If you grew up religious: What was the first item of faith you questioned?

[trotsky]

There were a lot of things that just didn't make sense to me, even as a young child. But the biggest, first question came during one of my confirmation classes. (I was raised Lutheran.)

My pastor told me during a class that he had been born a preemie, and that his parents had rushed their pastor in to baptize him quickly, because they feared he might not survive and wanted to make sure he would get into heaven.

W....T....F....??? is the look that probably registered on my face. There is no more innocent a person than a newborn baby, and yet I am supposed to believe that this almighty, ever-loving god would curse that baby to hell because of something that his (supposed) great-great-great-great-great-etc. grandparents did?!?

"Original sin"... the very concept of it repulsed me once I really understood what it meant.

[lazarus]

1. I think it was Job

The idea that God would gamble (I thought gambling was a sin, according to the Southern Baptists?) with Satan, allowing all sorts of torment to be heaped on a man (including the deaths of his family members) just rubbed me the wrong way.

Started me thinking and reading with a more critical eye.

[trotsky]

4. Yeah, the story of Job.

That really bugged me too. Like God and Satan are old college buddies... "Hey, watch this! He'll STILL believe in me! Ho ho ho ho!"

Actually if Xianity had been taught to me like that - you know, sometimes God is just a mean old bastard and likes to fuck with people - it might have made a lot more sense.

[kdmorris]

2. Not sure if it is really an "item of faith"

But the first thing I remember questioning was the whole "Cain and Abel/Adam and Eve" thing. I asked my father at the time, (and as a side note, NO ONE has been able to answer it in the last 30 years) how it could be that Adam and Eve were the ONLY people on earth? Because the problem was, Adam and Eve had 2 sons (now FOUR people on the Earth). Cain killed Abel, so now there are three people. And then, when Cain was exiled... he went and got married.

To WHOM? Did he marry his mother? If he married his mother, how did she stay behind and have Seth? If he didn't marry his mother, WHO did he marry? How could they be the ONLY people on Earth if Eve was the only woman and Cain didn't marry her? And if they weren't the ONLY people on Earth, then is the Bible lying? Or confused? If confused, how can it be the Word of God? Does God get confused?

My father tells me that that was the day he realized I was probably never going to be religious. I was 6 or 7 at the time and we had learned the story of Cain and Abel in Sunday School. And, as you can see, it didn't make much sense to me. That was just the beginning of a long road for me, though I felt so much guilt and shame as a teenager because I didn't have the right thoughts. I WANTED so badly to be a Christian and to believe like my sisters and brother and parents. But I didn't feel it like they did. Once I grew up, I finally just decided to admit it and work my way out of the cycle. I tried to find another religion for a time, because I thought it was the "proper" thing to do, but no other religion made sense either. So, I ended up where I am, an atheist.

[lazarus]

3. Oh, that's a good one

I had trouble with that one, too.

The explanation fed to me (that I accepted at the time) is that Adam and Eve were merely the first two people God created. He could have created others and just not had it mentioned in the Bible.

Heh.

[kdmorris]

5. I got

They weren't people, they were tribes of people. Like the Tribe of Adam, Tribe of Eve, etc. The story of Cain and Abel was just a symbolic story of a war.

Which made me go... hmmmm. Umm... OK.

[StrongbadTehAwesome]

8. I was told that Adam and Eve had more kids after Cain and Abel,

but they just weren't mentioned. That explanation fit right in with how the Bible leaves usually women out unless they're involved in a sex scandal of some kind (Rachel and Leah, Tamar, etc.), so it made sense to me. Cain was still marrying his sister, though, and that bugged me.

[gollygee]

6. I was never regligious

but my grandma (who was) gave me a Noah's Ark once and told me the story, and I remember asking her what would have happened if one of the animals couldn't have babies. I had an aunt who had major fertility problems so I knew that happened, and I didn't see how Noah would have been able to not have a few non-fertile animals.

[YankeyMCC]

7. The old man in the sky...

I remember as a young child always trying to reconsile how the bible stories may have arisen out of some ancient way of trying to explain the scientific theories which I truly believed to acturately describe the world even as a very young child.

