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.

I used to believe in God and prayed every day. I’ve had a life of extremes, some really awful things have happened to me and some really good things have happened to me. One day I just realised, there isn’t some “higher power” looking out for me. It’s just me and life. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. Believing and praying didn’t change a thing, nor did not believing. Also the older I get the less convinced I am of any “afterlife”. And the more convinced I become that religion was/is just a tool to manipulate the masses into behaving.

I really felt God as a child and even as a teenager and decided to give church a go at uni, and followed two evangelical friends to their church. It was a cold, dry dull event. I never once felt any spirit there, no joy, no anything really. Then the pastor gave a sermon about some high profile gay celebrities and how 'their' disease of HIV and AIDS was God's punishment....I was sat next to my GF at the time. And I just thought fuck this shit. It was all so ignorant, narrow minded, petty, unkind and socially and medically wrong.

I don't have any faith in the Church at all. And God is not what we are taught. I thought maybe meeting a woman vicar would bring me back to church, but she was full of nonsense.

I am surrounded by a lot of spiritual type people now. But equally I have absolutely no patience with any woo woo stuff. It creates the same kind of churchy people as mentioned in pp, hypocrites, gossips, unkindness and bullshitters just with a different doctrine.

I do yoga but its grounded in the here and now, and I don't follow a 'guru' - sexual abuse is rife like in the church.

I was brought up a lapsed RC, we were sent to RC schools but rarely went to mass.

At my RC girls' school we were basically trained to be mothers and housewives, it was OK to have a career, until you married. And some careers were good such as teaching or nursing

We were told to get good exam results we should do a novena, I thought 'what a load of crap, better to revise'.

It just seemed sillier and sillier the more I learned.

he abortion line also seemed to me to be cruel, no one decides, 'right I'm going to get pregnant so I can have an abortion', everyone has reasons.

As I grew up I just stopped finding it at all convincing or interesting.

I learned about science and the universe and could see clearly that a) there was no need for some kind of creating deity b) the explanation of a creating deity was a very boring and uninteresting one compared to what actually happened.

I learned about psychology and could see why people would reach for the explanation of faith, which again was much more rich and interesting than there actually being a deity.

I respect the role faith plays in the lives of many people but even if I wanted to believe, which I don't, I wouldn't be able to.

Growing up and educating myself. I wouldn't ever say I was hugely religious, but I believed in something and got married in a church and had my children christened not for the sake of it but as I believed. The thing that opened my eyes was studying medieval history for a job and the utter realisation of how organised religion was needed to manage lawless society. It created boundaries that were needed for order, but has been systematically abused to suppress certain sections of society- largely women, but many others. Over the years I've developed quite a vehement distaste for organised religion and think it has far too much power over a modern society. I don't describe myself as atheist, I don't know the meaning of life, or if there even is one, but just think we should appreciate the lives we have, take responsibility for our actions and try to be good people.

My DM was given a terminal diagnosis when I was 17.

That's when I truly lost it. I couldn't fathom any justification for her losing her life. It was so painful watching her.

(She's OK now - long story involving unconventional medicine but my faith was ruined after then)

I still find religion interesting. I like seeing the similarities and the symbology. I pick and choose the good/sensible bits as a moral compass.

My grandma was a Christian her whole life and she had some real tragedy. I asked her once how she kept her faith through the hard times and she said she prayed even harder. I suspect she felt someone/god was with her through the difficult times. I went to church with her sometimes and don’t recognise the description of some churches here, it was a Methodist church and everyone seemed very warm and friendly. It certainly offered her a lot of support as she got older and before that she gave a lot of support in the community herself - not just to church people but elderly neighbours etc.
I work with some catholics though and they are finding themselves hugely challenged to stay catholic not just by the wider Catholic Church but by the diocese in the local area. I won’t say too much but some of the politics on a local level have shocked me.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

• Epicurus

I grew up a catholic, was baptised and confirmed, went to catholic schools, took communion, went to confession, mass every Sunday. My brothers were altar boys, I applied for the role but lacked the requisite genitalia.

My doubts started in primary school when we were taught about ‘doubting Thomas’, the disciple who refused to believe in Jesus’ resurrection until he had seen for himself the crucifixion scars. I thought Thomas had a point.

