sent in by beanheel when i was about 12, my family started to move around quite a bit. before then we had always gone to church on sundays, but it wasn't a central theme for us, and i really didn't consider religion a central part of my life. then we moved five hundred miles away, leaving my friends and what i considered my life behind. we moved in the middle of summer, so i didn't have an opportunity to try to make new friends right away. my mom, trying to help matters, found a church for us to attend, thinking rightly that there would be kids my age there. i became close friends with many of those kids, and since none of them went to my school, i only saw them at church. because of this i started going not only on sunday, but on wednesday, and i joined the bible bowl team (a fierce monthly competition based on exact memorization of a given text, for those who are unfamiliar). i was good at it. church became the only place i felt a sense of comradeshi

sent in by Vic This testimony was taken from my Website "The Pyrrhonist" My fascination with things "divine" started at a very early age. As a young lad, brought up in a Roman Catholic country (Mozambique, under the Portuguese) and attending junior school at the Convent in the city of Beira, the idea of becoming a priest was, perhaps, my first conscious thought on religion in general. What brought that idea about has been lost in the recesses of my mind, but I suspect that the pomp and ceremony of the liturgy, and the influence of the nuns who taught me in those formative and impressionable years, played a major role in my first career decision. As I grew older that infatuation with the divine grew colder and was eventually lost by the time I attended high school and it was not rekindled until many, many years later when I was married, and the proud father of a lovely baby girl. This does not mean that religious thoughts were totally obscured during th

sent in by John I was born into Christianity, and I was brought up to "know" god existed. And I was taught that Christianity was the only way to god. My parents were very devout and active Christians -- my father even considered going into the evangelical ministry at one point. So, there's no sugar coating it, we were fundies. I tried to take my religious beliefs seriously, although as a young teen I could tell I had a problem relating with other Christian kids my age. Looking back, even at that age I had a strong aptitude for human reasoning, and so I tended to be skeptical about what I was told if I couldn’t somehow verify it empirically. To the contrary, most Christian kids just seemed to accept what they were told without question, and that made it hard for me to have anything other than superficial conversations with them, which I found rather pointless. As I continued to learn more about god and Christianity, I started to sense that certain thing

jolly jo jo jihad Hi everyone, I was born into the Jehovah’s Witness’s organization and had mind control techniques used on me from a very young age. I was taught that jojo (Jehovah) knew what I was thinking and If I thought any bad thoughts, I basically wasn’t worthy of surviving Armageddon and living forever in a paradise. That’s a big load of guilt for a young child to bear. I used to test god and think "bad" thoughts and swear in my head waiting to get some reaction but I never did. I used to sleepwalk and talk every night and sometimes as a 5 or 6 year old I would be swearing blue murder in my sleep which my mother didn’t like .However I was continuously dragged to 5 meetings a week for more conditioning. As I got older every attempt at being an individual was thwarted and I soon succumbed and got that glazed dopey look that all jolly jojo's have. Around my teenage years the pressure from friends and peers to conform is

Edward Lecore aka A Uiet Bhor [Note] this was put in internet infidels but got no response I noticed several contributors here using names from water ship down and this interested me as this book, and the film had a part in my becoming an atheist. At school we were made to pray everyday, my earliest memories were of everyone around me kneeling with their hand together and me with my hands in a paw like configuration praying instead to Frith, the sun deity worshiped by all rabbits that was invented by Richard Adams. I did this because in the film a brilliantly animated creation myth is portrayed in aboriginal art style, and to my very young mind was more powerful and moving, and seeming made more sense than the one in the bible. I understood this was fiction, but I looked at the people who believed the Christian teachings and felt that if they could have their god why couldn’t I? This my seem odd but I didn't feel right praying to a god I didn't like or und

