I didn’t quit the LDS church, I was unofficially excommunicated for being born intersex and having a puberty not consistent with my assigned gender.

I have both sets of genitals. Both are small, deformed, and non-functional. The bishop at the time told my parents to keep it a secret and to raise me as a boy. Then puberty came along and I physically filled in as female.

It scared the ward members, it scared the bishop (different bishop than before), ajd it scared me. I didn’t know what was happening, nor did anyone else in the church. From their POV, a boy just physically changed into a girl.

The common sense thing to do was to consult a qualified and competent doctor about this, yet no one in the church did that. Not even my parents. The bishop gave my parents an ultimatum. Choose between God or your child abomination.

They chose God and my parents disowned & kicked me out. The church quietly turned their backs on me. They all wanted me to just go away.

I’m older now, wiser, and in a far more stable life. I’m even an ordained Satanic minister now, and I am happy. Our congregation welcomes those who are cast out. Words and deeds are more important than your physical appearance or what’s in your pants.

Edit: And before any LDS members respond with attempts to get me to rejoin, don’t bother. I no longer believe in gods, afterlives, and magic. Plus I will never rejoin the religion that cast me out for the crime of existing.

Pedophiles

The final nail in the coffin for me was looking at a world map and thinking about other religions. These people here were raised on this religion, and they believe wholeheartedly that they are right. But, I also believe that I am right. Everyone believes their religion is right, and that belief is solely based on what you were exposed to in your region. Doesn’t that mean it’s all bullshit? Only one belief can be right. Religion is shaped by the culture of the land, and if the culture changes, so does the religion. With all the changes to each religion over time, that means the original beliefs are gone, or the original “correct” religion is gone. I suppose a current one could be the correct one. It’s just infinitly likely that there is no god since religion is formed by those in power instead of an actual god contacting the people of the world.

I was a nerd, so I tried really really hard to prove logically that my religion was the correct one… and failed.

I read the Bible. I started asking questions about things in the Bible that didn’t match science, I loved science (still do), but nobody wanted to answer my questions, they’d just get mad, so I started seeking information elsewhere and came across atheist or ex-religious sources who answered the questions I had. Those sources also helped me realise the damage that had been done to me mentally, which I’m still working on overcoming.

Raised Christian. Christian is supposed to be about love and acceptance, but after all the transphobia and homophobia I saw, it was kind of over for me (sapphic)

A lot of Christians claim that there is only one God and that you will burn in Hell for not believing in their religion, which just sounds discriminatory regardless of “I’m just trying to lead sinners on the right path”. It isn’t the right path if you have to fearmonger to lead people on it.

They also claim they’re trying to gently let people into God’s way or something but don’t seem so gentle when they spam “YOUR DELUSIONAL WOMEN (sic)” on trans men’s social media, or ”DELUSIONAL MEN (sic)” on trans women’s.

I believe all religions are the “true religion” and I’m polytheist.

It was not answering the questions that science could answer

The church’s overall support for trump and anti-vax/anti-mask positions were a strong counter to the doctrine of sanctification, especially as support tended to increase among older populations. Sanctification is central enough to Christianity to be one of the pillars that either proves or disproves it.

Two things started the slow 10ish year journey to atheism for me. I can’t remember which happened first.

Some Mormon lads doing their mandatory missionary work knocked on our door when I was home alone. I decided, screw it, kill them with kindness. Maybe I’ll convert them! After I got them some ice water, they started the spiel. It was so stupid, how could anyone believe this? Then I thought, wait, how is what I believe any more believable? That was an unsettling thought that I could never really shake.

I also challenged myself to read the entire Bible (NIV) front to back (which I did, thankyouverymuch). I already had a lot of apologetics for the pentateuch warfare, slavery, etc. but in Psalms there’s a verse that basically goes, “blessed is he who dashes the babies on the rocks.” And like. What the fuck is that. In what possible circumstances is killing babies okay, let alone with God’s explicit endorsement? That also stuck in my head ever since.

