Why Not Belief?

I thought it might be an interesting counterpoint to Dan's thread asking believers what their experiences were that caused them to adopt their beliefs, if I opened a thread for the non-believers (or non-inerrantists, for that matter) to "witness" why they don't believe. After all, the True Believer's (TM) have numerous threads discussing this subject from their perspective. Why not the True Non-Believers (pat pend)? There were a couple of very interesting side comments from Schraf, Mammuthus and Crash on Dan's thread. Maybe we could expand them here. I don't know if it's been done here before.Was there any one specific thing, experience, or moment when you deconverted? What were the causative factors, if any?Mine:I'm afraid I don't have any deep philosophical or metaphysical explanations. I freely confess that I was never a True Christian (TM). I was raised in a very non-judgemental "suburban Christian" family. I attended church regularly (Old Rite Episcopalian/Anglican), with the whole confirmation/first communion thing. I was even an altar boy, briefly. However, I think I went only under childhood duress (I liked sleeping in, and no one could ever explain to me why the heck I had to get up and go to church on Sunday). My parents felt it was a social thing, and were lukewarm at best, I assume. I never really had anything to deconvert from, as it were. Over time, as I matured and became interested in science, the whole supernatural aspect slowly faded away as I learned to take nature as it was, not as I wished it to be. Experience has not led me back in that direction - rather reinforced my original thoughts on the subject. So my becoming a-theist was more an "evolutionary" rather than "revolutionary" process. How 'bout it? Anyone else?

Hi Q,
What you describe is similar for me. I was baptized as a Catholic, my Dad is protestant. We went to Catholic mass most Sunday's where I proceeded mostly to fall asleep and wait to socialize with the other kids afterwards. Had a few really funny priests and a couple of bores...even played trumpet at a christmas mass...I started getting into science fiction first when I was around 8 or 9..gradually became more interested in how things really worked than fantasy. My parents are both academics so were not exactly hard core religious right types to begin with and were not too upset when at 10 I said the whole church thing was not for me since I thought that the same butt heads that I saw other days did not seem to be improved by standing around talking to a non-responsive diety...actually, after I stopped going..so did they... Started into biology in junior high..had a couple of really top notch teachers ended up continuing with it to this day....all the supernatural blah blah just became less and less relevant to me as I got older so like you, it was evolutionary rather than revolutionary....however, when I meet the over the top carpet chewing fundies from time to time who claim to be the only ones who "know" who or what the "true" god(s) is/are and everyone else does not, it certainly colors religion for me as not merely irrelevant but distasteful...fortunately the vast majority of believers that I have met personally are not like this at all...makes one think maybe we CAN all coexist peacefully if it is only an unruly minority causing all the problems.

Quetzal,From a very early age I was always interested in how things worked. I use to pry things open just to see their innards and to try and figure out what made them tick. (A minor drawback was of course that after I'd finished with something, any further ticking was usually out of the question.)Through my experience of dissecting things it slowly dawned on me that, if you fiddle with something long enough, you'll always find a rational explanation for why it does or doesn't work. And also that, sometimes, if you fiddle with something too long, a tiny but essential part of it will ping into one of the corners of the room, never to be seen again.Then there were church and bible lessons. Well, what can I say? What I heard there seemed like a lot of baloney, right from the first moment I consciously thought about it. Of course, before a certain age you don't question what your parents and other adults tell you. After all, they said Santa would bring presents, and it's presents I got, so it had to be true, right? Little did they know that by the time they admitted Santa wasn't real, I was quite used to drawing my own conclusions. Obviously, God was in the same league as Santa.The rest of primary school bible teaching was just a waste of the teacher's time, as far as I was concerned. Oh, I loved the miracles, the bloodshed and the tumbling of walls and all that, but my mind was teflon for the theological implications of it all.The story of Galvani's frog leg experiment in high school biology class was the clincher: biology was just mechanics. Well, sort of anyway. And physics and chemistry classes didn't do much good either for the religious teaching that still went on.Just prior to graduation I had a tremendous argument with one of the deans about my not attending Monday morning prayer. I said it was just the same old wish list every time, God please give us this and God please don't do that. He was not amused but said I could stay away from these sessions, provided I'd use the time for studying purposes. Not such a bad chap after all, this dean.Well, that's my story.