sent in by Brian Hill 23 years of going to Church up to 3 times on a Sunday in the early years. I can't believe how I fell for it (nor does my wife who did that as well). Both our parents are fairly strict Chrsitians although they have loosened up somewhat over the last few years. Princess Diana's death was the turning point as all our Christian freinds and family said she would be going to hell, no matter how good a person she was. That gradually ate away at me until the last few weeks when I've eventually come to the conclusion that the Bible is no more reliable than Lord of the Rings trilogy. The comments by others on this webring have helped tremendously, so we'll see how we go. I'll expand on this at a later date when I have more time, but Christianity is history, and was a complete waste of time for both of us. going forwards, we will think freely!!!!!! City: Chippenham State: Wiltshire Country: UK

sent in by jennifer I'm not going to bore anyone with the story of how i became a xian. I was a little kid and that was that. there were several things that pushed me (and I really mean pushed, because i was not eager to go) into unbelief. 1) knowing people in other religions whose faith systems gave them what they needed & wanted. I had several mormon friends before i moved and they were great women. i admired them because of their values, their lifestyles and their wisdom. it always amazed me that they could be silly enough to believe in the book of mormon, etc., but they depended on those books to give them guidance and counsel and those books did. they turned to the teachings of their church in times of trouble and when tragedy struck and it helped them through. yet regular xianity says they are going to hell for being heretics. and, of course, mormons do not believe that non-mormons enjoy the highest level of heaven... 2) my intrerest in history. pr

sent in by Grant I was raised in a christian family and went to church every Sunday. My family is more devout than most i would say. I went throught all the motions and said all the right things but i was always very skeptical. Science was always of much greater intersest to me even as a young child. I never really pondered my mortality until around 13 or 14 and started to openly denounce god around people who werent family and didnt know them. I was so passionate about science and i thought it had all the answers. At 17 while going to prep school(i lived in a dorm) to aid me in becoming a scientist i had my fill of classes and decided to go back home to a normal school. 4 things i believe made me search for god. 1. Fear of death -I relied on the idea of cryrogenics (freezing peoples brains) to keep my fear of death down but when i came back home i grew up and realized there are many problems to it. I let the fear get to me again.My first real funeral experiences were

sent in by finallyhappy From birth on I was taken to church. I had no idea there was a different way of living. Forced to be separate from non-believers, I was unaware of other beliefs and life styles. I had been blindfolded for 48 years. I remember being in the church I'd been attending all my life, guitars were playing, singers were singing their hearts out, and a faint incling of weak handclapping to the beat was coming from the back pew. I looked around at the faces. Trance like, glassy eyed zombies, staring at their shoes. Who were these people? They all looked alike with their same vague expressions. I had the feeling that if one of them stood up and left the service, all the rest would follow blindly behind with no thought as to what they were doing. I guess it was then I decided I wanted to live; to breath on my own and experience anything I could possibly experience just to be able to FEEL something. I wanted to explore my own body and brain - to fin

sent in by Andre Harris My name is Andre, and I am a recovering christian. My last fix was in 1994. I was 18 years old. Y'know what? I'll come back to that, Let's start from the beginning. It was 1992. I was 16 years old. And just like any other 16 year old, I was into to girls, big time. So since I had practically grown up in the church I knew that this where the girls were. But after about a month or so, I actually started to enjoy going there. It wasnt about the girls, it wasn't about the free meal and the annual Labor Day picnics after church (although that was a plus, and the picnics were the bomb!!! LOL), it wasn't even about the holy ghost. What I enjoyed was the fellowship. See, Revival Tabernacle is a church where the congregation was made up of people of all walks of life. Doctors, Lawyers, Rich People, Poor people, Black, or White. There has even been instances where police officers and the very criminals that they arrested stood hand i

sent in by Warren Wow! Where do I even start? I want to try to make this as short as possible if I can. Ok, I was born on St. Thomas United States Virgin Islands and raised 150 miles southeast on an island known as St. Kitts (Christopher). From the time I knew myself, I was going to church because I went to St. Kitts when I was 6 months old. My grandmother raised me Catholic and you guys have got to realize that 30 year ago, the Caribbean was a bastion of Christianity of all types of faith. Slavery's legacy of learning the religion of the slavemaster for 400 years was deeply entrenched. I don't even remember Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Taoists, Wiccans or Hindus in the community much less the island. You were either Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, Moravian, Baptist or Pentecostal. In fact, considering this was back in the mid to late 60s, we had no television at the time and all my grandmother did was have her radio locked on a Christian station 24/7/365. The radio was

