My experience is similar to yours, except that I was raised to be a Moron (oops, Mormon). I was brainwashed as a child to accept everything the church taught without questioning anything. Blind faith was all they wanted. In my 20's I started to ask myself questions, and I discovered that the scriptures had many falsehoods in them. That's when I became a non-believer, and was excommunicated from the Moron church. A little more study, and I discovered that all Christianity was flawed. I am very happy to be free from such a scam.

At mass, the priest would read one selection from a gospel and another taken from one of the epistles. I never understood what they meant. In college, I took a course on biblical exogesis, where I learned the gospels were written decades after the time period when this guy supposedly rose from the dead, and that there were a bunch more gospels that king James didn't like, so he didn't include them in the Bible. The icing on the cake was the coursework I took in philosophy. Since then, I have been heaven and hell free.

My paternal grandfather was probably the most religious person in my extended family (more so than my father). He gave me an old copy of the bible when I was a kid (now that I think of it, it's interesting that my sisters never got one), and I, too, decided to try reading it cover to cover. I don't think I got past Genesis. Sometime around age 12 to 14, though, the spirit moved me to open it up at random to see what wisdom I could glean from its pages. I landed in Leviticus, on the rules about how to deal with a spot on someone's body, stuff like isolating the person and watching how the spot changed to determine whether it was "clean" or "unclean." I remember my reaction very clearly: I could not believe that something so obviously primitive and ignorant was in this holy book supposedly dictated by God, and I had to wonder if anyone else was aware of it. It was inconceivable to me that anyone could read that and still think that the book was the product of some omniscient intelligence.

I was not raised particularly religious, and I was never much of a believer, but I have always wanted to be a good person, and I did generally take it for granted that religious people had some sort of a leg up where virtue was concerned. In retrospect, I don't think I got that message from my parents; I'm sure it came partly from my grandfather and my maternal grandmother, but mostly I probably just absorbed it from 1970's American culture. I may have been a bit slower than many people here to abandon faith altogether, but finding that passage from Leviticus was a big step in that direction. A second big step was the Intro to the New Testament course I took in college. I'm still amazed to think that the professor was himself a believer, because after that course, I knew I wasn't a Christian (though I still hadn't abandoned religion altogether).

I'm sure I couldn't have maintained any sort of faith for too long, in any case, but I do wonder what might have happened if at age 13-ish I had opened the book to something like the Sermon on the Mount instead of Leviticus.

Reading the bible cover to cover is what made me stop being a believer.

I studied the bible and read it cover to cover. If you study the bible as we know it today, Constantine and how and when the books were chosen, etc. the only conclusion is that it is all bullshit. Your beloved Jesus was not even a Christian.

I read a lot as a young person and had lengthy discussions about how do you explain...

I read Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology as well as the Christian mythology and rabbinical texts. There was so much that was lifted from the others, that they all blended together. The trinity was a way to differentiate the christians from the others in that while all other mythologies had the gods having human children (demigods), the Christians claimed their demigod was a full god (3rd century). When you ask the difference between Hercules (the most famous demigod) and Jesus the answers were basically bullshit.

I was raised to question everything and to research and develop my opinion based on the facts. That is how I am where I am today.

I have read the Christian bible, the Koran. The book of Mormon, The book of Krisna, the Satanic Bible and many other books based on faith mythology so I'd like to think mine was an informed choice.

Also raised catholic. Forced to go through the requisite rituals. Got as far as being confirmed.
It all felt so false to me, even when I was little. The older I got, the more I read, and I read everything I could get my hands on.
I've always been really interested in ancient history. Especially pre-christian history. The more I learned about that time, the more absurd the concept of "one true god" became to me.

Reading the bible, both old and new testaments, sealed the deal.
What an unbelievable collection of nonsense.

My father insisted that both my sister and i will read the Bible , and also we took World religions for 2 semesters while in college .
At that time I was in fine arts university and my sister in med school . We grew up without religion , he was an atheist and so and we , but he wanted us to come to r own thoughts and conclusions after we hear what religions have to say .
We grew up in Catholic environment in Italy , where every day is a good day to celebrate a saint , a martyr , something Our household wasn’t acceptable by anyone , and we couldn’t care less
Years later , when I came to USA , I took religions of the world again at university ( I figured easy grade for me ), and curious to see if any different approach . Nope . Same shit . Hilarious .
Today , if I find bibles on hotel rooms when I travel , I draw all type of pics on it , and some I used to take w me in my bag for fireplace purpose . Not anymore , gas fireplace , lazy
I think the Bible is almost funny if it wasn’t that sad .
It smells abuse ,pedophilia , fear , and cruelty , emotional abuse , and worse , a false belief that loyalty to Jesus will reward u w eternity / peace / success , and u ll be the good guy all way there .
Well . I got a problem with all of the above . And I make sure at every opportunity I get around youth , to talk about it . It makes me happy

The Bible is a prop used by those wishing to control the behavior and beliefs of others

It seemed to me that you had the right to kill on the one hand and on the other, you could go to hell for killing! The hardest part that i never understood was...‘to fear god was to love god!’ When I fear something I don’t want anything to do with it! Then I found out that the word ‘fear’ meant love! Meanings of words were turned upside down!
And the last part was the hardest for me...’if you believe on the name of Jesus you will be saved’ and ‘washed in his blood’ made no sense...I did however believe that Jesus was trying to teach people to rise to their higher nature. But, I never learned that from the Baptist religion as a child, that came later with my own study.