So I could never actually swallow the idea of a human like superbeing somewhere up in the sky.

Then much later in life I just realized the whole thing was bunk and what the proper place was for the bible stories...myths and ancient codes of conduct.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Many Christians regard much of the OT as allegory

so I don't really count any of it as an item of faith; so it didn't matter if it was absurd from the first moment I heard it.

I remember being unable to understand what was wrong with Thomas doubting the resurrection until he'd seen the resurrected Jesus himself - so, in a way, the first item of faith I questioned was the concept that you had to have faith.

The idea that God listens to prayers struck me as extremely unlikely from an early age, given the state of the world. So that removes a lot of organised worship.

My final decision there was no God also came, ironically, in a confirmation class. They held up a picture of a black and white pattern formed from sunlight and shadow on snow, and said "what do you see?" I thought "a bearded man", everyone else chorused "Jesus", and I thought "brainwashed". There was no way back from there - I started to really analyse what I really believed, and God disappeared from it.

[progressoid]

14. Hey, cool Marvin avatar

[progressoid]

10. I think praying was the first thing I had an issue with.

I couldn't really understand my hesitation at the time other than it just didn't feel right. Once I gave up on the usefulness of prayer completely, other doubts and questions wouldn't stop coming into my head. After a year or two, I became a closet heathen.

[StrongbadTehAwesome]

11. the first thing I really questioned was

why did Jesus have to die? If God really wanted everyone to go to heaven, why couldn't he just DO it - or at least do it some easier way? Wasn't he supposed to be all-powerful?

That question would pop up and get shoved to the back of my brain several times over the course of many years before I started really and truly doubting.

[Behind the Aegis]

12. interesting question

When my parents married, we (my mom, me, and younger brother) changed from Methodist to Jewish. We were immersed into Judaism. I questioned everything, but that is often encouraged in Judaism. As I studied more and more mythology, I found comparisons in a variety of places. So, my first question of faith of real consequence was....why are our beliefs considered a 'religion' but their beliefs are considered 'mythology?' That went over like a fart in a diving helmet! But, I was always encouraged to read more, so I did.

[Tafiti]

13. Hmmm, tough one.

For me, the thing that leaped out at me most was the stark contrast between the Old and New Testaments. God seemed so bloodthirsty and vengeful in the OT, e.g. Joshua's massacre sprees (sparing no woman or child), and then Jesus coming to Earth and God is now so loving and benevolent. Yet, constantly I'd hear sermons say something like: "God is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. He's never changed - he's always been the same." Hmmm, sounds like 2 completely different people to me.

Plus, the OT practice of sacrificing animals to "please the Lord" was so bizarre to me. It seemed to anthropomorphic. Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God need to smell dead animal to be pleased? "Thanks, you burned an animal. I forgive you now." Sounds like a psychotic barbarian to me.

[lazarus]

15. God's bloodthirstiness

just went underground.

Notice that Jesus talked a LOT more about Hell than he did about heaven.

[JNelson6563]

16. How come God lets us get hit so much?

No kidding, it was abuse that really made me question everything.

Julie

[Synnical]

17. Glad to have this forum to share experience - my boring story

For me, it was before I was ten years of age. My brother (a year older than me) was a severe asthmatic, and I routinely had to wake my mother so we could take my bro to the Emergency Room. I regularly spent time in the Emergency Room Waiting Room in the wee hours of the morning reading (wasn't diagnosed with bad eye sight until I was in First Grade - and OH YEAH, the PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM demanded eye tests way back then (the early 70's) - and if it had not been for those tests, I probably would have been labeled "stupid" simply because I had poor eye sight, i.e., highly astigmatic.)

Due to my my Bro's bad health (he's very, very healthy now), my mom pursued other religions . . . I was raised, and baptized a Lutheran - that creeps me out nowadays. But, Mom then took us to Christian Science, weird enough. Though she tells me to this day, that they never, ever told her to not consult a physician.

