This is not going to be easy to explain, since it didn’t happen all at once. But if I could sum this up, I would say I lost my belief for intellectual reasons, and also moral problems that I came across in The Bible.
Part One: The Seeds of Doubt.
Back in high school, I was a fully fledged Christian who believed I could have a personal relationship with God; that I could talk to him and he would speak to me back. It sounded pretty awesome huh? Then one day, one of my friends said people shouldn’t mock me for believing in a figment of my imagination. I was pretty insulted (and even now I think it was a bit douchey of him to say that), but it did get me wondering. If God is speaking to me through my mind, how on earth can I tell if it’s him or just my own thoughts? Later on I ended up going to churches who didn’t seem to believe that God could speak to them personally like that, but he would speak to them through The Bible or life events. Woohoo for keeping hold of my belief!
Part Two: The Break.
After high school I went to university to study earth science. For the first few years I went away from church completely, and I enjoyed it! I pretty much lived a non-Christian life, hanging out with non-Christian friends all the time, partying etc. Back then I still believed in God, but I was just happy with what I was doing. I moved towns to go to uni, so that meant finding another church. I did visit one church a couple of times, but they seemed a bit creepy and cultish, so that put me off finding another one.
Part Three: A Better Life?
After a few years, life took a bit of a downturn. There were issues going on in my family, and some of the people I lived with were not very nice either (I was flatting). My grades at uni were OK, but everything else wasn’t. One of my old friends got in touch with me to hang out. He was a Christian but he really went off the rails a few years ago with drugs and alcohol. But now? He seemed to have turned his life around for the better. He invited me to his church, and I enjoyed it. I would eventually end up going there regularly, and moving into a flat with him and some of his friends. Being able to live with people who were actually my friends was great, and I enjoyed being part of a community of Christian people again. Life really seemed to be going better at that point. I began to think, maybe I should try this God thing again.
Part Four: Looking Outside My Worldview.
Life was mostly good, but I ended up living with one guy who was a bit of a dick. He took his Bible pretty seriously, but he seemed to have some over the top views on things, like he believed you shouldn’t buy or sell things on a Saturday. That would be OK on it’s own, but he felt the need to push his beliefs on everyone else, and be arrogant which really annoyed me. I’m not sure if it was him, or something else, but I started looking up atheist videos on Youtube. To this day I really don’t know why, but I did spend ALOT of time on Youtube, and that meant I watched ALOT of these videos. I watched channels like 43alley, nonstampcollector, darkmatter2525 and Edward Current. Many of these videos were satirical of The Bible and Christians, in a lighthearted matter, but they had a point to them. I started to re-read parts of The Bible and realised how absurd a lot of it was. When you look at something with a view other than the ‘Christian lenses’ you were given, you will be amazed at what you may see differently! I also read ‘The God Delusion’ too. Funny thing is, a number of my Christian friends and family happened to catch me with the book. I just responded with the whole ‘I was just curious” trick, it seemed to work as everyone forgot about it…
At this point, I started to have genuine doubts about the whole Christianity thing. It was odd though, instead of feeling anxious and vulnerable, I actually felt a little peace in the corner of my mind, like I was coming to an acceptance that maybe the God I believed in wasn’t real, that I didn’t have to base my life on him anymore and fight all these doubts. However, I chose not to let go of God, and hang on! Why? Leaving religion isn’t an easy task for many, it’s something I will explain in more detail in a later post.
Part Five: Taking An Intellectual Hit!
I still went to church and enjoyed it. I think I enjoyed the social aspects of it, having a group of like minded friends to be with each week. I also (kinda) still believed. At times I definitely believed in God, other times I wasn’t so sure, and other times I went back to not believing like before – but I didn’t tell anyone this! Part of me WANTED to believe in God though, and like before (see Part Three), I had this attitude where I should try believing in God and see how my life goes. Over time though, it got harder as my critical thinking mind started seeing more and more problems in The Bible. See, I have a science background, and when you read Genesis it seems pretty absurd in the face of science. I decided I didn’t believe in Genesis anymore, and briefly considered believing in an old age earth AND God creating the world, but that didn’t last long. I could cover this in more detail later, but here are some of the things I thought absurd:
- Noah’s flood
- Creation of Adam and Eve and the whole original sin thingee
- A young aged earth which has NO reliable scientific evidence backing
In other parts of the Bible, I found the concept of miracles and demonic possession absurd too. I had never actually come across miracles myself, but many other people claimed they happened all the time. But there was NEVER reliable, convincing evidence that these things truly happened. It always seemed to happen in remote third world countries though, funny that!
