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.

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.

If I’m really honest it was just because I’m a bit of a weird guy and just didn’t fit in.

I mean if all church girls loved me I would’ve probably just ignored the illogical nature of it all, at least for a while.

I thought doubting God was a sin and I’d go to hell if I died with doubt in my heart, so I avoided atheist material out of fear that it was Satan working through them to tempt me to doubt.

But eventually I just couldn’t resist, and figured the atheist arguments would clearly be false, and God’s truth or whatever would show through and then I could always refer to that event to shake any doubts.

The first video I watched was a debate between a pastor and Christopher Hitchens.

Absolutely shook my faith to the core. For a couple days afterward, no matter how I tried to twist it, I couldn’t find the fault in Hitchens arguments.

After that, I began to research the history of Christianity with a more open mind, and it became clear what a shit show the whole thing was. I became agnostic, and I suppose in a way I still am a bit, in the sense that the existence of reality itself is quite puzzling, but I can say with certainty that no religion on earth has any answers toward that end.

I used to attend church with a small following (50-60 members). The pastor seemed very kind at the time and still does some charitable things… But when my grandfather was dying in the hospital, he suggested that suffering brings you closer to God and any kind of hospice or pain-relief was a sin.

The next Sunday I attended, the pastor starting mocking the medical staff during a sermon, basically airing my family business and likened my family to Judas. I walked out and never came back.

Some of my family still attends his church. I saw the pastor a few years ago and extended my hand for a handshake and he walked away.

My mom and I talk about this whole situation sometimes (she attends a different church). “If you hear something at church you don’t agree with, don’t bring it home with you.” That was her way of saying that the pastor is just a person, too. Take what you can from a lesson and apply it for good in your life.

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.

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.

My brain started working.

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

The question doesn’t directly apply because I’m not an ex-believer, but I am sort of ex-church (attendance).

After years of praying for healing, for myself and others, and seeing nothing happen (beyond the natural healing that would have happened anyway had I not prayed for it), I prayed for someone to be healed and he died.

So that’s how healing manifests through me. You aren’t or you die. This seems in direct contradiction to Jesus’ claim that all who follow him will do greater things than he did, which I interpret to mean at least the same as what he did, one of which was that everyone who came to him got healed.

So my church attendance is on hold for now while I work out why God doesn’t want to involve me in his work. I’m still a believer, but obviously I can’t preach “God heals” when my only direct evidence is that he doesn’t. I’ll go back when it’s clear what he wants me to do.

It was not answering the questions that science could answer

I was always kinda skeptical but the event that triggered my way out was when I asked my mom how can God expect people, who were raised with other religions, to believe in him instead when they simply have no idea. She said they know about God and it’s their own fault for not believing in him. And that for me was not logical because I knew from my own experience that I only believed in God because that’s all I knew.

But it took a while for me to completely stop believing in any deity or whatever supernatural power because I kept looking for reasons why we exist. Now I don’t care for that. Sure the Big Bang is mysterious and we might never solve it but there is no sense in making things up either. Everything else can be explained by science so let’s just go with that.

If the Christian God wants me to believe in him, he should stop being so vague and contradicting. Turn the moon into cheese. Pluck a mountain out of the ground and float it in the sky. Whatever, he is almighty, he should do almighty things.

I worked as a researcher and started applying the scientific method to the bible and faith, and it fell apart. before i tried to “disable” critical thinking on many issues in the bible and push those issues away. Also, I realized that my faith kept me from accepting responsibility for my actions and kept me externalizing responsibility to god and/or the devil and other people.

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I never really was into spirituality much and then over time I noticed Buddhism kept bumping into me and kept explaining things in more and more straightforward ways over the years so eventually I caved in and looked into it more closely and decided to practice Tibetan Buddhism because it felt more closely related to my own personal experiences and interests…it can be tricky to understand at first until you understand how all the symbolism works and then a whole world of information was opened up to me and I feel better than ever.

Those early Tibetan Buddhists really got a lot of things right from the start and still today I see science research come out suggesting the same things they figured out long ago.

From what I can tell spirituality serves an important purpose in our lives and it is to keep us mentally healthy by whatever means we wish, the caveat here is that you don’t misinterpret messages and fall into bad negative paths.