Might as well toss mine in...My father is half-Catholic, half-Protestant, and was raised in Ireland in the 50s. He didn't come out of it with any great love of organized religion. My mother is Jewish, but not practicing.So basically, I was raised with knowledge of all three religions, and the statement, "you wanna believe in any of these, go nuts. You wanna believe in Buddhism, Islam, any belief system at all, go ahead. If you don't believe in any of them, don't feel like you have to."So... yeah. I read up on a lot of religions, but without the pre-existing supposition that any specific one of them was true.And working from that stance, none of them seemed to leap out at me as TRUE. All of them had nice bits and pieces that could be strip-mined as general advice for life, but after all was said and done, I wound up with more of a personal philosophy than a religion.1) Don't be a dick.2) It doesn't matter if God is there or not. Don't be a dick.

I was raised by a Catholic mother and a Buddhist father. I was dragged to Church on Sundays, I was baptized as an infant, had my first communion, and went to catechism for way too many years. Then every other week, I went to the Buddhist temple - they had GREAT food!! I can't remember a time when I didn't sit in Church and think it was all a bunch of huey. I did believe in god, but only because that's all I knew. That's what I was supposed to do. So I said my prayers and talked to god like the good kid that I was. Once I was old enough to understand what it meant to be a Buddhist, that my father didn't believe in god, I realized that according to the church, he was going to hell.The father who was better than any other father I had ever heard of, who loved my mom more than life itself and told her he loved her everyday, who tucked us into bed and kissed us every night, was going to hell??? NO! That was not possible, god would never do that to good people. Once this realization hit me, my deconversion started.In addition, I was always a science nut. I decided to be an anthropologist in the second grade and I still have the severely worn books my parents gave me as a young child - astronomy, earth science, biology. I always knew I would be a scientist. History also always fascinated me, especially the history of the earth and of human development. Learning science accelerated my deconversion.Since my early teens, religion had not been a part of my life, but it wasn't until I started getting involved in messageboards and discussing religion that I found I was no longer a Christian. I considered myself agnostic for a time (I had never heard that word until about three years ago!). The more I thought about it, however, the more I realized that I emphatically did not believe *GOD* was a possibilty. Discussing religion completed my deconversion.My non-theism was an inevitability that progressed slowly and quietly, but once I realized what had happened, it WAS "revolutionary." [This message has been edited by roxrkool, 08-26-2003][This message has been edited by roxrkool, 08-26-2003]

Let's see...I was raised a Catholic. My father was an "Easter & Christmas" attendant to Church, but my mother went every single Sunday along with all of the kids.I also attended twelve long years of Sunday School which were exceedingly boring. Church was also exceedingly boring.I saw no benefit to going to Sunday School but I knew without even asking that I had no option but to do what I was told. That's the way my family worked.I was a casual believer in God for a long time, but took what they were telling me in Chrurch with a grain of salt. The basic morality was good but I carried around a lot of guilt and shame, particularly regarding sexuality, for a long time. My mother and father are very much a product of their times so we had no discussion about sex, relationships, etc. All I knew was that masturbation was a terrible sin and that sex before marriage was even worse.My mother caught me reading a romance novel once when I was 13 and she FREAKED OUT. Called me dirty and everything. The funny thing was that I was pretty naieve about sex at that point but terribly curious; the parents weren't fothcoming at all, so the book was a way to figure things out a little. I basically learned that I was VERY BAD to be interested in such things.By the time I left for college I would call myself a casual believer in God and the basic Christian principles. However, I began to flesh out at this time the vage realizations of the disconnection I had been noticing between what they said believing in this religion was supposed to do for you and what I was actually experienceing in my life.My mother went to church every Sunday, but she was still miserable, and my father didn't go at all, and he was still miserable. I began to think that following a religion had little to do with how happy one was or how well one treated other people.At this time I stopped going to church while I was at college. I was scared that something bad would happen, but it never did. Nothing at all changed except that I had more time.Eventually I met the man who was to become my husband, and he told me about his agnosticism, and it all made total sense to me. I realized that the farther away from religion I got, the happier and more peaceful and kinder I became. I also became more and more interested in science and nature, and also skepticism, and the last vestiges of "ghosts and gods" fell away from my mind.

