What made you convert from religion to non-religion?

I lost my faith when I was 12. Prior to that I believed all the main tenets of Christianity. When I was 12 I tried to think objectively about Christianity. For a tought couple of weeks I vascilated between thinking Christianity was absurd and praying for God to forgive me for my doubting him. Eventually reason won over fear and I was an atheist.

For me, my deconversion process began when I finally sat down and read the entire Bible. It gave me the perspective that it really was nothing more than a collection of ancient superstitions and customs. It took several years to complete the process, but that’s how it started.

Because science just made too much sense!!

Plus all religions were thought up by someone. Someone made all this crap up. Romans, Greeks, Sumerians, Egyptians, etc. all had religions that believed in sevral gods, and were the dominant religion for THOUSANDS of years. They are all gone now, and Christianity shuns multiple gods, but has not been around for even half as long as some of the other religions. Christianity, and everything else is just a fad. In 200 years, if this planet isn’t a block of ice from from global warming, stupid people will be worshiping something else.

Also religious people annoy me with their constant hypocracy.

I’m becoming an athiest slowly. Becuase I’m just starting to think a lot of those things don’t make sense.

My family is religious, went to mosque all the time, still do, but when I was about 13/14 I started to notice the hypocracy of the people around me, they didnt come to pray, they were there to socialize, to show off their clothese, cars and jewellry. They gossiped, lied and put down people, all in a place where they were supposed to be assembling for God. I also started questionning their beliefs, but most of them didnt have answers, they didnt know, and they simply blindly accepted what they were told… So that turned me off my religion.

What turned me off religions in general was that most of them dont answer the question of “why”. It being God’s will simply wasnt enough. I grew up in a place where 90% of the people live in poverty, mud huts, no clean water, people starving type of poverty, and God’s will or plan simpy didnt cut it…

Yes, my family is all still very religious, very involved, (to the point where my mother still makes up stories about why I wont go to mosque) but I dont bring up my views on religion. They think I’ll grow out of it, I let it go, because honestly, I dont care.

I still believe in God. Or atleast my own version of God. I dont think it changes things. My family and friends are free to believe what they want, I believe what I want and we all continue living our lives…

It was a combination of things. I never felt anything while praying to God, I felt Christianity no longer provided answers to the questions I had about life and the universe, I felt the Christian congregations I was part of were hypocritical and lost interest in going to church.

After this initial questioning, I started to study history and learned the truth about Christianity’s origins, I also read the Bible more in depth and realized how many errors, inconsistencies, and mistranslations there are. At the same time, I decided to look at theories like evolution and the Big Bang which I had mocked for so long, and realized that neither myself or any Christian I knew had ever taken the time to really understand them. And when I did that, I realized how wrong I had been.

Most of my family and several of my friends are Christians. I avoid bringing up my views on religion, because I just don’t see the need to strain relationships over it.

I still study the Bible, read works by Christian writers, and have an interest in topics pertaining to religion. But at this point in my life, I don’t see myself becoming a convert ever again.

I went to a catholic primary school for six years, and I have a very catholic grandmother, who’s played a big part in my growing up, but my dad is an agnostic, and as a father does, he tried to teach me what he thought was right, so I veiwed stuff from both perspectives. I didn’t completly beleive everything I was tought at school, as the stuff my dad had already told me, and what I’d read in books made so much more sense. But I still went along to mass on Christmas and easter and all the rest, sitting there in the pew, bored to death, silently contradicting everything the preist was saying, knowing I knew better. But I was never a very outspoken kid, so if you’d asked me my religion, I would’ve said Christian, just to avoid unwanted attention. But one day, in either 2006 or 2007, I was at an easter mass, and there is a part where you have to “renew your baptismal rights” and the preist says stuff like “I beleive in the holy trinity” and the parishners repeat. All these years I’d just been saying these things, just because that was what you did, but then as the preist summed up the whole thing by saying something like “ this is what we as christians believe…” and something just clicked in my head. I thought “ I don’t believe any of this, why am I saying it? Why am I standing here, bored to my very core, just contradicting everything I know? “. The next day, I had a talk with my dad, and said “ I say I’m a christian, but I don’t believe any of it.”. He just said “then don’t be a christian.” I really didn’t want to offend my grandmother, as I was so gratefull for all the things she’d done for me, so it took me about a week to decide, but eventually, I did. I’m not actually an atheist or agnostic, and I did experiment with buhddism for a while, but now I believe that I can live by my own set of rules, which I do quite effectivley, although it does get a bit annoying to have to explain my views on everything whenever someone asks my religion. This whole thing did upset my grandmother a bit, who is endlessly trying to convert me. ( as well as make me eat meat, wear pink, cut my nails and get a haircut.) Another touchy point is my christian friends, who I’ve made a pact with that involves not discussing religion in each other’s presence, if not just to preserve our friendship, but to keep the peace and not make our other friends uncomfortable. This doesn’t always work, and occaisionaly I argue with my grandmother ( who is only trying to protect my immortal soul ), but generaly, it’s all good. Not having a religion does not make me feel “empty” or “unloved” as some people have tried to tell me, it makes me feel free and able to be myself, rather than living in a haze of taboos, lies and fear.

I was raised in a reformed jewish home. my temple provided comparative religion classes. this started the ball rolling. so many religions and each believing they were correct. then came the christian “jesus freaks” as we called them back then. pushing their agenda and trying to make you feel guilty if you didn’t turn you life over to christ. my distance began with my removal from “formal” religious life. with age, I grew to see the many horrible things done in the name of religion. I had great disgust for the hypocrisy. I eventually began to distance myself from a punishing god that sent good people to hell along with the evil. I feel no better or worse because of my lack of faith. I feel exactly the same. I rely on myself. just like before.

I love being a christian