Part Six: God Isn’t Who I Thought He Was.
If you have problems believing in many of the Bible stories literally, such as the Book of Genesis and miracles, it is still possible to believe in a God, and many people do. After all, didn’t Jesus still die for our sins etc? It shouldn’t matter how we got here, right? For me though, I began to see more problems in The Bible than just that. As a Christian, God was all loving (he WAS love) and all knowing, and supposedly knew what was best for everyone. With that in mind, I struggled to believe how an all knowing, all loving God would create something like Hell. Anyone who didn’t believe in Jesus and have him as their personal lord and savior would suffer in Hell for eternity. It didn’t matter what life you lived apart from Jesus. How on earth can a God like that be remotely loving or just? Ah there’s so much I could say about this, but I will talk about Hell in a separate entry in more detail. What else wasn’t right? Well in the Old Testament, God made up lots of weird and strange rules for people to follow. Sure he did away with a lot of those rules, but for an all knowing God to create those laws, it didn’t make sense. Some of them were pretty brutal too, like saying homosexuals should be sentenced to death (Leviticus 20:13). This supposedly loving God sounded very primitive and violent. So after a while I decided that The Bible wasn’t really the word of God, but written by a bunch of different people during much more primitive times. This would explain the contradictions and harshness of God’s character much better to me than any Christian theologian ever could. So that was it, I decided that I didn’t believe in God anymore, the straws were all falling and had now broken the camels back.
Part Seven: What Now?
Now I consider myself a closet agnostic. Probably leaning more towards an agnostic atheist now. Some family and friends know this, but many church friends don’t and I still attend church from time to time. Eventually I will tell them all, but I want to come to terms with what I believe now, and be ready with a semi-decent explanation for what I believe. To be honest, I don’t know what I believe now, except that I don’t believe in the Christian God anymore, and I’m actually OK with that. Recently I have been reading a few atheist blogs and books from other people who were religious and left religion, I find them quite riveting actually. If you’re curious, I have been reading ‘Why I No Longer Believe’ (winlb), ‘Respectful Atheist’ and ‘Leaving Your Religion: A Practical Guide To Becoming Non-Religious’. Check them out! When it comes to religion, they have really been there and done that, and decided that religion didn’t work for them anymore. They seem to be quite humble too in their writing style, and that makes their writings all the better for it. So there we go, a full summary on why I am no longer a Christian anymore.
The Liberated Atheist 
Branyan has honoured you with a post.
I laughed at the fact he lied through his arse over what you have written in this post.
He says you are ”vague” about intellectual reasons, yet he ignores completely that you mention Noah’s Ark, etc.
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Ugh that guy. Lol something entertaining to read while I wait for my butter chicken curry. I don’t follow his blog but he’s posted about you and a few other related bloggers too.
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Oh, indeed he has. I am banned, and don’t follow him either but enjoy popping in and catching upon the insanity.
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The level of ignorance on Branyans post and the guy who commented on it are both hilarious.
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Ignorance? That’s way to generous. I am inclined to lean toward disingenuous or even bordering on lying.
