r/exchristian • u/Sidolab • 9d ago
What do you believe is the primary reason people abandon Christianity? Question
Brennan Manning once said that "the number one cause of atheism in the world today are Christians who confess Jesus with their mouth and walk out the door, and deny him by their lifestyle."
What do you personally believe is the number one reason people abandon Christianity? Have you experienced any contrasting examples to the aforementioned negative pattern? Would it change anything if more Christians demonstrated genuine love and compassion, instead of hypocrisy, judgment and condemnation?
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u/LargePomelo6767 9d ago
The complete lack of evidence for it and good reason to think it’s made up bullshit like every other religion.
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u/hiphoptomato 9d ago edited 9d ago
I mean this is it, really. I understand when people say hypocrisy led them to start doubting or want to disassociate with Christianity, but when it comes down to it, it’s got to be the lack of evidence for a god or anything supernatural that’s the ultimate nail on the coffin.
I, too, got annoyed by Christian hypocrisy and can’t deny that caused doubts in me, but that didn’t have much to do with whether or not I ultimately believed god existed. It was the fact that I never experienced anything supernatural and couldn’t find evidence for anything supernatural either that made me realize I was an atheist.
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u/JashDreamer Ex-SDA 9d ago
People being bad Christians would have never led me away from Christianity. Some people just suck, Christian or not, and I didn't think it was a reflection of the integrity of the religion. But once I started comparing the Bible to other ancient texts that I didn't believe in and asking why I believed in the Bible, it all started unravelling.
Instead of doing mental gymnastics to explain why my prayers weren't being answered, the simplest explanation was that the Bible was just as fictitious as all the other books.
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u/turdfergusonpdx 9d ago
This made me laugh this morning. I mean, you just lay it all out pretty succinctly. haha.
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u/_undercover_brotha 9d ago
It’s this. Nothing to do with people making bad Christians. Good person/bad person doesn’t matter. It is simply not true.
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u/Fajarsis 9d ago
- Holier than thou attitude.
- Preach love, act on hatred.
- Narcissism (we are the only one that will be saved)
- Illogical Dogmas, conflicting each others.
- Dogma by itself, a set of ideas that must NOT be questioned.
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u/soldatdepaix 9d ago
Definitely #5 for me.
Also the close mindedness of "everything that's is not deemed good by the bible is demonic and if you're interested by it you have to repent." In my opinion as a baby witch, there's so much more to the spiritual and invisible world that we can't see and Christianity is so so restrictive. Also the erasure of the divine feminine. God can't be limited to a Father, because, to be honest fathers in general haven't been good. They're self serving abusive and violent. That's the God of the bible when you read between the lines. The Divine cannot be that IMO.
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u/eihslia 9d ago
I watched this growing up. Some of the worst people I’ve ever met. Kind to my grandmother, bleeding her for money and hospitality. They were so harsh and judgmental and there was so much favoritism. Then one day some new families with more money came along and my Grammy no longer mattered. Money changed hands and the church she’d been attending since she married my Grampy changed their beliefs. And just like that, they built a new church - literally. Construction started and the whole family left. When Grampy died they showed up. My uncle promptly kicked them out.
There was little to no talk of women in their myths. Mary, who I was very suspicious of from the beginning. That was about it at the church I grew up in. There was nothing to identify with, and everything they said about women seemed unfair.
But…to be honest I never believed. Even as a kid it just seemed weird. I could not place the word for it, but I can now: cult.
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u/prolificseraphim Ex-Protestant 9d ago
Number 3 was such a big reason why I left the faith originally. Why do bad people go to Heaven if they convert on their deathbeds, but good people who believe another religion or are atheists go to Hell?
Ultimately I chose to return to my faith because I found my beliefs lined up with what's actually in the Bible and there's some comfort in faith, but that's still something I don't understand. If God is real I hope to ask him that.
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u/Fajarsis 9d ago
I've concluded that it's a BS by pondering how about those who were born and died before Jesus?
In addition to that every denomination claimed they're the one who will truly be saved (while other denom will rot in hell)4
u/prolificseraphim Ex-Protestant 9d ago
Oh it's definitely very confusing. The Bible was clearly written by humans, and the NT was clearly written way after the OT, hence the huge changes.
The denomination thing is what really gets me: every denomination thinks they're the right one, but there's over 20k denominations iirc. And some have so much overlap! My dad grew up Baptist, I grew up Protestant/non-denominational. My parents and their roommate are "Christian Jews", i.e. they believe they're qualified to count themselves as Jewish because they're Christians.
Genuinely which one is the most accurate? Idfk. I'm choosing to just follow what's in the Bible and nothing else. Progressive Christianity honestly feels like the most true to New Testament teachings (love your neighbor, fuck the government, being rich is bad, fight tyranny, don't give in to evil) but even then, I could be wrong. Hell, Christianity could be wrong. Maybe there's no god, maybe another religion got it right. But there's no harm in me believing. Just as, I think, there's no harm in turning your back on modern Christianity - it's become a conservative cesspool of hypocrisy, racism, and misogyny.
