Any atheists here who were once believers?

[Mazulu]

Yes you do have superior wits. With a silent "t" on the front.

Har har har!!!

 

[wynn]

There are plenty of examples of Christian priests becoming atheists, although your bar maybe set so fuzzily that you may just argue "ah, but they weren't genuine believers to begin with".
Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_converts_to_Nontheism and these are just high-profile "converts".

Just because they were/are high-profile people in society doesn't automatically change anything.

A "former theist" who comes up with a challenge like Abraham Kovoor did - if this sort of thing is indicative of his former beliefs, then he wasn't much of a theist/religionist to begin with.

The bar I'm setting isn't fuzzy. Take any actual religon and check their own criteria for what makes a person advanced, what makes a person religious or a theist. Within all the major religions that I am familiar with, performing miracles, having special powers and such are typically not highly regarded.
Although the nominally religious masses probably invest most of their efforts into just that. Which then atheists gladly pick up and present as "exemplary religiosity".
But no - per a religion's own internal crtieria, having fancy special powers and such are generally not a requirement to be considered religious, adavanced, a theist.

But my own position is that, as soon as I understood the question, I can't say that I believed. Before that it was very much "because my parents/school told me to be".

You do realize, though, that officially, you are probably still a member of the Catholic Church?

 

[Robittybob1]

....

Take any actual religon and check their own criteria for what makes a person advanced, what makes a person religious or a theist. Within all the major religions that I am familiar with, performing miracles, having special powers and such are typically not highly regarded.

What would define an advanced theist in your understanding then?

 

[wynn]

What would define an advanced theist in your understanding then?

It's not about my understanding. Like I said, I'm talking about a religion's internal criteria. These can differe from one religion to the next.

 

[Robittybob1]

It's not about my understanding. Like I said, I'm talking about a religion's internal criteria. These can differ from one religion to the next.

Well can you please just give me a clue in one such religion then?

 

[wynn]

I can't prove it but I am such a case. I was a deep believer, even the Acolyte of the church

I'm sure you felt like you were a deep believer.

But given that your activities were like this:

Yes I believed - prayed silently to him most days, often for selfish things I wanted. I can still remember "Please God let me win" as I continuously repeated it while my soapbox derby rolled down a long hill. I didn't win but my faith was strong so I assumed the other driver's needs were greater than mine.

I have reason to believe you were'nt much of a theist. Apparently, you "believed in God" for the sake of gaining stuff for yourself, as if God was supposed to be a kind of supernatural vending machine.

While there indeed are nominally theistic religions that would approve of what you had been doing, the way you had been praying etc., they certainly aren't the only ones.

 

[wynn]

Initially it was belief in the idea of god that I was told to believe in, much like it would be for most people growing up with religious parents.

Then it was belief in God, with Christianity being just one religion among many that seeks to understand and know God.

But then no one could actually show me why that belief was important to me. No one could explain how belief in god actually affected anything I did (i.e. that i would do something because of of holding that belief that i would not otherwise do).

And then I realised I was looking for an excuse to believe, looking to the benefits to justify the holding of a belief. And it was then that I realised I simply did not have the belief, and even if there were benefits, even if it affected the way I acted, those alone could not make me believe: I find Pascal's wager to be promoting lip service only.

And I realised I was atheist.

Now, God may exist or He may not, I don't know, so I also consider myself agnostic on the matter.

In some ways, we're actually quite similar. Technically, I am an agnostic atheist too.

Although I myself grew up on the other side of the fence: I was, from infancy on, officially excluded from the theist community, since I wasn't baptized. To me, "belief in God" became a trophy, a something I yearned for but could never have.
Then I got to know other theistic religions, and I couldn't but relativize the Catholic supremacy. The sense of exclusion from the theistic community as such continued, though.

So I dropped the notions I had been taught and went back to the notion of a universal: if God exists then he is surely the same for all - lest we end up with the Roman/Greek pantheon that I had been learning about at school.

But from there, how could I possibly know which religion was being accurate about which aspect, if any at all?

This one is actually easy for me to understand: God reveals Himself to different people in different ways, ie. in ways they can comprehend. There is no need for total theistic uniformity.

And then from there I questioned how anyone could possibly know anything about God at all...