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This is a significant story TCA. Welcome to the wonderful family of Humanity! 😁 ❤ You are going to LOVE this life now!!! Promise! 😉 If I may please Sir…
I found your Part 5 and 6 quite relevant to me. My journey was similar. But since the most plausible method of "proving" the Christian God and His nature was really only thru "Special Revelation,” i.e. the Scriptures, It is the most tangible proof to non-Believers, right? LOL 🙄 Finding God via “General Revelation” is a total joke really — modern science has and will always continue to debunk that Christian folklore-mythology. “Miracles” (unless one is referring to speaking in tongues; that’s a whole nother debate! LOL) are simply way too subjective and impossible to standardize to either God/Christ or Satan; an impossible postion for Christians to defend even poorly! So… all one has left is the 4th-century CE canonical Hellenistic Pauline Christological New Testament… and THAT is where EVERYTHING completely falls apart. For me, it starts with all the Messianic prophecies, the proported celestial events at birth, the supposed(?) massacre of thousands of baby boys(?), and a 12-yr old boy supposedly astonishes Rabbis at the Temple!!! At that point in time in the narration, how would it be possible for the “likely(?)” Messiah, that Rome MUST hunt down and kill — and Rome always got their criminals or revolting King-userper, always — to suddenly VANISH into thin air for near 20-years, all of Judea, Galilee, and Syro-Palestine suddenly develop acute amnesia and go into catatonic states when “missing Messiah” is brought up… AND Rome with all her spies and paid-off Jewish traders, NO ONE knows ANYTHING about where The One Son of God has dissappeared to!!!??? Hahahahahahaha!!! Right.
Obviously this “Messiah” Emmanuel was NOT who people claimed he was then or 300-400 years later when they kept trying to retro-grade his nature, story, miracles, blah, blah, blah… and it all becomes totally long-standing typical Greco-Roman Apotheotic Christology with the help of the Gentile lover Saul of Tarsus.
The End. 😄 😉
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Lol thank you 😊. Yeah I always assumed Jesus was a real person but now see that the evidence Jesus the teacher even existed is left wanting. For starters, the Gospels all say contradictory things, including about his birth!
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Yes. And unless a blind “Faith-follower” steps aside from their typically deep emotional attachment — which blurs clear vision and cognition — just suspend for a moment the hooplah surrounding the “faith,” they are not going to catch the litany of problems and failures all throughout Christendom. In that sense, it is honestly the deadly, deceiving power that Addiction has over the human brain and body. Psych/A&D rehab is my occupational background. The similarities are UNCANNY!
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Whoops! you are wrong friend
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What am I wrong about exactly? Please clarify. This is about my experiences going from a Christian to disbelieving in God. And modern science has lots of power actually, think of all the advances in medicine, for instance, and all the diseases which won’t kill you anymore (but used to be a common occurrence).
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friend what you see is not reality one has to hear from proper source. infact modern science has its own limitations it has no power enter in to the misteries of Bible and God.
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To prof Taboo: sir, I just want to clarify from you sir, that psychology of a person depends on his or her environmental factors am I right sir?
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To Covert:
Long answer to your question:-Dear friend, the first thing is it is not merely believing in GOD by some traditional constrains or by centiments. one may believe that there is GOD and one may believe that there is no GOD. Faith in GOD is not dependent only on external experience. You said that you lose faith in God when you experience a negative thing. Some people also lose faith in GOD when they are rich and opulent they will say that there is no need for GOD for me as everything is under my control and I am the controller of everything.
Actual faith in God comes only if we understand ourself are we the controllers of everything or not? An intelligent man should ask to himself that whether we are controllers? Are we are controlled by external forces?.
I read in your article that your faith in GOD was shakened by the reason of modern science. there are two levels of science one is gross science and other science is spiritual science. it is not possible to understand spirit of GOD and his spiritual activities by material science. infact many honest scientists like Dr.Ae.wilder smith who had earned 3 Phd’s says “life rides on matter and matter has to be highly organized inorder to carry life”. so an intelligent man should inquire what is life and what is matter. Unless one understands the difference between matter and life or soul one can be free from all doubts.
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Different people lose faith for different reasons, and yes people lose their faith for the reasons you’ve listed. That mostly didn’t apply to me though. Many people lose their faith for the same reasons they stop believing in Santa Claus; it stops making sense and they see no evidence for it. I think that’s a good a reason as any to stop believing.