By the time I was doing my science O Levels, it was obvious to me that creationism which the Catholic Church taught to children was complete nonsense. I then realised that many nuns priests and devout laity, including members of my own family, really did believe in these fairytales. If there was no evidence to support that, where was the hard evidence that Jesus existed? Where was the verifiable proof that he performed miracles? Or that he rose from the dead? Or that God existed?

From that point, my faith collapsed very quickly. By my 16th birthday I knew I was an atheist. It all came to a head one Sunday morning around that time when for the first time I refused to go to mass, which caused a huge family row. I have not attended mass since.

My daughter's death and my son's autism. That was it for me.

Raised CofE but no longer believe. For me it's been living a life of constant depression, self-loathing and the feeling I'm a failure, wondering why I've been chosen to be so miserable. I had few friends, wasn't getting to where I wanted to be in life.

I stopped praying and praising God. Within a couple of years I was married, I have a son and friends nearby. I am much happier and feel successful in myself. Probably coincidence, I guess, but once I stopped thinking someone else had control over my life I could suddenly start to become much happier.

I haven't prayed since.

I wasn't ever really church-goingly religious, but had a sort of faith. However, basic human observation over the years made it decline. Finding the quote from Epicurus that someone posted above really struck me in my early 20s. Also visiting lots of museums and noticing how many sacred motifs were actually pagan first and acquisitioned by the Christian church to make the changeover easier. Later on I made friends with a lovely woman who is very devout, but in what I call "the good way", i.e she tries to take Jesus' teachings to heart, do the right thing, she is lovely to everyone, non judgemental, just a gentle soul genuinely trying to do her best. But she and her family regularly go through hell with long term health problems, family illness and death, and it seems like nothing ever goes right for them. What sort of God does that to such a nice woman who is doing everything "right", and lets an unbeliever like me get off pretty much scot free? And if there is a god and they are messing with her like that, then it's not a God I want much to do with.

This quote has always stuck with me. I haven't visited Mathausen but I have been to Auschwitz.

The fact that God is quite happy to completely ignore the suffering of - mainly brown - people the world over whilst privileged westerners go to church and honestly expect to have their prayers for exam success, their auntie's hernia operation or some such trivia. My sil (educated and well off) used to pray for car parking spaces and would then thank God when he allocated one to her.

I tried reading the old testament and was appalled by the violence and encouragement by God to kill everyone, and rape anyone who was left over.

I tried reading the new testament and was confused by the apparent contradictions and the confusing way in which jesus spoke. I'm autistic and like things to be presented in a straightforward way rather than hints and alluding to things.

Both bibles are quite obviously made up and God undergoes a personality transplant from vengeful psychopath in the ot to benign loving father figure in the nt. How does that work?

I worked for Christians for several years. Never again. Horrible experience, never before encountered such lies and deceit. Awful people who honestly believed that they were superior to everyone else because they went to church. Their actions - and inactions - were harming vulnerable people and I couldn't be any part of it after a great deal of soul searching and losing my faith. Religious people will claim that they weren't proper Christians, but I'm no longer interested in that argument because I've encountered too many judgemental horrible churchgoers tbh.

I disagree with the judeo-christian teaching that man is top dog and is in full charge of the natural world and the animals. This has led to such arrogance, exploitation and abuse of the natural world that now the planet is fucked. Man is not special and is merely another type of animal and we should strive to fit in with nature and not control and harm it.

I believe that religion is a form of self worship - it's no coincidence that God reflects Man's nature and is bestowed with Man's supposed qualities.

The Christians around me were praying for trivial and ridiculous things and then, when their prayers were 'answered', they were happy and smug. I realised that this is a form of self worship and encourages narcissism. It reduces their God to nothing more than a little pocket magician.

Honestly, don't waste your time on it. It's so obviously made up and you don't need an imaginary being to keep you on the right track anyway.

I was raised evangelical - my parents and sister and her family go to church twice on Sundays and bible studies in the week and have been variously involved in toddler groups and old people's lunches at the church. My father was treasurer at his previous church. He voted for brexit because he thinks the pope is the antichrist.

My sister and one of my nieces have quite severe depression and I'm sure that a lot of the problem is being in a church where you are constantly told that you are a sinner and you must do as your husband says - my sister married at 20, the niece at 18. The most awful thing is that they were both amazing, unique, shining individuals as children, and certainly my sister has spent over 20 years being dull and average and I am very worried that the same will happen to my niece.