I've come to see this question as a matter of personal pride - that flat-out refusal to even consider that God reveals Himself to people; along with the flat-out refusal to consider that some people just might have a kind of special power that gets them connected to God.

For a long time, I've envied theists (and sometimes still do), thinking of them as those special people to whom God revealed Himself, or as those special people who have that special inner power to connect to God.
While I, of course, wasn't one of those special people, nor had those special powers.


I find it interesting that you use phrases like this:

what I was being asked to belive in

To me, this suggests that you see belief in God primarily as something that gets imposed on you from the outside. While I can understand how some people see belief in God as such an externally imposed thing, I myself have a resistence to see it this way. Instead, I'm more inclined to think of it as something that comes from within, something that is between the individual and God, and where other people play only a secondary role.

And from there I questioned whether God even existed, and whether God's existence or not impacted the way I lived my life (given that I had already dropped religious trappings).

I've always seen belief in God as something that would radically impact the way I live my life.

You use the phrase "whether God's existence or not impacted the way I lived my life" which is different from the idea of belief in God impacting one's life.
It seems that to you, God's existence was a matter of "If God exists, I will get measles/many presents for my birthday". I never saw it that way; except in the one instance of "If God exists, I will burn in hell for all eternity."

 

[wynn]

I'm genuinely interested to know how people come to believe what they believe.

I used to wonder about this a lot.
I've come to the conclusion that the development of beliefs is extremely complex, cannot adequately be layed out in steps, and that people's explanations of how they have come to believe this or disbelieve that, especially in the field of metaphysics, are incomplete, unreliable and irreproducible.

IOW, after having invested into this question years of effort, I've come to the conclusion that it is a useless question.

 

[wynn]

The interesting thing to me about religion is the big picture and not the arguing about the small details.

And this "big picture" is essentially a Western secular project that ignores the reality of the individual theistic religions, as if they would be all the same.

With religion you would start the story out with "There is a God" and by the end of the story there are burning bushes and thoughts on what kind of meat one shouldn't eat on Friday

That you think burning bushes and such are "the end of the story", show how severely limited and biased you are in your views.
You have an anti-Christian agenda, but are trying to sell it as an anti-theistic one.

 

[wynn]

Well can you please just give me a clue in one such religion then?

I'll need to find convenient online sources. That may take a while.
I would think that people talking about religion would be familiar with the things I'm talking about, though.

 

[Balerion]

This whole page is on ignore. Haha.

 

[Robittybob1]

This whole page is on ignore. Haha.

Well you shouldn't see this then.

 

[Sarkus]

I like getting to the heart of the matter.

That explains the questions, but not the leading nature of your summation of what I have previously stated.

So, you figured ''no smoke without fire''?
Can this be desribed as independantly believing God?
Or is it a curiousity. Kind of ''let's see where this goes'' kind of thing?

What I want to know is: Did you just believe in God regardless of religion?

The concept of god, even in its most basic form as "original cause" or "creator" was given to me through my education/parents/upbringing. I did not arrive at the concept independent of those things.
But once I had shrugged off the trappings of the the religion, what was left, as the core which remained necessarily untarnished by that religion, was God as the original cause.
So at this point, yes, I believed in god regardless of religion.

I can dig that. But would you agree that you never believed in God despite the indoctrination and the notions put forth by that particular religious group?

No, for all the explanations that I have already provided to you that you somehow seem to either ignore or misinterpret.

Did you see God as a separate idea that you needed to make sense of?

Separate from what?
From what the religion was telling me? No, not really.
I saw the same God but no longer dressed up in the robes of one religion or another, but as the universal god.

But in all of this, I don't see a belief in God. I see someone looking to see if belief in God is beneficial to themself.

That is certainly true toward the very end of the journey.
But before then, as explained, I did believe in God.

So it is possible that people can be religious, even a priest, bishop, or pope, and be in the same situation you were with regard to deciding if God exists, but never actually believing in Him. You decided to become agnostic/atheist, but others may not make that decision and settle with something that they are willing to accept. But it is not belief. There is no question about belief in God for one who believes in God. It's not really a choice, but a worldview.

