Seven years old, in the middle of a cemetery. Burying my premature sister, I just couldn’t understand why such a supposedly loving God would put a child onto this earth only to endure its only moments, minutes, in pain and struggling to breathe.
Unlike my religious relatives, I could not be satiated with the whole “It’s part of God’s plan” routine.
After that, I approached everything with skepticism and the workings of my weekly catechism began to unravel.
It was arround the time I was taking Confirmation classes at my Episcopal church I spent a lot of time thinking about my beliefs. Most of my city was Roman Catholic, and there were many other churches in town, so I though about what would have happened if I had been born in another family: I would have a different set of beliefs. Then I extended that to Judaism, Buddhism, etc. People in those religions thiught they were right just as I thought my beliefs were correct. I realized that the chances that a person had been born into or chosen the right religion were small. From that I figured out that if all but one religions were wrong, then it made sense that they all were wrong. Once I stopped believing, it all just fell in place. Why does God let people suffer? Because there is no God. How do we reconcile scripture with science? We don’t.
That’s because Catholics are too chewy.
Although this happened years before I had my first serious stirrings of skepticism, I inadvertantly stumbled into a gray area of doubt when I noticed that it seemed God certainly took a more active and open role in world and human affairs during the time of the Bible than He does now. Sometime after Christ’s resurrection, He chose to mostly leave us to our own decisions and mistakes on Earth.
I was about six years old. My parents had been sending me to the Lutheran preschool conveniently located across the street from the apartment. I’d come home talking and singing about Jesus. (In hindsight, god, my poor parents.)
Eventually, my dad must’ve gotten sick of it because he started saying things like, “Hey, if there is a God/Heaven, then why does…” Being only six, I couldn’t answer his questions.
He then showed me there were other explanations or theories for things previously attributed to God. God didn’t make kittens or pudding or sadness or rainstorms; they were made by or developed from or associated with such and such other thing. It was awesome discovery. There were countless things that I didn’t know about because I was being told God did it or God made it, period. Eventually, hearing “God made it” or “God did that” became boring and unsatisfying, synonymous with “I don’t know.” Finding other explanations for things made the world seem a much more interesting place.