and boiled in hell . They were there for a long time. How is that reconciled?
The whole thing just got too illogical and stupid for me to stand any more. Once I got back in control of my thoughts, the rest followed easily.
I was raised Catholic. I lost that faith around my late high school years and picked up some sort of Assembly of God amalgum of faith. I started going to the church my mom’s boyfriend was attending. Looking back on it, those people were so batty, I don’t know how I couldn’t see through the bullshit. Gay hate, creationism, misogyny, evil muslims, you name it. I don’t think I ever bought into any of that, though. Thank God (heh).
Then came Iraq. Religion came easy there. Not out of fear, like you might think. It was more out of boredom. Belonging to a church was a nice feeling in the absence of friends and family. It was a community, a brotherhood. So I fell for it all over again.
Believe it or not, these boards made me an atheist. In order to keep my faith, I had to do a bunch of mindbending and backwards logical attempts to save it. Eventually, I got so tangled up that couldn’t justify faith anymore.
Then there was a period of fear and guilt. I felt like it was too much of a risk to stop believing in hell fire and brimstone. And I felt guilty that I couldn’t have faith anymore.
Once again, these boards let me adjust to that, and I became a militant atheist. I would sneer at any believer and try to work in my new beliefs into any conversation. Eventually, the pendulum settled down and now I’m a calm, nice atheist.
The moment of transformation was exactly like when Dawkins retells his friend’s (colleague’s?) story about “trying on the glasses”. She decides that she’s just going to let it go and “try out” atheism. But immediately she feels scared and alone, like we’re just a tiny stone flying through space all by ourselves and that “the world is falling and I just want to reach out and grab it”. But then you kinda calm down and realize it’s not so bad on this side of the fence.
I was brought up in duel traditions (Southern Baptist mother, Catholic dad), and I didn’t have a de-conversion so much as that none of it ever just took with me. I realized at a very young age that I didn’t believe any of it (I have a clear memory of sitting at a Baptist service when I was about 6, and suddenly having it dawn on me that I wasn’t buying a word of it), and I was kind of astonished and puzzled that so many adults did. Whatever everyone else was getting from religion, I never got. I never felt any Baptist spirit or Catholic grace. I never felt any sense of the presence of God. I could never understand why people bought so readily into this thing that flew so clearly in the face of evidence and logic. My thoughts were not that sophisticated when I was 6 year old, of course (at that point, it was more like, "why do the grown ups all believe this? This is weird), but the older I got, the more hardened I became in my certainty that people were deluding themselves. I definitely wanted proof. I was always that way. I had no faith at all in faith. I wanted hard evidence for things, especially anything supernatural.
I didn’t tell many people for a long time that I wasn’t buying into the God thing. I still went to church and went along to get along. I never had an abusive relationship with religion the way a lot of people do, and never had any hostility or anger towards it. There were some things I liked. I had no use or feeling at all for ritual and ceremony, but I was fascinated by the Bible, and the history alleged by it. I always loved the Bible stories in sunday school, and that started my interest in ANE history, and trying to find historical kernels for Bible stories.
I was an adult before I told my parents. It seems odd now, but back in the 80’s, it felt weird – like it was somehow subversive or anti-social – to tell people I didn’t believe in God, or that I wasn’t a Christian.
My parents didn’t care much (and I don’t think they were exactly surprised), but ot was fairly common for other people, including some friends (and way down the line, my wife when we were first dating) to try to talk me out of my non-belief. They were obviously not successful, and on more than one occasion, I ended up convincing them I was right (not on purpose. I wasn’t trying to deconvert them, just answer their own questions about why I didn’t believe).
I still kept my interest in religion and the Bible and made them my Major in college (which also had the effect of making me even better at debating theists. Knowing the Bible well is a very useful tool for atheist debaters).
My wife is Catholic, my kids are baptized, and they go to a Catholic school. We stopped debating religion a long, long time ago (I think partially because it’s about the only topic of debate that I can pretty much dominate her at. In any other subject, she kicks my ass). We tell our kids theyre allowed to believe anything they want, and my oldest has really gotten interested in Hindu deities and mythology. I’ve never come out and told my kids that I don’t believe in God (I will eventually), but I have told them that no one actually knows the truth for sure, that it’s all belief, and that it’s up to them to investigate, think really hard and decide for themselves what they believe, and not let anyone else tell them what they have to think.
