What happened to you?

Ask any atheist out there, whether they were raised religious or not, if they’ve been asked this question, or something like it, from a religious person:  “What happened to you?” 
I have read enough atheist bloggers and read enough atheist themed books to know that almost every atheist gets asked this question from the religious.  As if there was some sort of traumatic thing that happened that made that person not believe in God, or as the believer phrases it more often, “What happened that made you so angry at God?”

If this post is read by a religious person, I can tell you that for almost every atheist I have met they will tell you there wasn’t something bad or traumatic that happened to make them stop believing.  There isn’t one single event that leads a believer to doubt.  In a lot of the atheists’ experiences I’ve met, it was usually a conglomeration of many, many smaller events (most of them pretty uneventful on their own) and many conversations that lead atheists to conclude that the scientific contradictions and the ethics of the god(s) and the characters presented in many holy books aren’t the best cases for morality that can be made in society.  It’s not a decision that is taken lightly.  There are many doubts that lead a person to stop believing in nonsense.

Yet, the main impetus for this post is that I was recently in a conversation with two very religious Christians.  One of them said he found Jesus after he was arrested and put in jail for a little while and another after the death of a spouse.  So, is that in essence, “what happened” to them for them become as devoutly religious as they are?  I find that there is a certain pattern like this for a sizable portion of the very religious out there.  I am excluding those who were raised in faith and are still in it.  They find solace in religion after something bad happens to them: a drug addiction, an arrest, a death of someone close to them, their own impending death either through a serious illness or accident or being sentenced to death.  Side note: Christians love to throw around the conversion stories of demented criminals who were saved right before being executed.  I still don’t understand that one, by the way.  Ted Bundy apparently converted to Christianity on his death bed when he was executed.   What if Hinduism is the correct religion?  He threw his support behind the wrong god! He’s doubly screwed!  Even celebrities who get arrested for very serious crimes and sentenced to jail terms somehow find Jesus and then they are suddenly given all this undeserved outpouring of support.  Converting to Christianity in the USA is somehow equated with being given a new lease on life, when more often than not it’s a smoke screen to hide what never really went away, ask the Catholic Church, Ted Haggard, or any others on this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_leaders_convicted_of_crimes

I think a few reasons for this phenomenon exist and I may not have all of them in mind right now, but here are a couple that stand out.

1.    Religion (especially evangelical Christianity) seeks out those who are in bad spots in life. I bet that most current Christians that I am speaking of didn’t become religious after a happy time in their lives either by accident or by choice and attempts to bridge the gap between what happened to that person and how Jesus can fix them, by telling them that they are sinners that need salvation (in the case of criminals that become religious), Or….

2.    By giving them the comfort that someone close to them who died will be in heaven waiting for the reunion (with the caveat of accepting the faith and just assuming that person is in heaven and not hell)

3.    Providing easy answers when the answers to very bad things that happen aren’t so easy.

So, I ask this to a lot of devoutly religious people (especially the ones who didn’t grow up in the church), “What happened that was so bad that made you religious?” 

See how demeaning that sounds when I ask it to the religious person?  It’s sounds just as offensive coming from me as it does coming from every religious person who asks it of atheists.  So, please religious people, stop asking this one.