sent in by Wolfgang Faust I have read several of the testimonies on this site and I see so much of my our conversion in them. I will try to explain what took place in my life. I was born into a very religious family and decided to become a Xian when I was 8 years old. I went to Sunday School and the like and heard all the great Bible stories. I bought it all of course hook line and sinker. And why wouldn't I, my parents wouldn't deceive me. As I grew older I began to take my beliefs very seriously. I studied the Bible very intently. I lived the life of a Xian (no drugs, no sex, no liquor, no swearing). When I graduated High School I joined the USAF. Suddenly I found myself in a whole different world. I was a thousand miles away from my home, my family and my friends. So I went to the only place where I knew I would be comfortable, the church. I joined the biggest Baptist church in town. The people in the church were impressed with both my knowledge of the bible

sent in by Toni I first became interested in religion when I was 15 because my parents felt the need for something more to their lives, so they dragged me along. When I finally felt the need to "accept Jesus into my life", it was the most amazingly liberating feeling I ever experienced in my life. I loved the sense of structure, warmth and family unity that I felt within the church. That, I felt, I had been missing my entire life. So, instead of dealing with life in my real home, God became my father and the church my extended family. Of course, when it came time in my spiritual life to leave my "old ways" behind and start becoming a more dedicated follower of Christ, that gave me even more of a reason to abandon my family and even my old friends emotionally. Eventually, I found myself abandoning everything I ever loved about my own life and identity in the past for this "new life" in Christ. This did not go over well with my parents, as the

sent in by Formerfundie I guess now is as good a time as any to submit this. It takes a certain amount of courage and I hope there are individuals here that can relate, and that there are ones that might read this that will be helped and encouraged. I was a Christian all my life, since I can remember. I grew up Catholic. There was never any reason for me to think there was not God, that’s all I ever knew. Even when I got older and had an episode where I was involved in Scientology, I still thought there was God, I had no reason not to, and even though I was in that cult, they encouraged anyone who was still going to church to keep going, regardless of what it was, so that never had any effect on me changing my mind. It actually had more of a reinforcing effect because while I was involved in the Church of Scientology I had what I thought at the time was an “out of body” experience. It terrified me, although I did get a lot of attention from the other “church” members

sent in by Kamilah I am African-American. These words alone bring many things to mind. The first is usually skin color. The second is a combination of characteristics, location, and class that date back centuries whether true or not. The last is the most obvious if observed and that is that 99.5% are religious. Well, with that said, guess which one is where my past began? Christianity. And of course, it all starts with grandmothers or prior in ancestry. I was born into the game of religion. In christianity, no matter what denomination you were in, children are considered the “future of the interest group.” Each Sunday felt like Monday through Friday except for the business/semiformal attire. Like every other African-American child, I was torn out of bed each Sunday, dressed, and went by force to a place with my parents that I was never given an explanation about, understood, nor exactly wanted be at unless something fun was going to happen. This place was called a “chur

sent in by Rob Ryan (a.k.a. Ro-bear) It is time I told my story, as I have roamed this site for months and have posted for several weeks. Some of the testimonies I have read have been quite moving. My heart goes out to those who have lost friends and family or otherwise suffered for abandoning Christianity and embracing reason. My own deconversion was relatively painless, probably owing to the weakness of my indoctrination. My parents were and are rather lukewarm Christians; I suppose their own indoctrination was less than severe. I know my maternal grandfather became quite devout upon quitting alcohol, but that was after my mother moved out and married. God and religion were not staples of conversation in my chidhood home, but we all dressed up nicely and went to church on Sundays.I think my parents felt obligated to impart to their children a moral system, if nothing else. In that respect, they succeeded. Church bored me. The preacher droned monotonously