About  

Leaving religion can involve giving up – to a greater or lesser degree – family, close friends, social networks and activities. In some cases, it can mean giving up a job, career aspirations, years invested in religious education, a high-profile reputation, and so on.

For this reason, there are many who might, occasionally, harbour thoughts of leaving. But the journey, in the end, is too daunting - the losses too great. Better to stay put, bury the doubts, and ‘go with the flow’.

Some are well aware of the costs, and so never set out to leave religion. But then, the unanswered questions start piling up. Basic doctrines begin to unravel. A series of traumatic life-experiences lead them to question whether the 'God' - who they thought would look after them - is really there after all. Eventually, they find themselves at a point of no return.

For others, the journey away from religion is deliberate and urgent. They find themselves unable to defend their religion against a particularly cogent and rigorous critique. Or they realise, in a moment of startling clarity, that their religion is utter nonsense, a fairytale.  Or they experience some horrific abuse within a religious context. None of these can be ignored or dismissed, at least not without damaging themselves. So leaving, for them, becomes a matter of sanity or survival.

Many who end up leaving will - at some stage - have tried a few stop-gaps, or delaying strategies. One of these is to modify or liberalise their religion. This is a very common strategy.  As Christopher Hitchens says:  "Everywhere I speak, I find that the faithful ... take their beliefs à la carte or cafeteria-style, choosing the bits they like and discarding the rest." (Vanity Fair, Sept 2007). The hope is that this strategy will allow them to stay in the fold without betraying (too much of) their intellectual and moral integrity. But this option becomes, for many, impossible to sustain. For one thing, it will, at some point, become clear that they are simply making up their own religion. Or they grow weary of continually having to hide the fact that their own 'liberal' views are not shared by those whose rejection or disapproval they fear the most.

For others, the liberalising strategy is unimaginable. Their current religion is so conservative or dogmatic that to become a liberal would lead to immediate - and possibly public - condemnation. They would lose just as much, personally and socially, if they gave up religion altogether. They cannot stay where they are and there is no 'third way'. So leaving is the only alternative.

Fortunately, most who have managed to leave religion would say that what they gained was of far greater value to them, in the end, than what they lost.  The de-conversion stories linked to this site provide ample evidence of this.

Even if the journey is ultimately worth it, that doesn’t make it any easier. One reason for this is the social isolation: it's unlikely that those who are leaving will have any close connection with people outside their religion, at least no one they could lean on for emotional support.  Non-religious colleagues or friends, even if encouraging, will often not understand what the de-conversion process is like. The person leaving can be struggling with questions which are completely alien to someone who has always been an atheist (e.g. "How do I live in the ‘here and now’ when the only thing that really mattered to me was what would happen after death?").  

The best support therefore tends to be people who have been through a similar experience.  Fortunately, there are now many online forums, where people can discuss these kinds of questions, links to some of which are on this site.  There are also, in many countries, support groups for those who would like to meet up with others who are leaving (or recovering from) the religion they once held.

Another reason why leaving religion can be difficult is that it involves shedding a religious mind-set; and this is not as easy as just declaring, one day, that you are an ‘atheist’ or an 'agnostic' (which is not to minimise how difficult even that step can be).  There are countless cognitive distortions that result from being religious: superstitious thinking, judgmentalism, black-and white thinking, ad hominem reasoning, a tendency to defer to authority figures, irrational fears, lack of self-esteem, avoidance or minimising of ordinary human pleasures, the tendency to blame oneself for any problems and to ‘humbly’ disavow any achievements or positive qualities, and so on. 

To give an example: someone who has been religious for many years may find that, even though they no longer believe in a god, there are still times when they find themselves inexplicably starting a prayer (typically during a stressful time), only to catch themselves mid-sentence. This experience can be a trigger for deep resentment and anger, reminding them, as it will, of the extent to which they have been damaged by religion. It can also bring on a pang of grief or fear, as they recall a time when they felt there was 'Someone out there to look out for them', whereas now they are 'on their own' (a response that is probably impossible for life-long atheists to comprehend). It can take longer than one might expect to lose these unwelcome habits of mind, along with their associated triggers.

Again, many who have been brought up in a religious environment have - over the years - absorbed a wide and complex array of rationalisations that were used to prop up their belief-system.  It is not always an easy thing to remove these props.  For instance, suppose you have recently de-converted, and you are reading the works of a scientist or a humanist thinker.  As you read, you find that theistic objections pop into your head, seemingly out of no-where. They come from a perspective that you no longer hold, and they can be dismissed with comparative ease. But it can be extremely disconcerting to find that your ‘apologetic instincts’ are still operating at some level. It can take a great deal of work and time to tease apart and fully eradicate these automatic responses.

One of the best ways of doing this is, of course, to immerse oneself in the work of those who have provided both critiques of religion and secular alternatives. This is essential to discovering and formulating one's own non-religious world-view. For this reason, this site has (and will continue to) collect online links to various resources on the subject. It also provides links to organisations that are designed to support secular perspectives on science, education, ethics and politics. We have also created a companion site called Sola Ratione ('reason alone') that presents our objections to religion in general, and Christianity in particular.

Leaving religion is not all pain, sweat and tears. At various points along the way, it becomes possible to view the religion you once held through the lens of 'an outsider'.  When that happens, it is hard not to be stunned at how patently ridiculous it all is. You wonder how on earth you fell for it - and for so long!  At these times, the best remedy is to turn to those who have the gift of exposing the hilarious absurdities in religion. Some of these are listed on this site under humour.   

This site is about how best to get through the process of de-conversion and successfully detach oneself from a 'religious eco-system'.  We hope that it helps you to ‘find your way’, and wish you all the very best!