No we are not the controllers of everything, that should be obvious. But you can’t just sneak God in there either, and even if you did, who’s to say it is your God and not someones from a different religion?
As someone who studied a Master’s degree in science, no there aren’t two types of science. That is rubbish. Anything that doesn’t involve use our senses to measure or predict things isn’t considered science. Once again, you’re trying to lead me down a garden path to God, specifically your God.
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Dear friend. I am not hear to force you that you should believe in GOD. Friend you said about science I had done lot of debates on science. Its no wonder people don’t believe in GOD these days. People use modern scientific observation has an excuse not to accept the fact of intelligent design of this world. It’s not only design but the nature around us is so finely tuned still the great experts are studying the intricate workings of the nature. if you say that there is no supreme controller then this universe is just a dead matter which has no power to function .
Some of the atheist people like you says that this nature is working randomly without any intelligence. This is total absurdity as you know very well friend that nothing in this world works by chance.if you say that this world is working by chance and random combination then there is no need for the scientists to labour so hard to study the nature. ultimately everything is just a chance and one who is lucky will enjoy the most and one who is unlucky will die. I will just give you some of the examples where gross or modern science has its own limitation and it cannot explain beyond a certain point.
1. How a first life came on earth? How did ameba came from inorganic matter?
2. how inorganic matter combined itself so precisely to form amino acids and DNA?
3. how information in the gene is present? DNA is made up of millions and millions of bits of information.
4. Where such information came?
5. Where from matter, space and time came?
6. What makes the electron preventing from crashing in to the nucleus.
These are the foundational question still modern science has no answers. When we ask yu these questions then atheist people are quick to answer it is under research in future we can answer. One thing is sure my dear friend that without a supreme controller nothing in this world functions precisely . the problem is there are two kinds of atheist people.
1. One who is a sincere atheist who is trying to find answers in nature to know about the absolute truth and who is honest to accept the scientific evidence. these kind of atheist people are intelligent and one day they will come to a right conclusion.
2. 2. one who is a pretender or cheator who is obstinate to accept any absolute truth even if he is shown evidence in nature these kind of atheist people are hypocrite and they will not accept any logical and scientific conclusion. Actually these people wants to take credit of GOD’s creation by denying the existence of GOD or supreme controller.
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So you say that you don’t want to force me to believe in God, yet you came here to get all preachy.
Ah so there are two types of atheists eh? So in your mind then, what is the ‘right conclusion’ that these intelligent atheists should come to then? What do you base this conclusion on? If you base things off the Bible, how do you know it to be true, as opposed to some other religious text, or Harry Potter for that matter?
I will be honest with you and say that I don’t know the answers to those questions. Science has a bunch of different theories that explain how life started, you can read that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis . Now if you’re going to be honest, do YOU know the answer to those questions? Just because scientists don’t fully understand something, it doesn’t mean that they won’t gather more knowledge about it later. I used to believe in intelligent design like yourself, but it has several problems and many of it’s ‘theories’ such as irreducible complexity have been quickly discredited.
Now there may be some unknown entity out there which started everything, but we certainly don’t have evidence that it interacts with us in any way. Also, whether or not I chose to believe in it, I’m not going to go to Hell thankfully.
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so, covert we are not blind believers of GOD. one who really realised the secrets of workings of nature shall become a strong theist. in other words one should be honest in accepting the real truths of workings of nature. i think your knowledge in science is lacking and you are pretty ignorant in other branches of science like bio chemistry, molecular biology also.
my humble request to you friend. it is not that majority of secular scientists who accept the world views of science can be declared to be right because theories are changing day by day and we cannot trust the words of such scientists. because scientists are also falible persons they can also make mistakes.
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dear friend most of your doubts can be cleared when you understand science in biblical perspective. so kindly go to
https://answersingenesis.org/genetics/mutations/biblical-perspective
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Answer to covert:- in short: first of all, all the bonafied eligions speaks about non violence and love of GodHead. I know why you had left the religion. There may be several factors for that. Some may be negative, some may be positive. Just like people lose faith when their prayers are not answered or people naturally don’t have faith when they are rich and aristrocratic. Most of the atheist people say if there is GOD show me first then we shall believe. This is an wrong argument. There is no need to show the existence of GOD because GOD is already before us and within us. the defect is our senses are limited therefore we can’t see GOD directly face to face.
