Atheists: why did you leave the church? Serious question. Thanks.?

I spent my teenage years and many of my adult years in terror of going to hell. When I was about 27 I met a woman who had thought about hell and decided it couldn't be real, it doesn't jive with a god that claims to love us.

That sort of opened my mind, but only a little. I was still afraid of God. I started saying "there is no god" and I started calling myself an atheist, but it was wishful thinking, not the truth. When I was about 30, a little voice came to me out of the blue and said, "Torture is wrong." That was a turning point. I could feel it in my bones that it was true, that God committed an atrocity, an offense to morality, in creating a universe that includes a hell.

It didn't reassure me much that I had the moral high ground, because God was still there, still angry. I tried not to think about it, and my fears faded somewhat. When I was about 40, I fell into a deep depression that kept me bedridden for months. I had a lot of time to think. With some help from Christopher Hitchens, I opened my eyes for the first time ever to the appalling violence committed by God in the bible. I had always read it with the mindset that whatever God does is right.

With some profound insights on morality from Sam Harris, I began to construct for myself a moral framework far superior to that of God / Jesus / Muhammad, a framework that reassured me more than anything else that the bible-god isn't real.

But I still worry. I guess some childhood scars never go away. I can still feel him, right next to me, keeping track of all my blasphemies to make sure I get what I deserve in the afterlife. I worry about the warning in II Thessalonians Chapter 2, that God sends a powerful delusion to the unrighteous, to make them believe lies. I worry that science doesn't really make sense, but God is making me think it does. I believe my moral framework is infinitely superior to his punishment / reward garbage. But maybe God is just making me think that.

I left the church a long time ago, but it seems I'm still a Christian, even against my will.

The only way primitive religion exists today is through the child abuse of forcing it into very, very young children but thanks to better education and growing intellects so many teens are able to discover the truth, throw off the indoctrination and step into the real world!

So atheism is not a conscious decision or a belief but a realisation!

The first person to produce a single tiny little piece of verifiable evidence for any god will become world famous and mega rich!

Academia states that in the absence of any sort of evidence of the existence of something it must be deemed not to exist until verifiable evidence is found - thus god is held not to exist pending some sort of verifiable evidence.

Of course a lot also leave the church because of all the intolerance, hatred, bigotry, homophobia and persecution posted by BAD Christians towards others!

Try finding a post about a loving god on here! It will take you a few weeks!!!!!!

When I initially left the church, and eventually/gradually became an atheist over the following years, it was kind of a dual thing... One important part of it was down to the fact that their doctrines, their concept of God, their holy book, their values and positions, etc, no longer made any sense to me at an intellectual level. The other part was more of an emotional, visceral reaction, founded in anger, alienation and moral outrage. (As in: deeply resenting the small-mindedness and intolerance of the church, being completely p*ssed off about the sort of hateful "values" that were being espoused by the Bible, etc...)

So: it was about 50% "this doesn't add up!", to 50% "this is disgusting, and I want NO f*cking part of it!", it seems like in retrospect... Although as an atheist, I often used to downplay the emotional aspect of it, and put the emphasis far more strongly on the intellectual arguments, in order to be considered more rational, be taken more seriously by both believers and non-believers alike, etc, etc.

I was working at a church the day I lost my son.

I received a telephone call from my then wife to go to the hospital.

I explained the situation to the head pastor at the time.. his answer.. "As soon as you've finished your work, you can go"

Hence, being a boxer, I f**ked him up, down, backwards and sideways, then left.

I was arrested outside the hospital and never got to see my son before he was gone.

You asked why I left the church, this is not the reason I left religion.

I am not "pretending to be Christian". I left the church long ago quite simply because I didn't see lives changed. Bullies are still bullies and good people are still good. But nothing is different.

I thought long and hard

about all the dogma I had memorized

and realized that the hypothetical God,

that I had been imagining,

did not measure up to my ethical standards

and did not really make sense,

except as the accumulation of human imaginings,

turned into cultural baggage.

--

Regards,

John Popelish

I never been in any church to begin with, so there was nothing to leave.

But if you want a specific cause to blame my atheism at, then blame mythology. I read all of it as a child - Greek/Roman, Norse, Slavic, Egyptian, African, you name it. When it came to the bible and later koran, I recognized the patterns right away...

when i became of the age that i had reached a certain level of education, I came to the realization that i did not buy into anything supernatural as i had never witnessed it myself and others could make no demonstration of any of it either. That, for me, included deities.

Religion had too many restrictions, and I couldn't live my life the way I wanted to.

Whenever I prayed for god to help me, nothing happened, my mother was very ill and I prayed to god to help me, and when she passed away, it was too much for me. I couldn't believe in god anymore.

-I contend we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.- Stephen Roberts

-Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.- Christopher Hitchens