Or, rather, can you explain what led up to you losing your religion?
This thread just had me wondering about the flip side of the coin and so knowing that we have an ample data sample here, I figured I’d poll for some reasons.
Anyone feel like sharing?
For me it was a long and slow pull. I was raised fundamental christian, and after a certain age, say around 11 or 12, felt really uncomfortable at church. I felt silly practicing anything we were supposed to do as christians, and raised an eyebrow toward anything I was just supposed to take on faith. I’m not sure when it dawned on me, but somewhere around then, the idea came into my head that the whole thing might be a sham. Factor in a few decades of denial at varying degrees (and my insatiable thirst for science), until I just figured I was more agnostic than anything else.
I guess God made me a skeptic at heart. 
Never really had one. Santa, Easter Bunny, tooth fairie, God…
Parents - don’t lie about a bunch of stuff, then expect to be taken seriously on a subject which REALLY sounds a whole bunch like the lies.
I was raised kind of Baptist, without a whole lot of churching or preaching going on. Never really thought about it much until I was about 17 and hitting on a hot born again chick. In an effort to impress her (or at least understand what she was babbling about) I sat down and read the bible. Not just the parts that people quote or recommend, but the whole thing. Didn’t take long to notice that Christianity was quite obviously a hoax. I could possibly be persuaded to admit some religious beliefs, but none based on the Abrahamic cults.
I come from a family of believers but ever since I remember I asked questions that no one could or would answer (not a good place to be in Catholic primary school). I never understood how babies that weren’t baptized went to limbo and never got to see the face of God. I never understood how heathens who had never heard the word of God went to hell. I never understood why God decided that people married to evil people had to be tied together forever. And don’t even get me going on “eat meat on Friday = mortal sin thing.”
When I was in HS I sampled other churches/religions including Judism. The one I liked the most was B’Hai. I really, really wanted to believe. But it never came. My biggest question ultimately was: Why would a GOD care one way or another what I do with my little life?
I came to believe that what we do with our lives is the glory of our lives. We vs animals can choose the type of life we lead. I choose to be a moral person. I tip well, am kind to animals, children, family (even those I don’t really like all that much) and strangers. If you give me too much change I try to give it back. I don’t tailgate, drive in the left lane unless I’m passing or break laws that aren’t meant to be broken. I wish that we could all just choose to be moral humans instead of Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc. and just treat each other with respect. I’m sure there’s a fatal flaw in my reasoning. Feel free to point it out. 
Hmmm. All good answers. And I just now realized that I may have started a similar topic in the past… so if I did, I apologize profusely for the repetition and my (possible) forgetfulness.
Anyway, I should add my own story. I wasn’t really raised in the church (our flavor would be non-denominational Christianity) but was sequestered to it once my grandfather died when I was 12. Much fundamentalism followed until I began questioning some things in my early 20s. My position seemed to cement when I finally started attending college and had my first World History class. Which taught me that almost every civilization under the sun had the almost exact same religious stories that I’d been raised to believe, but these all came first. And no one ever mentioned them!
Thus my path to agnosticism began too.
I took everything I was told in Sunday School on faith, and swallowed up the whole deal, hook, line, and sinker. But then, I was sent there beginning at age seven and didn’t know any better.
When I was nine or ten, I felt ashamed that I wasn’t one of the standout students there, although I was reading a few passages and even memorizing the odd line or two, so I resolved to read the Bible, beginning with Genesis. And I did doggedly read every stupid line of it, trying to reserve judgement until I’d read the whole thing. (I did cheat on one book – Song of Solomon, which was unbearably erotic. I went back and finished that one several years later. Typical for a kid; the ultraviolence is fascinating, but sexual passion is too oogy for words.)
Even when I was eight, I could see that many aspects of God’s relationship with mankind left something to be desired; there were many things that didn’t strike me as fair or evenhanded, and he seemed to totally revamp his relationship with humanity through Jesus, which suggests that his earlier dealings in the O.T. with the Jews (as opposed to everyone; this for me was one of the greatest flaws with Judeo-Christian theodicy, that it was never truly universal) were a misconceived failure, a failure born at least in part from his own bigotry and mistakes.
Add a few years and stir; adolescence hits, and I finally lose my patience with the whole charade. I lost my faith when I conceded that I never really had it securely in the first place, despite my good-faith efforts to conjure it. That failure of the inner transformative eureka moment to transpire beyond a doubt (my church was evangelical and emphasized the “born again” phenomenon), along with what I considered to be rather irrational aspects of many Christian creeds, together with the revolting hypocrisies of so-called Christians everywhere, and some of the more odious aspects of my particular church and its adherents, led to my break with it at the age of fourteen, when I announced to my parents that “I am not going back to that church anymore – and you’d better not try and make me, either…”. And amazingly, they didn’t. 
lp;oI hated Mass, but convinced myself I was just lazy and didn’t want to go. I felt creepily uncomfortable when anyone discussed their religious leanings (as if they were telling me about their sex lives), but convinced myself that I was just lazy and not very devout but that I Truly Believed and someday I’d grow out of it.
I knew I didn’t believe in Jesus, but that still left God, right?
Then I married an atheist and was always trying to justify my beliefs. He never attacked them; he just didn’t share them. I kept trying to say that religion might look goofy but it was really a good thing and it caused good things and it was all for the good.
Then 911 happened and even those pathetic little shreds of justification fell apart. One day, I could just say, “I don’t believe in that. At all.” And all of that churning dissonance went away. I liken it to coming to understand you’re gay after trying for years to convince yourself you’re straight.
