Why did YOU start to lose faith?

[Glitch]

I started to loose my faith when I realized that church was boring. I started to come up with excuses not to go to church any longer, and eventually just realized that Roman Catholicism was just bat shit crazy.

I think it also may have something to do with an argument I got in with my religion teacher in grade 4 when she told me that animals don't go to heaven because they can't "think". That argument lasted about 3 classes worth of religion, in the end, of course, I won and proved to a vast majority of my class that my religion teacher really wasn't that smart.

I completely lost faith my freshmen year of High school when I learned about quantum physics and figured out that a higher being of power made no logical sense.

That and I'm also autistic, so I think logically instead of with "faith" or with my "emotions", as my one friend puts it.

[Hijiri Byakuren]

I started to lose my faith

[SGOS]

I think it also may have something to do with an argument I got in with my religion teacher in grade 4 when she told me that animals don't go to heaven because they can't "think".

When my dog died, that's what my mother said when I asked about it.  It really bummed me out.  But when she realized how it bothered me, she confided that she thought dogs probably did go to heaven.  Then I was OK.  If thinking has a damn thing to do with it, tell me why a creationist deserves to go to heaven.

[leo]

I started to loose my faith when I realized that church was boring. I started to come up with excuses not to go to church any longer, and eventually just realized that Roman Catholicism was just bat shit crazy.

I think it also may have something to do with an argument I got in with my religion teacher in grade 4 when she told me that animals don't go to heaven because they can't "think". That argument lasted about 3 classes worth of religion, in the end, of course, I won and proved to a vast majority of my class that my religion teacher really wasn't that smart.

I completely lost faith my freshmen year of High school when I learned about quantum physics and figured out that a higher being of power made no logical sense.

That and I'm also autistic, so I think logically instead of with "faith" or with my "emotions", as my one friend puts it.

.                                                                                                                                                  Animals don't get to heaven because they can't think ? How the hell this people know the mind of animals ? Chrisrdars are experts of making shit up.

[renasimplified]

For me, I didn't grow up in a religious family, but was converted in high school by friends. I found it a way to escape my terrible childhood(lots of abuse, in every way possible.) I then went to bible school for pastoral ministry, and then got married as a good Christian. Well, marriage is not all its cracked up to be in the circles I was in. The man I married is so against science, when it doesn't agree with what he wants. He doesn't respect or acknowledge my intelligence. This annoys me. I began researching why Jews don't believe in Jesus, then found out those terrifying old testament things. Then one day I was like, dear God, I'm an Atheist. I believe in science. I am a rational, intelligent person of reason. Why would I believe a book that mirrors the other myths throughout history? I couldn't rationalize my beliefs any longer. So I am here now. :)

[scroyle]

I still keep the faith.

[SGOS]

Why would I believe a book that mirrors the other myths throughout history? I couldn't rationalize my beliefs any longer. So I am here now. :)

I took a mythology course in college, and it was fun to read the stories of the gods of the ancients.  The stories were totally preposterous.  But, it was easy to forgive the ancients for their ignorance, because well, they were ancient.  Yet none of us ever came to the point of suggesting that maybe the myths were actually true.  They were preposterous and all fell into the category of mythology, and rightly so.

With that understanding of mythology, now read the Bible with it's talking snakes, petulant god, fantastic tales of walking on water, parting seas, living in a whale's belly, an evil doing spirit called Satan, and finally 7 headed dragons with 7 tongues of flame. 

What possible justification is there for rejecting the gods of the ancients if you accept the preposterous stories of the Bible?  There is absolutely no difference between the believability of either one.  They were both concocted by the ancients, they are both impossible, and both are entirely silly when held up to the light of reason.

As you say, one mirrors the other.  I used to except the Bible stories, if only as metaphors, when I called myself a Christian, but the farther I get from Christianity, the more confoundingly absurd the stories have become.  I look at them now as any person, Christian, Jew, Hindu, or atheist would look at a book of ancient mythologies.