THEN, when my bro went off to a health care facility that probably saved his life (Sun-Aire), I joined neighbors in attending church - The Mormon Church. Our family had stop attending Lutheran activities after my bro was diagnosed as being ill. (Hmmm . .. )

I realized "god" was a figment of humankind when the LDS told me Jesus was GOD, while the Lutherans said Jesus was the Son of "god".

I sincerely had that motion picture experience where the camera pulls back and gives the impression that something is really wrong here . . .

I knew all these religious people were sincere in their belief, but I also knew someone was lying to me.


Then I read Frank Yerby's novel "Judas, My Brother". And I began reading more and more.

I researched esoteric beliefs, such as Wicca and Satanism, and many others.

Carl Sagan's book "Demon Haunted World" taught me rational thinking. His "Baloney Detection Kit" is priceless. I took Philosophy in College, my professor never mentioned "Critical Thinking".

I am now a hard atheist, and demand that anyone define "god" before I begin any discussion on the topic. That is, give me universal, objective definition of what a "god" is . . . because I cannot start looking for evidence of such a thing until I know what everyone agrees on what a "god" is.


-Cindy in Fort Lauderdale

[gollygee]

20. That always puzzled me too

The whole trinity thing. Is Jesus God, Is just God God, what is the Holy Ghost and how did that get to be god too? And doesn't that make three gods? So how is that monotheism?

The answers I got sounded like rationalization to me.

[Ediacara]

46. What IS the Holy Ghost anyway?

That one never made ANY sense to me at all. What is it for? Is it a divine lighter? A soul making machine? Seriously, it made no sense whatsoever, and no one has ever been able to give me an explanation of what it is, what it does, and why it isn't cognizant.

[A HERETIC I AM]

24. Cindy? Will you marry me?

nicely said.

"Define "GOD" " is the perfect way to begin the discussion and most xtians simply CANT!

The Anthropomorphic god of Abraham and Isaac is OBVIOUSLY a mythical construct and no more real than Zeus, Apollo, Horus, Mithra or all the rest.

[PassingFair]

18. Hypocrisy

I thought that the people in church were meaner than anyone else I knew. I saw nepotism and favoritism that I never saw in my home or public school.
I don't think I would have questioned or noticed it that much, but they were so DAMNED proud of being christ worshipers, puffed up with it, if you will, and yet they were less humane than other groups.
I still feel this way, generally.

[Az]

19. Never had religion but I did come to realise I was different

My parents are weak agnostic/atheists. I was raised religion zero. It never really came up. The first I realised that I had substantially different beliefs than other kids came about because of the Boy Scouts.

I was a science geek as a kid(well science and band geek). So I was thrilled when I heard a Boy Scout outing was going to have a trip to an observatory. It was during a weekend camping jamboriee.

Saturday night we went to the observatory(those that were interested). It was marvelous. Jupiter was in view. The sky was clear. It was wonderously geeky. I went to bed dreaming about the cosmos.

The next day they got us up early for something called Mass. Mass? Like in density? Nuhuh. Mass like in Pie Iesu Domine...Dona eis Requiem(thump). Well I had never been to one before. I am always up for new things. So off I went to a Mass.

It was the opposite of the previous night. I suddenly knew what the term sheeple meant (even though we hadn't made the word up yet). The throng of people there all subjigating themself to this nonsense (the word that came into my mind at the time) sickened me. That I was expected to be part of this startled me. It made no sense.

That was the last Boy Scout event I went to. I suddenly found myself different from most people. I suspect this event may have been whay propelled me on my exploration of philosophy. But the nonsense of seaking a god drove me to eastern philosophy which does't focus on such matters.

I have since learned that I had an older history with religion and churches. It seems that when I was five or six or so my parents took a vacation trip to Boston. Of course some of the tourist sites there are the historical Churches from the revolution days. But we never got to go in them. What my parents tell me is that when they tried to go in I went off like a hellchild. I refused to go in and screamed my head off. Its probably a good thing they didn't name me Damien.

