southernhybrid

It happened when my parents sent me to a fundy college. Spending time 24/7 with these people quickly made me realize how absurd the entire thing was.

6748_smith_w

For me, it happened relatively early. I was attending a public elementary school and my parents (my mother, mostly) decided going to church every sunday wasn't enough, so they enrolled me in an after school Bible study program. And what did we learn in this program? Love? Hope? No- just fear. We were taught that we were scared sheep lost in the wilderness at night in a raging storm and the only thing that would save us was Jesus (just as long as we followed certain rules, of course). All my questions were answered with "Good Christians don't ask questions". I didn't buy it for a second, and I watched my fellow calssmates being turned into a bunch of little zombies. Years of schooling in Catholic schools only served to strengthen my convictions. I guess I was lucky to be able to liberate myself (at least mentally) from religion at a young age. I feel bad for those people who suffer into adulthood before realizing it's all a scam.

HazyRigby

For me, I think the leap from my comfortable-and-safe religious mindset came when I was in high school. I was still sorting out my beliefs, and though I believed in a "higher power" and in Jesus, I was pretty much an agnostic. However, one day I was in history class, and I had the audacity to defend someone else who was being picked on because her religion was different. The boy who was teasing her saw a new target, and for the next month to six weeks, he tormented me daily, calling me "blasphemer" in front of the entire class and the teacher. He insulted me every single day, and the teacher never said a word to him about it. When I finally had enough and went to the guidance counselor, the old bitch actually had the nerve to refuse to discipline the boy and used my visit as an excuse to ask me if there were problems at home because I wasn't a Christian! They essentially endorsed his harassment as excusable because I couldn't say that I was a strong believer in Christianity.

Well, from there on out, I've been a questioner. I studied the Bible and religion for myself and found it to be a crock. I suppose now I should thank that fella for being so kind as to open my eyes to what hypocrites they all were!

Albion

I grew up having a lot of respect for liberal Christianity, but I came across fundamentalists for the first time at university, and the narrow-minded, self-righteous hypocricy really turned me off. At the time I was at university, any kid who got a place at university in Britain automatically received a (means-tested) grant from the local education authority so that kids from poor backgrounds who were accepted by universities could afford to go. The sliding scale of the grant meant that even kids from rich families received a nominal amount (about $100 a year) whereas the poorer ones had most or all of their fees paid plus help with expenses. One of the people in my chemistry class was a fundamentalist who made it clear from the start that he was there to win souls for Jesus and that's all he was there for. He cut lectures, he didn't show up to labs (which caused endless trouble for his lab partners) and he didn't do his assigned work or make much contribution to seminars, he spent all his time hanging out at the Christian Union and witnessing about his faith and handing out leaflets on campus. I asked him how he reconciled his Christian faith with his abuse of the government grant, since that money was given to him to go to university and get a degree, and he calmly replied that he served a higher authority than the government and that God had called him to do this. He didn't see anything wrong with accepting a university place that would have otherwise gone to someone else and taking money that was intended to help educate him and using them to try and convert people. Of course he failed his first-year exams and left to go to a Bible college, but the whole idea that fundamentalists don't have to pay attention to either the law or their societal obligations if they think God wants them to do something else is one that I really found repellent.

Joel

I started questioning religion heavily when I was in high school.

I had many questions about the religion, but was flat told that questioning 'Jehovah's organization' was wrong. (my family were Jehovah's Witnesses) If I didn't understand something it was my own fault and I should try harder by reading more of their publications (read propaganda) and studying the Bible more.

So, I did as I was told and really started reading the Bible. This of course did not help the situation. I now had a bigger list of questions than before I started.


Anyway, I started talking to anyone and everyone about Christianity in general and realized not a one of them had any more clue about it than I did. I decided to look at my doubts and questions from the other side and started reading some skeptical literature. As soon as I figured out that I wasn't the only person questioning my religious beliefs, and that I wasn't 'strange' or 'evil' for asking questions I learned as much as I could about religion in general. Knowledge was all it took for me to drop the religious idiocy and tell my family what I thought.

Of course, after all those years of growing up with that batch of uptight whackos at the Kingdom Hall my entire family has stopped attending meetings or associating with the Witnesses. I like to think I had something to do with that. (Maybe not though - I'm still the only one that will come out and state I'm an atheist.)

B34RZ0R

WOW good question! There is just so many damn answers!
Lets see...
The hate for anything differant that most of the Xians I know have... like poeple who are not white people who have tattoos people who are homosexual people who dont believe in killing others in war etc etc etc...

That and my Mother (who has passed away) would always lecture me on whatever I had just done wrong and how it was the devil trying to get control of my soul... oye.

Those and generally I have found that Xians are just so closed minded.

There are more but I am at work and cant post for tooo long here
Be Well

-=Bear=-

Paul2

Heh.. i started paying attention in church, and disliked being called a sheep. it was all downhill from there.

Edit: oh wait, my church wasn't fundy, so this post is out of place. my bad.

Choy Lee Mu

Great question!

My father left Mormonism due to problems he percieved with their religious doctrine. After having been "raised in the church" since I was an infant, this sudden (well, "sudden" to me, a fifteen-year-old boy, although he had apparently been thinking about it a long, long time,) break with all I had ever known hit me like the proverbial sledgehammer. Over a period of time he taught me to critically think about what I believed.

To his great surprise, I took those critical thoughts all the way to their logical conclusion and dismissed the whole of religion, not simply the specific fundamentalist faction that he wanted me to dismiss, Mormonism!

Whenever he gives me any grief about my atheism (we're actually still on great, friendly terms) I tell him, "Well, it's your fault!".

sensate

I can think of three breaking point moments in my early teen.

1. The realization that some people actually believed in literal interpretation of genesis.

2. As a gay teenager in the 80's, witnessing the homophobic backlash to the AIDS crisis from the religious community.

3. Being accosted in a bookstore while I was browsing through the Dungeons and Dragons section by a fundamentalist who preceded to lecture about how the game would turn me away from god. What an endorsement!

Heathen

I'd never really thought about it until I got to college. A friend invited me to church with her on Wednesdays ( hey, Sundays are for sleeping ) so I accepted, because hey, it was something to do. As I started listening to them talk, it just suddenly didn't make sense anymore. I didn't really have a "breaking point," though I turned it over in my mind for a while, and I became atheist. Some of the main issues I have with Christianity are:

1. How people use it to justify wars in the past and present. "Well, God is on our side!!!" Yeah, only if you have the bigger army.
2. Using it to justify hatred and suppression of other people.
3. The snobby attitude of many born again Christians
4. The fact that I tried prayer a million times before and it never seemed to work
5. How a benevolent, omniscient, perfect God could make a world this messed up and send people to hell for not obeying his every whim

There's more, but those are the main reasons.