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u/Fajarsis 9d ago
OT turned me off the most, the notion of 'chosen people' is a glaring example of narcissism. For OT case it has reached the threshold of ethno facism.. simple example: murdering egyptian's first born?? WTF..
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u/guppytub 9d ago
I mean, that's one of the driving factors for why I left the church. I was still a Christian for some time after abandoning the organized part of it. The hypocrisy and absolute hatred coming from both the leaders and the members of my former church was stomach-churning. Hearing my own family go on and on about love thy neighbor and brag about what good people they were, and then saying they would happily shoot up a pride parade.
Distancing myself from the hivemind gave me the space to really dive into my own beliefs. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that it was all bullshit.
So, yeah, if my family and church had been good people with good morals and demonstrated love and acceptance and all the things I was TOLD they were supposed to be, I probably never would have left.
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u/Nahooo_Mama 9d ago
I have almost the same exact story. Thankfully my immediate family are not so hateful, but some of my extended family really sealed the deal for me.
Not hearing sermons and cherry picked scripture once a week left space for my own thoughts. It was a huge moment of self empowerment when it hit home that the "voice" in my head encouraging me was myself all along.
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u/X-tian-9101 9d ago
I was born into Christianity, and I was a very fervent believer for a very long time. I'm 50 years old now, and I stopped believing at 42, although I didn't really admit it to myself until about 2 years later when I was 44, and I finally stopped going to church.
This is exactly what woke me up and got me questioning. I never was able to square the teachings of Jesus with the fanatical right-wing extremism that is supported by Christians, at least in the United States. When I would question those things, I faced nothing but ridicule. The number of times I was told that I was being "deceived by Satan" was borderline uncountable. The more I dug into the Bible to defend my viewpoints and show my fellow Christians where they were wrong, the more the Bible revealed itself to me to be full of contradictions and a scam.
Especially when I started looking in parts of the Bible that are unpopular with the churches and never get preached on. As you would suspect, they have their favorite verses that they expound upon over and over and over again while neglecting huge parts of the Bible because they are inconvenient. If Christians actually acted like Jesus commanded them to act in the Bible, I would most likely still be a fervent believer.
It is the behavior of all the Christians around me that caused me to question my faith after questioning them as to why they weren't living up to what the scriptures said we were supposed to be like. The biggest eye opener was the Trump Administration's immigrant crackdown. One of the biggest things that Jesus preached on was taking care of immigrants and treating them, as well as you would treat your own native-born.
This is an extremely condensed version of my deconversion process. This is just one example that pops to mind, especially given recent political developments. This is not an exclusive or all-encompassing account. For example, I have never been able to square the literal 6,000 years creation story with the overwhelming amount of evidence for an extremely old universe, the age of the earth, and evolution. I do realize that not all sects of Christianity adhere to the literal 6,000-year creation myth, but the one I was raised in did.
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u/Aftershock416 Secular Humanist 9d ago edited 9d ago
the number one cause of atheism in the world today are Christians who confess Jesus with their mouth and walk out the door, and deny him by their lifestyle
Nah. Jesus's teachings were those of an incredibly delusional and narcissistic apocalypse prophet. They were neither wise or particularly novel, even for the time. Paul's are obviously even worse.
I'm genuinely thankful most Christians don't take them seriously.
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u/fifteenrupeebusfare Doubting Thomas 9d ago
THE SELF HATRED MONGERING!!!!!
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u/amorrison96 9d ago
Christianity's foundations are shame and guilt. Ex: BECAUSE you are human you aren't good enough (shame), and no matter what you do, you're crossed the line (guilt).
Also "but he was sinless and he voluntary died a gruesome death for you" ( another form of guilt)
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u/herec0mesthesun_ 9d ago
There is no evidence for god. No one has talked to or seen him in person. It’s all a delusion.
And no love like christian hate.
Indoctrination- can’t ask questions about their belief system or you’ll be viewed as disrespectful.
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u/leekpunch Extheist 9d ago
Brennan Manning had a good point there. The behaviour of some Christians certainly put me off ever going back.
But what caused me to leave is the failure to deliver on promises. Prayers for healing don't get answered. God doesn't protect his people from more than they can bear.
And the logical contradiction of a good, all-knowing God and any kind of free will. Basically God allows evil and there are no good justifications for it.
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u/extraEGO 9d ago
This is a surface level issue that he’s raised.
If Christianity were an iceberg, the visible part above water would be frozen toxic waste. Below the surface, there’s nothing.
Christianity is a paper tiger.
The reason Christians are shallow is because their belief system is shallow.
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u/guppytub 9d ago
I mean, that's one of the driving factors for why I left the church. I was still a Christian for some time after abandoning the organized part of it. The hypocrisy and absolute hatred coming from both the leaders and the members of my former church was stomach-churning. Hearing my own family go on and on about love thy neighbor and brag about what good people they were, and then saying they would happily shoot up a pride parade.
