If you were religious and aren't now, what made you lose faith?

[GerryJam]

Ive been fairly religious all my life.

But of late I am really struggling. I've been through a very shit life, hindered by a debilitating illness which has ruined all aspects of my life from health to career prospects. Life is a struggle mentally and im always skint too which doesn't help matters. Im nearing 40 and have watched friends and family flourish through life relatively unscathed and financially stable and with so many opportunities for themselves and children. Im happy for them.but it breaks me to think that I could have had similar if it wasn't for my health. I feel a failure and feel robbed of a life of what could have been. Mostly I feel so sad for my children whom I feel I've let down. Sometimes I feel that I shouldn't have had children. I can't give them what they deserve. Life has been so cruel to me from a very young age.

The last few years I've slowly stopped praying. I don't feel heard. I feel hurt and let down. I still believe but I am so distant from it all now.

The death of my baby.

I found out during pregnancy that he was likely to die shortly after birth, and I prayed and prayed, but to no avail. My beautiful boy died. I couldn't countenance a good and just God letting this happen.

I guess any faith I had died with him.

OpiesOldLady im so sorry for your loss.

I have never been religious, but have often found it interesting that my religious friends find comfort in their faith when terrible things happen, or when their life has been blighted by something like a chronic illness. I have tried to understand, but not been able to see how the idea of God can bring solace when you are in pain. To me, the idea of God just seems to add insult to injury.

The only comfort I can find at times like this is in realising that there is no logic or justice or sense in things, but that there are still so many moments of beauty and joy and hope. These moments might just be something like hearing a cat purr, or understanding a line of a poem which was obscure and then become clear to me. But usually, these moments come from human sympathy, from feeling that a friend has recognised what I am dealing with and given me support, and still been able to enjoy my company when I feel like a dreary bore.

Sorry, I realise that I am not answering the OP, but I hope you don't mind me commenting anyway-

I was raised as a catholic. However, even from a young age I was aware of members of the congregation being incredibly judgemental and often, really quite spiteful. At 5, my family missed church one week. My class teacher made me stand up in class and explain myself. I had no answer, as my parents hadn't told their 5 year old why we hadn't been.

I also know many Christians who go to church weekly, church groups, prayer groups, yet when not in church, their attitudes are appalling. Children emotionally neglected, judged. Lesbians, gays are seen as disgusting etc (yet as long as those judgmental pricks go to church it's all ok.
I dinstinctly remember from a young age, the coffee mornings following Sunday service were the perfect opportunity for members of the congregation to gossip. My mother was one of them!
Our priest was sent to prison for being a peodophile.
My father worships the church, yet actually never ever initiates any contact with his own children.
I've also known really vulnerable people 'welcomed into Christianity sounds great and I'm sure in lots of cases it can be, but far too often, they then become to entrapped within the church, they become isolated.
For me it's about living the life we've been given to the best we can. Appreciating life. Not judging and being ignorant, then popping to church do we feel holier than though.

Not me but a family member used to be a vicar and his father before him so religion was deep rooted. When his wife died he said god couldn't exist and left the church. I'm sure there must be more to the story too. They had young children and I suspect he couldn't manage both on his own.

I think that people will either shy away from religion when times are continuously hard because God is not hearing them, or they will embrace it for strength. My feeling is that if religion has been such a large part of your life that you feel unheard I would speak to your church about your feelings. Seek comfort from them, you won't be the first person who has felt like this (as this thread shows).

Thinking about the vastness of the universe. It just became apparent how insignificant Earth is/we are.

Occam’s razor. Watching the theological gymnastics involved in a sermon insisting on the necessity of continually worshipping a deity who was invisible, inaudible, undetectable, and appears to have set up a world of pain and injustice without the slightest interest in its inhabitants. All of apologetics is a series of attempts to fend off the most obvious interpretation of the facts of human existence.

The idea that we (Catholics) were right and everyone else in the world was wrong and I searched for a while for the one true faith before I gave up on the whole lot.

My family claimed to be CofE though it wasn't enforced much. More the idea that God existed. I went to a CofE school in the village I lived in at the time, so from the age of 4, and was told every day God existed, that Jesus died to save us, and my school strongly celebrated all the festivals. I believed it.