And worldviews can change.
If you wish to make they priori assumption that belief in God is and can only ever be a permanent state, such that those who claim to have been theist but now atheist were never really believers to begin with, then this is an assumption that you're going to struggle to support given the testimony of those that have been through that change. Feel free to try, though.

If your claim is that there are people who currently claim to be religious, even overtly so (through holding religious offices), who are not believers, then I would agree. There was even a claim (if I recall correctly) by one bishop that every priest in his diocese had confessed to being atheist (I do lack the reference, but will try to find it).

But you can not simply claim that because someone no longer believes then they never really believed without supporting that claim. Beliefs can and do change, based on experience, circumstance, education etc.
For the majority of the time While I believed there was no question about it.
Then I doubted the religion but not the universal God behind the religion(s).
Then I doubted the existence of god, and at that point - at the very start of that phase - you could say that i was no longer a believer, that i no longer held the belief in God. But up to then I most certainly did.

 

[Jan Ardena]

Seattle,

Tell me what you don't believe in and what your decision making process is for that. Why don't you believe in Zeus, Santa, or whatever supernatural "beings" that you don't believe in?

I don't care about the things I don't believe in, and would never go as far as to express anything I don't believe in, without provocation, to make a point. I leave that to you guys.
However if I found myself constantly expressing something I didn't believe in, it would make me wonder if my un-belief was genuine.

If you apply that same standard to God then God will fail that test.

It depends on how you understand God. Unfortunately, your worldview situation phrohibits you from open-mindedly studying scriptures to see if there is any validity in the concept of God. This not much different to the evangelical Christian groups who forbid their members from looking at other scriptures to increase their understanding of God, in case it shows up there own lack of understanding. Christian dogma, and atheist dogma, is very similar. One day I may even start a thread on that.

Why are you so anxious to "surrender" to something that you agree there is and can be no evidence for?

To obtain ''knowledge'', not just information, from any external source, requires some level of surrender, trying to obtain ''evidence'' for something that requires direct experience in order to obtain the truth does nothing to enhance knowledge.
Once you know something, there is no more need to learn how to obtain knowledge of it (obviously).

If you believe in the power of prayer there could be an easy test for that. Just set up a double blind test where the test givers and test takers don't know who the control group is and who is actually being prayed for and by whom.

If I believe in it, why would I want to test it?
If you want to test it then go ahead, but why waste good money on that, when scientists can be put to better use?

With a statistically large enough group after correcting for randomness you would clearly see whether terminally ill people who are prayed for anonymously are having their prayers answered by God or whether that is just not the case.

Therefore God does not exist.
It doesn't take much for you believe that does it?

The standard of evidence for your point of view is nonexistent. Your "evidence" must be (as you have eliminated everything else) that God came to me and that's it.

You mean that is how it must be for you.
Your idea of God stems from the evangelical christian tradition, it is little wonder you have little or no understanding of the nature, and character of God. I'd like to give more explanation of the attributes of God, as defined in the scriptures. If nothing else, it is remarkably interesting to know. But I don't feel like it (my bad)

If Salma Hayek comes to me in a vision (and she does) does that mean she's God?

In your other post you said you would accept God if He came down from the clouds, to you, in human form. Now here you are asking me if this woman comes to you in a vision would she be God.
Now the thing is, in your criteria for acceptence, how would you know that the person from the clouds was God, yet you would accept.

In answer to your question: You tell me.

jan.

 

[geeser]

Now you're lying. Atheists are the biggest instigators of hostility here.

How so! Just because that don't believe in your god, "they are hostile" really!
From whence comes this hostility, if all it is; Is being in opposition then that's nothing, you are in opposition to them.

Which of the two, theist or atheist uses the most hostile terms.
Think about that before you brandish the hostile tag in future.

 

[Sarkus]

In some ways, we're actually quite similar. Technically, I am an agnostic atheist too.

You? Me? Similar?

Although I myself grew up on the other side of the fence: I was, from infancy on, officially excluded from the theist community, since I wasn't baptized. To me, "belief in God" became a trophy, a something I yearned for but could never have.
Then I got to know other theistic religions, and I couldn't but relativize the Catholic supremacy. The sense of exclusion from the theistic community as such continued, though.