Hi Quetzal,I was raised by a very fundamental Christian woman and a pretty lukewarm man. For my first two years or so, I didn't go to church much. I remember this because I remember the day it wwas announced that we were to become church-goers. It struck me with horror. For a couple of years we went to a Pentecostal church run by a televangelist my mom liked and whose name I can't remember, but then settled into a local Southern Baptist congregation. I was definitely a believer. I couldn't think no-god thoughts. Even so, I knew something was not right. I had questions, and I was given answers that made no sense even to a seven year old who still believed in Santa Claus. By thirteen or fourteen, I started investigating other religions. I was still a believer in God, but was becoming less sure that I believed in the right one. Eventually, probably around fifteen, I made a pact with myself-- some may call it a nervous breakdown-- and screamed at God that I would find him or find the truth about him. And so began more than a decade of obsessive study and reflection, and caused my entry into college as a student of Philosophy and Anthropology. Eventually I realized that my question, "Which God?", could not be answered. That allowed the question, "Is God?'. I could find no reason to think so. And here we are.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

I was a True Christian (TM); I even had a 'talking to god' experience.I was raised in a highly Christian family, although fortunately not a fundamentalist one (both my parents have PhDs in Zoology, my dad was a biology lecturer - my mum is now an ordained priest in the Church of England). We were not baptised as children as my parents thought it should be by personal choice (I'm English, and infant baptism is standard practice in the CoE and Methodist churches we attended). When I was about eight or nine and my siblings were a bit older, we decide we should be baptised as that's what Jesus said we should do.At this time, and throughout my early years, I certainly believed in god but I was not particularly fervent about my beliefs. In my teenage years, my siblings and I started going to a Baptist church in a nearby town. It was much more evangelical than those I had been raised with. A group called British Youth For Christ (BYFC) ran regular Christian meetings which I attended. We also went to Spring Harvest (big Christian meet held at several sites in england) a few times. All these organisations were considerably more fundamentalist than I was used to, and for the first time I encountered those that actually believed in a literal interpretation of Genesis - thankfully I was educated enough by that time to think them rather silly.My brothers and my sister became born again Christians around this time, along with many of my friends. One of my brothers even spent a year as a Christian youth worker in London (none of the group he did this with are still Christians, I think he's an atheist these days - but I'm not sure). Still I stayed away from evangelism, and becoming 'born again' for a year or so. But, during one BYFC weekend away, they had they're usual 'conversion push' at the end of the weekend. I remember sitting there listening to them going on, thinking 'yeah, right' when a strange thing happened. I had one was almost a conversion experience. I remember breaking out in a cold sweat, and feeling the presence of god, and knowing I was going to say 'yes' this time and become 'born again'.And then? Well, I did a bit more of the evangelical bit, going on March For Jesus handing out flyers, even doing street theater - you know the kind that Christians (and me at the time) feel is real meaningful, but anyone outside the faith remains singularly unimpressed by. I also started reading the bible and prayed every night. I was about fifteen or sixteen at this time. Reading the bible started putting holes in my faith from the very beginning. By the time I stopped reading I had read two thirds of the old testament, some four or five hundred pages of very dull text depicting a god who was absolutely nothing like the god I believed in. I'd also read nearly all the new testament which was at least a little closer, even if Paul was a wanker, but has nothing there to distinguish it from fiction. All the while hearing nonsense excuses from the other faithful in response to any question "You're keeping your god in a box", "God moves in mysterious ways", etc. All the nice neat cop outs one would expect from those guarding something that wasn't true, and their dumb acceptance of Genesis as literal with stupid "I didn't swing out of the trees as a monkey" one-liners and downright lies (the kind that get trotted out at AiG and TrueOrigins all the time) to back them up. I found nothing in the world around me, nor in the world I heard about in Newspapers and on TV to make think there was a god, and no holes in the natural world that needed a God-of-the-gaps. I found no answers to my prayers, and no meaningful guidance from my peers.Still, I'd met god, how could I disbelieve in him? As it happens I get mild hallucinations very occasionally. I got them most, and worse, towards the end of high school. One day I realised something, there was no difference between them and my experience of god! I believe now it was simply a self-created fantasy, brought on by the pressure-cooker atmosphere of the weekend, and peer pressure. Discussing it with Christian friends at the time of the experience, I am led to believe that their experiences differ in no meaningful way from mine. I still went to church for a while longer, it was what I did on a Sunday, my parents expected it and I had a massive crush on one of the girls who went - although I no longer sung the hymns. Eventually I stopped that too, and began working out my new world view without a god.It feels much, much better. No longer is there a daily struggle trying to fit reality into what I believe, no longer do I contend with a fractured 'faithful' who hold lies as tenants of faith. I find the concept of a purposeless universe so much more satisfying, and so much more liberating. Now I choose my course, not struggle to find what course god has charted for me. Now I act on what I believe is right, not on what I will be rewarded or punished for. Now life is Life, all we have, not some talent contest for the real thing that comes after death.Atheism rocks.

