Good day all!
I "lost" my faith when I was around 6 or 7 years old. Here's how:
My family was Catholic. More specifically, my mother was Catholic. My father, on the other hand, was an emotionally abusive alcoholic. My mom came from an old-school diocese. When I say old-school I mean, when she sought out her priest to discuss her unhappiness in the marriage, he asked if my father was physically abusive. He was not, so the priest counseled my mom to stay in the marriage, as divorce was a horrible affront to god.
Many years later, mom finally left my dad and the Church. We moved to a small, Southern town in the bible-belt and promptly became Methodist. I was 6.
I remember comparing my Catholic Sunday school lessons to the lessons taught in the Methodist church. I was terribly confused. They were so different. I remember thinking that they couldn't be talking about the same Bible, Jesus, god, and where was the Virgin Mary who was so important to the Catholics?? I got sent out of Sunday school many times for asking "inappropriate" questions.
Amidst all this, I realized that my town was divided into two main groups: the Methodists and the Baptists. If my doctrine/dogma based questions weren't faith-shattering enough, I realized there were other factions who held even more different beliefs and who thought of themselves as god's chosen faith. I couldn't resolve who was right and who was wrong. Then it dawned on me, "What if the Catholics, Methodists, and Baptists were all wrong?" What if the "true" faith lay in yet another faith or in no faith at all? I simply gave up trying to puzzle it all out, and decided that they were all wrong, or at the very least fallible.
As I got older, my ideas solidified and were supported by various facts. Learning about the Council of Nicea some 6-700 years after the death of Christ was a big one. Realizing that even if one took the leap of faith that the bible was the literal written word of god, I still couldn't overcome the fact that it was written by men, contradicted itself on several points, and was interpreted by people who may very well not be working under "divine" guidance, was another. Then there was all that science that offered a logic and reason based explanation for things.
I decided by the time I was 10 or 12 that I had made the right decision to throw the whole religion thing out the window. I have proudly identified myself as atheist ever since.
I "lost" my faith when I was around 6 or 7 years old. Here's how:
My family was Catholic. More specifically, my mother was Catholic. My father, on the other hand, was an emotionally abusive alcoholic. My mom came from an old-school diocese. When I say old-school I mean, when she sought out her priest to discuss her unhappiness in the marriage, he asked if my father was physically abusive. He was not, so the priest counseled my mom to stay in the marriage, as divorce was a horrible affront to god.
Many years later, mom finally left my dad and the Church. We moved to a small, Southern town in the bible-belt and promptly became Methodist. I was 6.
I remember comparing my Catholic Sunday school lessons to the lessons taught in the Methodist church. I was terribly confused. They were so different. I remember thinking that they couldn't be talking about the same Bible, Jesus, god, and where was the Virgin Mary who was so important to the Catholics?? I got sent out of Sunday school many times for asking "inappropriate" questions.
Amidst all this, I realized that my town was divided into two main groups: the Methodists and the Baptists. If my doctrine/dogma based questions weren't faith-shattering enough, I realized there were other factions who held even more different beliefs and who thought of themselves as god's chosen faith. I couldn't resolve who was right and who was wrong. Then it dawned on me, "What if the Catholics, Methodists, and Baptists were all wrong?" What if the "true" faith lay in yet another faith or in no faith at all? I simply gave up trying to puzzle it all out, and decided that they were all wrong, or at the very least fallible.
As I got older, my ideas solidified and were supported by various facts. Learning about the Council of Nicea some 6-700 years after the death of Christ was a big one. Realizing that even if one took the leap of faith that the bible was the literal written word of god, I still couldn't overcome the fact that it was written by men, contradicted itself on several points, and was interpreted by people who may very well not be working under "divine" guidance, was another. Then there was all that science that offered a logic and reason based explanation for things.
I decided by the time I was 10 or 12 that I had made the right decision to throw the whole religion thing out the window. I have proudly identified myself as atheist ever since.