I had friends from an early age who were from atheist families and saw no real difference in their practical lives, other than not having to go to church. They behaved the same, wore the same, although they might well have thought differently. And it is the practical side we see of others, unless we interrogate them as to motives.

This one is actually easy for me to understand: God reveals Himself to different people in different ways, ie. in ways they can comprehend. There is no need for total theistic uniformity.

Sure. That is what I thought. And still do, to an extent: IF God exists then that might well be the case. All I can say is that I received no revelation while I was a believer, and still haven't... At least not one that I have interpreted as such.

I've come to see this question as a matter of personal pride - that flat-out refusal to even consider that God reveals Himself to people; along with the flat-out refusal to consider that some people just might have a kind of special power that gets them connected to God.

Maybe. But they are unable to show this power, to show how it works, how it can be observed, how, in essence, the non-material realm can interact with the material realm and not leave a trace.
It is the same "pride" that would prevent one from accepting psychics, magicians et al having powers other than a mundane ability to create illusions of a power.

For a long time, I've envied theists (and sometimes still do), thinking of them as those special people to whom God revealed Himself, or as those special people who have that special inner power to connect to God.
While I, of course, wasn't one of those special people, nor had those special powers.

I quickly became skeptical of extraordinary claims, especially as my interest in maths, logic, sciences started to grow.

I find it interesting that you use phrases like this:

To me, this suggests that you see belief in God primarily as something that gets imposed on you from the outside. While I can understand how some people see belief in God as such an externally imposed thing, I myself have a resistence to see it this way. Instead, I'm more inclined to think of it as something that comes from within, something that is between the individual and God, and where other people play only a secondary role.

Once you start questioning what you believe, even to try and seek deeper answers than you might be being given from friends, family, priest etc, and you conclude that there maybe more / less than what you are being told, then you quickly realise that you really are being told what to believe, and that few people actually do question what they are being told.

I've always seen belief in God as something that would radically impact the way I live my life.

I've concluded that it wouldn't really affect me in the slightest. But then that depends, I guess, on what clothes you subsequently get your God to wear. If you believe he is vengeful, that he will consign you to eternal damnation for not doing things, then yes, perhaps that would.
But then my question would always be: how does one know that God wears those clothes?

You use the phrase "whether God's existence or not impacted the way I lived my life" which is different from the idea of belief in God impacting one's life.
It seems that to you, God's existence was a matter of "If God exists, I will get measles/many presents for my birthday". I never saw it that way; except in the one instance of "If God exists, I will burn in hell for all eternity."

Nothing like that.
Given my lack of revelation to this point in my life, the most I could say about God would be "initial cause" or some such universal.
Now, it is a truism that this god either exists or not, and if god exists I would live my life in way X and if god does not exist... well, I would still live my life in way X. Therefore it makes no difference to the way I live my life whether this god exists or not.

However, if I give god some clothes, this might affect the ways lead my life, even if just to hedge my bets.
But the question then is: which clothes does god wear? Who can tell me that, and why should I believe them rather than anyone else. But since I stripped god down to "first cause", I have concluded that no one can tell me: either I will get some revelation or I won't.
If I don't then I can know nothing else about god, if god exists, other than being "first cause". And since I have already concluded that the existence or not of god does not alter the way I lead my life, then is there any benefit to believing? Or even to considering the "first cause" as "God", with all the baggage that comes with it when in discussion with others.

If I do get revelation at some point then all bets change, of course.

 

[wegs]

This whole page is on ignore. Haha.

you should expect two lumps of coal now, in your Xmas stocking.

Seattle,
I don't care about the things I don't believe in, and would never go as far as to express anything I don't believe in, without provocation, to make a point.
However if I found myself constantly expressing something I didn't believe in, it would make me wonder if my un-belief was genuine.

This is a very VERY interesting point, Jan.

This thread has offered me insight into how others view religion, spirituality, and an overall belief in a god, or God. I have grown to understand wynn’s points much better, and find myself in agreement with much of them. I believe that while I can’t say if there is a god or not (I don’t have a complete atheist view, more atheist/agnostic)…it isn’t for me to judge if others do feel there is a god. Why should it bother me, if someone believes in God? As long as religion doesn’t intrude upon others, why should I honestly care what someone else chooses?