My father was probably agnostic or atheist, but he didn’t make a big deal of it. My mother was thoroughly conventional, and thought that going to church was nice and you could meet nice people.
My sister and I were sent to Sunday school every week. I never understood why, since the family only went to church 2 or 3 times a year and for the occasional wedding. Later I figured out it was so they could have some reliable alone time in our little house.
Anyway, on those occasions when we did go to church, once I was old enough to listen and puzzle about the sermons, I began to seriously question. About the same time I took confirmation in our church (Methodist). So I was confirmed and became a conscious atheist in about the same year (13 years old or so).
I can’t say it was much of a conversion. The change was between unthinking acceptance, and the rejection that came from conscious thought.
Roddy
I read the bible and asked a lot of questions. The answers I got were as confusing as the bible itself. Then I realized there was lot in common with when I started questioning Santa Claus.
Then I decided if there was a god, he didn’t get involved which is the same as not a god, that eventually led to absolute not a god.
Similar to above posts. Raised very fundie Protestant, church several times a week, church camp, VBS, virtually all extracurricular activities church-related. No other options allowed in the house. Spent chunks of my childhood ashamed and embarrassed that of everyone I knew, I was the only one to whom God never made his presence/love known. it was my dirty little secret that I hid by parroting what other kids said. In my early teens, I started to wonder if maybe some other people were doing the same.
By my late teens, I had enough education to begin to understand that the existance of a creator was unneccesary to explain life, the universe and everything, so it was only a matter of time before I realized that I had been an atheist all along. I did a little “seeking after the spiritual” for a few years in my twenties, but stopped needing even that crutch in time.
After 25 years of open atheism, my mom still thinks I’m going through a stage. sigh
Beer pong. Seriously. I was raised pretty strict Catholic - never missed a Sunday Mass, 2 years as an altar boy, 12 years of Catholic grade school & high school, confessed sins regularly, was my grandmother’s pick to be her grandson priest (dodged that one by being too math & science oriented) bought into the whole system and never seriously questioned it. Then I went away to college, and realized that no one was actually going to wake me up to go to Mass, and sleeping away hangovers from endless beer pong Saturday night was the best way to deal with them, so I stopped going. When I went home, I stopped going to Communion, and my parents were at first shocked, but I later found that my older brothers had pretty much gone the same route and prepared the way for me. Haven’t given religion a ton of thought since, besides realizing that pre-marital sex is A-OK, and a restriction on birth control is just nuts.
My father was pretty much agnostic and my mother is Catholic. In order to raise us in church they agreed to go to the Episcopal church. My father would not attend a Catholic church.
I don’t think I ever really got into the whole god thing and just assumed it was like school and we had to go. I remember being shocked when I found out people really believed that stuff. I was probably about 10 and I was in the church youth group. We had a meeting at our house and were doing communion. It was not the usual wafer but actual bread and I recall quite good. After finishing, one of the older girls asked one of the women in charge of the group who I believe presided over the communion what kind of bread we ate.
She, looking serious said, “it’s the body of Christ”. The girl replied, “yeah, but what kid of bread is it”?
Looking a little annoyed she replied, “it’s the body of Christ”.
I don’t recall much else but I do remember being shocked that she obviously thought we were actually eating flesh, even though it looked and tasted exactly like bread. For a while I thought there was something wrong with me and started reading about religion, the Bible and tried to make myself believe.
Seeing all the contradictions in the 'Good Book" and bad behavior of supposed moral superiors I eventually decided it was all crap and tossed God in with Santa, fairies and other imaginary beings.
I was raised Jewish, but my parents weren’t very religious. My father’s mother was, but she died when I was about 3. My mother’s father was probably an atheist, though you didn’t talk about it in those days.
I went to Hebrew School mostly because you had to to get a highly prized Saturday bar mitzvah, and my father was into having a big party. I did all five years and actually liked it, and went to shul more than I had to, not that I was devout. all this time I more or less assumed that what I learned was true, and, of course, that the Christians were mehshuggah.
12th grade AP English had a small section on the Bible as literature, and so there was a stack in the English book room where I worked one period in 12th grade. Out of boredom I picked one up, and read the introduction, which described the familiar theory of the three authors and editor of the Bible. Everything immediately fell into place, and it seemed clear to me that the whole thing was fiction. In grad school, on Plato, there was a religious discussion group, and I offered to read and take notes on the Bible if someone sent me one. Someone did, and I did take notes and post them, and after reading the entire thing I was solidly an atheist.