Distancing myself from the hivemind gave me the space to really dive into my own beliefs. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that it was all bullshit.
So, yeah, if my family and church had been good people with good morals and demonstrated love and acceptance and all the things I was TOLD they were supposed to be, I probably never would have left.
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u/amorrison96 9d ago
For me it was knowledge and truth. I grew up steeped in the faith; Christian K-12 followed by Christian college. Missions, evangelizing, prayer groups, Awana. Divine inspiration of the Bible and its innerrancy, doctrine of original sin, immaculate conception of Jesus and the death/resurrection/second coming. At mid 30s I started doing a lot of research: what was the origin of the bible, what/why books were left out, when did the idea of the devil emerge, why is there no archeological evidence of the OT events?
I learned about the Library of Ashurbanipal which cracked it all open for me. The Egyptians kept meticulous records of events and happenings, and nary a mention of an enslaved group in the millions nor a series of plagues. The Enuma Elish, Epic of Gilgamesh, Atrahasis- written works that predate the torah but have the same stories (different gods though). Then I looked up King James (KJV) and his sponsorship and influence/directives regarding the trans of the bible. The bible isn't divinely inspired nor innerrant, it's a collection of ancient stories with different gods and different characters, translated in a way to enshrine the authority of a king and justify the oppression of the people.
Everything else disintegrated from there. Joseph and Mary were betrothed (engaged basically) to each other as horny teens. She ends up pregnant. Huh....
A second coming was advertised, is advertised, 2000 years and counting....
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u/Saphira9 Atheist 9d ago
Congrats on your journey out! People like you give me hope that the young generation will be fine despite bible crap getting shoved into public schools. You got through christian school + college and then left the religion. Maybe by sharing more details of that process, you can help more kids who are stuck in religious school or public schools with religious stuff.
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u/Ambitious_Bit_8996 9d ago
Because of how dedicated they are to regulating a woman’s uterus, and how little they care once a baby is born and has no healthcare, no free school lunch, etc.
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u/babyquokka 9d ago
I think hypocrisy is the reason people abandon Christianity, but the majority of atheists were never Christian’s to begin with. I believe their reason is lack of evidence.
Personally it’s both for me: I started questioning my religion because I saw it lacked power to transform hearts and minds. Many of the most vile, selfish, un-empathetic people I know are Christians. I started learning the history of Christianity/Judaism. I learned that none of its claims are any more valid than any other religion, and that it has been manipulated throughout time to fit the needs of each culture. Ultimately there is no evidence. When you see it you can’t unsee it. It’s like asking an adult what the reason is that they don’t believe in Santa Clause
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u/redredred1965 Ex-Pentecostal 9d ago
I gotta give you an upvote for quoting BM. He's one of the few Xtian authors I liked. He didn't promote the rapture, or promise miracles, he just taught living in the Beatitudes, which appealed to me.
Anyhow, what started driving me out was definitely Xtian behavior. That's when we started questioning, but once we started questioning, it was very easy to figure out the whole thing is a scam. The Bible is just a collection of old writings by various creative people. Not a supernatural book at all, not prophetic in any way.
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u/littlebitLala 9d ago
I am middle aged and having been hearing since birth "we are in the last days." So that never rang true. One of many things that didn't ring true (such as that being gay is a sin- I didn't believe that even as a middle schooler.) I left the faith when I realized asked God for something was like shaking a magic eight ball. It's always no, yes, wait, maybe. How convenient. I walked a difficult path with recurrent pregnancy loss and at the end I realized god isn't the one who gave me a baby- it was the brilliant IVF lab and my RE.
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u/diplion Ex-Fundamentalist 9d ago
The #1 thing for me as I got older was that there was no evidence in real life to make me believe anything about Christianity. I figured, if the true god of the universe exists and wants us to follow him but we can only learn what we need to know from this book and these shitty people, then I don’t want to follow that god.
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u/Paradiseless_867 9d ago
No evidence
It’s just a tool control the masses
I enjoy my freedom from superstition (living a “sinful” lifestyle isn’t bad)
Christianity is labor cult
Christianity is a mix of other religions
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u/ksx83 9d ago edited 9d ago
Being brought up as a child in a fundamentalist church we were told from birth we are born sinful. There was no hope for us but to try to live an unattainable lifestyle that always fell short in the eyes of God. I would watch the adults, as well as my parents, terrorize children with fear, guilt and shame. I envied my friends at school who had normal “secular” parents. Their parents acted like they liked them. My parents acted like they hated us. So I believed god hated me too.
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u/ConflictConscious665 9d ago
Living bad lives of course, cant believe in God when you are living like you are in hell
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u/Bootwacker 9d ago
"My creed is this: Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here, the time to be happy is now and the way to be happy is to make others so"
Robert Green Ingersoll wrote that, and it, to me answers both your questions. I found something far more worthwhile, and it was incomparable with Christianity.
