Sincerely interested in learning about skeptics.

In My Humble Opinion
1

To those of you who feel I don’t listen, this a thread that I hope will change your mind. I am sincerely interested in learning about former followers of religion who are now deists/agnostics/atheists/skeptics.

What happened to your previous faith? Why did you stop believing? (Mind you, I’m asking those who are no longer practicing in organized religion but once were.) And to show you that I’m honestly interested in learning about others, I have no intentions of responding to anyone who posts here. I am interested in hearing the stories of skeptic’s preivous faiths. If you don’t mind sharing, that is.

So, my mouth is shut and I’m all ears…

2

I’ll bite.

I was raised Methodist, which is a fairly liberal leaning Christian sect. We went to church/Sunday school on a weekly basis. It was at times enjoyable and free thought was actually encouraged for the most part.

My religious beliefs began to erode the day I realized that even if there was no such thing as God, religions and beliefs would still exist. It caused me to do some long term soul searching (pardon the pun). I started noticing disturbing trends in various religions: “If you’re not one of us, you go to hell”, “Dance and you go to Hell”, “Do whatever you want, just ask for forgiveness and it’ll be okay”. I also began to actually read the bible on a regular basis. I had a hard time reconciling the Old Testament God with the New Testament God, which was the one I had pictured thanks to my upbringing. Love thy brother, but stone the kids if they misbehave seemed a bit odd to me.

In the end, too little evidence (read none) for the existance of a God, too much evidence against. “Blind Faith” is just too easy to use as a way to explain anything you want without having to support your position.

I still follow a moral code, it’s just my own personal one. Most people I come into contact with think I’m a devout believer, due in large part to my generosity and caring. :slight_smile:

3

Seems more like IMHO or GD, but anyway:

Born and raised Lutheran. We went to church and Sunday School every week, though my parents weren’t overtly religious at home. We only said “grace” at holiday dinners, for instance.

This probably encouraged free thinking.

After confirmation, I began to look more closely at what I was allegedly believing in. I think what disturbed me most was what I saw as God’s inability to take responsibility for his actions, and his obvious lack of Omnipotent skill: Namely, he created imperfect human beings, and then blamed them when they screwed up, rather than himself. Seem like me building a chair and then cursing the chair (rather than myself) when it breaks.

From there, I got pretty bitter and started looking into some more hard-core atheistic arguments to back myself up. I became pretty vehemently atheistic for a few years, before I got over it and gradually toned things down to my current level of strong agnosticisim/weak atheism (namely, I’m honest enough to admit that I can’t know for sure that there is/isn’t a god, but that the available evidence seems to imply that god is not necessary). So my disgruntlement over being blamed for something I didn’t do led me to look at the lack of evidence. And here I am.

4

Okay, I’ll throw in as well.

I was raised in a fairly fundamentalist family - church 3 times a week at bible-literal, non-charismatic protestant churches. I don’t think I ever had faith or belief beyond that of a child who accepts this because it’s the family paradigm. After a few years of reading, questioning, and learning out in the real world, I noticed that I did not beleive. That’s all. After years of prayer, convinced that something was deficient in myself I decided (at about age 15 or so) not to worry about it. There was no gradual erosion of faith, merely a realization that I never had it. Years of searching for a religious truth in various Christian and non-Christion churches did not produce any epiphanies. If there are any deities out there, they are not giving me any spiritual nudges. I don’t deny there may be something out there, I just think it is irrelevant to my physical existance.

BTW, I do not think this has anything to do with skepical thinking because it resides in the realm of faith/religion/philosophy. If it is unprovable by scientific method, skepticism only applies if someone is trying to present it as fact rather than faith. Only then will I demand proof.

5

I’ll confess as well as best I can.

I was raised an atheist. Yet even in my youth I had a strong desire to determine right from wrong and a yearning to act in accordance with such convictions.