[Mr.Obvious]

I started losing my faith after I went through puberty. That's a weird marking, but I think that puberty had me very self-absorbed and had me thinking I was the smartest guy in the world, so I couldn't possibly be wrong.
After puberty however, I started looking at my claims more rationally. And I realized that what I believed in could be dismissed with the same ease as astrology or reading tea-leaves or other religions. 
I still didn't want to admitt i was wrong so I went from moderate christian to somewhat christian to agnostic christian to agnostic with christian mindset to agnostic hoping for a God... but I still said I was a Christian. And I kept looking for evidence.
But the more I searched for proof, the less I found and the more atheists on youtube and in texts and so forth started making sense. And I couldn't find anyone who presented the god-argument in a good way. I wanted to find someone, but I couldn't.
So eventually I figured. I'm seventeen (or eightteen or something) and I haven't even read the bible though I proclaim myself to be a Christian. I even like reading, so what's stopping me? Any self-respecting Christian should have read the bible at least once and if any place has the goods to back it up, it's got to be the good book, the source material.
I had to put it away after the third book. I no longer had any problem with calling myself an agnostic after that. (I actually felt natious for a few days, which was weird.)
Over the years this 'agnostic' lable has evolved further. I now call myself atheist (agnostic atheist if we invoke Dawkins' scale) and sometimes anti-theist. And I'm happier than I ever was as a Christian.
I had luck though. Belgium is on the whole occupied by people who believe and is denoted as a 'catholic country'. But most who believe, believe in the vague 'something'. And everyone at home is atheist, except perhaps my brother who perhaps believes in 'something'. So I didn't have any troubles admitting my atheïsm, except to myself.

[SGOS]

After puberty however, I started looking at my claims more rationally. And I realized that what I believed in could be dismissed with the same ease as astrology or reading tea-leaves or other religions. 

This strikes very close to home for me.  After puberty is about right.  However, I don't think puberty has as much to do with it, as I understand that certain cognitive abilities of our brains don't manifest themselves until well into our lives, just like puberty or sexual drives are not present early on.

But what really parallels my experience is your own specific observation:  " And I realized that what I believed in could be dismissed with the same ease as astrology or reading tea-leaves or other religions."

The key words here are "dismissed with ease."  At some time in early life, I realized what I had believed on authority, could be "dismissed with ease".  Suddenly, I found myself confronted by an array of alternative explanations for my beliefs, and so many of these alternative explanations made much more fundamental sense.  They did not require leaps of faith.  I had never recognized these alternatives before then.  I assume my brain just began to process information with a greater clarity and awareness of 1)other explanations, and 2)lack of basic evidence to support what I had previously believed.  I was also able to accept my own ignorance without the certainty of beliefs to fill in the information for which I had no answers.

It's a function of human development and a maturing brain, I think.  Partly, we do learn to process information better, but partly it's just the physical development of our brains.

[SGOS]

As an afterthought to my previous post, I started wondering about why not everyone suddenly realizes alternative explanations and then processes them.  I don't know for sure, but my first guess is that is has something to do with the intensity of the sociological imprinting that is done on us earlier.  I certainly experienced the imprinting.  My Grandmother was a raving Baptist.  However, mostly she just scared me.  My mother was religious, but on a very few occasions in my childhood, she would question something about OUR beliefs, or at least point out the question to me, without actually providing the answers.

My father was a fundamentalist, strongly influenced by my grandmother (his mother), but I remember what might have been my first trip to the zoo.  Going to the zoo became a frequent weekend activity with my father, but one day there I was in the primate house face to face with some kind of monkey hanging onto to the bars of his cage and staring directly into my eyes.  He was so intent in his eye contact that I knew he was thinking (about what exactly, I don't have a clue).  I probably mentioned that the monkeys looked like little people.  Now this wasn't even one of our closest ape relatives.  It was a two foot long monkey with a long tail.

My fundamentalist father told me that a lot of scientists said that we descended from monkeys millions of years ago, but he never added (as far as I can remember) that the scientists were wrong.  He just let it hang there for me to think about, which of course, I did.  The point of all this is that in spite of my religious upbringing there were a few times when I was allowed to process information without the encumbrance of a strict religious training.  Those occasions were not common, but they happened in such a way that they made a rather enormous impression on me.

[charde]

I know some of the people here were raised as atheists, so this obviously isn't directed at them. What I'm interested in is, for the people who were raised religious, was there anything in particular that first made you doubt your religion?  It's a subject I've always found to be interesting when discussing it with atheist friends of mine.

