[Serious] For former Christians only, why did you leave your faith?

[Gwaithmir]

I grew up in a Catholic household. My religious indoctrination began even before I was old enough to attend school. I can still recall how my mother taught me to say simple prayers and that the world was created by God from nothing. I was skeptical of this outrageous claim, even at the tender age of four or five years.

I attended three Catholic schools during my youth. Each class featured about 40 minutes of daily prayers and anywhere from an hour to three hours of religious instruction and study. Students were literally smothered in a miasma of religion. Walls were festooned with religious imagery and there were statues of Jesus, Mary and the saints everywhere. Only the restrooms were free of this nonsense. Every book, regardless of subject, contained religious imagery. I can still recall how most of the geography books I had to study featured articles on churches, missions and famous saints in each country around the world. History books concentrated more on the history of the Church than that of the world.

Fear was an essential element of my indoctrination. Nuns were especially fond of scaring their students with tales of the horrors of Hell. These stories were frequently supplemented by horrific images of Hell, guaranteed to traumatize young minds. Physical abuse was also an acceptable teaching tool. Slow learners were apt to have their hair pulled and their faces slapped, not to mention being struck with rulers and oaken rods. My 8th grade nun's favorite method of abuse, which she carried out with great frequency and relish, was to seize a boy by the cheeks or hair and repeatedly bash his head against a wall. This happened at a time in which a public school teacher would have gone to jail for similar behavior.

This abuse extended into my home life as well. My father was a Bible-thumping Lutheran who firmly believed in the biblical adage that “...by the blueness of their wounds shall they be cleansed.” He would frequently beat my younger brother and I for petty offenses, real or imagined, with sticks or a belt. He began using the strap on me when I was only four or five years old. While I showed a grudging respect for him during his life, I did not shed so much as a single tear for him at his funeral.

The first serious cracks in my faith occurred when I had to study the Bible. Even the bowdlerized Catholic version I had to read revealed a God who was anything but loving and benevolent, but rather an insecure, malevolent, egotistical tyrant. The Book of Job, in particular, turned my stomach.

My senior religion classes included learning proofs of God’s existence. Students weren’t supposed to discuss and critique them, however. We were required to memorize and accept them as true. Being an amateur student of astronomy, I debunked the Kalam Cosmological Argument as it had been interpreted by St. Thomas Aquinas. I dared not voice my criticisms in class, however, for fear of being punished and/or ridiculed in front of my fellow students.

I attended a secular college after high school, which turned out to be a breath of fresh air. I was able to discuss science and religion with many students of other faiths, although I can’t recall meeting any atheists at this time. I still identified myself as Roman Catholic, but my faith was pretty weak by then and I was neglecting to attend Sunday services with increasing frequency.

Following my service in Vietnam, and having witnessed some of the horrors of war, I identified myself as an agnostic. I read a number of books on religion and comparative religious study over the next decade. Some time in the late 1970’s I saw Madalyn Murray-O’Hair on the Phil Donahue Show and was quite impressed with her arguments against religion. I decided to subscribe to her magazine THE AMERICAN ATHEIST. The October, 1982 issue featured an article titled The Agnostic’s Dilemma, which was an epiphany for me. From that moment onward, I knew that I was an atheist and probably had been one for some time without realizing it.

[Jehanne]

Somewhat ironically, perhaps, Phil Donahue is Catholic.

[Ahriman]

Yes, I was baptized and confirmed, and went to Catholic school.

Do you still attend Mass?

Not anymore. I used to go every week until I was 18 years old and after that I just didn't feel like going. I started smoking weed when I was 19 years old and then I really really did not care anymore. I still had some artifacts in my house, a rosary and some crucifixes, but I got rid of them last year. I don't blame the actual Catholic religion for my abandonment as much as I blame myself for being a bit of a louse.

[Belacqua]

I debunked the Kalam Cosmological Argument as it had been interpreted by St. Thomas Aquinas.

Aquinas describes in detail why he rejects the Kalam argument.

[Jehanne]

I debunked the Kalam Cosmological Argument as it had been interpreted by St. Thomas Aquinas.

Aquinas describes in detail why he rejects the Kalam argument.

Citation?

[Angrboda]

I don't know why I left the faith. As a child I attended church with the family. Then as a teen, I realized that I didn't believe. I don't know what happened inbetween.

[Mister Agenda]

I was raised Pentecostal, United Pentecostal on my dad's side and Assembly of God on my mother's (they divorced when I was five). I bought the whole thing hook, line, and sinker. I feel on the UPC side because I found their arguments on doctrinal differences with the Assembly more persuasive. In my mid-teens I decided if I was going to be a good Pentecostal, I had ought to read the Bible. So I did, cover-to-cover, the KJV. It did not match what I had been taught. I read a modern English version to make sure the King's English hadn't confused me. It wasn't all the magic that threw me, to an extent it was contradictions in a book I was taught was perfect because it was authored by God. Mostly it was the barbarity. A God that ordered genocide, that ordered babies killed, that plagued Egypt after hardening pharoah's heart...I believed in a tri-omni God and after reading the Bible, I couldn't believe the people who wrote it had any special connection to an omniscient, good being.

For about ten years after that I was what you might call an agnostic theist. I thought there was a God who created the universe, but I didn't think you could know much about it. I became an atheist after years of getting more skeptical about other things I believed in: ghosts, Bigfoot, alien abductions, ancient astronauts, Nessie, ESP, and so forth. I wasn't raised to be skeptical, I had to learn it on these streets.

[Jehanne]

It is incredible that some Christians are still reading the KJV outside of a literary context, considering how poor of translation it is compared to modern translations, such as the Revised Standard Version. Still nuttier are those groups who consider the KJV to be inerrant.

[arewethereyet]

Was raised Catholic and from 6th grade through HS graduation attended Catholic schools. Prior to that were Catechism classes here and there. Never really bought into, just played along. In early 20s went on a seek and find as to what to believe in as I thought you had to believe in something. It just didn't take with me. I always saw it as a fairy tale...a 'grim(m)' one at that.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

If you wanted to avoid spiritual consequence for bad deeds, you should have remained a Catholic. The whole confession/absolution thing is kind of a ‘Get Out Of Hell Free’ card.

Boru

That is not what Catholic theology teaches, not in the slightest.  In Protestant Christian theology, one has neo-Calvinism ("Onced Saved, Always Saved") versus Arminianism, which believes that an individual, once saved, can lose his/her salvation.

The Church makes a distinction between venial versus mortal sins, and the simple act of confessing one's sins does not necessarily remit those sins.

That is precisely what Catholic theology teaches. Contrition and confession (the latter being the necessary consequent of the former) are required for absolution - once the priest pronounces te absolvo, the sin, as well as the guilt arising from that sin, are expiated. Check your Aquinas.

Do not presume to lecture me on Catholic theology.

Boru