I was raised Catholic and blindly accepted it all — hook, line, and sinker — until I was 16.

In my Catholic high school, we delved into the Bible in religion class. I had never read it before — and I was shocked about the inconsistencies, and to learn that they voted on Jesus’s divinity in the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. Basically saying he was divine would mean more believers, ergo more people making donations to their church.

I felt utterly betrayed and never believed in this BS again.

Evangelicals are so oppressive I felt enlightened when I went to a catholic college. That should give people a hint how bad fundies are

I red it cover to cover, also red the Quaran too, found all of it just a lot of nonsense.

I read the whole thing through, probably four times (or many more, if we also count reading along as it was read aloud on Sunday). I had a cute laminated bookmark that assigned two readings per night, jumping around from old testament to new and back again, so as to tie the two together. Or maybe to reduce boredom. Anyway, it was designed to cover the entire Bible in one year. I didn't always meet the deadline.

This reading did not, at the time, make me a skeptic. Sure, I had questions - but I was usually satisfied with the answers I got.

Disbelief came later - quite suddenly, I saw it all as the fairy tale that it is. And THIS is when all that reading came in handy. So many parts of that book can be contradicted by other parts...or by observed reality.

This is the thing that boggles my mind. Say god created us and is omnipotent and knows the future.. Why did he create us with desire to sin? Why would god then punish us for the sinful nature he created us with. Why would god even create a place so horrible for sinners that they are tortured for eternity?

How can god say he loves us and at the same time punish us with such cruelty. I would never even think of doing that to my kids. I could never imagine punishing my kids with horrible torture for eternity for disobeying me.

One the Prime Rules of Religions such as Chrustianity is,
" Thou shalt NOT read the Holy Bible for thineself, for it may well cause thee to think for thyself and thus thou shall be seen in the eyes of God as a sinner of the worst kind."
Imo, Religions depend and rely upon the "Mushroom concept," i.e. "keep them in the dark and feed them on bullshit."

The claims of Genesis 1:1 to 2:1 are manifestly ridiculous thereby invalidating everything that follows. The same goes for the Torah.

Pretty much the same as you. The more you actually read it and analyzed it, the less plausible it all seemed.

Read the first five books . Lots of , " begatting ," going on . A man born and raised as a Pagan , fought and won many battles and wanted to be crowned Emperor , but the Pope refused to recognize a Pagan and told him he had to convert in order to become Emperor . This Pagan , born and raised , is the same man who chose which books made it into the current day Bible , excluding , among other things the information about Lillith .

I actually made it through reading the bible from cover to cover. However at the same time we were studying Greek mythology in high school, and it became petty obvious that the bible and Greek myths were generated in much the same way. So, it became obvious to me that it was all just made up stories.

Immaculately seminal.

I liked the story of Jarius's daughter, but found most of the rest very boring indeed. I think I would have become a non-believer anyway, Bible or no Bible.

The bible played a huge part in my upbringing. I was taught that the Bible was 100% true and that when the preacher got into the pulpit that he was a messenger of god and that he was filled with the holy spirit and everything he says is correct. I was born and raised in the Deep South so that is the consensus opinion. If you believe otherwise then you are ostracized and ridiculed. I tried to read the bible from cover to cover and i found some interesting stories in it but others very hard to understand. You are told that you must be in the spirit to truly understand it but i think that you self hypnotize yourself into believing its true and then twisting the stories to your belief. The problem with the Bible and preachers are that preachers read one verse of the bible and then interpret it to mean whatever the preacher thinks it does.

The Noah’s ark story and just how absurd it is. Here you have an ark that is about 500 feet in length, it had no ventilation, no radar, no sonar, bilge pump or depth sounder. And the space needed for all the animals, Noah’s family as well as all the food needed for the 9 months, as the Bible claimed, that they were in the ark for the period of the great flood.

You would need approximately 7 or 8 ocean liners the size of the Titanic to do all this, possibly more.

I never read much of the Bible. Did attend church very occasionally as a child and more regularly with my ex and four children.
I never got it. I think college classes in history and ancient history helped form my views.
Love all my kids and keep in touch with all. On a religious scale there views range from 1 to 10.
I am very lucky to be seeing a non religious woman for almost a year.