[goddess40]

21. I don't ever remember believing

I was raised Catholic and jumped through all the hoops along the way until I got in to my teen years, but it was only because I didn't have a choice. I started to rebel and fight going to church, my mom finally gave up when I was about 16. She now can't stand the hypocritical Catholic Church.
My dad was a Lutheran and his church was the bar on the corner.

[leftofthedial]

22. the creation myth

never made ant sense to me

[disillusioned1]

23. Hypocrisy made me question religion

1. "Thou shall worship no other Gods before me" Ok...why the Trinity then?

2. Communion - why do I have to eat his flesh and drink his blood? Sounded satanic to me.

[dwckabal]

47. Exactly

not any particular article of faith, but the hypocrisy of the people around me made me question my religion (Methodist).

In college, I read the Satanic Bible, and I remember feeling guilty reading it (not to mention the fear of someone seeing me read it). The more I read it, the more I realized that hypocrisy was LeVey's main gripe with Christianity as well. I re-read the Bible (without church influence) and came to see that the Jesus in the Bible was nothing like he was portrayed by the church. Not to mention the countless contradictions, impossibilities and errors.

Now church- and religion-free!

[GOPFighter]

25. I'm not really sure...

...there were a lot of small inconsistencies that started adding up.

I grew up Baptist in the 50s and early 60s. Every week the preacher and our Sunday School teachers would tell us that if we put our faith in God and handed him all our troubles, he would shoulder our worries and fears, and protect us from harm. Cool! But at the same time we were told that the dreaded Godless Commies were fast taking over the world and our government had better make more and more nuclear weapons to protect America, God's Country, from this evil hoard. Huh? What about God protecting us like the Bible says? It was obvious that those good people didn't believe a word of what they preached.

The next crisis was race. "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow black and white all were precious in his sight,..." we used to sing in Sunday School. Ah, but when those little black children grew up, evidently Jesus stopped loving them, if you believed what many of the Congregation said after church. I was really shocked by their attitudes toward people who happened to have a different skin color.

So I went about calling myself a Baptist throughout high school and into the Air Force, but I knew my faith was weak. Very Weak.

What really did it was the realization of all the horrific things that have been done in God's name over the past 2,000 years...and not a peep out of God. Slaughters, enslavement, rapes, and even Priests buggering little kids who believed those Priests represented God himself...and God stood by and did nothing. It became so obvious to me, either there is no God, or if there is, it is not a God worthy of worship.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

26. Not a defining moment

But my father, the little covert saboteur that he was, ;) always made sure I had fun science books to read. Mom would have me read "Bible for kids" kind of books.

No contest, really.

[NoodleBoy]

27. "what was there before god? who made god? was there another god that made

god?"

Asked my 2nd grade teacher in catholic school, expecting a little bit of intellectual discussion. she gave me this look of "your just totally blew my fucking mind," then turned around slowly and walked slowly to her desk.

I considered myself to be a strong believer then, and didn't realize the significance of what happened, but her complete incapacity to even venture into that territory later registered a big crack in my beliefs.

[El Fuego]

28. My parents tried to indoctrinate me.

I actually tried hard to "get it" as a kid, because it seemed so important to everyone around me that I be properly religious. I could never really reconcile religious teachings with, well, reality, but I tried to fit in and thought I believed.

I remember very vividly when I was ten years old: like a bolt out of the blue, suddenly I realized, "Wait a minute! This is all a bunch of CRAP!" And from that point on, I was an atheist.

At the time when I was ten, I actually thought Jesus was just another elaborate adult hoax like Santa and the easter bunny.

[Az]

29. Santa and the Easter Bunny aka The Skeptic's Starter Kit

The trouble of course is that Santa's absense and the Easter Bunny can be demonstrated. Someone is there to fess up to their supposed actions. There is no such demonstrable refutation of god. So there is no one there to fess up to the story and no reason to stop believing other than whatever skepticism you build up on your own.

[lazarus]

34. actually

I have more evidence that Santa Claus exists than I do that God exists.

