My beliefs were like a house of cards in a hurricane of reason

Sent in by Christopher

Hello all. I've been trolling this site for a few months now, and I'd like to share my story.

Unlike many of you, I wasn't born into a conservative Christian household. When I was 7, I asked my mom if there was a god, and so we started going to church. When I got into my teens I had a fundie Bible school teacher who absolutely believed that the Bible is the unerring Word of God. I remember one time when another kid a few years older than me was in the class and brought up some very valid scientific points (he was extremely smart and knew his stuff). Our teacher simply refused to concede that he was even in the right frame of thinking. The teacher simply used the "Because the Bible says so…" argument.

I think this was the beginning of my doubts because everything Nathan said made sense. I was never into the whole church thing because I always thought it was boring and repetitive, but I still believed. I even went to those brainwashing summer camps a couple of times. I "witnessed" to some people at school to and lived a religious up bringing.

Fast forward a few years, and I joined the Air Force at age 18. Now I can do what I want when I want and I start drifting away from x-tianity gradually. Eventually I came to a point where I had to evaluate my beliefs and see where I stand. I applied critical thinking to my beliefs and read the Bible from a realistic 3rd person POV and was astounded at what I saw. The Bible is the biggest catalogue of myths, atrocities and crimes against humanity ever recorded. Brutality from start to finish with inserts of fairy tales. NO omnipotent, compassionate loving being could be like the god of the Bible. It would be like picking your favorite child and saying to him/her, "I love you more than you siblings, so go right ahead and kill them all and take their stuff."

The Bible was CLEARLY written by MEN in positions of authority who were looking to assert their power over the populace. When I realized this, it blew away all my beliefs like a house of cards in a hurricane of reason. I am now an atheist, but I do believe that it is possible that there are some sort of god-like entities in this universe, just not the abrahamic one. I am 23 now and have only deconverted a couple years ago, and I have some lingering anger due to being duped into this falsehood for so long. Since I deconverted though, I feel stronger like I can do anything and my chains have been broken, and I guess I have.