When did you start to question religion? I remember when I was ten, I was at a summer camp, I was raised in a Catholic family and I believed because my parents told me to believe. I was playing with my pokemon plush when a girl came to me and said, 'you know pokemon is evil right? It has evolution and is against God!' I was heart broken. I LOVED pokemon, but I LOVED God, how could pokemon be evil? How could an almighty, forgiving Lord damn a child to hell for liking pokemon? That was when I first wondered about the validity of God. Then when I was twelve I read a book where once characters died they went to the after life. But even in the after life they slowly faded until they where gone. That terrified me. I wondered if there was something like that in heaven, I mean how else could all people of history fit in heaven? That's around the time a priest came and visited my school and I asked him. He told me that not everyone made it to heaven. That those who went against God were punished to hell. Again I wondered how a loving God could do such a thing. So I began to read the bible. I was disgusted by what I found. I did not find a loving God but a vengeful, arrogant, prideful dictator. When I confronted spiritual leaders they told me that their beliefs had changed, or that they don't follow that part of the bible anymore... I noticed they cherry picked it to suit them... I was afraid of death, still am. The thought of dying and there being nothing would make me wake up screaming when I was little. But then I thought about heaven and I would feel better. These revelations to me jarred me. I was terrified to think there was no loving omnipotent being watching over me, guiding me...
But as time went on I realized several things. There are terrible things in the world, God either ignores them or cannot stop them, people choose what parts they like and don't take the whole thing in the bible. And that good things only happen when we will them and do them. No God gives us our morals. I was terrified to think there was no loving God. But as I learned more I realized what I thought was a loving God was a cruel dictator, and I saw that either I deluded myself into thinking there was a God. Or faced the reality that either there is no God, or if there is, he's an ambivalent cruel monster who ignores the suffering of people. That's how I started to question religion, when I stopped believing. How about You?