janavoss wrote:
It seems like there are several people on this forum who used to be Christians (or something else) but abandoned their faith after studying and questioning for a period of time. I think that it's likely those people are the kind that would be here, because they have put a lot of time and effort into examining what they used to believe. They have something to say.
This certainly describes me. Although, like Once Convinced I too do not think of my realization that Christianity is false to be "
abandoning my faith". It would seem to me that I would need to be a complete idiot to continue having faith in something that I can clearly see is false. Not only this, but to even attempt to do so would to be live a lie. And why would I want to do that?
In fact, I never even questioned the truth of the Bible. I didn't turn to studying the Bible as a skeptic. To the contrary, I turned to studying the Bible for the purpose of understanding "
God's Word" so that I could help other people understanding. Not the least of which were pastors within our own church who held different views on various Biblical issues.
So my purpose was to find answers to questions that weren't even necessarily mine. After all, if my purpose is to help others understand the "Word of God", then I had better be prepared to answer any question anyone might have, right? So I went into this fully expecting to find answers. After all, I had been taught that the Bible contains answers to ALL our questions. That alone may have been a bad teaching, but it was what I believed when I started out.
Unfortunately, for the Bible, what I found was precisely the opposite. Not only was I not finding answers to the questions I was seeking answers for, but in the process of seeking those answers all the Bible did was create even more questions. The more I search the more questions I had, and the answers were not forthcoming.
I finally realized that not only are there no good answers in the Bible but the more I study it the more obvious self-contradictions and problems arose. It got to the point where I could see that the Bible could not possibly be the "
Word of God". No God could be that stupid.
So I really had no choice but to face the reality that the Bible cannot be true. It wasn't even a matter of faith at all. It would be absurd to continue to place faith in something that isn't making any sense and only leads to more and more contradictions with every question raised.
There comes a time when trying to keep the "
faith" requires lying to myself about what I'm actually discovering. And there's no way that I wanted to live a life of faith based on a need to continually lie to myself.
I also became mature enough to actually ask myself why I should want to even have blind faith in this religion. So I asked myself that question very seriously. And the answer was a real eye-opener. The only reason to keep the faith is to avoid damnation. But ironically in order to keep that faith I must also have faith that there is a God who is out to damn me in the first place. How utterly absurd is that?
What about the promise of eternal life?
Well, to be perfectly honest about it that carrot was never incentive for me to believe in this religion at any point in time. I'm not afraid of ceasing to exist. So I'm certainly not going to pretend to believe in an obviously failed theology just so I can convince myself that I'll be granted eternal life.
For me, ceasing to exist can't be any worse than returning to the state I was in before I was born. Apparently it didn't bother me then, why should it bother me after I die?
Fear of death is truly the silliest fear a person can ever create for themselves. Any religious person who believes in a religion for the promise of eternal life or to avoid punishment after death has truly played the greatest joke on themselves that they will ever experience.