Atheist Memes

Most people "find god" when they're children, they're going to church with their family/friends, they're participating in social activities under the auspices of the church, and they're nibbling away at the propaganda of the institution. Conversions are the exception, not the rule, and are far more commonly a consequence of interfaith marriage than some personal trauma.

I would argue that people "lose god" when they're unhappy more often than they find one. Discovering that you're not the ideal religious worshiper - you're selfish, you're angry, you're horny, you're heretical, you're not merely satisfied to exist as a little disposable worker bee in the business hive that keeps the church coffers well-funded - is alienating and disorienting. Discovering that church officials don't have satisfying answers to life's harder questions is frustrating and tense.

Big institutional churches feed on normalcy and prosperity. They do best when their congregants are looking for a certain baseline validation in their own virtue, not when they're defeated or transitioning or questioning their social norms. Downturns don't send people to the pews, unless the pews offer something that newly impoverished people need.

There are church missions that fill this role in some instances. But - by and large - the church exists as an amenity for the wealthy and privileged, not the poor and disempowered.

When people are at their lowest, they seek something to fill the void

When I was at my lowest, I went to my church looking for relief and I got back empty platitudes and a mysticism that didn't hold up under the slightest pressure. I became significantly less religious and more agnostic, as I started looking outside the church for better answers.

Things might have been different if I'd been in a more Evangelical Church with a savvier group of ministers. Or if I'd been in a family that was more well-connected with the church's philanthropic organs. But the depression, the fear, and the indignation I felt at my lowest propelled me away from a church full of pleasant-seeming do-nothing gospel singers.