I moved on to a non-dom secondary school and slowly I began to question it. I wanted to be confirmed. My mum had been, but it was a case of me deciding to or not. In the end I didn't. My first grandparent to die made me wonder about heaven, hell, and even other religious notions such as after lives etc.

I was agnostic by the time I was 18. Soon after my move to London a third grandparent had died and I dumped the heaven/hell thing entirely. My grandmother wasn't very strongly religious, and only took communion because she liked the wine!

I then decided I couldn't find evidence of God. He never revealed himself to me. I was also in a sciency profession at the time, and realised God cannot turn up because he didn't create anything. It's physics, and evolution, and biology. I found the Humanists, and hung out online with them for a while, and now I am an atheist.

My mum now says she had me christened because it was the tradition. She wants a non-religious funeral. My dad is a tiny bit religious, but I think only because of the festivals and rituals. My husband and in-laws are atheist.

When I became old enough to see the inequalities of the world. If this all powerful God exists then how is he allowing children to starve to death in a world of plenty. And if he does exist and he allows this then he is a God I want nothing to do with. Anyone who can sit through comic relief etc and still believe in God at the end is beyond me.

When I heard that child abuse is carried out by priests. But not all of course. There can't be a God who allows that.

Stephen Fry sums it up pretty well:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=-suvkwNYSQo

There were a few sermons I sat through that just made me think wtf ? The first was about how, as head of the household, I must not question my husband. Husband going to take all the family money and blow it on a business idea that you know will be a disaster? Tough, it's not your place to question it, your job is to support him unconditionally. And obey him at all times. He wants another child even though pregnancy was very dangerous the woman? Suck it up, it's his decision not yours.

Then there was the one about not being able to go to heaven unless you believe in a seven day creation.

And the final nail in the coffin was the one about how it is a father's role to ensure that his daughters don't get raped by not letting them keep bad company. And if a woman does get raped it is because she has been alone with a man when she shouldn't have been with. A woman shouldn't be alone with a man who isn't her husband or father. When I stopped attending and the minister found out why, he wanted to come to visit me to discuss it and was very angry when I said it was hypocritical to want to visit female parishioners alone whilst also preaching that women should not allow themselves to be alone with a man. That's different apparently...

Catholic here - my father who is a deacon, I went through a very low period in my life and needed a lot of family support, but he was too busy doing church things to be there for me. The judgement about children outside of wedlock. My father having multiple affairs and DM forgiving him because it was 'the right thing' to do...

Just focus on Jesus, whether you believe or not.

Did he have a problem with gay people? Nope.

Did he shame women? No, he was happy to eat and touch prostitutes.

Did he shame people who were weak and vulnerable? Nope.

There are people on this world who pretend to be Christians who are as far removed from Jesus as it is possible to be. Don’t confuse their hypocrisy with the basics of Christianity. I don’t actually believe myself, by the way.

I went to a Catholic grammar school. The head and lots of other teachers were nuns. When there was a mass, a priest had to be brought in and the clever, educated, devout women who taught us were relegated to washer-uppers. A didn't want to belong to a religion that treated women like second-class citizens.

I studied theology. I find religion very interesting, the history mainly but how it impacts people. I picked it at a time my faith was declining.

I was raised catholic, but never felt God had protected me from anything. From being a small child I was subjected to emotional abuse and traumatic events. One after another. God never helped me when I prayed. In my teens to decided that either God hated me or didn't exist. It's easier to believe he doesnt exist. I couldnt get my head round how the people around me had so much faith.

I also find history very interesting. One half of my studies were around the beliefs. The other half on the history of catholic church. Upon hearing that popes and their followers regular changed bibles and historical documents to fit what they thought should be allowed, the fact their would murder women for helping other women in child birth, the way they used religion to put women down and keep them down, the way those at the top would murder and destroy people for going against the church, while breaking the same 'rules' Turns my stomach.

Unfortunately every religion is the same. It's a tool to control the general populations while those at the top do what they want and spread evil and do so much damage to the people it should be protecting and helping.

Would God keep allowing that in his name?