There was a lot else in between, but years later I stumbled into a copy of The God Delusion. “Know thine enemy, right?” So I read it on lunch breaks at work. While I now know the book has a reputation for kinda bad philosophy, by the end it had tidily dismantled the last vestiges of the purely “rational” arguments to believe in God I still had. So I sat there, an atheist for the first time in my life.

I was never a believer but I was raised by MAGA Christians. The kind that believe in the rapture and show you bad dystopian movies about it.

I tried to believe it for a long time but eventually gave up. I’m pretty sure the majority of the people didn’t believe any of the mythology, they were just there for the racism and child abuse, so I tried to get away. Unfortunately the same stupid bullies have taken over the country. At least I’m not trying to see their side as tolerable anymore.

Spending time away from it. I was raised as an evangelical Christian and I was fully bought into it. I’d had doubts but was always able to explain them away or suppress them. All it took was not going to church every Sunday for me to finally stop believing.

Because I was raised in such an extreme “all or nothing” way, I wasn’t able to fall into a sort of half belief like what I imagine most Christians in America believe who only go to Church on Christmas and Easter. But I think younger people are starting to identify as agnostic or atheist in those scenarios.

There are more specific steps to it, but that’s the majority of it was just getting away.

I’ll never forget the relief when I finally came to believe that the category of things that were sins but not otherwise morally wrong were things I didn’t need to worry about anymore.

I don’t like to say I quit, more like expanded my belief system to become a human belief system, and not exclusive to a cultural belief system.

I traveled outside my very conservative and religious country, met many different people, learned about a lot of different cultures, and their beliefs. It made me see how “limited” one type of faith can be. How blind I was to the human experiences.

So now, basically, I don’t believe there’s one answer to rule them all. And that’s the biggest change I went through outside of the religion i was raised on.

My super religious wife cheat on me and get knocked up. Followed by all our church friends throwing her a party. All the scandals didn’t help also. So I’m done. I now consider myself an atheist.

Does it count if you live in a very religious state that has pushed religion down your throat all your life but you resisted? For me I think I was about 22 when I started to see religion as not just a personal belief, but as a tool used by power hungry men to hurt and control others. I used to respect my religious peers, now I feel sad for them, because I know that they were raised into it so hard that I can’t really blame them. The sad thing is, even though I live in one of the most developed nations in the world. I am still in a part of it where criticism of religion, past not believing it, can come with a high social price.

I grew up as a Christian. When I was around 15, someone asked me “if I hadn’t been born a Christian, would I be a Christian?” Considering it, I opened my Bible and immediately a verse popped out (in classic God fashion) saying “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have”

So then I felt called even more to really explore, based on that:

• 1. I couldn’t currently defend my faith reasonably
• 2. If God was actually real, he wouldn’t be scared of people exploring arguments against Christianity, because the faith would be based on something ultimately true.
• 3. By exploring other faiths, arguments, etc, if I returned as a Christian, I would have a much stronger faith.

The more I explored these arguments, as well as gaining a better understanding of what the Bible actually is (in a historical and literature sense), more and more of the belief system unraveled, eventually to the point I didn’t call myself a Christian anymore.

Then over the next decade I went back and forth exploring alternative denominations in Christianity, as well as other religions (Daoism, Buddhism, Judaism), especially as I still felt a “spiritual pull” / intuition in a lot of situations. So it took me a really long time to separate that intuitive sense of direction from the belief system around the Holy Spirit specifically, and learn where trusting that intuition is effective, and where it can be misleading. That’s been the most complex part of all of this.

I still enjoy exploring other belief systems, components of Christianity, and connecting with whatever that intuition is occasionally, as I do think there is a lot there for human psychological and emotional health that Western modernity sorely lacks. (I suspect this hole in our culture is why a lot of fundamental US Evangelism has flourished btw)

But that’s how I lost my faith - God gave me the push I needed :P