Ny parents are members of the United Reformed Church (previously Congregationalists) and are deeply involved in the social and religious life of their church (and to a lesser extent the previous church they went to). Although they are not especially demonstrative there is no doubting their faith. I never even encountered the idea of Biblical inerrancy as a doctrine.For me the trigger event was having to seriously think about Confirmation and coming to the conclusion that I could not honestly go through with it.The things that lead me to this conclusion are - in order of importance:The Bible - especially the Old Testament with so much that is contary t the God of Love I was taught.Learning about other religions at school - although the RE teacher was an Anglican minister he made no attempt to propagandise or attack the other religions. It was there that it really hit me that other people really did seriously believe in other religions.Increasing skepticism. I was also reading up on fringe and occult topics - at that time very superficially. Von Daeniken, UFO's, astrology, palmistry, tarot cards (the minister was also reading the fringe books) and finding out that much of it was rubbish. and Christianity didn't seem to be much better.

Many thanks everyone for the replies! This is wonderful - and exactly what I was hoping for. Fascinating stories, not only for the histories, but also for the opportunity to get to know a bit about the people behind the usernames.Since my brain tends to work this way (sorry everyone), I can't let data go by without some kind of analysis. Although the sample size is a bit small (n=9) to determine trends, there appears to be one interesting thread weaving throughout. In spite of great differences in upbringing, culture, early religious experience, etc, there appears to be a significant difference in how people went from belief --> no belief versus what occurs going the other way. Mr. J's "born-again" conversion story is quite consistent with many I've heard. Becoming "born-again" appears to be the result of a one-time or short series of intense experiences, whereas deconverting (if I can use that term) seems to be more the result of longer term thought, study, training and experience. No one thus far appears to have had a one-shot experience. Hmmm, curiouser and curiouser. Nothing like validating your preconceptions... Again, many many thanks to all who've responded.Note to PaulK: I also flirted briefly with Von Daniken (about two or three years, I think). Heavily influenced by Chariots of the Gods which I read at age 13 or 14. It never took hold because shortly after I first read it I stumbled across Skeptical Inquirer magazine (at the time, going under the name of Zeitetic), which in the very first issue I read had a thorough and completely factual debunking of Chariots. I was instantly deconverted from Von Danikenism (I've been a subscriber to SI ever since - over 25 years now). For some reason, I still like New Age music, however. Go figure...