Formerly Religious People Explain What Made Them Leave Their Faith

For many people, religion is something they were born into. Their parents took them to their own house of worship and required them to participate in their faith.

But in increasing numbers, young people are leaving religion behind.

Reddit user dailyIT asked:

"People who grew up religious, what took you away from religion?"

Dysfunction

"Realizing that my family had given religion the responsibility of tearing me down as a child and it worked."

"That, followed by the ongoing attempt to rebuild/mold me, I was turned all the way off of it. I didn't and cannot empathize with the religious mindset about 'sin' or telling children they are basically trash human beings unless they give into the hype of something they don't understand."

"I couldn't get past how bad it felt to have religious people tell me over and over how the devil this and the devil that whenever I made a mistake or had a bad dream or whatever."

~ CynnaWolf

There Can Be Only One

"I remember the exact moment. I was walking through secondary school and just had an epiphany."

"There are loads of people here with lots of different beliefs, why is one more correct than the others?"

"It can’t be, so what is the point? Just don’t be a jerk and you’ll be fine."

~ Ebio_Amisi

No H8

"When Prop 8 [outlawing same-sex marriage] was on the ballot, my church went hard anti-LGBTQ+."

My best friend was LGBTQ+."

"I chose love of them over some manky old book of magic."

~ greeed

Rotten At The Core

"Ex Mormon here. I used to stay trying to convince myself that the people were the problem and the church itself was still 'perfect' (common Mormon idea)."

"I’ve since come to appreciate just how abusive and harmful the institution itself is—and how it manipulates mostly good people to be judgmental and less empathetic. I honestly believe most Mormons are wonderful people trying very hard to be good."

"The LDS church takes advantage of that and uses it to convince people 'being good' looks like giving 10% of your income to the church and being unquestionably loyal to the institution."

~ CubsFanHan

Politics

"Pushing their political beliefs onto their congregation."

"You wonder why America is so screwed up, it's because our pastors preach politics instead of morality."

"If an Evangelical Chrisitan met Jesus, they would throw a fit over how woke he is."

~ steffie-flies

Judge Not

"One of my good friends throughout high school was really involved with the Catholic church. She volunteered, she helped with teen masses, she sung in the choir, everyone knew her."

"The first year out of high school, she got pregnant with her son, and everyone in the church—the same people who knew her since she was 12—completely shunned her."

"She kept her son, didn’t consider anything to the contrary and wanted to raise him in the church but was completely ignored and tossed aside when she said she wasn’t marrying the father."

"She was heartbroken and her whole world was rocked because so much of her life was devoted to the church. They couldn’t see past her out of wedlock 'mistake'."

"That’s when I realized the people who were supposed to be this spiritual family were horrible people. So much judgment and condemnation, they spoke horribly about her even after she stopped going."

"At that point more than a few of us left the church around the same age who knew her and other than the occasional wedding and funeral, I haven’t been back."

~ Ube_Ape

Super Spreaders

"When COVID happened, a close family member of mine who had cancer died from COVID. We went to the same church, although at this point I was starting to back away from religion."

"Anyway, what really solidified my decision to fully, completely drop out was when I found out that multiple members of the church visited my sick with cancer family member while they knew they had COVID, hugged them, touched them, went to their house multiple times, etc..."

"This (obviously) led to my family member being infected and dying, considering, you know, the cancer."

"When they died, all the church went to the funeral and kept saying how 'they were such a fighter' and 'only God knows why he took them from us so early' and literally didn’t think or acknowledge that they were at fault."

"Really pissed me off and I’ve never looked back since."

~ zuchinniblade

Hell

"When I finally went to college and met the 'heathens' and 'unbelievers' I was warned about, they turned out be more loving, compassionate, and kind than anyone I had grown up with. They knew the meaning of loving your neighbor."

"I figured if God was really a loving God, he wouldn't condemn all these incredible people (who were actually following the ways of Jesus more than sky 'Christians' I knew) to hell just because they didn't happen to be born into the crazy sect of religion I was."

"Things didn't make sense anymore."

~ teach_yo_self

No Girls Allowed

"What did it for me was my 8th grade 'confirmation' in my religious private school. My small class had to give short presentations to the church elders to become official members of the church congregation."

"One of the girls in my class gave a presentation on how she wanted to grow up to become a pastor."

"Well, that apparently wasn't right in the eyes of God or—more likely—the church elders, because she was promptly told that only men could be pastors, but she could go on to do other stuff within the church that would align with her status as a female."

"That's what prompted my 13-year-old self to start questioning everything I knew up to that point."

"A child of God turned away from wanting to spread his word? Even my young self knew that was complete bullsh*t."

~ DisposableVisage

Love To Hate

"They say I love everybody, and then they hate everybody who believes differently/is different from them."

~ Lopsided_Bench9654

Hypocrisy

"The icing on the cake was when we went over different religions in my (Christian) school, and both the teacher and students started laughing at Buddhism because it was 'so silly' that they believed a man sat under a tree and then 'magically' knew the secrets of the universe."

"I asked the teacher 'but we believe a virgin gave birth to the son of god, he was killed, and then rose from the dead. Isn’t that equally as silly?'."

"Needless to say I got detention for that, and so did my belief in god."

~ PennilessPirate

No Questions Allowed

"I was told not to question God, because I was trying to ask for clarity about things that don't make sense."

~ vin_oduor

And The Number One Reason To Leave Religion...

"Religious people."

~ schonleben

"There is a famous quote from Steven Weinberg: 'Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion'."

~ chunkyloverfivethree

"Nothing ruins Christianity like Christians."

~ DingGratz

Have you left your parents religion? What happened?