If you were ever a theist...

[CapnAwesome]

If you were ever a theist/believer, what led you to no longer believe? Not looking to preach, that’s not my thing and it’s against rules anyway, but just curious. I remember my own journey over the past few years with it all, and just thought it’d be interesting to hear your ‘stories’ if you were once believers before identifying as an atheist. 

Well I was raised Catholic and come from a mixed religious family (Jewish Grandparents, My father has eastern spiritual beliefs, my other grandparents were agnostics and Universal Unitarians, my mother jokingly called it 'Church for Atheists') but only ever really believed in God or the supernatural when I was younger. Getting older all the stories and everything about Catholicism and all the other religions I was exposed to made less and less sense. I also got to witness the similarities and the similarities in arguments made by different religions. By the time I was maybe 14 or 15 I was really justifying my belief in God to myself, making weak arguments against my own skepticism in my head. By the time I was 18 or 19 I could no longer convince myself to believe in God. It wasn't really a painful transformation, like some people report on the pain of deconversion or something like that. I didn't really experience anything like that. It was more of a slow drip of losing beliefs.

However the more supernatural beliefs that dripped out, they more I got to replace it with knowledge of the real world. In college I got a degree in history with a focus on middle eastern history and studied Islam extensively from a secular perspective. I also am casually interested in a lot of science and anthropology and early man and how he lived. Dealing with the world as it is makes it so much more interesting in my opinion. I take a lot more joy in the world and there is so much real stuff to discover, endless knowledge and information that I don't see the need for the supernatural. The natural world is amazing as it is.