I think I was 19 when I first read the Gospels, and something did click. I realized that what Jesus taught was right. Although I realized that were there no God, keeping his teachings would be impossible, a few years later I made the leap of faith to keep the commandments as he taught them. I expected to find out that there was no God. I expected to suffer – I felt I deserved to suffer for all the mistakes I had made in my life besides. But much to my chagrin I found not suffering but joy. But there seemed to be a flaw in the world. I lived almost like a God while others waited on my every beck and call and yet I could not convince these others that keeping the commandments was what was right (aside from a half dozen). Furthermore, many were quite angry with me by virtue of my holiness, and I feared that should I keep it up I would eventually get myself killed. If I could not turn many from sin the world was flawed. And I lacked faith that those who had turned could truly prosper. Considering I was not prepared to be happy, I decided to return to my sins. Like John predicted in Revelations, for 42 months I happily served the beast. But for the past 6 or so months there has been a burning within me that I should return to a life of faith. But I am weak, and have not yet brought myself to do so. I am trying to learn about others so were I to embark on another mission I might be more sucessful.

6

Raised catholic. Never liked going to church, but attended CCD classes, made 1st communion and was confirmed. Went to church on Sundays thru HS cause my mom made me. Never went once I went away to college.

Not sure what or how much I ever believed, but I remember being in grade school and thinking the way they taught bible stories struck me as unbelievable cartoons. I went to public school, and resented that the nuns told the kids in Catholic school that they were better than us. I was really stricken by the inconsistency when they decided all of a sudden you could eat meat on Friday. Couldn’t understand how they could just change the rules like that.

When I really began rejecting it was when I realized that non-believers would not get to heaven, no matter how good they were. (Back then there was still a limbo, and they seemed to be freer about consigning folk to hell than they are today.) I couldn’t believe in a system that would not “reward/recognize” all of the “good” people of the world equally. As a kid, I recall this thought took the form along the lines of, “You mean all the Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. are going to hell? Gandhi too? How could a Billion Chinamen all be wrong?”

Into high school, these feelings intensified. I disliked people/nations who pursued personal goals under the guise of religion. And I thought it ridiculous that different sects would violently disagree about stupid little things neither could possibly know about. (Transubstantiation, the assumption of Mary, etc.) And I did not like what I learned about missionaries imposing their views on native people in the name of “civilizing” them, eradicating their native culture in the process.

In college, I thought religion was of use only to the weak or ignorant. I acknowledged that the bible thumpers seemed really happy, but thought the same could be said of certain idiots in padded cells. Looking back at it, I wish i had attended a UU church at the time. My Phil classes provided a vocabulary/framework/logic for what I rejected and why.

While I have backed off from that, I still am unable to understand why someone would believe. I see no need for a supernatural being. What little I know of science seems to explain things adequately for me. And to the extent things are not explainable, well, I don’t see the reason for making up some convoluted fairy tale ala Christianity to explain them. So maybe I am back to my childhood position of rejecting cartoons.

I also have known some people (including my mother) whom I felt devalued this existence, in the hopes of something better happening later. Which struck me as sad. I mean, it would be fine and dandy with me if there were an afterlife, but if there isn’t, I would hate to have missed out on something here and now planning for it.

Feel free to comment away, jenkinsfan. It ain’t as tho you could hurt my feelings or convert me. I sure ain’t trying to convert or insult you.

7

I was not raised religious, but my family was Catholic and believed in god and all that good stuff. I only went to church once or twice, finding it unbearably boring, but I still believed in god.

As a child, every time my mind started to wander over to the other side - that is, the possibility that god doesn’t exist - , I’d feel very guilty for thinking that. I’d feel like I wouldn’t get into heaven if those thoughts kept recurring. I know it wasn’t my parents that drove those feelings into me. Perhaps it was the nature of our overtly religious society, or maybe it was simply all in my head in the first place. I don’t know.

When I was eighteen, I went through a severe bout of depression. It was kind of crappy logic, I know, but I reasoned that any kind of compassionate god would never let someone suffer like that, so maybe there’s no god at all. Some people tried to steer me towards Wicca. One even told me she could manipulate objects remotely. When asked to prove it, she backpeddled, of course. So I pretty much wrote those people off as a joke.

It took me a while to realize it, but I am now firmly agnostic. To me it seems incredibly arrogant to say that you not only KNOW there is a god, but that you KNOW what he wants us to do.

8

Raised a Presbyterian (my father is a minister).