I’m not much of an arguer, in my offline life…and so, to argue with people over why they believe as they wish, just isn’t me. I think we can make excuses sometimes to feeling offended, over perceived slights. I don’t like seeing cold, crass comments shot at non believers, or believers. It’s what always bothered me when I was a Christian…this need to always be proving myself. Proving why I believe. And in that process, making others look like they are living in opposition to ‘the right way.’

Likewise, now that I’m no longer Christian, I can see where the road could lead, if I allow myself to go down it, ‘defending’ atheism/agnosticism. On either side of the tracks, how one lives his/her life is honestly all that matters. If someone touts that he/she loves God, but tramples on his/her neighbor (mocks, insults, takes pot shots at, etc)…then, to me…don’t bother touting anything. Likewise, if an atheist touts that religious folks are a negative influence on society, yet also presents him/herself in the same light…then, what has such a person accomplished?

I just don’t have a ''dog in this fight'', anymore. What other people choose is none of my business, unless he/she wishes to share here. I’m grateful for my life, and while it’s far from perfect, I’m happy in it. Stay open minded, everyone. You never know who you can learn from in this life…and on this forum.

 

[Billy T]

... I have reason to believe you were'nt much of a theist. ...

Yes I prayed for God to help me - have you never? But words, including prayers, are not the way to judge one's faith - Did you do as much as I did to help your fellow man? (Give up a summer in midst of my Ph.D. program to lead the successful effort to open Baltimore's restaurants, after others had failed during the two prior years? I was spit upon several times, and once "beaten" by an angry, frail, old woman's cane. (Beaten is in quotes as I was able to catch the blows in my hand.) My main concern was for her, not me, I feared she might fall or have a heart attack. Once an angry man came up to me, briefly pulled his coat to one side to expose the gun in his belt - that did scare, but not stop, me.*

Is your faith of "worshiping words" or a doer of God's will, Like Abou Ben Adhem or the Bridge Builder's (two poems I memorized back when I was a deep believing Christinan)?

What have you done at considerable personal cost to help your fellow men? If nothing comparable to mine then, "I have reason to believe you aren't much of a theist."

Read Abou Ben Adham here: http://www.sciforums.com/showthread...ce-believers&p=3115018&viewfull=1#post3115018

The Bridge Builder, By Will Allen Dromgoole 1860–1934

An old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
Through which was flowing a sullen tide
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.


“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?”


The builder lifted his old gray head;
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followed after me to-day
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been as naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”

PS I said it from 60+ year old memory while reading the correct version above, omitting only the blue text and substituted "time" for strength. The Bridge Builder is easy to memorize, compared to others I learned as it tells a story. Not bad I think, but this poem is important to me as is Kipling's IF as a guide to life - more so than almost all the bible. As is Goldstein's Hebrew (in translation) preference in his book "Classical Mechanics" (Be yea doers, not hearers only.) Inspirational poems have been very important to me for more than six decades.

When I recite IF, I jumble the order of the verses and leave several out. Usually I recall and silently say only one, as needed. - This one often when jogging:

"If you can force your heart, nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing left within you, except the will, which says: " hold on" ...

* Some years earlier, while swimming in the ocean, suddenly my body was being bumped many times per second. I understood immediately that a school of fish was swimming past me. About a half second later, I realized I might be in serious danger if they were escaping from one or more sharks; but then I thought death will be quick and useful if it comes (Feed some hungry sharks) and that all must die some way. I recalled these thoughts soon after the man covered his gun with his coat again. What I would most like to happen to my dead body, is it be dropped in the near shore ocean with weights on the feet. It is the fishes' turn. - I have eaten several times my weight in fish. Why pollute the ground water with embalming fluid or the air with CO2 if cremated - better to feed some hungry fish.

 

[Balerion]

This is a very VERY interesting point, Jan.

It really isn't. It's a fallacy in an attempt to smear atheism and atheists while also rendering all arguments against his claims invalid by ad hominem. (ie "Why should I answer questions from people who don't really believe what they say they believe?") And it's hypocritical, since Jan spends the vast majority of his time here at sciforums trashing other worldviews and implicating the people who hold them as insincere, deceitful, and stupid.