:D

[OrwellwasRight]

30. "god answers all prayers"

"ask and ye shall receive"

"god punishes those who disobey his laws"

What a crock of shit.

The liars and cheaters become President and the honest, kind people get screwed.

Fuck it.

I decided to be good because it is right to be good, not to please any "all-powerful" sumthin-sumthin whose actions are completely uncorrelated to my good acts.

[immoderate]

31. I think I had natural immunity.

My parents were Jewish lite. I don't remember ever being taken in by it. I do remember the disapproval of my grandparents when at about 5 years old I said I didn't believe in god. "You shouldn't say that. It's a sin." My grandmother said. that was my introduction to the concept of sin, which are things that you do that are somehow bad even though they don't hurt anybody.

The culture I grew up in, a Jewish suburb of NYC, was much more oriented to education than religion. Science was especially prized, and each adolescent boy was encouraged to have a "laboratory" like Tom Swift.

Strangely, one of my first favorite books was of Bible stories. I loved those tales of the supernatural, which lead to a long time interest in science fiction. Funny, I don't read a lot of science fiction any more because most of the things I liked have become reality, like personal communicators, rocket travel, singing birthday cards, etc.

--IMM

[leftofthedial]

32. the creation myth

as soon as I knew the first thing about dinosaurs, the fossil record and geology, I could tell the genesis myth was a load of crap. Then all the religious people in my life did back flips tryng to rationalize it to me.

[politicat]

33. That girls were somehow inferior to boys.

Grew up Catholic. The whole Priests/Nuns dichotomy hit hard, and the fact that I could not grow up to be a priest if that's what I wanted. So even though I considered the convent, it was a sticking point for me.

I considered the convent because I grew up on military bases and in small, neo-con towns in NE Arizona. Not good places to be an assertive, freethinking feminist, and the men in both environments can just be royal asshats. (I'm positive there were good ones, but the majority had serious problems with testosterone overdoses.) As a late teenager, being pretty misopenile (a new word my friend made up that means a person who hates men since misanthropist is taken...) a good, liberal, liberation theology convent in Tucson seemed better than dealing with men for the rest of my life. Until I found out that priests and bishops were allowed on grounds. And later that year, I discovered girls. :evilgrin:

Pcat

[Biased Liberal Media]

37. YES!!!! I hated that!!!!

[Taxloss]

35. I knew decent and loving people who were not Christian.

My chaplain could not answer the question "will they go to hell?"

I wasn't born into Xtianity, I converted into it from atheism.

[Biased Liberal Media]

36. Not really faith...but something else...Why men were so above women??

I saw so much sexism in my old church. I was brought up non-denominational, born-again Xian. The men expected their wives to stay at home, have a shitload of children, expected that they be put first before anything or anyone else. Not only that but automatically boys were allowed to win games over the girls all the time in Sunday school. What a crock huh??

I also was questioning why it was okay to be so anti-abortion especially in the cases of rape or molestation. It disgusted me and I removed myself from the church when I was 16.

[gottaB]

38. the divinity of the Nazarene

Before I was old enough to seriously question immaculate conception, the claim to be the Son of God struck me as remarkable.

As a wee small lad I wondered about the Antichrist, and how I would be able to distinguish him from the Christ. What if I opened my heart to Jesus, but the Antichrist walked in? A figure, standing right there, darkening my door. You're not going to pray your way out of this one. You're on your own, kiddo.

That didn't totally destroy my faith, but it led me to a more mystical and existential relationship with the divine. From there I have gradually been able to free myself from the manacles of religious dogma.

[Kolesar]

39. Lord have mercy on my wretched being

This was not so much an issue that made me question religion, but one that set me off. I was a compliant and meek child and would go to mass or catechism and be told that I must attone for all the rotten things I did. That is a terrible message for young grade schooler.

Years later, I realized that my type of Christianity was basically fucked up. I would go to other churches and they had these embroidered banners that said "LOVE". I had no idea how to put that together with being a subject of god's wrath. This stupid Christian concept has taken me years to shuck off and make right in my psyche. I guess my grief is a restatement of Trotsky's "original sin" critique.