 I think a number of things happened at once. As I became more educated, I began to learn more about church history, and also about the beliefs of people other than Jews/Christians. It became clear to me that the Bible, and hence Christianity, was merely part of one of many philosophical systems that human beings had invented and would continue to invent. Not a divinely inspired rule book, not even particularly original.
 Second, I had always been interested in biology (one of those dinosaur nut kids) and when I got to college, I continued to pursue that interest. The view of creation presented in Genesis became pretty much completely meaningless in any practical sense, as far as I was concerned.
 Third, my views on a number of moral questions (premarital sex, women's roles, reproductive choice, homosexuality)eventually came to clash irreparably with those of most Christian churches.
 Eventually it dawned on me that there was not longer any need to believe in a supernatural creator of any kind, and I was certainly not that impressed with the one that Christians would have me believe in.
9

To paraphrase George Carlin:

“Religion has you believe there is an invisible man…”

Faith is worthless in terms of what it does for human beings.

What makes you human? I promise you that if you have a religious system based on faith and/or rules, you’re less human than you should be. A relatively highly developed brain/mind, setting aside it’s reasoning and critical thinking abilities for one of the most important decisions the human mind will ever have a chance to think about: That’s what happens when you have faith. You shut down the most essential parts of your mind at the most important time.

The ultimate paradigm: If there is a “God”, “He” will have more respect for atheists/agnostics/critical thinkers than he has for those who are “believers”.

10

What finally did it for me was the realization that evolution could explain everything that religon couldn’t. If God built us, why would he make us jealous and spiteful. Why would he give us the need to procreate while at the same time restricting who we could do it with? Why would he teach us to love thy neighbor while we organize a jihad is his name? These things don’t make sense in the context of God, but they do in the context of evolution.

But the greatest source of confusion for me was why would he judge us when we die without giving us any concrete proof of his existance. It seems a little out of character for the loving God to place us in an unfair and demanding world, give us no guidence other than the folklore of ancient cultures, and expect us to do certain things in order to be happy forever. Is it fair to disqualify a player when they break a rule if you haven’t told them what the rules were in the first place?

And the clincher: Evolution explains religon. Believing in a supernatural being, especially one of the Judeao/Christian/Islamic variety would create an order to society which would give that culture an evolutionary advantage over one in which the people had no higher morals. It would cause them to take their lives and the lives of those around them more seriously.

11

My experience pretty much mirrors Dinsdale’s.

In addition:

My mom is Catholic, my dad is Greek Orthodox. My brothers and I were raised Catholic. The religions are very, very, very similar, yet the Greek Orthodox church seems to have fewer ‘requirements’ - ie, church is not an obligation, priests can get married. It seemed to me that I could just as easily have been raised Greek Orthodox…what was the big deal? I became preoccupied with the study of other religions - my Catholicism just seemed to be an accident of birth and geography, and I couldn’t accept that Hindus, Muslims, animists, Jews, etc. were experiencing something “less” than I was.

Some good old teenage rebellion is involved, I’m sure: I didn’t want to make my confirmation in the Catholic church, because I felt unready and unsure. It seemed false and wrong for me to get up in front of everyone I knew and say “Yes, I truly believe this and want it for myself” when I had so many doubts about it. My house was rocked with fights about this for about 3 years - I finally caved in under the threat of not being able to go to college, and I regret that decision to this day, because I made some very insincere vows.

There just seemed to be so much baggage associated with the religion. I used to get kicked out of CCD classes regularly for asking “why did it matter whether Mary remained a virgin after Jesus’ birth? If she and Joseph were married, what makes you think they didn’t have sex?” (I did a huge theology paper on this in college, tracing the history of this idea). "Why does the priest go to such lengths to discredit Bible passages that talk about Jesus’ brothers and sisters, telling us that they are really “cousins”? No one would answer my question, I would just get kicked out.

I am more than a little creeped out by the Catholic doctrine of “transubstantiation” of communion. I used to pray “please let this just be bread, please let this just be bread” whenever I choked it down as a kid.

I remember going to church with my mom one Sunday when I was home from school, and hearing the priest talk about domestic violence. He told some very glurge-like story of a battered woman who forgave her husband over and over until finally one day he got the help he needed and didn’t hit her anymore. Lovely.

Like I said, Dinsdale summed it up for me - the more I questioned and interacted with people from other religions, the more I realized that religion would exist with or without a God. And over time, I found myself disagreeing with so many things the Catholic church believed that it seemed ridiculous to call myself a Catholic, or even a Christian. I’m a “recovering Catholic”, a hypocrite who goes to church every Christmas for the sake of family harmony, and who takes communion so that the old biddies in our town won’t wonder behind my mom’s back what kind of sins I’ve been up to.