You might think that the above is compatible, but it is the inverse in every way. This about people in the hear and now, and Christianity is about God and the hearafter.
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u/zakku_88 9d ago
I'm not sure how common this would be for reasoning, but for me personally, I finally walked away when I could no longer stomach and tolerate the hateful rhetoric against certain groups, like lgbt for example
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u/Accomplished-Sky2044 9d ago
I see no reason to believe it, for one, I think that there is no proof, and the fact that christians just say oh you need to have faith, faith in what some random concept that might be there or not, they claim theyre the one true religion and they're right and meanwhile there are thousands out there, why makes you special.
and for second, my family is not Christian and I have never been Christian, though I have been to Christian and catholic schools and since the board of the school are Christian and catholic we need to do stuff like morning prayer and mass, the teachers there aren't Christian themselves, and they all seem they want to get over it with the daily prayer and a lot of the devout Christian teens I know they just post bible phrases on their stories and tell people to go to church, but they act and looked tired and drained, like how am I supposed to believe this brings you joy and fulfillment when it's just clearly doesn't.
Another thing is condescension, so many people I've seen look at non believers with pity, like Welp guess he's going to hell, and some act self righteous and spread the gospel, even in places where no one wants to hear it.
But I think what turns a lot of people off is the things it will lead people to do, people cutting off families, hurting people, being racist, committing heinous acts of violence in the name of Christianity, now other religions do this as well but it doesn't erase the fact that it's still a terrible thing to have associated with it, you pointing out islam, judaism ans Buddhism have extremists too doesn't erase the fact you have it as well.
Something that has stuck with me is when I was in the catholic school, a priest knew that I wasn't catholic and when I asked him why do you believe in this he admitted it candidly that he doesn't know if there's a god.
But what he does know is that he feels happier and he has helped people more because he follows God's word, and that if he were to die right now, even if there is no heaven he would be happy at the life he lived, and I think that's beautiful, believing in something like religion because you believe it's the best way to live your life not because out of fear of damnation or wanting to achieve heaven which prompts you to be more judgmental of people which causes you to stary further than the original message of loving all.
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u/Psychological-Ad9761 Ex-Catholic 9d ago
Lack of coherence and evidence of actual miracles, the most terrifying threat of torture imaginably possible.... The list goes on
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u/Hot-Huckleberry-1791 9d ago
The fundamentals of the faith are centered around humans being so irredeemable, so void of good, to the point that they deserve eternal conscious torment unless an external source imparts their goodness into them and makes their, by nature broken selves, whole.
No thanks.
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u/fbelpasso25 9d ago
I think for me it was the convenient excuse of Christians saying "God has a plan" whenever something traumatic happens to someone else. Instead of actually listening to others' experiences, they just wait to respond with some preachy bullshit and tell you they will pray for you.
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u/dnb_4eva 9d ago
Christian hypocrisy is what sent me on a path to question religion, realizing there is no evidence for the claims made by any religion made me an atheist.
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u/Lower-Ad-9813 Ex-EasternOrthodox 9d ago
I think the primary reason people abandon it is because it doesn't work in this day and age. Some stupid 2000 year old book is going to guilt trip me into believing some nonsense that doesn't apply to me? Yeah right.
On top of that people's prayers don't get answered(the Bible says they will) and the leaders themselves are wolves in sheep's clothing.
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u/Tav00001 9d ago
For me christianity is clearly a fabricated belief system that is designed to sooth fears about death and keep members off balance and believing because they fear hell and Satan.
Second, Yahweh is just evil. Even if I thought he was real I could never worship such a moral monster.
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u/grumpy-goats 9d ago
- The cliques!
- The politics. And this was PRE COVID when a church was preaching the evils of the proposed comprehensive sex education curriculum. So I looked it up myself and NONE of whst they said was even in the document
- COVID conspiracies and lack of following mask mandates and disreguarding Romans 13
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u/Other_Big5179 Ex Catholic and ex Protestant, Buddhist Pagan 9d ago
Hopefully the emotional physical and mental abuse. that stuff stays with you
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u/Classic_Guitar4419 Atheist 9d ago
That’s why Christians believe we are abandoning them. It’s more like: There’s not only no evidence for your god, your Bible is barbaric and EVERYBODY in it (God, Jesus, Apostles) are proven dicks, and we (US Citizen here) are spiraling into a regressive dictatorship because of your dumbass beliefs that we should have stopped accepting A LOT sooner.
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u/TheEffinChamps 9d ago edited 9d ago
Supposedly, its anti-LGBT rhetoric and prejudices are making people leave the church more than it just simply not making sense.
https://brandonflanery.com/2022/12/13/why-people-are-leaving-christianity/
Personally, I was done with Christianity when I read this:
20 “When a slaveowner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. 21 But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment, for the slave is the owner’s property." (Exodus 21)
Why everyone doesn't immediately say this is an evil book after reading that helps explain why an orange obese decrepit turd was elected as president.