It was not at all traumatic.
I’m not really sure. When I was young, say 7 or 8, I believed. What was funny about that was that I bought into evolution and Adam and Eve at the same time, and the contradiction never really entered my consciousness. By 18 I was more less fully atheist. But there was no big a-ha moment in between. I guess it just fell away gradually, without my being very aware of it.
I do remember going to church with a friend when I was 14 and thinking the priest was a pretty cool guy. I went to a different one with a different friend when I was 15 and thinking that the minister was a complete whack job.
I find it amazing that in present day that someone raised secular can still find god and have a meaningful spiritual life. I’m not at all surprised that so many people turn their back on family beliefs and tradition. I believe it’s more of a failure of the church itself and family members to not have set them on the right path, than it is the individual who reasons his own way away from God.
Concerning the OP’s complaints, there are far more acrimonious and sarcastic posts by atheists on this board than there are from theists.
I was raised Catholic and went to a Catholic grade school so I just kind of bought into it for a while since all family/friends were Catholic. Did the whole communion and altar boy thing.
Then in my mid teens when the questions started coming up (Is there really a god? How do we know? Why Catholicism? What are all these other religions? Why be a Catholic and not something else?) and nobody seemed to answer them with anything other than “Why? Well, because that’s what we believe.” I started having my doubts build.
I was also told (misled) that by going to confirmation classes all my questions would be answered. I eagerly awaited for this to happen but was sorely disappointed when nobody (including the other teens) was interested in discussing anything of the sort. They weren’t giving answers to the hard philosophical questions. They were just hearding the sheep who already had their minds made up.
I went through all the classes and when it came time to go to the actual ceremony I simply told my parents, “I don’t want to be confirmed. I would just be lying to myself and others if I went through with it. I don’t buy into it. Sorry.”
My mother was shocked by this and to this day (20+ years later) thinks some rogue public school teacher talked nonsense to me and brainwashed me.
On the other hand my father (who was a luthern and became catholic), I could sense, was privately proud of me for thinking for myself and taking a stand.
AFAIK, you still aren’t supposed to eat meat on Friday (at least during Lent). There are a lot of misconceptions that Catholics (and others) have about their religion.
Just going to ramble here a bit to tell my own story:
Myself, I was raised a poor black child…er, scratch that…was channeling Steve Martin there. I was raised in a poor Hispanic family and brought up to be a very religious Catholic and a died in the wool Democrat. On my grandmothers mantle was a picture of Jesus and one of JFK with lots of crucifixes and religious icons strewn about it and a small nicho underneath with a statue of the Virgin and Child. Though poor, when we moved to the US I attended a Catholic school (where nuns repeatedly beat the crap out of me with rulers for speaking Spanish at first, and then for speaking English with a Spanish accent…well, and to be honest, they beat me for other stuff too).
Early on in my life I discovered an interest in reading and in science, so I started reading up on things like anthropology, biology, archeology and of course the taboo theory of Evolution. I’d say that this, more than anything, is where I started my break from the rest of my family and the whole God/gods thingy. I remember one incident when we were all at my grandmothers house (pretty much the central pillar of our entire family was this house and my grandmother…other Hispanics will understand) and I was having a discussion with several of my aunts. They were, of course, talking about the bible and how God had created the world, and I was earnestly attempting to explain to them how the earth was much older than they were saying, about how species mutate and change over time, and about how the whole flood thingy was not possible. Long story short I made one of my aunts burst into tears, brought on some serious displeasure from many of my aunts, uncles, cousins and other assorted relatives, and of course brought on The Wrath Of Dad(tm, aar) in the form of a mega-spanking. I was around 8 at the time and probably spoke (and wrote) English better than 80% of the folks in the room. But that was really a key…I had already started to become acclimated to America and English in ways the rest of my family wasn’t (all those nun beatings were paying off!), and this gave me a much deeper perspective on things. People here probably think that Catholic schools/religious private schools are horrible at teaching science, but compared to the education I had previously (the ONLY book my grandmother read was the bible, afaict) it was light years ahead. And they had this thing called a ‘library’ which was…well, it was really something. You wouldn’t believe all the books and things in there if you’ve never seen one before.
