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?

My mother is extremely religious and also the reason my faith dwindled. She is a told narc and emotionally abused me and I can't reconcile that with a loving God.

I was always a believer / strong faith (Catholic) and it was actually my wedding that put me off. The priest was quite horrible to me as I didn't do much volutary work for him (I worked two jobs)

He went on to ask me was I hiding any wee ones (Irish priest meaning had I kids and gave them up.. Like wtf)
Then too many abuse stories. Power. Brainwashing. I don't even want a Catholic funeral now.

I'm so sorry, to all the posters who have shared their incredibly sad experiences on this thread.

Like BertieBotts I never really had a problem reconciling bad things happening with the notion of a loving God. It probably helped that nothing truly bad had ever happened to me or anyone I loved while I was religious. I think a lot of religious people hold very central that they cannot understand God's plan and that earthly suffering doesn't, in the grand scheme of things, matter all that much. Christianity arose in and was shaped by societies where lots of people suffered and died, and religion was a way to reconcile yourself and give meaning to that. It doesn't work so well in contemporary society I think, though if you get in deep enough it's psychologically easier to give up on earthly ties than on belief in a good God. I think responses like Stephen Fry's betray a very shallow and glib understanding of theology - he's tearing down a straw man. Centuries of scholarship have wrestled with the problem of evil, and with the nature of God, and I think someone as well-read as Stephen Fry would know that.

For me, my faith disappeared as I realised that to be a good Christian (in the lights of the church I was attending) would mean I would have to give up on being what I thought of as a good person, or rather give up things that were very important to my sense of who I was. I wasn't prepared to do that. Religion has created deep rifts in my family and I would not want my children to have a dogmatic faith but I can still see that it has its benefits as a way of trying to make sense of the world and of ourselves, like art or literature. My grandmother's Judaism was very like this, though to be fair she always spoke of God as an optional extra.

I know Religion can seem like a load of Bollocks

Like God its incredibly indifferent watching on passively whilst people are drowning waving their arms for a safety swimming neck thing to be thrown in the water to rescue them.!

Hopeless /pathetic situation.!

I have needed to wait to add to this thread, until I had enough time and headspace.

With respect, some of the posts on here, people have not actually become a Christian. So even though you did believe and now dont, you can still become a Christian.

There are several posts from ex Catholics.
With respect to them, and I dont know all the ins and outs, Catholism has several books added to the Bible, which shouldnt happen.

As another poster has said, people should not muddle up what humans do, with what God does.

I can understand some reasons why people think they dont want to believe, but for those put off by what other humans have done to themselves or others, that is not God!

I've never subscribed to organised religion, it was obvious to me that it was flawed from a young age, but my absolute wake up moment from agnostic (about "something") to atheist was as a young adult studying medieval history. I'm someone who needs to know WHY something is the way it is, and studying about the way women in particular were treated and how religion was used to suppress society made me realise it was just completely necessary to create law and order in a time that was so primal. It just clicked, this was why it was needed, this is why it was created and developed, we don't need it any more and it is gradually diminishing as a result. It's a complete fallacy and as comforting as it may be, I just think religion as we know it isn't real.

Still have sooo many questions though!!

Catholism has several books added to the Bible, which shouldnt happen.

Says who?

The vicar announced after children had left for Sunday school that they would be learning about family values...and how any family that wasn't traditional married man and wife had to expect to suffer as atonement.

As a struggling single mum just escaped from an abusive relationship I found the smug delight in my misery was just a step too far....

Wish I'd left years before. I'd liken it to an abusive relationship where you hang in there making excuses for stuff which isn't right or acceptable.

I was brought up to be religious. I was a child and didn’t know any better. Then I became an adult and gained critical thinking faculties.

I believe in the possibility of beings that I would consider a god or goddesses, it's just that due not talking to these beings d directly about how they should want their commands to be followed, then I'm on the fence.

When a book or any texts, has been written, rewritten, selectively admitted or included, etc, then to me that's humans interpreting God's wills, rather than the concrete words of God's orders.

I’ve been through a lot of pain in my life and believing there was some higher power/purpose made me feel worse. Why was God allowing me to suffer like this? There was someone who could make it better but they didn’t. So it was a slow realisation that actually I was on my own.

I now feel happier and freer than I ever did when I did believe. Accepting that there is no higher power and that sometimes life is just crap was so much easier to deal with.

