Ex-Christians/Muslims/JWs et al - Why Did You Stop Believing? (Buddhist, Buddha)

[TroutDude]

I was born and raised in a strict Catholic household in the 50s and 60s. My father, an ex-Seminarian, was Chairman of the local Catholic School Board. I was taught by nuns until my third year of high school. I served as an altar boy for several years and assisted at hundreds of Masses as well as several weddings and funerals.

I stopped believing around the age of 15. My reason for leaving the Church (and Christianity) wasn't dramatic. I simply came to realize that the world around me made sense - and the world of the bible/Christianity did not.

It was that simple for me.

What circumstance(s) led you away from an organized belief system?

[Pleroo]

I was born and raised in a strict Lutheran household. My father was a pastor, my grandfather and uncles and cousins and siblings were pastors and Lutheran educators. I went to a Lutheran school for 10 years. I married a Lutheran and we lived the Lutheran life for 20 years.

I was in my 40s before I figured out the bible was not the "inerrant, infallible word of God". I'd been indoctrinated with the belief that if the bible wasn't infallible there was no reason to believe God even exists. Being the sincere, conservative Lutheran I was, and having fully bought all I was taught, I obediently stopped believing in God at that point.

Now, I've returned to a belief in God that is considerably different than it once was, on all levels, but not to any "organized belief system".

[TRANSPONDER]

While I can say that belief in the validity of organized religions, their personal gods and Holy Books is false, I cannot be so definite about a 'God' of some sort. I don't believe in it myself and reason that there are other explanations, but it was a reasonable 'God -gap' while organized religion doesn't.

I reckon you non -religious God -believers are still on our side, though the idea might not commend itself to you.

[mordant]

For me, it was really the accumulated burden of cognitive dissonance as it became more and more evident that the Real World does not operate anything like Fundy World. My first wife went progressively insane despite the best in fervent intercessory prayer and Bible-based counseling. My second wife died of a rare neuro-immune disease and various baroque complications therefrom, in about as slow and miserable a fashion as possible, despite everything that both the church and modern medicine could bring to bear. My oldest brother, a non-smoking church elder, died of bone cancer. My 82 year old mother died in a car accident. From the age of 12 to about 47, I was crippled by disease myself, the only bright spot being that the genius doctor who could not save my 2nd wife managed to totally cure me.

By this point I figured that I need have no concern of god cursing me for not believing in him, as my life was unfolding exactly as I'd expect it to if he had already mixed up his blessing list with his cursing list, so I basically told him to bugger off and get back to me when he was ready to live up to his own billing.

A few years out of the reality distortion field that was the church, I realized that there was no god to get back to me on anything, and suddenly my entire life made much more sense. Besides, by then it had improved 1000% anyway.

[Joe90]

Church was huge for me as a kid, although I'm not sure if I ever believed. I did think JC was generally a cool dude though. I think even as a kid, I tended to be skeptical about outrageous claims, but I think boredom may have been an even bigger factor in my disbelief.

Leaving was a non event, with many elders saying the spirit was never in me (I preferred to say the force was weak), but also saying that I would be back one day.

[sanspeur]

Religion held too many unanswered or unanswerable questions for me.

[Rider's Pantheon]

Religion was not a big thing in my early life. I was not baptized until I was 23. I was curious about the Holy spirit. I read that Jesus got himself baptized, so I tried it. About 2 weeks after I got baptized in a Methodist church, I went into a deep meditation, and I experienced a very dramatic spiritual awakening. After that my Chakras lit up very bright one at a time for a couple weeks at a time, I started to experience one prophetic, lucid dream after another, and I also experienced a totem animal, the Raven/Crow. It was a very profound, dramatic spiritual awakening that would take too long to go into. I soon found the Tibetan Book Of The Dead at the library(pre-internet) while researching lucid dreaming, and immediately connected with it. I didn't go to Jesus until 9 months after that. I have been living like a priest/monk all my life. Celibate, and living simply and small. Fast forward almost 20 years, I discovered my ministry. I had a calling to go online as the Rider from Rev19 and throw Muhammad into the lake of fire, when my attention turned to Moses, as he is just as evil as Muhammad, and it all unraveled as I soon realized that Jesus is a big reason why Muhammad and Moses's false "God" of terrorism influences the globe. What is just as bad as Satan, is someone performing miracles, and expressing love on his behalf, which Jesus does, as well as Moses and Muhammad. Jesus is probably worse than the two false prophets as far as spreading YHWH's (Allah's)evil. Over the years debating religion has made me more and more far eastern/Tibetan Buddhist. The Tibetan Book Of The Dead blows the Bible clear out of the water, morally speaking. I used to have Jesus in Heaven as my go-to guy. I have replaced him with every other deity from all other religions of the world (Mostly Buddha). Actually, I am at the point where whenever I show any kind of appreciation for Jesus in any way, I then suffer the consequence of loving a ***** as a *****. Knowing the evil Jesus ignores and the evil he influences means my conscience, and my God will not allow me to pass on that evil as he did. I need to go on and do what Jesus did not do, and throw Moses and his false God into that Lake of fire where they righteously belong. Had Jesus done what I am doing, Islam, along with a LOT of horrible evils would have never existed. Jesus is responsible for it all to come about.