Ex-believers, what made you quit your religion/cult?
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I read the Bible. I started asking questions about things in the Bible that didn't match science, I loved science (still do), but nobody wanted to answer my questions, they'd just get mad, so I started seeking information elsewhere and came across atheist or ex-religious sources who answered the questions I had. Those sources also helped me realise the damage that had been done to me mentally, which I'm still working on overcoming.
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I never believed, I was told I had to be christian or I would go to hell.
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Many experiences over many years. My own curiosity and love of learning really helped save me. But for me it was all made to finally click together by psilocybin.
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Withdrawing from it for a while and not going through the motions
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I went to a Church school.
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Haven’t. Curious on the experience of others.
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I read the Bible. I watched the wah believers treated others, and leanred how they saw the world. I realized out poorly adjusted I was for interacting with anyone besides other believers. I left the church and learned how to become a better person. It was a tremendous amount of work, and frankly, I'd rather have learned it earlier.
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I consider myself someone who is always in search of truth.
When I realized evangelical Christianity has some hardcore lies and hypocrisy, I left it.
I did eventually find my way back to a more traditional version of Christianity that is interested in truth and love.
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I just gave it up 1 day. No life changing event, no bad experience, just a shift in perspective happened, and I basically realised that I did not really need a god. I still practice some things which were part of my religious activities (donating, or serving others), but that is more of general good citizen thing rather than being religious
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Two things started the slow 10ish year journey to atheism for me. I can't remember which happened first.
Some Mormon lads doing their mandatory missionary work knocked on our door when I was home alone. I decided, screw it, kill them with kindness. Maybe I'll convert them! After I got them some ice water, they started the spiel. It was so stupid, how could anyone believe this? Then I thought, wait, how is what I believe any more believable? That was an unsettling thought that I could never really shake.
I also challenged myself to read the entire Bible (NIV) front to back (which I did, thankyouverymuch). I already had a lot of apologetics for the pentateuch warfare, slavery, etc. but in Psalms there's a verse that basically goes, "blessed is he who dashes the babies on the rocks." And like. What the fuck is that. In what possible circumstances is killing babies okay, let alone with God's explicit endorsement? That also stuck in my head ever since.
There was a lot else in between, but years later I stumbled into a copy of The God Delusion. "Know thine enemy, right?" So I read it on lunch breaks at work. While I now know the book has a reputation for kinda bad philosophy, by the end it had tidily dismantled the last vestiges of the purely "rational" arguments to believe in God I still had. So I sat there, an atheist for the first time in my life.
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They tried too hard to make me join, but instead I got annoyed
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They weren't very kind to my family.
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The hypocrisy and manipulation made it impossible to worship with them next to me.
I graduated from oral Roberts University and was full in. But the leaders of the small church were more interested in holding power rather than helping people. Fox News had an article with a headline stating blue eyed people were smarter than brown eyed. Being Latino, I was annoyed at the article and started to question why I even thought that the right wing evangelical establishment cared about me. I was just used for the financial support and votes.
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What you guys are referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
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I read the whole bible as an adult
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The people. Family, their friends, the church people, the religious school people. Everyone. Toxic. And it took me far too long to figure out how wrong it all was and how so much judgement and hate and shame and guilt was not normal.
None of my community raised an effective adult. But they sure tried to raise an indoctrinated subservient guilt-riddled sack of shit.
Fuck religion and fuck people who pressure it on others, especially children, and so many of them use it all as an excuse to cover the fact they are ultimately just shitty people.
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The meanest people I have ever known were church people. My dad left us when I was young, my mom was left a single parent. Seeking refuge in the church, we started attending regularly. In that time I felt things from others, ranging from genuine kindness all the way to pity. However, as things progressed and my mother became more involved with the church, the more people started to talk. From casual mentions, to annoyance that she would show up, to talking behind her back.
Was she super pleasant to be around? No, I think she can be awkward and has a hard time making friends - and those people picked up on that and ran with it. It wasn't so long until she was excluded from certain events, that there were more "special" bible studies that she would her invite would be "forgotten". She wanted so much to be included, but she didn't fit their paradigm of.. I don't even know what.
Oh they preach of acceptance and forgiveness, of not judging, but they are some of the most hurtful people out there. I don't know what I believe personally, but I'll avoid going into a church for as long as I can.
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Took me until my 20s to reconcile my atheism. Maturity, i guess.
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Bad shit happened. When I asked why, the answers were lame. When I accused god of being an asshole, the defenses were the very definition of not even being wrong.
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I’ve left catholicism Because of the amount of bigotry and hate I witnessed in catholic some circles, from celebrating the death of a openly gay person, to calling for a g*nocide of the f slur (yk what I mean),the thing is. These some catholic circles are pretty much common. and I’m like. If this is what you teach. Then screw it, im leaving the church, then I left it and didn’t wasted my time getting around catholics, Then I found refuge in Anglican Church. Now I’m a normal, non-bigoted Christian living my life like how I want to , and now im slowly started to disconnect from my catholic community I used to be part of, no more tradcath nonsense, moral of this story. If your church/religion teaches hate, then you should just change it, or just become atheist at this point,
