The purpose of this thread is to get some insight from people that used to believe in God or a religion but then relenquished it. if you want to share please do. Im curious to know the rationale behind the decisions that were made.

I became absolutely convinced, through study and research, that the Bible was not inerrant and god-breathed -- as I was taught as a Calvinist, then Fundamentalist, then Evangelical.

This, of course, led to the inevitable conclusion that I had been brainwashed for the first 25 years of my life.

I seek my own truth now. I trust no organized religion.

I was an emotional wreck and unable to function. To be honest, I wanted to stop believing in God before I stopped believing. I wanted the fear to go away. In the last 13 years, I've found that reason and compassion (being gentle with myself, among other things) have given me strength in the areas where religion ate away at me.

Amen!

In the context of my post, and your posting history -- this is FREAKING ME OUT MAN!!!!

To anyone, do you find yourself disliking religious people of the tradition that you left?

Most of my friends are Christians, so in general I do not dislike religious people. However, most of them aren't ardent theists (I know more about Christianity than almost all of them), and only a few of them attend church on a regular basis. They will self-identify as Christians if they are asked about their beliefs, but that's as far as it goes.

The religious folks that I dislike intensely are those that cannot go more than a few minutes without proselytizing. It doesn't help that these people are generally less intelligent and have a really superficial knowledge of their faith, which makes them even more annoying. Luckily, I have only met a few of these people in real life. I've encountered many more of them on the internet.

I was baptized as a baby. Raised in a family where I went to church every week. Went to religion on wednesdays, etc. I was brainwashed like every other person in church. When I became old enough to make decisions for myself, I snapped out of it.

You don't teach a kid politics at 1yr old. Yet you baptise him into something far more important at that age. Before he can make his own decisions. That's called brainwashing. Your forcing something upon that child. Luckily, I was one of few that snapped out of it. More than 90% of people are the religion of their parents, just goes to show how good that brainwashing really is.

so you believe in God, you just don't like the organization of it?

what was it that you feared so much?

what is it that you believe that makes you certain of your choice?

No. They are who they are. I am who I am.

Stations of the Cross. For 1 hour 45 minutes. Every Friday(during Lent). In the afternoon. Stifling church. No air conditioning. Mandatory church services on holy days of obligation. Altar boys acting weird and then a priest just "disappears". No one even spoke of him. Yeah it was a pretty normal childhood at school I'd say.

Man, Erf beat me to it.

Does it bother or surprise you that I would say the same thing?

I just believe in God. The rest, I haven't figured out yet.

No, it wouldn't. You're not as ... fundamental ... as Erf.

I still cannot figure out what qualifies someone in this category for you. Do you still put me in this category? I know that you used to.

I don't dislike religious people, some of my closest loved ones are deeply religious...I do however find it hilarious that they truly believe...sometimes I think they cannot but they seem to truly do...and its whats best for them and their families so who am I to judge.

seriously...

because I opened my eyes and my mind to reality, science and common sense.

I'm not some stupid atheist that is unwilling to see the other side. As I said, I was born and raised Catholic. However, I began to build my own morals and I realized that I don't always agree with the church, and that's ok.

two big ones that initially triggered my doubt in Christianity:
a. The bible is very outdated and at times ridiculous
b. The church has done and will continue to do things that is very wrong

I can't guarantee you that there is no God. But now that I can step away from religion and think for myself, and then make decisions, I clearly see that the substance to the church is not there. I post in forums like this to see what arguments people have to make, but so far I've not seen one that made me think "well that makes sense..." however even at the height of my belief in religion, atheists could make points that I would have to admit made a lot of sense. Not one point that a religious poster has made on this thread has made me second guess my belief change. I would love to see one, as I like to learn and become smarter obviously, but I don't expect to see one.

+100 this is exactly how I feel. It's like night an day. I feel 100x more enlightened to the truth then I ever did when I was religious.

this too. My initial stance, which I guess I still maintain is against organized religion. If your able to form your own morals and somehow relate that to a higher power, fine. If you follow a 2,000 year old text I can't respect that about you.

i understood at a fundamental level that there must be some sort of god. what captivated me is very similar to what notready appears to suffer from.

fundamental proposition: the universe could not exist without some sort of deity. (reinforced consciously/subconsciously by the argument from design, human desire for significance, fear of death/loneliness, etc.)

after this it's easy.

