Ever been a point in your life where you questioned your faith? If so, please share?

Yes, as I got older, entered college and got into science and philosophy – especially when I started to think about what I’m allowed to judge on and why, and what knowledge is.

It was pretty hard, but in the end I was unable to blindly believe in things that I only believed in because the people I grew up around told me were true, and that otherwise were just extremely unlikely. Not sure if that’s what you want to hear though.

Of course. Around age 15–16, I started questioning my religious choices and beliefs. I studied various religions and alternative belief systems.

Well, I questioned, and ultimately rejected faith because it didn’t make sense to me. Faith implies believing in something without any evidence, and as I became more of an empiricist I realized that the dichotomy of being an empiricist, and a person of faith was incompatible. So I rejected all faith and became much happier as a result.

I don’t think you can have real faith without questioning.

My understanding of faith may be a little outside of the mainstream, but I don’t see it as being equivalent to belief, or certainty without evidence (or in the face of contrary evidence). I consider it to be more making your peace with uncertainty and living out of that questioning. When you can do that, then the unknown stops becoming an enemy to be vanquished with certitude. Not-knowing becomes the fertile ground of creativity.

The German poet Rilke, in his Letters to a Young Poet, described what I call faith:

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”

I left the religious tradition I was raised in precisely because it considered questioning and faith to be incompatible. I chose questioning, because it felt absolutely essential.

I think most people question their faith and it usually happens when they’re college age. I was atheist during my college years and some years beyond college.

In high school I went to a Presbyterian church camp. There were classes we could choose from. I went to one called “Why I am a Protestant..” I wanted to know why I was a Christian. The answer was not answered by the the class (since that wasn’t what the class was about.) I worked up enough courage to sit next to the head of the camp at dinner. I asked him, “Isn’t it just a matter of luck that I’m a Christian because of where I live in the world where I do and have the family I have?” That man turned his back on me and said not a word. That was the beginning. I continued to pray to be shown what I should do with my life. In my 20’s I found myself in a painful situation. I decided I would have done better to make my own decisions instead of waiting for God’s directions. It wasn’t long after that I understood it was all a snare and a delusion. And I’ve been happily detached from religion ever since. (Except I sing a lot of religious music. Because it’s beautiful music, not because of the lyrics or text.)

Yeah, raised Catholic and starting to feel as though I was sold a bunch of bullocks.

I have questioned my understanding of my faith but I can’t really say I have questioned the existence of God. My faith used to be in a very small box. It has become bigger and broader the more I learn and understand.

At about 13.

Came to the conclusion my faith was bogus and I became an atheist. 50 + years later and I see no reason that the questioning and conclusions were wrong.

Ever since I was a child, I asked questions about the religious teachings that were presented to me. As an adult, I tried various religions, trying to find the answers. I finally realized I don’t have any faith and that’s why none of it made sense to me.

When I was in the 8th grade, our science teacher told us about the “Big Bang” theory and that’s when I began to question my Catholic upbringing. Someone was lying to me and I wanted to know who.

I just remembered. When I was 6, I had a 5 year old friend who was a Catholic. She was telling me that Jesus was in a little box on the altar. Now I knew that wasn’t possible. He wouldn’t fit in a little box. I think that was my first doubt about religion.

I became a Christian in my teen years, probably partly to rebel against my de facto agnostic parents. Over the next decade, my faith slowly waned as I read more and more about the Christian god and the bible. It made increasingly less sense tp me as I grew into an adult and established what kind of person I was morally. The Christian god is simply not moral. That was the one contradiction I could not excuse, no matter how hard I tried. When I finally realized that I didn’t believe, it was a huge relief to me.

Yes I do often. Mostly when things are not going my way. Then other people point out to me how God has worked in my life. Oddly these people are not religious nor believe in God. How odd is that?. Questioning ones faith is a personal thing though.

NO, I could never see any other way than the faith I believe.

I was blindly faithful to Christian beliefs from tiny child until I was about 40 or so. Then I finally had to do some self-searching and had to admit to myself that believing in a superior being is flying in the face of reason. Anyone that knows any Science at all knows what we are, where we came from, and how the world works. We know how the world around us was formed, and how the living things on it evolved. It isn’t a mystery anymore. We are on our own, folks. I think Jesus was right when he said, “know ye not that ye are gods.” Provided there was a Jesus, that saying means to me that if there is any divine intervention, it is coming from ourselves. You know, heaven helps those who help themselves.

My faith just gradually died away as I grew up. I don’t think there was any great struggle in it. It’s just not a big issue for me.

Yes. I attended Catholic school from first through high school but I started to doubt the logic and found a great many contradictions in what I was taught and in religious scriptures in general. A great deal of cruelty, early suggestions of human sacrifice, claims to monotheism while suggesting the existence of “other” gods and no connection I could possibly see between the very angry god of the Jewish scriptures who killed for some kind of pleasure and the evolution of the Jesus figure for whom man latter killed for some kind of socio-political dominance and perhaps pleasure.