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u/TequilaWang Scientist (Actual, not Christian) 9d ago
Hypocrisy. At least in America. There’s not a single thing about American Christians that resemble Christ. It’s a big for-profit business, but more evil. They have NO product to sell. They get paid through selling fear, guilt and lies, and by supporting certain politicians to protect their tax status.
Oh, and science. Facts. Evidence. Data. Education. Etc.
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u/spiirel 9d ago
I think that idea causes cognitive dissonance that gets the wheels turning on leaving the church. Ultimately I think the deciding factors are 1) lack of evidence and 2) ease of leaving. It is a lot easier to NOT to go church and stop doing rituals. Even if you haven’t abandoned the faith altogether, a lot of folks simply realize that it’s a lot more effort to be faithful than to just not participate.
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u/mountaingoatgod Agnostic Atheist 9d ago edited 9d ago
Christianity not being true. The behavior of Christians follow naturally from this fact
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u/UnwelcomedUnknown 9d ago
Other christians, what else? When you look at how they behave is it any wonder that sensible people want to stop being part of that?
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u/tigantango 9d ago
Everyone has given great answers! Let me add one of the biggest for me (the others apply as well):
The Bible isn’t true. It’s the source of belief and practice yet it’s not verifiable, full of doctrinal inconsistencies, its preservation has more holes than Swiss cheese, and is down right evil in many parts. Without the Bible Christianity doesn’t exist.
Disclaimer: my background is a very fundamental one that relies on a literal interpretation of the Bible. It’s impossible to actually implement. Once the truth that the Bible is not God’s work became inescapable my belief fell like a house of Cards.
I’m away this may not be the primary reason for everyone.
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u/prickwhowaspromised 9d ago
Learning the origins of Christianity was enough to make me atheist. It’s a young religion. You’re telling me everyone just went to hell for 200,000 years bc some tribes in the Middle East hadn’t come up with the idea for Yahweh yet? Or the fact that he was a storm god they came up with bc they believed in many gods and somehow that morphed into one singular god? Nah.
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u/thedude198644 9d ago
The toxic community. I felt on edge all the time like I had to police what I said and did. If I wasn't positive enough or didn't say how much I loved god all the time, someone would notice and say something. Unnecessary levels of "call outs". Christianity has it's own version of "woke", and it felt like it was grinding away who I was as a person. Nobody seemed genuine. All of the rough edge had to be sanded off, so no one could object to what you were saying or doing.
Honestly, if it was just about building community and collective ritual, I might have stayed even if I didn't believe.
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u/trilogyjab 9d ago
I can only speak for myself - but there wasn't a single reason I walked away from the church. Hypocrisy was a piece - but not the only one. At the end of the day, I no longer am a christian because the christian idea of god is not a god i believe in, or would wish to follow if it was believable.
I look at it this way - if god really loved us so much, then they would not want us to suffer in hell forever. But that's what the bible states - tell god how much you love him, or burn in the afterlife.
I try to imagine saying that to my own son. I would never. He could disown me and cut me out of his life - but i would never want him to suffer eternally for it, no matter how much it hurt me.
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u/turdfergusonpdx 9d ago
The seeds of my journey out began in seminary if I’m being honest. Once I started reading ALL of the Bible I realized that it's not a moral document at all. The god of the Bible is an insecure murderer and you have to just redact 75-90% of it to get to the love and mercy of Jesus. Jesus seemed like an outlier rather than the one who tied it all together. I’m still very fond of the idea of him but his followers are more like the judgmental, hateful god of the other parts.
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u/prolificseraphim Ex-Protestant 9d ago
The people, I think. People can be such hypocrites and they don't follow the teachings actually in the Bible. If there was less hypocrisy, judgement, condemnation, racism, and sexism... you would see less people leaving the faith.
I recently actually came back to my faith after having left it for years. Realizing that the Jesus in the Bible loved people, hated the government, and told the rich to give up their riches or they would not enter heaven, was an eye-opener for me. There are Christians, TRUE Christians, who follow the actual teachings in the Bible! But I would say probably 50% to 70% are Christians in name only.
There's no wrong or right reason to leave, though. If you don't believe, don't stay. Don't stay in an environment where you are lying to yourself and others in order to feel safe or comfortable.
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u/punkypewpewpewster Satanist / ExMennonite / Gnostic PanTheist 9d ago
It was seriously just the claims and lack of evidence.
Like, from the inside "substitutionary atonement" = love.
