When did you start doubting your born-into faith?

[Muagan_ra]

(Obviously, ardent life-time believers need not knacker the proceedings of this thread with affirmations of faith and trivial, aimless debate - doubt I can do much about that, though.)


I've just been thinking recently about the point at which I really started to view the "faith" of my Catholic culture in a critical way, and I remember it very clearly indeed, thought it might jog up some memories. I should preface by saying that I'm not talking about the time your dog died and you started hating God, but nothing more than your earliest memory of taking a different view to things. Assuming you where raised to be religious in the first place!

For me it was that Disney film, (the?) Exodus, when I couldn't have been older than 11 - "Let my people go!" and all that. I remember enjoying it, but I was puzzled by it all, because I'd always been taught (as most children in moderate or liberal Christian communities are) that most important of ideas that 'God loves us'.

I remember asking my Mum why it was that the same God who 'loved all of us equally' didn't seem all that bothered inflicting the Ten Plagues on the people of Egypt.

That question wasn't doubtfull, it was earnest asked, but what struck me was the distinct lack of an answer on my mothers part! I remember her simply not saying anything, even after thinking about it rather carefully! 'I don't really know...'

[Squiggle]

[My born into faith was just a general kind of Deism]

Probably 15ish, I watched a video extolling proofs for Christianity, and started to worry that I was on the wrong side of things, and had been taunting something Holy, my whole life, out of ignorance.

[Muagan_ra]

Any chance your change of heart was coloured mostly by, shall we say, age appropriate rebellious inclinations?

[Squiggle]

Any chance your change of heart was coloured mostly by, shall we say, age appropriate rebellious inclinations?

Have you ever read C.S lewis conversion to Christianity? If you havent, he basically sets a scene where he converts kicking, screaming and struggling like a child. That applies to me rather well.

[Muagan_ra]

I only ask because my adolescent "athiest" phase was very much coloured by that general principal.

[Voodo chile]

raised roman catholic. Generally believe in most of what they say solely because some of the parts of the religion are just part of my nature. Help others, poor people, forgive people etc. Dont agree with everything though. Still classified as catholic. I'm more of a theist. A general statement i suppose. Started doubting sometime around the start of highschool maybe.

I do believe there is a supreme being/s. I dont really follow any religious rules seriously. So basically i've got my own set of "moral values" but i also dont hold them very strongly. I believe it is alright to steal but who you steal from why you steal and what you steal change it completely
Steal 50 dollars from bill gates so you can buy some food so you dont starve then i say good on you. If bill gates relys on a machine in order to live and you steal if from him so you can buy total war shogun 2 then i will frown upon you because you have stolen something extremely important and for your 'lusts'.Many people may disagree with me but that's just me, my decisions arnt based on disiplined beliefs and change according to the situation. If a guy gets woken up by boyracers outside everynight and negotiation doesnt work and he breaks and brings out the bat then i wouldn't send him to jail. If he killed them i would send him to jail because he went to far. Normally the guy would go to jail or at least get a fine for harming people.

Because of this i would hate to have this idea enforced because it is easily exploited and you would probably only be able to run it in small communities.

. I dont really worship anything. Basically you could say i'm just a friendly human being. I'm just not into devoting time into religious ceremonies and practices and i just think our time can be better spend doing other things.

[Lord Romanus III]

I always dislike churches and the people there, but that had nothing to do with religion. I was a Christian of sorts that did not believe in any hell, only that there as a God and he loved everyone. My friend snapped me out of my ignorance by arguing atheistic ideas with me when I was about 15. By 16, I was a firm non believer.

[Helm]

Probably when I was 12 or or something along those lines, not that I was born into a faith but I was taught a little bit of Christianity at school, I tended to think that was just something that happened in real history and I didn't think much of it. At some point I picked up a book on atheism written by a former Blue Peter presenter in the school libary and I was surprised to find out that it may not have been real history after all but was really just what something people believed to be real history because they liked the idea of it for certain reasons, and that made sense. So there wasn't much of a rebellious phase there I just slipped into it it without thinking much about it at the time. I didn't actually call myself an atheist until many years later though as it wasn't something I really thought about or discussed with anyone in any real depth at that point, I probably still had some level of belief in the supernatural such as ghosts and psychic powers and things because I was a big fan of the X-Files at the time, and Warhammer 40K of course, you have the Warp there full of souls and psychic energies, the gods of Chaos and other general coolness.