I began skipping mass by freshman year in high school and attended a Unitarian Universalist youth group that was studying comparative world religions at the time. I was fascinated by the variety of spiritual perceptions. Within a couple of years I was studying with Margaret Mead and became very interested in comparative cultural perspectives.

I ended up an agnostic – Not because I saw no logic any specific Abrahamic god, gods, but that I rejected the concept of any man made god concepts based on iron age cultures and their evolutions. None of them make any sense at all. I can appreciate their need during times when they were the law and people did not know the meaning of things we understand today. Religion is the opposite of intellectual liberation and education – it prevents people from moving forward and discovering the unknown.

I have never died and can’t claim I know anything that comes after or if the universe itself is what people feel – the unknown. I vary between identifying myself as agnostic and atheist.

I was raised Christian and I was a devout follower. I had the same sense of certainty then about my beliefs as I have now against them. I would summarize my time with Christian faith as the conclusions I formed when I didn’t know the whole story. Now in the present, I feel like I know more of “the story”; I feel better informed than I was while growing up and so my original conclusions simply weren’t as “good” as my current conclusions. So, I believe my conclusions have always been rational but my access to evidence and information was limited. I believe even my current understandings are at the mercy of whatever new evidence and information I might come across and I’m prepared to change my mind about anything as long as there is good reason to believe it.

Most of us are telling you stories of the past, @Mama_Cakes, but your story is in the present and it would be awesome of it you could elaborate and share what you’re going through, what conflicts you’re weighing, etc. :) all the best

It was the point where I reached a state of maturity that allowed me to freely admit that I am wrong at least thirty times a day.

Fortunately, this also allowed me to start learning that there is an enormous reality out there that is not me and the way I want things to be.

Always question it, questions eventually lead to deeper understanding. Questions steer me away from Atheism AND Theology. Both are flawed. Answers and meaning exist in those grey areas…so explore them.

Sort of. My parents didn’t really raise my siblings and I to be religious, but they did try to teach us about God and the importance of prayer. By the time I was eight though, I outgrew it. I started to have doubts about whether prayers meant to me what they meant to my parents and whether any Being was really out there listening to me.

Although I embraced atheism steadfastly as a child, when I was in high school and a close friend of mine passed away I very desperately wanted to find religion. I wanted to believe in some higher power—and believe me, I looked everywhere I could! But the deeper I got into my explorations the more I realized that I wanted to believe, but never actually did.

Theology is completely flawed, sorry….It is. Faith is the the key here… you buy it, I don’t. Belief is one thing and reality is another. We can’t know spiritual reality and faith is accepting without evidence some version of spiritual reality. Whatever, believe what you will. It’s the easy road to accept faith. I’m not about the easy road. I’ll bushwhack to the truth if I have to dammit.

It happened when I was very young and it might have been more rebellion than a crisis of faith. As I aged I just had no need to believe in gods and their tales of morality. When I got even older I learned the truth of religion and decided I was 100% against all of it.

I have never doubted the existence of God, but there have been times I was sure He didn’t like me.

When I was 12 or 13 I got interested in logic and logical fallacies. A lot of the religious beliefs I was raised with didn’t stand up to basic scrutiny. I’ve been an atheist since then.

It started when I was 11 years old, and read the bible from front to back. That experience convinced me that all religion is man-made, but I still believed in a god (though not the God), off and on, for many more years. I considered myself agnostic for a long time, but I’m an atheist now. The religions of today will almost certainly be the myths of tomorrow.

It is common for people to question their faith, usually when fairly young. You initially reflexively adopt the beliefs of your parents. At some point, you have to either take ownership of your faith, thereby strengthening it, or else reject it. When I was around 12, I started questioning and wound up an atheist. It helped that my best friend at the time went through a similar experience.

What a GQ, and all of the responses above are fascinating.

Like many others, I grew up in a very Christian environment, both at home and in the community (southern Virginia, USA). It wasn’t until I was about 13 that the seeds of doubt sprouted. A public school class on Greek and Roman Mythology made me wonder if, someday, people would look upon Christianity in the same way we chuckle at the beliefs of these past religions.

At a high school age, friends were made that had other religious beliefs. In college, a dear friend was my first exposure to atheism. A few years later, I dated a Muslim. All of these opportunities, where people share their beliefs, have allowed for an unending education on religion (or not).

Several years ago, Julia Sweeney’s Letting Go of God was viewed. Humorous, but it hit home. How can any of us truly believe what feels right unless we question our faith and not search for answers?

I was brought up in a strict Catholic household but even at a very young age I never really bought into any of it, i don’t have faith in anything that is not tangible. i am a agnostic because I can not prove nor disprove the existence of god

Yeah. It was when I was old enough to realize it didn’t make any sense. I was about 10.

I question it regularly and sometimes I lose it altogether for a period of time. It’s always come back so far but it can feel very lonely in the meantime. I try and find other things to channel some faith into, whether that be my relationship with partner or friends or my passion for my job.