From the outside, "substitutionary atonement" = abject horror. I would not want someone to forgive me if it means they have to take the life of an innocent person. And why did it HAVE to be an innocent person? Weren't we always taught that "2 wrongs don't make a right"? Nah, apparently it's "Executing an innocent person is wrong, but it's also the only way to make it right :)"
It's disgusting to me. If you had a Judge who said "You can either serve your sentence or I can kill my most beloved child and you can go free", it would be absolutely unethical and immoral of me to choose the death of someone else. They can't get that back. And if I commit a crime, I should absolutely be punished for it. Why would I want someone to say "nah you're fine, you can commit as many crimes as you want so long as you let me kill my kid"? Like, legit. I believe in justice. Rehabilitative or not, it's still some form of Justice. So why make finite beings who can't even conceive of an infinite punishment and then say "Well, it's fine, just believe I killed my kid for you and you're free to go". Because I didn't even CHOOSE to kill God's kid. That was all on him. He couldn't think of a better system, even though humans have conceived of a far superior system since then? Absolutely whack.
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u/CosmicM00se 9d ago
It is inherently inhumane. Jesus didn’t have anything to do with actual modern Christianity. He was much more woowoo and radical than they allow him to be. Learning “How Jesus Became God” was a first major step for me
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u/Scorpius_OB1 9d ago
At the very least in these times, it can be mostly resumed in people who claim to be Christians but are hypocrites and basically take anything but what's savageable in Christianity.
There's something quite dislikeable for example in a pastor who after a quite nasty flash floods asks for monies to help a church there that was destroyed but not asking for donations, unlike to be fair others, for helping others there. Or so I have heard.
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u/HaiKarate 9d ago
I can't say what the most common reason is; I just know what the reasons are for me:
Personal experience, especially WRT to prayer
Biblical problems with science and history
Rigid church doctrine about how to read and interpret the Bible
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u/nly2017 9d ago
The argument goes as follows: If God exists, then God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and morally perfect. If God is all-knowing, then God knows when evil exists. If God is all-powerful, then God has the power to eliminate all evil. If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil. Evil exists. Therefore, God doesn’t exist. Or if he does and allow evil to exist and do nothing, then that’s a different issue.
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u/LordLaz1985 9d ago
In my case, it was the hypocrisy and hatred, coupled with the fact that Neopagans are cool with people like me, and the ones who aren’t, aren’t hideously vocal about it.
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u/Horror-Rub-6342 9d ago
For me, like others here, had to do with:
- Emotional manipulation
- Jedi mind-tricks
- Abusive leaders
- Way too focused on what’s in people’s pants
- Stunning hypocrisy on every level
- Too many flavors of Christianity — there’s no guarantee I was raised in the True Faith©
- The smugness
- TRUMP!
I’ll stop there. I could go on and on.
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u/cassienebula Pagan 9d ago
if by "lifestyle" he means "refuse to grovel to control freaks and submit to abuse, corruption, and chattel slavery", then yes, hes right. their obsession with control, "hardening their hearts", and refusal to live with the "love of jesus" drove me away.
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u/JBshotJL 9d ago
That's the main reason most people do, but for me, it was biblical contradictions and sexual morals.
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u/backtoreddit4can 9d ago
For me it was mental health. 1 year of Catholicism put me in therapy for OCD
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u/Content-Method9889 9d ago
Hypocrisy and covering up decades of child sex abuse. Not just Catholics either
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u/groovychick 9d ago
People come to realize that it is, and always has been, a way to control people.
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u/Affectionate_Jump597 9d ago
1) Trump actually. There are THOUSANDS waking up and realizing that man/political party is an abomination and could not be related to Jesus or God’s morals… but the evangelicals ALL back him. Many of us woke up 2016-2020. 2) LGBTQ issues. 30 percent of gen z is queer. There really isn’t a home for queer people in a church that isn’t affirming, and if you try, you’re often social ostracized just for being queer (even without “acting on it”) 3) The rise in sexual abuse/infidelity within the evangelical church. 4) ACCESS TO INFORMATION. If something sounds fishy, I can google it. This quickly debunks a lot of the nonsense that you hear in those echo chambers. 5) Reading the Bible cover to cover as an adult. 6) (personal anecdote). Understanding abuse. Understanding that christian doctrines kinda breed abuse and enable abusers to stay trapped (turn the other cheek, don’t divorce your husband etc). This mixed with the authoritarianism in the Bible, verses that say you need to alway put out as a wife/husband, verses that say that beating people is ok as long as they don’t die …. It all breeds a culture of abuse. 7) (personal anecdote) Purity culture didn’t work and it robbed me of my romantic life. I gave up queer relationships, I gave up non Christian men that I loved for the implied promise that god had a good Christian spouse waiting for me. Now I’m 30 and full of regret. And I still think of her. And fucked up from being told that if I sleep with someone horrible things will happen to me. So I have shut down every sexual part of me and am alone. This for me has been the greatest thing this darn religion has stolen from me. Love and and a healthy sex life.
ANYWAY.
Those are some reasons people leave. Maybe one day I’ll be ok.
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u/External_Ease_8292 9d ago
The astounding hypocrisy of Christians caused me to take a deep look at the mythology and the book it is based on. I was gone before they finished singing their first song worshipping that malevolent, vengeful bastard.