Full blown science didn't kick in until I studied the subject at college. And full blown atheism only kicked in once I started arguing with believers on Internet forums, it was only at the point I had something substantially religious to react against. So it came about gradually through a series of subtle stages since the end of childhood there wasn't really a big dramatic moment, unless you count that Blue Peter book but I would have found out there were other beliefs in the world at some point.

Have you ever read C.S lewis conversion to Christianity? If you havent, he basically sets a scene where he converts kicking, screaming and struggling like a child. That applies to me rather well.

I've read it and I'm not feeling the struggle. You make it sound like it's something that should happen against your will because the arguments in support of it are so convincing, I'd say the opposite is true if anything most people have to struggle to believe it. That is what faith is meant to be a struggle to keep your disbelief in something that seems a bit far fetched and unlikely at bay because they don't like what the alternative entails.

[The Dude]

I wasn't born into a faith so much, but I did attend catholic elementary school and that was enough for me to place a few major questionmarks at things at a very young age.

The concept of prayer had always seemed ridiculous to me. My family isn't so much atheist as non-theist, and as such we really don't pay any attention to religion at all. We do own a Bible, simply so that if we had any interest in such things our parents made sure we had the options available to look into them. But they never tried to persuade us in any direction.

So attending catholic elementary school was something that I wasn't really bothered with since I wasn't too sure what any of it meant until I was about 5 or so years old and flat out refused to join prayers in class. My teachers would ask me why and I'd say that it just seemed like a strange thing to do. When I was seven years old I first declared myself an atheist which lead to some strange looks from people.

[Helm]

Seven does seem a bit young to declare yourself an atheist, I probably still believed in Santa at that point.

[The Dude]

Well we have Sinterklaas instead of Santa Claus in the Netherlands and I never believed in him. At age five I had already discounted the possibility of his existence. I remember very well approaching my mom and going "you can drop the Sinterklaas charade now, I know he's not real." Not in those exact words, obviously. But you get the point. I've always been a very sceptical kid.

[Helm]

At age five I had already discounted the possibility of his existence.

I'm sure whether you were a gifted logical genius at an early age or you had a horribly restricted childhood imagination, perhaps a bit of both.

[The Dude]

It just seemed nonsensical to me to assume that a man on a white horse was trudging across rooftops with his magical spanish helping negroes who excelled in descending down chimneys. Moreso because if Sinterklaas was supposed to be this great rooftop adventurer, why were the packages always being dumped at our front door? It seemed a lot more likely, therefore, that it was our neighbour who was simply being asked to bang on the door loudly every 5th of december.

And why did the Sinterklaas on TV look fairly believable yet the one that visited our elementary school looked like a bum?

Even a five year old can understand inconsistencies and contradictions.

[Helm]

It just seemed nonsensical to me to assume that a man on a white horse was trudging across rooftops with his magical spanish helping negroes who excelled in descending down chimneys.

I like the sound of that, but I think there should be room in childhood for a little bit of magic. There's plenty of time to discover it's all complete nonsense as you gradually grow up, starting with Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and moving up through to God and religious beliefs then eventually pseudosciences, and spiritualism. Though most people don't tend to go much past the first stage there's some kernals of child like wonder and magic left in there for some reason, they're not building their lives on the foundations of unyielding despair.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I love this video, I find it satisfying for some reason.

[Jaketh]

i stopped believing that stuff when i was around 10-11 years old

[removeduser_4536284751384]

stopped believing as a catholic at 15.

and no I was never very rebellious it just seemed a bit ridiculous.

[MathiasOfAthens]

Born catholic... I honestly dont remember when but I would bet it began when my parents divorced (around 12-14) and was because of that. I dont think I became a serious atheist until college or round age 18. I still sorta believed in god at 18 but I was more of a deist. So I would say College enlightened me. My parents were catholics and we never went to church again when they split.

[tonymurphy1888]

When i was like 12 i started to find out that the catholic church actually belived in the old testemant and i just kinna went with it until i was 15 then i just fell away from attending church still believe tho silly me

[Mythos]

Around 13 I had my first doubts about the notion of an all-knowing god who cares about humans and at 15 I could realise the folly of that notion. By 16 I was atheist.

[Copperknickers II]

Basically since I began taking more of an interest in religion (more or less when I joined this forum and saw it being debated), and realised:

A - Roman Catholicism was not compatible with Darwinism, both of which I was familiar with having been raised by an Irish Catholic mother and a lecturer in biology father.

B - the more I prayed, the worse life got. I'd thank God for something only to have it taken away from me, or so it seemed. Interestingly enough I set up an altar to Ganesh the other day, and he answered one of my wishes, so maybe I'll convert to Hinduism now.