[kslib]

40. kind of long

but this looks like the right place for it....

My mom was the church music director (in a small town), and I LOVED church when I was little. Our pastor told stories to us during part of the sermon, and bible school was crafts and singing (which I adored), and I got to sing solos sometimes, and wear pretty dresses and hear stories, I loved those stories. I remember being a little disturbed to hear "secular" rock with "bad words" coming out of car sterios in the parking lot right after church, but didn't give it too much thought. I made our family have a birthday cake for Jesus on Christmas, because, I said, that was what we believed (even though everyone just wanted to open presents, and eat). So, hypocrisy was the first issue with me, I guess.

Then, something happened at the church, and my mom didn't do the music anymore. I was in about 5th grade, and we stopped going to church in town, and went to a charismatic church. No stories, just a lot of speaking in tongues, and fainting, that kind of thing. And in children's church, we didn't get the love your neighbor, golden rule kind of stories. Instead we were regaled with tales of gnashing teeth, and scary stuff about hell. Things that would happen if you didn't believe. How to spot satanic worshippers. Why Disney is a satanic cult, brainwashing kids into disbeleif. I started to have nightmares every night. We lived close to a train track, and when I heard the whistle, I'd cry because I just knew that it was the "glory train" coming to take away my parents, and that I wouldn't be able to go, because I'd forgotten to ask forgiveness for some sin.

I went to a birthday party, and they showed a video about being left behind, and I remember a little kid getting his head chopped off in a guillotine (because he wouldn't get the 666 tattooed onto his forehead), and the balloon he was holding, floating up in the air.
It was too scary, and my mom just pulled me out of church because I couldn't sleep anymore, and was reading the bible for hours and praying for at least an hour, listing every bad thought that I had, so that I wouldn't go to hell.

I really "saw the light", when I started a paper in college on how governments through the ages used religion to govern people. I was mostly thinking of the Greeks, but I started thinking about the Middle Ages, and Christianity. How the govt. used it to explain things that the science had not explained yet, and used it to control the masses. Then I realized that it was the same "faith" I had. I felt like an idiot! I'd been duped! Well, no more. If not an atheist, I'm definitely an agnostic. I still fear death, but I'm able to deal with it without resorting to blind faith. I'm not sure it there's "something" out there, but I know it isn't the "god" of religious belief. I can't believe that there's someone "up there" just checking us out, and raining judgement from the sky or even love really. It's a nice thought, I guess, but really it's just an explanation of the unknown to comfort the masses.

[NoodleBoy]

41. a video of a kid being guillotined?

what the fuck were they doing showing that at a birthday party?

[kslib]

42. Beats me.

She didn't go to my church, she was a Baptist of some sort. I remember that when one of our best friend's father died (I think we were in 7th or 8th grade), she told the girl that her dad was going to hell because he was Catholic. That was the end of the friendship for me, previously we had been inseperable.

I also remember that her mom got mad at me because I woke her up that night (it was a sleepover) crying and asking her if I needed to get saved again. Damned fundies! :)

Now, she's married to this guy from high school because they got pregnant (before marriage). She was just odd, very odd.

[NoodleBoy]

43. that's pretty fucked up, glad you got away from that

[trotsky]

44. Wow

I look back on my religious experience and I realize I got NOTHING compared to what people like you had to endure. Congratulations to you for snapping out of it and freeing yourself.

[luzdeluna]

45. It started with Santa Claus!

I was raised by Irish catholics and sent to a catholic school at four years old.

For some reason they skipped me past kindergarten and put me directly into first grade.

Being a terrified little kid who had never been to school before, I kept my mouth shut and my ears open in order to survive socially.

One day all of these six year olds in my class were talking in a nonchalant manner about Santa being a myth. At first my mind fought the facts. Then I suddenly understood that Santa and Christmas really was a big lie.

I can remember it as if it were yesterday...my four year old brain when directly to god and applied the same criteria. This caused an uproar in my home and at school. Everyone had a try at putting my faith back together again but it was over for me from that day on.

ldl