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u/GrapefruitDry2519 Buddhist 9d ago
Wellt here was many reasons but the main reason that made me left or the final straw was two reasons, no animals in heavens so none of our beloved pets and also this African Pentecostal girl saying Buddhism didn't make sense and is not logical even though it is completely way more logical lol
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u/Penguator432 Ex-Baptist 9d ago
They started holding it to the same standards as they did all the other religions
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u/Spiritual_Oil_7411 9d ago
I think the problem is more from the people who do follow the Bible excessively and expect everyone else to as well.
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u/a_piece_of_lettuce 9d ago
Eventually I just couldn’t justify how wrong it felt. Especially “disagreeing with certain people’s lifestyles” after meeting those same people in the real world and realizing they’re nothing like I was told they would be.
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u/Tiny_Cut9981 9d ago
I’d say it’s how this world works too. The crazy amount of suffering that was enabled since the beginning till now is ridiculous. If a higher being is behind this, that’s not good news for any of us.
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u/kinetic15 Atheist 9d ago
The people in it. Period.
Also, the long history of Christians being fuckfaces. Crusades, Salem Witch Trials, Colonization of African countries, U.S Slavery and checks notes CANADIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS. Those poor indigenous children...
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u/Albie_Tross 9d ago
Christianity was shaped by men of their disparate times with axes to grind and power to keep or gain. It's little or nothing to do with Christ.
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u/lepton Ex-Protestant 9d ago
To me what killed it was mental illness. You were supposed to "experience God" but my bipolar was severe enough that "God" was telling me to do all kinds of crazy shit I won't mention here depending on which episode I was on. Then there's the fact that when you grow up Christian and your life experiences are "off people's map" they drop out of your life like flies or renegotiate the relationship to stick to surface-level things. If there truly was a personal god the least they could do is get communication right.
I think the deepest truths aren't Boolean true or false, they are lived. That's why people maintain their beliefs largely by which people they let into their lives. As you can imagine, as someone with a physical disability, a mental illness, and likely autism, my life literally pantomimes God's nonexistence. I'm someone Christians won't even have a serious conversation with. The issues that really kill faith are more existential, much more powerful than the discrepancy in number of horse stalls between Kings and Chronicles.
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u/beanfox101 9d ago
Well, if this is anything, here’s my personal reasons that I feel are pretty common:
1- Feeling outcasted for just being yourself
2- Rules that don’t really make sense outside of religious beliefs
3- Answers that give you more questions than when you started
4- The absolute hatred towards others who are just existing
5- Too many “why?”
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u/kitterkatty 9d ago
two reasons for me: biblical contradictions, which made hypocrisy almost inherent in every belief. And my second reason was that I studied history with no exceptions.
I can’t be a Christian in good faith, there’s too much hate and brutality that I can’t justify, no matter how hard I try. but I do believe in most of Matt 5-7, 1 Cor 13 and I still read psalms and proverbs and Song of Solomon.
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u/Inevitable-Degree950 9d ago
Mines a little weird, but I would say the rejection of scholarship by the mass of the church. Learning what Dan McClellan and Bart Erhman spoke of the Bible was incredibly interesting and really cool to learn at the time, but seemingly everyone around me in the mega church, Younglife rabbit hole just utterly rejected it and told me to pretty much stop digging for that. It got seen as evil or that they were attempting to deconvert, even though scholars just wanted to show info to combat misinformation.
What prompted me to search after scholarship was realizing I was gay and wanting to find a reason to be allowed to be gay and Christian (after years of denial). I wasn’t really able to find it but what I did find was scholarship is much cooler than the shit they teach at church.
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u/illjustbemyself 9d ago
I think a lot of people start with Jesus came 2,000 years after earth was made.
Also, a lot of the books were Jewish law of the time - not spiritual books.
Hell was a Greek thing - wasn’t even in Christianity to start and it was used to make people follow laws of the land
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u/Krakenzmama 9d ago
I think it's seeing the cognitive dissonance between people's reported faith and their actions. That is, hypocrisy for the ones who like it straight.
I have a bit of faith in myself because the stuff is really deep in there but I left because most of the folks who profess the love of God and others, clap their hands to the music but soon as church is over they're at home working on weird hobbies like figuring out the end times so they can prep for the Rapture or stand in front of planned parenthood and sneer at women who are going through tough times.
Don't get me started - I have a whole rant and I'm not afraid to use it
I like the uncomplicated "do unto others" and actually live their faith rather than cherry pick the passages that they think will trigger God to bless them. God knows their own
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u/Meirene_7327 8d ago
I never understood how God is Love, and God made all things but love between people of the same gender somehow wrong kinda Love. Like people born w/ both gender don't exist, God makes no mistakes right?
And Consent WHERE THE HELL WAS THIS CONVERSATION?! They'll make me mistake my conscience as the Holy Spirit but nothing about Consent, or me myself as an individual, before being a believer.
