If you used to believe in God, but not anymore, why?

[HankHillsPropane]

I was brought up in quite a religious home. As this is the status quo in my home country i.e. everyone is extremely religious, I never knew anything different. I grew up believing in God/heaven/hell, church every Sunday, prayers every night, praying whenever I needed something..etc

I think I started to have my doubts around the age of 15, and properly gave up on the idea when I was around 17. I'm 30 now.

For me it's the absolutely shocking state of the world we live in that made me completely give up on the existence of God. I felt that even if there was a 'higher power' of some sort who had engineered all of this, they were very much the opposite of benevolent(sadistic even?), and probably did not deserve my worship.

Just the constant barrage of disasters, evil, chaos, inequalities, atrocities, the absolute randomness and luck that defines our existence...I mean look around. Would anyone really want to put their name to this?

Anyway, what was your turning point? When did you stop believing in God?

And so I'm left thinking but what about suffering that isn't man made, such as to children...where there isn't an obvious social or geopolitical answer if humans were perfect.

watching dc suffer and spending time on children's oncology ward if God existed and loved all children why do we have children's oncology wards?

I was never a devout religious person, but I still believed in God. I lost my faith when I found out that my daughter's dad sexually abused her. I refuse to believe that there is a god that allows this happens.

I know there are millions of children that have had the same trauma that my daughter went through. But I felt my heart break and the little faith I had, dissappear.

To make things worse, he was found not guilty and my daughter was tarnished as a troublemaker. But I know my daughter is telling the truth.

When I see her make the wrong choices now, I cant help but see how the abuse has affected her. Even though this happened many years ago, my heart aches when I look at her beautiful face and I wish every day that I could've been given a sign by God as to what was happening to her. I'll always hate myself and feel like I've failed her.

I'm rambling so I might not make sense. This is the first time, I've said or disclosed this.

TBH I struggle to understand why anyone actually does believe,and if they do, why they would want to.

If you read the bible, god is depicted as the ultimate abusive parent. “Love me or face the consequences; if you don’t behave in a way I approve of then you don’t deserve a place in my life.” If this was an actual parent most people would have cut contact with them years ago and be in therapy for the abuse they’d suffered at their hands. But because it’s God not only do people tolerate it, but they actively worship it. Why?

And that’s before we get to the “god made us all with free will,” argument. While that could be argued to be true, reality is that Christians seem to think that only applies to the bad that happens in the world. So someone dies or a tragic event happens in the world and that’s all because we’re human and God doesn’t intervene because he gave us free will.

But if something goes right then “hallelujah praise the lord.” So either God is responsible for everything or nothing, they can’t have it both ways.

@EatTheCakeBarry
Thank you for that excerpt with Stephen Fry and Gay Byrne from the RTE programme Would You Believe.
SF put it very succinctly.

I watched someone I love die in agony. Then I read her funeral wishes which included the hymn “Praise My Soul the King of Heaven”. I could not ‘praise’ a greater power for creating a world with cancer in it. As someone else said, it’s pretty sadistic when you think about it. And if, as a pp suggested, god has no power to intervene, then what’s the point of god?

It was actually very liberating when I stopped believing.

Kids believe anything they are told. Santa, the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny. It's the same with religion. And obviously it varies which religion / which God they should believe in. The difference is, most kids aren't told at a certain age 'oh, it's make believe' so they keep on believing. There are hundreds, if not thousands of religions and various different gods. How would you know which is the 'right' one and which are the 'right' rules to follow in order to go to heaven? If God was real, and he did have all these terms and conditions we must follow to go to heaven, he'd come and tell us wouldn't he.

The weird thing is I do not find the existence of a God to be incongruous with suffering or personal misfortune or what we think of as cruel turns of events (and I have some friends who have had absolutely tragic things happen, I'm not being flippant, life can be utterly awful at times) I'm quite happy to understand that as being on a higher level that we can't understand/process at our current state of evolution and you would only really "get it" once you had ascended to the spirit realm or whatever. Kind of like how as a child you can experience something which seems like the most unfair, cruel, awful thing in the world but when you get to adulthood you see it with perspective, only in a much more amplified way.

But I still just think as a whole the concept doesn't really make sense. I think it comes from a sense of hierarchy, feeling that it's the natural way the world works and wanting it to be inherently fair, so it sort of brings comfort in the sense that no matter how unfairly people stronger/more powerful than you act, there is someone at the top of the chain who is the very definition of fair and kind (but also somehow judgemental!), and that anyone acting outside of moral rules will eventually get their comeuppance. I can completely see how that worldview works - I just don't subscribe to it, I think it's wishful thinking and some people's way of dealing with the fact that people have different morals to them.