I shouldn't have to tell you this, but the amount of time one spends speaking against something they don't believe in does not mean they secretly believe in it. By that logic, activists of any kind--be they for civil right, animal rights, or human rights--are all in actuality cruel bigots and oppressors. Obviously, that's a stupid thing to infer, and Jan is only doing it because he has no other recourse. His arguments have failed him at every turn, and he's resorted to ducking me (I posted my post three times for him, and I've yet to get a response; that's not an accident. He can't answer the questions I've posed to him, and, like the intellectual coward he is, he'd rather run than face the music).

If you're looking for substance, you're barking up the wrong tree with Jan.

 

[Jan Ardena]

Sarkus,

That explains the questions, but not the leading nature of your summation of what I have previously stated.
The concept of god, even in its most basic form as "original cause" or "creator" was given to me through my education/parents/upbringing. I did not arrive at the concept independent of those things.
But once I had shrugged off the trappings of the the religion, what was left, as the core which remained necessarily untarnished by that religion, was God as the original cause.
So at this point, yes, I believed in god regardless of religion.

Okay, so if after some time you came to the conclusion that God is unlikely to exist due to lack of evidence, what was it you believed in? And are you implying that what you believed is the same as what everyone else who believes in God, believes?

I can dig that. But would you agree that you never believed in God despite the indoctrination and the notions put forth by that particular religious group?

No, for all the explanations that I have already provided to you that you somehow seem to either ignore or misinterpret.

But if you believed in God, how can you now not believe in God? Unless it was an idea of God you believed in, one which requires materialistic processes to determine it's validity? In which case an argument can easily be made to show that you never believed in God, but an idea of God which was concocted, first by your church, and accepted by your parents.

Again, do you think that your idea of God, and reasons to believe in that God, is the same as everyone else's, and to add, does that God corroberate with the God in the scriptures?

Did you see God as a separate idea that you needed to make sense of?

Separate from what?

From yourself.

But in all of this, I don't see a belief in God. I see someone looking to see if belief in God is beneficial to themself.

And worldviews can change.

Yes you can, but that doesn't explain how you can believe in God, not just believe He exists, but believe IN HIM, then not believe in Him based on puny speculative reasoning and information (by comparison to believing in God). I'm just suggesting that you were fed the wrong information, followed up on it, and came away from it, meaning you believed in an idea, not God.

If you wish to make the priori assumption that belief in God is and can only ever be a permanent state, such that those who claim to have been theist but now atheist were never really believers to begin with, then this is an assumption that you're going to struggle to support given the testimony of those that have been through that change. Feel free to try, though.

The question still remains :what was it they believed in?
If you wish to make the priori assumption that all belief in God is, and can only be delusional, such that every person in the history of the world who believe(d) in God is delusional because of your own experience, then this is an assumption that you're going to struggle given the testimony that those claim to have a different experience to you. Feel free to try.

If your claim is that there are people who currently claim to be religious, even overtly so (through holding religious offices), who are not believers, then I would agree. There was even a claim (if I recall correctly) by one bishop that every priest in his diocese had confessed to being atheist (I do lack the reference, but will try to find it).

Yet every two-bit explicit atheist cites the notion that it is possible to believe in the atheist philosophy of darwinism, because the Catholic church claims that it does. (lighthearted poke)

But you can not simply claim that because someone no longer believes then they never really believed without supporting that claim. Beliefs can and do change, based on experience, circumstance, education etc.

I apreciate that it is not as simple as that, which is why I'm trying build up a picture of what you believed.
You say you believed in God, but you remained separate to God. You were prepared to believe in Him on your terms, on the condition that He tick all the boxes of enquiry. He didn't, so you stopped.

For the majority of the time While I believed there was no question about it

Okay, this is interesting.
Why was there no question about your belief?

Then I doubted the religion but not the universal God behind the religion(s).

Did you realise that God was the origin of everything in nature?

Then I doubted the existence of god, and at that point - at the very start of that phase - you could say that i was no longer a believer, that i no longer held the belief in God. But up to then I most certainly did.

So your reason for doubting God was kick-started because of your disillusionment of religion (s)?
What did that have to do with God?

jan.