only other fits the bill, the others not only were not my reason for losing faith, and not only were they not in play in my life regardless of whether they were the cause, "losing faith" does not accurately describe what happened to me.

first i'll start with the general and then i'll drill down to myself.

if bad things happening was a legitimate reason to lose faith, religion would have fallen by the wayside eons ago. i think faith is often a coping mechanism for people to deal with bad things, not something people give up when life turns ugly.

how can there be proof god doesn't exist? there would also have to be proof the tooth fairy doesn't exist. it's a nonissue.

religious people doing bad things doesn't redound to the deity of their choice unless that deity reveals itself and confirms the order. besides, my cats are atheists and they are sometimes naughty.

okay now for me: i was raised as a secular jew. judaism itself relies very little on actual faith as christians know it. there is no basic "shut up and pray" thing going on. questioning is a natural part of judaism. some of the best chassidic stories involve humans having arguments with god! so there was no "faith" for me to lose, per se. what happened was that i found out that what i had been told, and believed, about a completely different matter was wrong, and i decided to reexamine all the things i took for granted. as i like to say, god went out the window pretty early on. there was no trauma involved. i didn't need a reason. i'm not mad at god (or oliver twist or golem, but if you see that tooth fairy, you tell her she owes me!) nothing HAPPENED. i just realized i'd been told there was a god and that just clearly wasn't so. it was as simple as that.

g

p.s. i am sorry i keep picking on the tooth fairy. it's just so easy!