I sort of lost faith when I realized that very nearly anyone, no matter how rotten a person he was, could find something in the bible that justified everything he wanted to do and believe. I’m not stating it very clearly but that was it for me.
I was raised Episcopal. But when I had questions, no one would/could answer them. So at age 11, I started trying to find the answers for myself. By age 16, I had discovered that religion is nothing but a giant con game from start to finish.
Parents were non-practicing Protestants, and I went to Catholic school through high school. For a while I was essentially a deist (not that I’d ever heard that word) who believed in God because I reasoned that creation required a creator.
Then one night in 3rd Grade (I would have been 8 or 9) I was in the bathtub, and I realized that if God could “just exist,” then so could the universe, and if you didn’t need God to explain how we got here he was unlikely to be real. For the next nine years the priests and nuns (and students) at my Catholic schools were fine with my being a heathen – In 12th grade, they even let me be a group leader on an explicitly religious student retreat.
You can’t lose something you never had
Sure, as a child, I went to church, hated every second of it, at a rather young age, I began to notice contradictions in the bible stories and lessons, I really only went to church at the time because I had no choice in the matter, my parents dragged me along against my will, I went through the motions just to stop them from pestering me
when I first heard the story of Job, my initial reaction was “boy, God sure is an A-hole, what did Job do to piss off God?” I saw God as nothing more than a vengeful, spiteful bully with an illogically “needy” side, an “all powerful” lifeform that needs to be liked?, does…not…compute…
I never believed, and once I made it into my teenage years, I simply stopped going to church, ahh, bliss, Sundays spent the way they were intended, by sleeping in until noon or later, not mouthing empty platitudes to a nonexistent bully-entity
I don’t think I ever did.
These are all very thought-provoking and make me glad to know I’m not alone, even down to some of the specifics. But even at 40, there’s still residual fear and guilt (the two strong suits of the denomination we ascribed to) that’s sometimes hard to overcome. The only thing that seems to help me is playing it off against logical arguments and then hoping that the God I could believe in wouldn’t be the one I was raised with.
Thanks everyone for the honest replies. Keep 'em coming.
Never had it. No religious observance in my family, no Santa, Easter Bunny stuff (not Christians), but Jewish values and culture enough that I identify as Jewish. However, as far as I know, I’ve never believed in a deity or supernatural forces. I do remember being walked to kindergarten by an older Baptist child who told me that god was in the sky, so I imagined a sort of attenuated cloud-guy, and that being a Jew, I would burn in hell forever, which I thought at the time was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard.
This is a funny thread. I was raised in the church–presbyterian. Then my dad made the mistake of becoming a pastor. I despised the lifestyle. But, you know what, the funniest thing is that when I was about 3, the older kids in sunday school made a temple of sugar cubes. I ate it. And never looked back.
Never had belief, my parents and most of my extended family are atheists.
I didn’t really have a whole lot to begin with. I went to a Christian (YEC, witnessing types, no idea what particular label) private school as a kid for the academics, and often came home with confusing questions about what they were teaching in school vs. what I was learning at the museum (or wherever). My parents encouraged me to question beliefs early and often, although I didn’t lose any sort of faith in God, mostly in man.
When I was a teenager I went through a neo-pagan phase, which sort of petered out around age 19 or so (although I still retain some sort of special appreciation for nature). Then I married a Catholic, and between that and the death of JPII (which, for whatever reason that I cannot precisely name but probably has to do with the togetherness and the history of the Church) I really soul-searched. When I came up for air, I realized I didn’t really believe in much of anything. The closest I get to any sort of religion anymore is an admiration of my ancestors. But for me, there is no “There” there, in terms of a supreme being. Nowadays I identify as atheist but I have my agnostic days.
I was raised Roman Catholic and I guess I disliked Church early on for several reasons and then started asking some uncomfortable questions by the time I was 8. We did not attend regularly but I refused to go shortly after that and apparently my Dad did not really care. I guess I never got properly indoctrinated. My older sisters still feel some guilt for being separated from the church.
When I was very little, we lived in the Bronx, NY and my older sisters would take my brother and me to a children mass where there was some singing and a lighter atmosphere. I would sing with the songs and be noisy like you would expect a 3 or 4 year old to be at a Children Mass and some old busybodies would be shushing us little kids. It took several years later for me to realize they were the ones that should have shut up, as their shushing was inappropriate for the type of sermon being given. So I guess I got off to a bad start.
Later we moved to New Jersey and when I went to the boring masses, I heard a lot that made no sense at all and when I asked questions I was told either not to ask or that “you just have to have faith.” Well I don’t seem to be good at faith. I need explanations. Sometimes I think I would be happier if I could accept things on faith but then I realize I am doing pretty good without faith and church in my life.
Jim
I was raised in a strict Mormon family and I believed for quite some time (up until a few years ago). In some way, it almost seems easier to believe in things that are way out there because you have a whole community reinforcing your beliefs and outsiders just never understand.
I even went overseas for two years (like you’re supposed to) and “converted” a bunch of people to Mormonism. (That’s not how I would describe it, but you know what I mean.) That is where I really started questioning my beliefs that I had always taken for granted. I had a lot of questions that didn’t have good answers and I witnessed a lot of unbecoming behavior by church leaders.
Despite that, I still half-believed for another five or so years until I started reading on the internet. Now I am an atheist and the idea that I ever believed in God seems ridiculous.
Unfortunately, it’s very easy to stand outside a belief system and see how silly some of the beliefs/practices are. It’s much, much more difficult to see through the silliness when you’ve been taught from age 3 that that’s just the way things are.