The complete hypocrisy of the church when I was a child

It was never really an issue of "questioning". As far back as I can remember, I just always felt like it was false. It made no sense to me as a kid, and the more it was forced, the more I rejected it.

There is no question.

Reason

I was a young earth creationist, fundamentalist, extremist, wacko. I read the bible more times as a teen than most Christians have read it in their lifetime. Really... Need I say more? The best way to make an atheist is to have a person read their founding document.

Oddly enough, reading the bible made me start to question things and lead to skepticism.

Common sense.

He sounded like an abusive parent and I said fuck that if he's so loving why is he a jerk?

Too many "beliefs" within the believer community that didn't add up. Their whole thing is based on a book assembled by bronze age primitives who didn't know where the sun went at night, believed the earth was flat and had no concept of earthly phenomena easiy explained today due to scientific research. I also didn't buy the circular reasoning that said the Bible is true because it says it is and that belief in supernatural and magical occurances were rationalized by claiming that we as mortals were incapable of understanding the vastness of His wisdom. Claiming something was beyond my ability to understand, but was true none the less, reeked of manipulation and self serving pseudo-logic that seemed like it's purpose was to control large groups of people through fear and promises of something with zero tangible evidence what they were promising would be delivered.

I questioned Santa Claus at 6 years. It went on from there.

I question god for the same reason I question all mythical fairy tales, and religeon would have to be the greatest fairy tale of all......Even more unlikely than " Mary had a little lamb. "

1 - ZERO, "0", answered prayer.
2 - Guilt over every "inpure" thought or deed.
3 - Absolutely no evidence in the lives of Christians I have observed, that they are in any way being influenced or controled by a "Holy Spirit".
. Conclusion: no good reason to believe in a god.

I started doubting the Bible at a very young age, around age 12. The Bible proved to be self explanitory, BS.
I didn't really start doubting the existence of a deity until around three years ago.
I finally realized that if my religion was wrong, they all might be. And I cannot separate religion from a god in my mind. A deity is nuclear for most religions. I finally gave up on the hope of afterlife, in favor of more solid things in this life, and obvious truths in front of my nose.
Man created God
Death after life.

My earliest memory as a skeptic was at age 5 when I 'called out' the Santa Clause myth to my mother, and she told me that if I didn't believe, I wouldn't get any gifts. At age 10, someone told me what an atheist was, and I instantly knew that was what I was, but I had to keep it to myself until after I left home.
I was raised as a Mormon, a transcendental religion, so there were many layers of belief in the afterlife and how those imaginary beings interact with the living every day.
I've never believed in imaginary beings.

Supernature , scripture, historicity, lack of divine intervention, plagiarism & contradictions. On a usual sceptical dismissal a critical thinker would only need one of those but the sheer amount of anomalies in religions is what makes it such an attractive target for ridicule.

i love the truth

As an adult and believer, someone said the Bible was not true stories. I was very upset with this person but couldn’t forget the comment. I started really questioning things in the Bible and realied they are just a book of short stories. They do have great stories and should definitely have received that notoriety but that’s all they are. Then when I started researching other religions and how a lot of them had some of the same “commandments” I realized that in its earliest form it was only a way to direct people and keep order. A semi form of governing people. I then remembered prayers that were answered and tried to understand this phenomenon but quickly realized that when many people have energy towards a common cause or if someone’s energy about a cause is so strong it is “answered”.

He never answered my letters.

At about the age of 15 I watched a movie that showed a primative religious cerimony and I didn't see the difference between that and what I saw in church each week. I also wondered how a god could care about the silly things they taught us to do, like how to hold our hands in church or that women had to wear hats in church.

Praying for companionship for years and nothing happened. I thought god was supose help me find a wife/partner and make the world a better place. God was suppose watch all of us, but it seems that is a big lie, based on how my adult life has turned out.

I was raised to be a Mormon. In 1989, at age 29, I decided to prove that Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, was a true prophet. That way, I could convince others to become Mormons. Taking Deuteronomy 18:20-22 as the test for a prophet, I discovered the opposite of what I started out to do. Joseph Smith had no gift for predicting the future, though he attempted to do so. He was definitely a false prophet. When I started questioning the Mormon authorities, the church excommunicated me for apostasy. Good riddance, to be free from Mormonism.

For a while I flirted with other Christian religions. Then I started putting the biblical prophets to the same test I used to disprove Joseph Smith. I studied the prophets and found false prophecy in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and others. Then I started finding multiple contradictions in the Bible. I discovered that the New Testament writers misapplied Old Testament prophecies in constructing their story of Jesus. Finally, I concluded that the Bible, like the Book of Mormon, was not divinely inspired, but written by fallible human beings.

Next, I started questioning whether God existed. I studied the question scientifically. I read many apologetics books in favor of Christianity. Many Christians offered "evidence" as well. But all the evidence I found fell apart when I examined it. I concluded that there was no God. In 1994, I uttered my last prayer, as a test. According to what I had been taught, if I cursed God, he would immediately strike me down. So I prayed, "Fuck you, God." Nothing bad happened then, and no extraordinary curse has befallen me in the decades since then. In fact, I felt joyously free. I still thank science for freeing me from religious scams.

I never believed because my parents told me it was bulls#!+but to answer the question I reevaluated it myself later in life and came to that same conclusion. After reading the Bible it became clear it wasn't true

It started with an introduction to sociology class that I took in the late 80s. Everything started unraveling after that.

The definition of God and Gods depiction and Actions in the Scriptures did not match.