Current Events > For all the atheists and agnostics here what was your gateway to that belief?

(+) Yeah! (+)

While I don't think it needs to be said but please remain civil.

Oh yes this is mainly for those who believed beforehand. I wish I could edit the topic title.

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1) Theists being religious for the sake of getting a ticket to heaven

2) Too many different religions

3) Cherry pickers

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My mom's birth canal when I was born

Religion is taught, theres no gateway to not being told to believe some crap

Same way theists don't have a gateway to believing the 500,000 other religions they weren't taught about

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UnfairRepresent posted...

My mom's birth canal when I was born

Religion is taught, theres no gateway to not being told to believe some crap

Same way theists don't have a gateway to believing the 500,000 other religions they weren't taught about

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

I didn't word it correctly. This is mostly for ex-religious people who now no longer believers. My bad, honestly.

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My parents aren't religious and didn't shove religion down my throat.

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I just slowly grew out of it when I couldn't support my religious beliefs with that of science anymore. It just took too much work, and things just felt very arbitrary with religion.

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I just decided myself that I was agnostic(as in the concept), then found out that what I was had a word lol.
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I saw how hateful and stupid a huge amount of fellow religious folks were and no longer wanted to be affiliated with those people

Also all the meaningless suffering that an all-powerful and all-loving God apparently doesnt give a shit about

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Religion always sounded ridiculous to me.
There was absolute nothingness for eons and eons before we were born and there will be nothingness after we die


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There wasn't really a specific trigger. I just gradually became disinterested and realized that there was no real reason for me to believe in god / practice religion.

My parents identify as Catholic but don't really care, and haven't went to church regularly for decades (probably before I was even born).

I went to Catholic schools, but aside from the sacraments (e.g. Communion) and the odd mass, my time at school was entirely normal. I was fairly disinterested even back then, especially at home, but no-one at school cared very much.

I had a near-death experience during a really bad asthma attack as a young kid. Despite all these marvelous stories of NDE'a I remember absolutely nothing. Just complete non-existence.

A part of me still held onto hope that maybe there was some way my consciousness would survive into the ether after physical death, but as I got older it sounded more and more like a fairy tale.

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I was raised in a Christian home and the smartest adults I knew were also Christian, so I was certain there must be something to it. Eventually, I decided there must be answers to all those questions I had that nobody cared to answer. I was a very angry person once I started to study religion seriously, because I felt like I'd been lied to my entire life. To this day, I have no idea how anyone could conduct serious scholarship on the Bible without becoming an atheist.

Buddhism in a refined sense is agnostic. The religious aspect of it is real, sure, in this world, but its a bit of a misnomer. Although Eastern/Western religions are just at a hard disconnect in most respects.

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When I was a kid in Sunday school, when I was about 9 or 10 I was like "hey this shit doesn't make much sense, why doesn't crazy shit like this happen today" and here we are.

Although I still have some of it ingrained in me. In the back of my mind I still kinda hope there is a god.

Edit: and I will clarify I kinda think there is something bigger than me that created this in a sense. It isn't a big part of my life though.

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The problem comes where legitimate albeit inmetttled religious people who are already deviating from the quiet life end up running into for the first time.... political religion, religious cults, pagan religion, and devil-worship religion (veiled or otherwise) without ever having made the personal journey (for whatever reason) and have no such foundation/individual relationship with a higher power to protect their belief system from being destroyed then and there. Most people take the dogmas (take any version of it too) and begin forming their own interpretations & whatnot...... Thats been the great debate since forever, basically. The other thing that happens is people can start asking questions and up forgetting that they care about the answer.

Time and observation. I think it's mostly a way to explain the unexplained and a coping mechanism for death. I wouldnt take that away from people because it does help.

The thing that gives religion legitimacy is how long it's been supported. But if you knew nothing of religion and I told you that some omnipotent being in the sky is going to let you be tortured for eternity after you die because you touched yourself at night, youd probably think I was crazy.

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dummy420 posted...

Time and observation. I think it's mostly a way to explain the unexplained and a coping mechanism for death. I wouldnt take that away from people because it does help.

The thing that gives religion legitimacy is how long it's been supported. But if you knew nothing of religion and I told you that some omnipotent being in the sky is going to let you be tortured for eternity after you die because you touched yourself at night, youd probably think I was crazy.

No.

Of course not.

I was never raised religious so I very quickly found the whole thing odd when I heard about at a young age. My parents never spoke bad about it when we were children, but let us develop our own views.

Pretty much all my siblings did have that moment when we did that thing children do, and just said the whole thing sounded stupid at some point though to a religious figure. >.>

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One parent was a lapsed catholic, the other followed a weird syncretic agnosticism that borrowed a little bit from everywhere.

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I think the fact that if you actually think about religion with any kind scepticism, the whole thing falls apart.

AirFresh posted...

While I don't think it needs to be said but please remain civil

Glob posted...

I think the fact that if you actually think about religion with any kind scepticism, the whole thing falls apart.

Not even close, this is absolutely normal to do and necessary to building your faith

I was raised in a very conservative Catholic family.

One day, it occurred to me that its really a bit absurd that someone might go to hell for eating meat on a Friday during Lent.

Eternal torture and damnation for eating the wrong kind of food on a certain day? Even if one did that with full intention and knowledge of the penalty, man what a disproportionate punishment; and yet, that is actual Church teaching.