My mum was Catholic and my dad was an atheist. I went through a religious phase around age 15/16 and went for instruction with the priest so I could take communion. When the priest explained that if I said such and such prayer x times then I would spend less time in purgatory or limbo when I died I started to think ' well, this is obviously all made up nonsense ' and slowly gave up from then. Sorry if I've got the details wrong, it was a long time ago but that's the general gist. I'm now a humanist

I realised when I was in my teens that’s it all ridiculous. Like a Father Christmas for adults. The promise of Heaven? So Humans go to Heaven, but what about elephants or dogs or moths?? What’s the cut off? A human brain and an ape brain aren’t that different so how come we have a Heaven and they don’t. It’s just utterly ridiculous.

What is it speaking in tongues mean then?

what does Testimonials mean too ?
thanks

In this past year I have really envied friends who have a strong faith. It has helped them get through hard times in one piece. Sometimes I wish I had something like that to lean on.

Have very mixed feelings on this topic !

Do you think there is a difference between spirituality faith and just being religious then?

I think in some ways the reason people go off religion is because we expect a more transactional agreement - I pray, things will happen, or I ask God for something, he will help me. Or that a loving God would not allow bad things to happen to us, like the devastating instances of illness and abuse already mentioned on this thread.

When really, I think faith in god is something much more nebulous and habitual, more akin to meditation and the ability to find comfort in that centrality of thinking, that faith. My mother is a believer and that's how she's explained it to me when we talk about it. I'm not religious as I've said upthread.

That's why I also think it's odd when people say 'I don't believe in God but I am spiritual' to me spiritual means you believe in a higher power - that requires you to believe in something you can't really 'prove'. Saying that, I can completely understand why people don't want to align with organised religion.

Overall faith is personal, if you believe, great for you. It's just not for me!

I stopped believing in God one time as I was trying to make sense to evolution and questioning if there were there deaths -like dinosaurs- before Adam and Eve

And the age of Earth vs. corrosion from the Grand Canyon

And I was really bother how they treat gay people and they can’t accept them and how they treat people of other race.

But I made my peace and have faith. And I switch church

I'm a clergy kid so I was supposed to believe in God. I realised it was all bollocks as soon as I was old enough to think for myself, and had encountered some very ungodly people. Religion has no part in my life now.

Raised Catholic in an abusive family, practised until my eldest son was 9 then realised my middle dc could never make his first holy communion because he is too disabled and thought "what the fuck am I doing?"

It coincided with the Catholic Church's 'Year of Faith' which was designed to make us all sign direct debits and a load of holier than thou women who kept criticising me and my children.

I was thinking about it today because I filled in the Census and put 'No religion' and I was pleased at enlightened I now am .

@Greenbks

The moment my baby died. If there’s a god then he is evil for doing it/letting it happen when I prayed for hours during contractions and the more likely reason is that there is nothing bcos not as much evil and bad things would happen in the world.

I'm so sorry for your loss this breaks my heart.

Stories like this and what happens to babies and pregnant women everyday. If he exists he does not care about women at all.

I lost two people I was very close to, almost 18 months ago. Both suffered horribly during the last year of their lives and had awful, painful deaths. They were both lovely, kind people. That was the end of my belief in God.

I identify so much with what so many of you have said, particularly the 'made up nonsense' bit!

I remember sitting in bible study group when I was pretty young and thinking how incredulous it all was! None of it stood up to even the barest scrutiny.

This world is terrible. There is just so much injustice, unfairness and inequity, for it to be the result of any conscious effort.

When I was about 9-10 and started to reason and think by myself. Unless you have been brainwashed into it by your family/culture, the whole religion thing is utterly absurd, childish and naive, really.

I’m not sure what I believe or don’t believe but I’ve recently accepted that I no longer want to go to church.

I was raised Catholic but since having children I’ve realised there are just too many topics the church has that I can’t agree with and don’t want to teach my children are right or wrong.

I’ve also struggled with catholic guilt a LOT and felt shame and guilt as a child which resulted in a lot of anxiety. I was finding church a very stressful experience and attending wasn’t bringing me calm and peace like it used to.

I feel so much happier not attending. And I finally don’t feel guilty about that anymore.

@aurynne

When I was about 9-10 and started to reason and think by myself. Unless you have been brainwashed into it by your family/culture, the whole religion thing is utterly absurd, childish and naive, really.

Same here!

I did a theology degree!

I believe there is an afterlife - humans being are so much more than skin and bone that they can’t just stop being. That belief brings me comfort but I don’t feel I have to pray to god to earn the right to believe that. My father gains great strength and comfort from going to church and focussing on the words and their meaning and has really struggled with lockdown closing his church with the congregation of five people. My mum lost her previously very strong faith when she prayed for things to happen and they didn’t.