-given that there is some sort of deity, what would be the "point" if that deity were not "interested" in us? i can't see that there would be a point. therefore, there is a deity that is interested in us.

-given that there is some sort of deity that is interested in us, what might that look like? is it plausible that god would "interact" with us through religion? if i were god, i think i might connect to people through something like a religion. therefore, it is plausible that religion can provide real connection to god.

-given that it's plausible that religion can provide a real connection to god, which religion is the most likely to provide this connection? christianity, obviously. it does the best job of, like everything. it just makes the most sense.

-given that christianity is the best religious option, can i look at my experiences and see them as consistent with christianity? do i see "lives changed" by jesus? do i get "warm fuzzies" when i worship/pray? do i see "miracles" and all sorts of "coincidences" that seem very unlikely to happen if christianity is not true? do i find prophecies in the bible that could only be made by someone with supernatural access to the future? yes i do! therefore, christianity is both highly plausible and much more consistent with my experiences than not-christianty.

can i reinforce these beliefs constantly through rituals? can i intentionally avoid ideas that contradict my beliefs and seek out things that confirm them? does it make me feel guilty to doubt? do i stand to lose a lot socially by giving up these beliefs? am i pretty much pot committed anyway? absolutely.

ok now after all that, what happens when i go back and honestly question the first assumption, which is that this universe could not exist without a god?

suppose i realized what an absurd leap that is. OK, so things look designed. oops i guess i was lied to by basically everyone my entire life, the ToE is a plausible explanation for complex life. if complex things can come from simple ones, maybe the universe, on some level, is pretty simple. do i really understand the universe well enough to say that it must have some "intelligent" cause? i guess i don't. i don't really understand much about it at all. what if for fun i pretend that god being invented is plausible and see where that leads?

-given that god being invented is plausible, are the religions the sort of things that people might invent? hmm... not much time to get into this, but yeah i guess they are. just read the bible and keep asking yourself, "is this the sort of thing a human being might write?"

-given that my religion might possibly be invented, would that be consistent with my experiences? is it consistent with the appearance of answered prayer? is it consistent with the "miracles" and "prophecies" and "changed lives"? is it consistent with my own behavior? is it consistent with the "warm fuzzies" and the sense of purpose and the powerful bonds of community shared among the devout?

amazingly, biases explain quite a bit, and they do it very neatly. after all, we pretty much all agree that most people are absolutely convinced that a false religion is true, and they can all manufacture reasons for it.

are my experiences really inconsistent with a universe in which god is a superstition?

given that the answer is no, and the sheer, blinding difficulty of christianity being "true," i have to admit that i fell for it, you got me.

even if i have to admit now that i don't have the universe figured out, i at least figured out that we don't have it figured out.

They started it.

I lost a ton of faith when my girlfriend died in 2005. THe day she went into seizures and a coma i was there, and it was at a time i normally wouldnt be there, so i felt God had me there to save here life. When she never woke up out of the coma 3 and died 3 months later, i lost a ton of faith and havent really gotten it back yet although i went to temple for the first time since then this october.

I think that you enjoy discussing and debating your religion on the internet. I doubt that you discuss religion nearly as much in real life as you do on here. I believe that this forum is your way of scratching your religious itch.

This is in direct contrast to my gut feeling about Splendour, NotReady, and BigErf. I'm quite positive that their lives are "All-Jesus, all the time". They'd be completely insufferable to deal with in real life. It would be impossible to talk to any of these people where they did not try to steer the conversation back to saving my soul.

I could be wrong, though. I don't really know any of you people from Adam. It's quite possible that the online personas that I dislike on this board would be people I could be friends with in real life, and the online personas that I really like could be controlled by the most miserable human beings you'd ever have the misfortune to meet.

Hell, directly. But that was an irrational fear. My father, when he learned of it, reassured me that hell is still better than earth, it's nothing to worry about. But the fear didn't go away. I mean, the images and sense of reality about them didn't go away.

But really, I think failing. Being sinful, being "fallen," displeasing God. Probably more than anything, being irrevocably severed from God. Being unwanted by God.