I went to an evangelical church. The emphasis on 'god fixing your problems' . It so clearly isn't true. Can't be happy that God fixed Jane's sore finger, helped Emily get a house, or Bob to find that book he's been looking for when that mother and her two young children are trapped inside Grenfall tower, and she facebook streams herself praying, but the fireman never reach them. Or any one of the other million terrible sufferings that happen each day,.

When the minister said, ' why are you worried about todays' problems - we have eternity'
And I thought, 'that sounds dreadful'
Made me realise I don't want Christianity's big payoff. Can't imagine anything worse than eternal life. I am glad my existence will stop one day.

Oh and I don't believe in Free Will, which is a central tenet of Christianity. And I don't believe creation is wonderful. Natural world is based on suffering and death. If the world was created it is pretty clear that the creator does not care about individuals (animal or human animal).

@Meruem

I’ve been through a lot of pain in my life and believing there was some higher power/purpose made me feel worse. Why was God allowing me to suffer like this? There was someone who could make it better but they didn’t. So it was a slow realisation that actually I was on my own.

I now feel happier and freer than I ever did when I did believe. Accepting that there is no higher power and that sometimes life is just crap was so much easier to deal with.

I found this too. Realised I need to believe that I have the agency over my own life. It just made me confused and feel shit to constantly be looking for 'signs' or the 'purpose' .

I have found power and freedom in relying on myself, not on God, the universe or new age 'energies'.

I was raised a Catholic, in a strongly religious household. I felt it was my duty as a member of my family to believe. Though I kind of didn't...

One day I read an article by Jane Asher of all people, she said one of the most freeing episodes of her life was when an elderly relative said you don't HAVE to believe. Something clicked...

I called myself agnostic for years at school because although I didn't believe in god, it felt too out there to say I didn't believe in anything. My school was a bit fire and brimstone in the morning assemblies which really put me off.

I'm definitely atheist now having thought about it over the years.

We weren't particularly religious, mum believed in god and brought us up to believe, but wasn't a practising Catholic after she married my dad.

It was similar to santa, just realised slowly it was all made up, but unlike santa had some very unsavoury aspects.

Because heaven would be a very lonely place for me, everyone I know has ‘sinned’ in some way or another, parents are divorced, sex outside marriage. Why would I want to go to heaven and be by myself? (Presuming I’m not a sinner )

As a teenager my mum became a Pentecostal Christian. I went to her church, I kind of wanted to believe, but didn't. In adulthood I finally accepted that I had wanted to, but never quite reached / been able to achieve believing.

I believed as a child because I believed everything my teachers said. God answers prayers they said. So when my 6yo classmate became ill I prayed and prayed and she died aged 6.5 of a brain tumour.

Reading the bible really cemented my atheism for religion at least. Then I suppose university and further education in the scientific method just showed how, if you want to believe in God, you have to abandon these things. I never felt spiritual and never went looking for supernatural stuff.

I was bought up Catholic. My faith was very important to me and got me through some shit times. I didn't ever agree with most of the Church's opinions on social matters e.g abortion, contraception, homosexuality, women in general, but the actual faith in God and the structure of the Mass were important to me.
Working as a nurse in Covid times destroyed my faith, especially given that it was not possible to go to Mass anymore. There was a particularly harrowing shift that I left and I clearly remember thinking why has God let this happen? I couldn't reconcile a loving God with what had happened that day, not just the existence of Covid but a particular incident. I suspect this suggests that my faith was never that strong in the first place. I miss it though.

My friend had a stillbirth and went to our priest for words of comfort.
He told her what a shame it was that her baby hadn't lived to be baptised and would never go to heaven!
She amazingly just went to another church.

I went to a C of E primary school where it was taught as fact. Then my granddad died when I was about 10 and the morning of the funeral I asked my mum if he was going to heaven. She asked me if I believed in heaven. I had no idea it was something to believe in, I thought it was as real as England. I went to my grandads funeral with my entire world rocked. I felt like a duped fool tbh, my mums disabled and I'd spent my entire childhood praying that she'd get better.

I was brought up Mormon, did the whole church thing, devoted my.life to.it, etc. As I got older, and more specifically, my dc got older, the misogyny embedded into religion ate away at me. I tried for over a decade to reconcile my religion with the reality of the world, but I just couldn't. It was illogical and frankly, ridiculous.

I stopped practicing and believing after exh - a leader in our congregation- violently attacked me, and I was expected to forgive a forget. No. That was the end for me. I dgaf if God is real or not, because if he is, I'm more pissed at him than he could ever be at me.