It's odd because growing up, several priests at our church, were amazing. One supported me in my teens. I don't believe everyone involved in organised religion is bad. But I believe those at the top are and I believe organised religion is bad.

widespread mysogeny and child sexual abuse

When I realised all religion is basically just a way for the elite to control the behaviour of the masses. The leader can't have his officers in every household so you make up a all-seeing, all-knowing being who can look out for bad behaviour at all times. Also, the appalling treatment of women in pretty much all the world's religions.

I was Catholic. I can’t be bothered with that bollocks now. My local priest has been more than unwelcoming. I’d take dds, and he’s grab me after the service and have a go that children are not allowed in the main part of the church, and we have to be in the foyer where there’s nowhere to kneel except the cold ground, and it’s crowded.
So, that was that.
I attempted to go to another church, but it was miles away with difficult parking. I just think the whole thing was pointless. They did ask why I’d never been to their church before, and I told them exactly why. They knew as I wasn’t the first to leave the church. It’s where we got married. Both dds have were baptised there.

I went to a boarding school that put a lot of emphasis on religion and I more or less went along with it. However, I remember being bored to death in church services and wondering about the logic of worshipping by getting together once a week and going through a set ritual; I felt that surely God would be just as happy with people honouring him in their daily lives. I equally couldn't see the sense in things like confession of sins: how could simply reciting them to a vicar and then performing some minor penance take them away? But I still basically believed.

Losing faith was a long process and I was fairly reluctant to accept it, particularly the fact that there is no heaven and no after-life. One of the main reasons is the existence of awful things that no beneficent God could possibly countenance, and which no religious person could ever sensibly justify or explain to me. Then there are the cruel and intolerant things that happen in the name of religion, including the christian churches' history of child abuse, and also the excess of christian privilege that happens in the UK, e.g. faith schools. I am obviously aware of the good things that have been and are done in the name of religion, but then they happen just as often with no religious involvement at all. Ultimately I could see that there really is no reason or evidence that we go on after death and I was perfectly comfortable with that.

Dear GerryJam
So sorry you are having such a bad time. And sorry too that your debilitating illness has left you so run down and skint. I have a similar illness (maybe the same one, I guessed it might be) that just eats up whole months sometimes years of your life and managing it becomes a full-time job with little energy left for anything else. Watching your talents and opportunities slide away while other people follow up on theirs is very very tough.

But for me, faith really helps. Believing there's someone who cares about me when even I don;t is quite a blessing. And there are times when I just say: over to you, mate. You bear this load, I can't any more. And in my experience, that helps.

Most of the reasons people lose faith seem to be down to human behaviour, ime. Being maltreated by the abused freewill of others. But if we were without freewill, just happy little puppets, what sort of gift of a life would that be? Stepford wives. Incidentally I have very little time for organised religion because it is full of narcissists and bigots and predators. It seems to attract the worst sort. But quiet prayer in nature, lighting a candle, visiting an empty church, reading the psalms or the beatitudes and devotional poetry - that helps, I find.

Not clicked on the Stephen Fry link but I remember him ranting about worms in children's eyes and thinking, surely what's hideous is that we could heal those children easily but we'd prefer to spend the money on a frappucino. That's obscene. We have the free will and ability to end poverty, hunger, cruelty. We don't.

When did you last ask for help OP? Have you told the successful people around you that you are struggling and could do with some support? Do you have everything you are entitled to, from proper health care and financial aid, to voluntary and charitable support from places like Homestart. When you feel this low, it's hard to reach out for help, but I have started doing so and if you knock on enough doors, some good ones open.

I had strong faith all my life. My father is a church minister, my mother was wholeheartedly devoted to their faith and church.

Watching my dad on his knees begging for God to spare my mum as she died, screaming in agony, riddled with tumours, was the exact moment my faith disappeared completely.

Having looked into organised religion from an atheist perspective, I don't miss having faith.

That said, I respect the right of people who do have faith to practice it, and would never mock or belittle them.

I just don't believe any more.

My then H's affair with someone I thought was one of my closest friends. It broke me on every level (I'm still not right yet) and cut away everything I believed in, mainly in the sense that my whole world picture changed and all the pillars crumbled

A tough life taught me that there is no such thing. I could give specific examples but they may be a little outing all put together.
You're on your own.