Anyway, I joined the service, which was yet another severing of the link between myself and my family (most of which still live in South Tucson to this day). In the service I learned even more about different peoples and their religions…and politics. After than I went to college which pretty much completed the break between myself and my family on religion and politics, and my own views on both began to solidify into roughly what they are today. I’m a terrible disappointment to some of my family as I don’t attend church, don’t pray, and hardly ever vote Democrat these days (and when I DID vote for one, he was a black Democrat that a large number of my family doesn’t approve of, the bigoted bastards).
It’s just a good thing there is no will or large estate involved or I’d be totally screwed! 
-XT
Are you trying to make a point. If so, what?
I think I made my point, but I can summarize again if you wish.
People that lose their faith are most often let down by those were responsible to guide them, and regarding your complaints in the OP, there are more and nastier posts by atheists here than theists. (the complaint being endless witnessing, maybe that part wasn’t clear.)
Cite? I wasn’t let down by anybody, I just didn’t buy it. It was the evdience that failed, not the people.
Critiquing and analyzing extraordinary claims is not witnessing, it’s just serving the stated goal of the board – fighting ignorance.
I’m not even sure what “atheist witnessing” would look like. How can you witness for a non-experience or a non-belief?
Born and raised in a Muslim family in a small Bosnian city of 50K. My mother was fairly observant in the terms of social gatherings in the mosque and private five times a day prayer. She comes from relatively religious family as her father and his brother – being relatively rich - actually went to Hajj in the early 1970-ies. One thing I remember from that early time – I must have been 7 or 8 – is that my mother could read in Arabic; however, she did not understand any of it. That’s I guess when I started having questions of purpose that eventually I never stated out loud; partly for the reason of son-mother respect but more so because there was really nothing from it that interfered with the daily life (e.g. there was never a mention in terms of “This how it is in The Book” or “This is what Imam said”). My father was born quite poor, 2nd in the family of five boys and only to see his dad murdered by Nazis one night in 1942. Lucky for him and his siblings his mother was strong and practical type that took on the conditions of the post-war times and fought for them and with them to provide decent life. For them religion never played a role as they spent every waking moment working toward a better life. Sometimes in the mid-1950-ies my father was in the obligatory three-year service when he discovered books and that would be I guess the point in his life that he implanted to his children, myself included. So books and hard work that saved him were basic principles that he touted. The only thing taken from religion was community related customs and Islamic calendar; not much more than that. In fact, my siblings and me were encouraged to read books on similarities with Jewish and Christian religions but only as FYI (that’s why Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” was so funny because I already had a frame of reference).
So, there was really no conversion as much as it was realization of who you are and what you subscribe to in terms of adherence to religion.
Like the OP, I was raised Catholic, communed and confirmed, though I did those only because my mother would have killed (or maybe just disowned) me had I not.*
As a child, I recognized that these were mythological tales with fables often trying to explain historical occurrences. Certainly, no one thought these stories (all of them) were to be taken literally?
Boy, was I wrong. As I grew older, I realized that everyone (or almost everybody) around me was taking religion much, much more literally than I felt it deserved. And I’m not just talking about the Young Earther’s. I felt like people couldn’t see the parallels between God to Zeus or Odin or Ra. One was cast aside as mythology from people who didn’t know better, and one was true, and no one could convince me that theirs was real while the other wasn’t.
Obviously, I didn’t believe in God. I didn’t believe the stories. I recognized that often they might take historical events and, like Homer, create a fantastic tale from it. As everyone else treated them as real (at least parts - not everyone is a literalist), I realized it wasn’t a place for me. Didn’t need the ‘fellowship’, especially if I would be there under false pretenses. I certainly couldn’t reconcile reality with the teachings, and the handwaving and excuses of theologists have never been convincing.
*hyperbole alert - no Pit’s about my formerly homicidal Mom please.
ETA: Upon reading the rest, for the most part, what DtC said. I think he organized his thoughts a little better than I did.
Religion has it’s tentacles through the lives of children. They are smart enough to know if you get to kids while they are in their formative years, you can usually have them for their lives. It is not that they were let down. It was that the church and the teachings are horribly and obviously flawed. Some people never question what they are taught. Others do.
The religious on this board are new to experiencing religious conflict. They are generally wrapped up in a warm blanket of believers. On this board you face harsh questions, for many of you ,it is a new experience. When you rarely face people who question your faith, a person who does seems to be stepping over bounds that your life has drawn. Sorry if it makes you uncomfortable.
Someone was responsible for getting you to buy in, they failed.
I agree that that’s not witnessing, gonzo complained about the endless witnessing in the OP. Not from atheists I assume.