The Two Step Process to Becoming an Atheist


Often, when Christian encounter their first atheist they will say, "I'm sorry to hear you had some unpleasant experience in the church that caused you to leave." Perhaps that notion is preached from the pulpit or elsewhere. It seems to be the default explanation believers have about non believers, they were driven from the faith by a bad experience.

Having heard scores of atheists tell their stories I cannot remember hearing that a person lost his/her faith because of a bad encounter with some unpleasant person or church. It does not make sense. If a person believes why would they not believe because they disliked some other person in the faith? Sure, they might move to another church or denomination. But it is not logical they would lose their faith.

A recent article discussed this in a much more realistic way. What the link says is common to what I have heard from almost every person who left the faith. Leaving religion is a two step experience.

First, of course, we have to recognize lots of people were raised outside the faith and never left it. But, for those who once believed but no longer do there is most often some version of a two step process.

The first step is that something happens in the faith that they do not like. They do not necessarily experience something bad themselves but know of something bad. The link talks of sex abuse by priests. There has been sex abuse in most other branches of the faith. For others it may be prejudice against their gay friends. It may be about money or a walking by judgmental protesters in from of an abortion clinic.

This experience in step one does not by itself cause the person to leave. But, it triggers an interest in reexamining the tenets of the faith. A person, for example, may have seen cruelty in real time and then starts to look for it in the Bible itself. It's there in the flood.

Or, a person may start to look at Bible stories he/she had always taken literally. Then, Step One triggered an interest in re reading fanciful stories and no longer finds them believable . This is Step Two.

There are many ways both Step One and Step Two happen but all of them are similar. They all result in atheists or "nones".

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