I wouldn’t say I’m an athiest, either - just profoundly undecided.

12

I’ve always been a very practical person. I was raised Catholic, and I went to church and believed because that’s what my family did and it never occurred to me not to. But I never believed a lot of the specific teachings, like transubstantiation (gee, still looks like a cracker to me), birth control, etc. As I grew up, I objected more and more to the church’s treatment of women.

Since my parents acknowledged parts of the bible as allegory and fable, it was easy to start putting more and more church teachings in that category, until I came to a state of belief in some higher power unknowable by humans but worshipped in different symbolic ways by different religions. My mother left the church at the same time, which really accelerated the process for me, I think.

I tried out other religions - first Protestantism then Paganism, but I just couldn’t convince myself to buy into the supernatural claims. So I just let it lie.

Then I started getting into skepticism, and started reading skeptical sites on the web. Some sites were skeptical of religion, too, and it got me thinking. I realized that if I were honest, I couldn’t believe in a god any more than I could believe in homeopathy or psychic readings (so I disagree with lucie there, I guess). I was scared not to believe in a god anymore, but after that realization, I had to admit that I just didn’t believe.

It got easier after that, and I have actually found it very freeing. I no longer wonder why bad things happen to good people, or bemoan unfair events in my life. Basically, my response to those events is “S**t happens,” and I get on with living.

13

I was raised Catholic and all that.

Anyway, short story:

It stopped making sense to me. I couldn’t fathom a supreme being creating us or watching over us. Most of the stories in the bible are utterly ridiculous (IMO). Finally, Catholics in general seemed to me to be a bunch of hypocrites. They want everyone else to be wholesome and righteous, but they aren’t themselves. This is not meant to be a debate. Just answering the OP.

14

Raised United Methodist. My brother is in the ministry.

I believe there is no conflict between skepticism and religion, but that’s neither here nor there.

I am not a Christian because I have studied history, religion, and the history of religion. There are so many different ways of looking at the world, so many different approaches to understanding the spirit, that it is irresponsible to me to claim that one of those is the only correct one. Either they are all correct or they are all incorrect. I prefer the former view.

God is infinite. To claim that your way is the only true and correct way is to place your human blindness and limitations upon Him.

I do not have the gall to limit God. His ways are not mine. Praise Allah.

15

jmullaney sez:

And I ask:
Are you telling me atheists and agnostics can’t be moral? That’s absurd.

16

Well, I was raised Unitarian, although it wasn’t a big thing in my family. I was pretty much an agnostic during my teens, but in my late teens I started attending a Presbyterian church. It never really sit too well with me; I was a bit too skeptical and the church and I disagreed on some points. (Especially evolution! I actually had one pastor who, on hearing that I was in grad school in biology, asked if I was going to disprove evolution! :rolleyes: )

Anyhow, now I’m more of a fideist.

17

Sorry! That wasn’t what I meant. I’ve known Satanists who were moral. I just meant my parents didn’t raise me all that wrong, you know? I’m not sure what opinions the OPer holds is all – I was trying to be clear to her.

18

This is IMHO fodder, but I’ll post to it now.
I was raised Protestant, fairly non-denomenational sect called United Church of Christ, and I never really believed it too strongly. When I had the big questions, I found biology and cosmology more acceptable than theology. My parents were not religious, either of them, but I had some devoutly Catholic grandparents, and I was struck at how irrational their faith was and how senseless their beliefs were. So when I learned science in school, and got a footing in how the real world is discovered and analyzed, I dropped the faith completely and became an atheist. A deity may still exist, but it has not been proven yet.

19

I really have no reason to post to this thread, as my Faith is still as strong and real as it has ever been.

I just am wondering why “skeptic” is being used as a synonym for “someone who has lost his or her faith.” I consider myself quite skeptical, but I do not see where that is equivalent to “atheististic”.

(Not to be implying anything against atheists, some of my best friends are atheists…)

20

Don’t you hate getting a further thought after submitting reply?

AFAICT, Gullible/Skeptical is a seperate axis from Theistic/Atheistic in human personalities. I have known extremely gullible atheists (ones who believe in space alein abductions or Bigfoot). I feel rather offended that jenkinsfan equates the two outlooks.