It kind of snowballed from that one minor aspect that Catholicism was total bunk, and from that point it was an easy leap to religion in general.

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I checked out of the cult mentally when i was like 12. I was never truely sold on the deity idea, but was able to leave after having more agency on my own actions and autonomy

I've just never been one for blind faith. I can't believe in something I don't know for a fact is there. Most of my family is very religious, but all going to church did was make me more skeptical. I'm supposed to worship some deity nobody's actually seen, or go to Hell? This "God" sounds like a petty, self-absorbed asshole imo. How does that encourage faith?

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Not gonna worship someone who makes so many people miserable.

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KeeperOfShadows posted...

I've just never been one for blind faith. I can't believe in something I don't know for a fact is there. Most of my family is very religious, but all going to church did was make me more skeptical. I'm supposed to worship some deity nobody's actually seen, or go to Hell? This "God" sounds like a petty, self-absorbed asshole imo. How does that encourage faith?

Lmao @ blind Faith

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I was young, maybe around 10years old, and i realized that if there was a god, they wouldn't let children be raped and killed and let the murderer/rapist go free.

So either god was evil, or nothing above exists, so i chose to believe in nothing.

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I remember thinking the story of David and Goliath was a Greek myth because of how outlandish it was, but no, it was Christian stuff that everyone believes happened; it naturally lead me to ask what the difference between the two was. I also had a third-grade substitute teacher who asked if modern Greeks still believed in Greek mythology today; I answered yes, but she looked at me like I was a fucking idiot for saying yes.

That aside, church and sunday school felt like I was being dragged away from shit I actually cared about. Obviously, I have better reasons for being an atheist today, but those were the stepping stones.

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Lonestar2000 posted...

My parents aren't religious and didn't shove religion down my throat.

This. My grandma is extremely religious and took us to sunday school or church whenever we visited her, but I think my parents lack of care stuck with me more. They'll tell you they're religious and believe in god if you ask but that's about it.

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As an inquisitive 12 year old all of my questions were met with "god is mysterious"

ok, you're right, have fun with your Santa for adults

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going to church and Sunday school. it never clicked with me at all.

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It doesn't make any logical sense. There is no proof. There is a good chance every religion is wrong even if a God is real.

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Literally just common sense. I was raised in a religious household but one day it just clicked that magic isn't real and this is all just magic and why tf would anyone believe this?
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I see no reason to think any of it is true. You don't need a gateway to disbelief. It's the default position.

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The idea of and all powerful God needing a blood sacrifice to forgive people sounds insane. I never thought about it when I was younger but imagine if your parents made you cut a animal's throat on a alter every time you did something wrong before they would forgive you. Everyone would call them crazy.

Also I realized every time I thought I felt God's "presence" in church was really just asmr.

There's other reasons too that people have mentioned.

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There were things I wanted to do that were against my religion so I started slowly breaking some rules and then I just said screw it one day and starting doing whatever I wanted. Also I realized that most of the stuff in the Bible didnt really make sense and that none of my prayers had ever been answered
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Phantom36 posted...

I remember absolutely nothing

Just complete non-existence.

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MushroomMuncher posted...

Mick Foley's retirement

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Blatant hypocrisy and corruption running rampant through churches

Love everyone and

NOT YOU

forgive them all and un

ESP NOT THEM

conditional love k thx bai

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My parents are religious but we never really went to church growing up. And while they believed they did little to teach it at home. I wouldn't say I'm atheist but I don't really subscribe to or follow a religion. Every religion I've seen uses faith to justify things that I don't agree with. So even if there is a higher power either their followers are lost and are misunderstanding their teachings to justify hate or that higher power is corrupt and not worth my worship.

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Lots of people I grew up around were Christians but it just never really resonated with me. Plus I hated going to church. Honestly, that's probably what did it to me lol. I hated going to church as a kid so much that I didn't want to be religious just because of it.

Of course you could practice a religion without having to attend a church or anything like that, but by the time I figured that, I was already pretty far removed from religion.

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Taoism got me out of religion.

Tao and atheism are completely compatible.

Tao is just the way things are.

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Dunno if there was a specific moment I stopped believing but I'm guessing some of the priests at my church being caught in scandals probably started getting the gears turning. By the time I was 16 I left the catholic church for good.
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YouTube atheism

I basically had questions about stuff like how it seemed evil to send people to hell and stuff, and that video community was an outlet that let me mentally and emotionally vent in a place in the country where everyone else is very Christian.


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Was maybe about 5 or 6 when my mother took me to a church with people falling over and passing out due to their strong....belief.

And decided from there in a way or the best I could at the age I wanted no part of that. And just tuned out religion passively from then on.


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Glob posted...

I think the fact that if you actually think about religion with any kind scepticism, the whole thing falls apart.

This, I sorta changed my way of thinking back in highschool and started questioning religion and the more and more I did it the more it started to fall apart like a house of cards. Things started to make less sense and started contradicting a lot of its own dogma. I realized that the religion couldn't possibly be made from God and instead being human engineered to control the masses by giving arbitrary answers to the unknown.

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Prestoff posted...

This, I sorta changed my way of thinking back in highschool and started questioning religion and the more and more I did it the more it started to fall apart like a house of cards. Things started to make less sense and started contradicting a lot of its own dogma. I realized that the religion couldn't possibly be made from God and instead being human engineered to control the masses by giving arbitrary answers to the unknown.

Jesus never taught about controlling anyone.

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