You can never be good enough - my sister's children were never allowed to play in the playground on Sundays or listen to the radio or do anything fun. They were expected to go to both church services unless they were ill.

I was generally drifting away in an unfocused manner and always hated sitting listening to long sermons. It never made sense to me that a god would rather I sat in church 'praising' him than be out walking or cycling and seeing the majestic things he had made. Someone pointed out to me that a lot of the bible belief that I had been brought up with was contradictory and that god must be very vain to need that much adulation all the time or he would send you to damnation. That sealed it really, the longer I am away from it, the happier I am and the more it is obvious that it has been used to control the lower classes and women in particular. I always had very strong views on fairness and treating people kindly and the church's attitudes to people of different religions and sexuality was very much against my feelings and I could not agree with them, even whilst I was still in the church. My sister told my other niece, who was a normal 19 year old at the time that her endometriosis was God stopping her from living a sinful life and going to nightclubs.

In short, some people find god, I lost him. It took a lot of effort and I still feel guilty a lot of the time (even writing the things on this post). It made me horrendously inhibited which I would like to see a counsellor about at some point. I'm glad I am out of it and will avoid any attempts to save me. It's much better out here.

It was Buddhism which finished me off.

A Buddhist leader cane to talk to our group about karma. He explained that the karma of the Jews led to the holocaust and the karma of disabled children in a previous life led to their disability.

I challenged this obnoxious nonsense and so did two others. Everyone else stayed silent.

It was this that finished religion for me, the accepting deference to religious authority and abdication of responsibility for values and beliefs of nearly everyone in that room. I’ve been an atheist ever since.

I have turned my back on Catholicism after 40 years because my disabled dc could never attend mass.

To add insult to injury, when I took my other two, well behaved, dc there was always a spiteful person ready to say something rude to me or them.

Some in the Catholic Church treat children as though they are all sinners. I know that there are also lovely Catholics but I just couldn't stick the mean spirited approach to children.

I had a job quite high up in the Catholic community. They wanted me gone so stole from my handbag to get what they needed (my personal item, nothing illegal or immoral but evidence of their wrongdoing). They act as if they're Christian and caring but in fact it all boils down to protecting their wealth. Nearly committed suicide because of their actions. Broken.

Fighting back now though. Good job with less stress. I have to work with them sometimes and they're wary of me because they know I know what they did and I could have gone to the police and didn't. It's actually quite satisfying... but it's taken 30 months to get to this point!

I was a born again Christian when I was a teenager and into my early twenties but lost my faith. I've too had a lot of bad things happen and I just feel that even though I have always tried my hardest and done given my whole life to other people that bad things still happen that have blighted my life.

Religion was created by men to control the uneducated masses. I haven't lost my faith, I never had it to lose.

I think that this world would be a better place without religion. No priests sexually abusing children, no Islamic terrorists, no religions treating women as little more than chattels, no hatred between two opposing religions resulting in death and violence, no poor families having more children than they can afford because their religion says no contraceptives, no nutters refusing to allow their dying child a blood transfusion, no other nutters who believe the planet is 6,000 years old (it's actually 3.5 billion years old) and fossils can be found because God put them there, the list goes on and on.

Two things killed what little religious belief I had.
The first... I was at a wedding where the priest told us “children are a gift from God, born to those that deserve them.” With a miscarriage and 9 IVF failures under my belt I wanted to get up and punch him.
Secondly I cannot get past this notion of original sin. I’m a good person, I don’t steal, murder, cheat. I do right by people and try always to be kind, yet apparently I’m a sinner who needs forgiveness. What tosh.

One defining moment and then many smaller ones afterwards. The beginning of the end was the suicide of someone close to me who was mentally ill. In Catholicism suicide is a mortal sin and therefore they get eternal damnation. In my eyes mental illness is something that deserves help, treatment and compassion. Any god who treats people like that is not one I want to join.

Since then many things people here have said, such as child abuse and sexism etc. I also don't understand how we can have free will and anything at all be god's will. Either we are completely free, or we are not at all, there is no grey. This is a god that created a species that is curious and an Eden paradise that could only exist as long as we don't push the big red button. How else can that be interpreted other than setting up to fail?

Other Christians (who do not behave as a Christian).
Teaching in a Catholic School and really studying the Bible.
The more I study it the more ridiculous it sounds and I can’t believe anyone believes it now!

*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*

How could you possibly know this?

he was happy to eat and touch prostitutes.