So, if you want to see GOD first of all one should develop the qualification to see him. so, what is your preliminary qualification to see GOD?. Even if you desire to see your president of country you cannot see him as you desire. There are several procedures and process to see him. so what you speak of seeing GOD who is the supreme controller of all the universes and who is spiritual and immortal in nature.
Most of the people are envious and enemical to GOD because they want the GOD to be their servant and they want him to satisfy their Bad desires which is harmful to them. Suppose for Eg: a 11-year old boy want to smoke cigar he approaches his father to ask for money. What will the father do. If he is really caring and loving he should punish his child for such a sinful propensity. Moreover GOD has given this planet to enjoy ourself without causing any pain to other living entities even to an ant. But due to our greedyness we want to enjoy more thereby violating the laws of God and we are subjected to punishment by the laws of nature created by him.
It is not that criminals should be shown mercy and love. punishment is also a one kind of mercy to reform them and make them a good citizens.
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OK so you didn’t really answer my question at all. Well, they were the questions you originally gave me related to the origin of life. If you can’t honestly answer them either, then you are wasting your time and don’t bring anything to the table, so to speak.
While I see what you’re saying, you are totally missing the point. I was referring to people who are seeking God and want to follow him, but they get no response. There is nothing selfish or hedonistic about that. So to use your analogy about the father and son, it is more equivalent to a kid being abandoned on the street by his father, after the kid wanted to serve him.
Why would God give us physical senses, which we couldn’t use to detect him?
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Expecting for results itself is a selfish desire. Further, if they are really seeking for GOD then they would not expect any material benefits from GOD. Further you did not mention what kind of respons they are expecting from GOD. GOD gave your physical senses because you desired to enjoy in this material world. Further what kind of seeking they are undergoing that is not clear. If you are seeking GOD to satisfy your material desires then GOD will satisfy your material desires only if you deserve such a position. If you do not deserve then he will not give you such a position. Further you cannot command GOD to favour you as GOD is neutral person for everybody.
So the answer for your question is GOD gives those who deserve it. If you are sinful and unqualified how he can give such a position which you do not deserve.
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OK maybe I didn’t make it clear enough. My point is that despite what the Bible says, God never actually talks to anyone or provide concrete evidence that he even exists. People say God wants a relationship but it is a very one sided relationship if he doesn’t even talk back. At the very least, God should be communicating with his followers. That there is a million different denominations speaks for itself really… Furthermore, you cannot call yourself Christian if you say that God only gives to those who deserve it. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that, besides, isn’t everybody sinful?
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Dear brother, I already told you that unless you realize the inconceivable activities of GOD you cannot understand the true meaning of scriptures. Even in bible there are different versions of Bible actually the original Bible is spoken by Lord Jeasus Christ 2000 years ago so there may be some accidental omissions and deletions of original instructions in the subsequent version of Bible. One can understand the true purport only if he is sinless in other words one should strictly follow the ten commandments given by GOD. There is no such thing like Christian, hindu and muslim in any bonafied scriptures. Christianity is a term which is sectorial. Lord Jeasus Christ is not a Christian he is one of the spiritual master for the whole world.
So the question for you is whether you are eating meat?
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if you are eating meat then you are eating contaminated and sinful stuff born of violence which is not good for your mind and body. You speak about love of God, compassion and mercy so, what qualification you have to speak about Love of GOD if you are commiting violence just to satisfy your tongue. if your mind is not clear you cannot understand any spiritual subject matter and activities of GOD and moreover on the moral point of view every animal is a life and it has right to live just like we humans have right to live in this world. in the socio environment perspective there are about 10 causes that we should not eat meat. one of the primary cause is our digestive system and our intestines are meant for digesting plant based foods and not flesh. here you go other causes to avoid Non veg.
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