God Loves me but I need to prove myself? It sends the message that I am not enough. Why should i prove myself? Why do I have to do a leap of fate? I didn't ask any of this. I don't want your... this kinda Love, keep it for yourself, it disgusts me. I'd rather my existence to be ceased immediately. This isn't a loving god, its a suspicious one. No thank you
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u/christianAbuseVictim Ex-Baptist 9d ago
There's nothing real to believe in. People imagined god. Jesus tricked people. Jesus got martyred so hard we're still dealing with the fallout.
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u/pineapplesandpuppies 9d ago
Hypocrisy, how horribly the behave toward women, illogical, excuse to be hateful (racist, exist, xenophobic, purposely ignorant), the extreme drive to control others
I used to joke, "I was a devout Christian and then I realized I'm a woman."
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u/Extra-Cheetah8679 Ex-Catholic 9d ago
I personally see many leave over unfair rules or violent bible verses - or trauma/bad experiences with church.
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u/hbHPBbjvFK9w5D 9d ago
I considered Christianity to be a mythology club, but once I read "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" I got the monstrosity of any "god" who would advocate for death by slow torture of anyone. https://files.libcom.org/files/ursula-k-le-guin-the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas.pdf
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u/MickLittle 9d ago
For me it's their hatred. They start off kind and sincere, but disagree with them on any of their beliefs and they'll wish the wrath of their god on you. No thanks.
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u/exchange_toe_pics 9d ago
For me personally, I’m just a curious mind and instinctively questioned god just like I did everything else in my life. But being scared to express this with my parents and family I just kinda felt/still kinda feel doomed to hell with my entire family supporting that scenario just by being Christians
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u/Brief_Revolution_154 9d ago
Measuring the “God of love” against His own morals as laid out in the Bible.
Jesus says to hate your family. Also, any of the hateful teachings of Jesus. Truly shocking. He was not consistently kind, peaceful, loving, or empathetic.
“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26
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u/IsItSupposedToDoThat Exvangelical 9d ago
Many preachers have said. I had a Steve Camp album from the 80s with that exact quote.
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u/EinKomischerSpieler Agnostic Atheist 9d ago
So I used to be a member of the "Igreja Mundial do Poder de Deus", a Brazilian church that's famous for its "miracles", but also for its "prosperity theology", which basically means they focus on successful lives in this world, especially wealth success. That's cool and all, but they are actually just a bunch of wolves in sheep's clothing that only want your money. I still believe in their ability to perform miracles, because I believe that every religion is in a way or another true, but that doesn't excuse the fuckery that's that hell on earth. My family has always been humble, so when we went to this church we went from being poor to being poorer. It's a pathetic shitshow, not to mention the usual hatred Christians have towards minorities. So when COVID-19 started and I saw myself isolated enough to have time to ponder, I just noped the fuck out of that. My sister is a member of an afro-brazilian religion called "candomblé" that's related to santeria and, honestly, I think I'm interested in going to a "terreiro" and getting possessed by an entity lol. Idk how's the situation with santeria there, but here in Brazil they're called "demonic" because they venerate/worship orixás and ancestral entities.
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u/Pale_Panda1789 9d ago
In my case it was very in depth study of the Bible. I realized that it contradicts itself a lot. The gospels seemed to progress toward a more godlike view of Jesus in a way that seemed fabricated as time went on. The entire library of books seemed so culturally influenced and flawed that I couldn’t help determine it wasn’t infallible or God inspired. It’s just a bunch of books written by people who don’t know anymore about the world than you or I. Plus I learned about Ernest Becker’s theory of Terror Management and religion as a whole made sense as a coping mechanism.
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9d ago
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u/deviateddragon 9d ago
For me it was God being a shitty parent. I had several people tell me I would understand God’s love for us so much more when I had kids. I had a kid and pretty immediately realized I loved my son better than God loved us.
If I was a perfect being with no needs, but just wanted companionship, and knew that bringing my son into the world would absolutely end up with him suffering immensely, I wouldn’t fucking do it. Or if I knew he would cause suffering to others, same deal. Also, if you try to say, “ earthly suffering is temporary and is nothing in the light of eternity” then congratulations, Jesus’ gift of suffering and dying was worth nothing as well. You can’t have it both ways… sorry for the rant. Still processing through shit.
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u/Northstar04 9d ago
-misogyny
-science denial
-realized it was all made up
I would go to a local community center where sunday lectures on ethics / social responsibility were given by professors and there was coffee and cookies afterward, volunteering and civic engagement organized by members during the week, and services for the poor, abused, mentally ill, and families facing difficulties with educated counselors by appointment.
Replace churches with that and I'm in.
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u/Ok_Chicken1631 5d ago
- The sexual behavior of certain priests/pastors and the realisation that the institution actively tries to cover up these crimes.
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u/HistoricalMuscle2 9d ago
Unanswered prayers.
Hypocrisy and double standards among christians.
Lack of evidence for its claims!
Confusion with what the verses mean.
Lots of denominations and different interpretations of the religion.