Anson

What made you first start to doubt Christianity and what made you finally give it up?

//riot of disorder::

Realizing that a large spectactled tubby man with a domain name and medicore web design work from Nebraska did NOT know the answers of the universe at the age of 32. (*coughRAPTUREREADYcough*)

Those fundies got me at age 12. I'm now 13, and free of religon and embracing my atheism.

TollHouse

Seriously, my first doubts came at a young age when I figured Santa Claus was a bunch of bullshit. It really helps you put phrases like "really, it's true, just believe" into perspective.

I finally quit it up a couple decades later, I found the push towards Christianity forced unto to us by our culture just too powerful to give up any earlier than that.

As I grew older and became more aware of global issues I could no longer ignore that most of the world's problems stem from religion. All these people causing so much grief for others - all the while thinking God supported such actions.

While in my last year of doubt, it was recommended by many that I "truly read the bible with all my heart". I was an athiest soon after taking that advice. I finally learned where people get the idea that harming others pleases God. Jesus said some nice stuff but the rest of it is simply inexcusable.

(Why Christians recommend reading the Bible to people in a crisis of faith is beyond me. It's probably the worst advice imaginable.)

faust

I've never really posted a deconversion story before so this is a rough draft timeline.
I grew up in a lapsed catholic home, we went to church on easter and christmas. I went to catholic school from k-12. From when I was very young I had the idea that we only went to church to see other people and let them see us. During my time in grade school we learned one thing 5.7 days a week, then had 1 hr of church once a week where we learned that everything else we understood was wrong and jesus was our buddy.
Honestly, I never gave religion a second thought from k-7th grades. I read the bible, and many other books; it was no different from other books but longer and boring and I recognized the stories from homilies. I vividedly remember being in 7th grade and praying to jesus and god and asking things at night. I always woke up feeling somewhat silly about it. My family kept up with easter and christmas, and my father still makes the sign of the cross everytime he passes a catholic graveyard. My mom has never, so far as I can recall, ever, mentioned anything religious. Reflecting upon it, I would say she's non-theist, doesn't think about it, basically atheist.

Highschool was hell for me, none of it involved religion except when the brothers of the sacred heart (catholic school remember) tried to recruit me along with the rest of the male graduating class. Otherwise I got a good education and not too much religion.

Your question was what made (you) first doubt Christianity. I would have to answer that I never apparently believed in it to begin with, so it wasn't so much a matter of coming to doubt it, as it was coming to recognize that others believed it. I did try sincerely to believe, but it never made any sense. I never saw jesus or anything.

As for "finally leaving it" well, I didn't buy it from day one, but I feel confidant in saying that from my study of memes, religion, christianity, scientology, YEC, OEC, biblical literalism, biology, genetics, chemistry, and philosophy; even had I believed before, I would be hard pressed to continue. I finally left it when I learned the history of religion.

Basically, I grew up.

Anson

Probably because none of them actually do it.

NonHomogenized

I can't say for certain where it started. I think it might have been when I read the bible, but it could have been from hearing the fundies. Either way, it started with "God couldn't be like this. It's preposterous. The creator of the universe wouldn't go for this shit." This resulted in me becoming a rather liberal christian. Then, I realized the brainwashing that goes on in churches, and I became even more liberal, disliking pretty much every church but the friends' meetinghouse (quakers).
At this point I was regularly mocking fundies for my amusement, and I realized that those who didn't believe in god would be great entertainment in that regard. I listened to the arguments, I studied the facts, I researched logic, and, eventually, it dawned on me that belief in god was pretty silly, and was certainly unsupported by facts and logic.

ranterjmc

I would agree - the bottom line is that I grew up - much too late in life.

I suppose I was gestating deconversion for years but what really triggered the whole process was chatting to a guy who introduced me to the creation/evolution controversy.His girlfriend had been snatched away by her fundie father and married off to a YEC.

After an exchange with a creationist by email (the idiot who runs "True Origin" - the exchange is published on his feedback) I realised the lies behind that part of Christianity.

It was only a short step, although it seemed a large one at the time, to realise that the whole edifice was built on complete deception and the rest, as they say, is history.

That was 4 years ago now. I still wonder how I was taken in by it for so long. And how so many other people still are.

Stiletto One

I dunno, my family was never devoutly Christian anyway.

I just sort of drifted away from religion, and wound up an atheistic agnostic.

KnightWhoSaysNi

For me, it began with the start of my university years. Having spent 2 years at a Christian school earlier, I was taught young earth creationism as science. When I got some exposure to real science and critiques of creationism, I began to think if creationists were wrong about evolution, then perhaps they were wrong about other things. I began to question religion, the existence of God, and the divinity of the Bible. At the same time, I was also turned off by the self-righteous bigotry and arrogance of the religious right, from following elections in the US.

My disbelief after that came about from a combination of things. One major factor was the character of the deity of the Old Testament. I couldn't stomache the OT atrocities, cruelties, or the doctrine of Hell as being "righteousness" or "omnibenevolence." It was looking at the "big picture" too that influenced me. Why would an omnipotent deity want to excessively tinker and micromanage the social affairs of a tribe of desert nomads? --- e.g. burn lots of animal carcasses for me, don't let menstruating women do this, stone this guy for picking up sticks on a particular day, don't eat pork, remove a part of your penises, chop this woman's hand off for touching men's genitalia in a fight, burn up priest's daughters if they sleep with boys alot, wash yourself with water if you get semen on you......, etc... It just makes far, far more sense to me in a human/cultural point of view (not a divine one) that a primitive superstitious culture came up with stuff like this on their own without prodding from a universe spanning all powerful entity.

faust

Korihor: Congrats, you just made my quote list. Damned funny way of stating the obvious