Oddly, it's never been human atrocity that has brought me down. I'm a realist and accept that in a world where people can make decisions, bad things are going to happen because some people will make terrible choices that can directly and indirectly result in suffering upon themselves and others. It's inevitable. (Watch The Matrix: "Choice" -- it automatically ensures eventual chaos.)

The reason I shifted to an agnostic position is because of the impossibility of "knowing" something for certain + it turns out that all the evidence my CHristian subculture told me was true, convincing me their blend of Christianity made the most rational sense, ended up being incorrect. I followed and argued for Christianity before because I thought it was the most supported; I now don't see the evidence being clear at all, and the Bible is mostly just a collection of writings that are historically off in many ways. The ideas are useful, and there's various types of writing within the Bible (poetry, prophecy, etc.) so it's an interesting collection of documents, but it has no special authority to state defined is historically and factually true.

Now, at that point, one can still choose to "believe" whatever one wants -- and I suppose that is "faith" -- and the reality is I don't see the need to believe that a lot of specific details are true if there is no actual dependable proof. People who comb scriptures and try to live according to all of its specifics, just to adhere to it? I don't see the point, if you can't show it's all actually true. (It's also kind of ironic how many Christians I run into who I can tell don't think particular things are wrong, and even can't explain why they are wrong, but still feel compelled to be against them simply because they think the Bible tells them they have to be.)

However, the process of living has led me to decide what things I want to do live for and what things I personally value and are important to me. So I can make a choice there to dedicate myself to those particular values. Values can be part of many different religions, incidentally -- it's not like you have to believe a particular faith's doctrines and claims to believe and accept certain values and want to support them with your life.

And there is also the reality where Christianity was my initial framework and shaped me (kind of the "mother tongue" for me), so I tend to still think of things in terms of it. So when i think of Jesus, I think he's a great example of sacrifice for others. So it's not like I've jettisoned the language and concepts I grew up with; I just reject this specific doctrine that makes a lot of implausible historical demands, claims to be exclusive, and seems to operate in practice far more out of guilt and punishment than higher values.

[pioteir]

I suppose I was raised in a religious family. Not fanatical but moderate christian. I received my sacraments except marriage (I'm "only" engaged). We never were big on going to church, studying bible etc. We didn't really think about god and stuff. And in time, when I was about 13-14 maybe, I realized that christianity was more like a sect with all the sitting down, standing up, kneeling, singing in the church, the whole "his father's son, the holy ghost, thy kingdom come" type of nonsense. I didn't understand the meaning of the words they (the godly) used like sin, soul, and other stuff. It was becoming more and more crazy. Like the guilt of being a sinner, that no matter what good will come to You it's god but something bad happened? - it's Your fault, you worthless human.
Also I realized I don't need church or faith to be a good human. I'm not sad god is not with me, I've never felt worse because of it. So you might say I was an atheist all along but didn't know it.
I didn't really thought about all this until recently when I stumbled upon debates of Hitchens, Dawkins and others with some religious nutbags, watching stand up of Carlin, Maher and the like. All the arguments against theism took shape, as I am not the most literate person around :) So once again I knew I was an atheist "by instinct" and now I can even write a post or hold a conversation for a minute or two on the subject.

[doorknob]

I think it all started when I got into a drug addiction. I got clean by the sweat of my own brow, Actually I was just really lucky. While I noticed all the people around me who couldn't get clean were praying for god to help them while I did nothing and got clean. I thought that was weird that god wasn't helping all those people praying to him. That's when it started.

after that I got into science and started looking at how illogical religious arguments tend to be and how science conflicts with religion. Personally I'll take science over religion. It's a lot more trust worthy in my personal experience.

[Simon Moon]

I was always a pretty skeptical person. I was easily able to refute other supernatural claims with ease.

At about the age of 20, I noticed that I never applied the same level of scrutiny to my god beliefs that I did to other claims. I decided if I wanted to be intellectually honest, I was compelled to examine them. When I did, they quickly collapsed. 

There was no rebellion, no 'hate toward god', no emotional crisis. It was strictly due to skepticism correctly applied to the god claim.

[aitm]

babble says, "if you pray, believing, you shall receive". I believed, I prayed, I no receive...fuck em! They broke the deal, not me!