How I Lost GOD!

Stefan Molyneux

In this episode, I share my personal journey from devout belief to atheism, sparked by a thought-provoking listener question. I reflect on my religious upbringing and the key moments that reshaped my beliefs. Through childhood anecdotes, I illustrate the contrast between relentless faith and an underlying disillusionment, particularly during my time in boarding school. I discuss how the emotional coldness of my environment—both familial and cultural—led me to view God as distant and judgmental. This narrative invites listeners to examine how societal behaviors can influence spiritual beliefs and questions the nature of divinity in a world that often feels disconnected. Ultimately, I encourage critical contemplation of faith and the search for warmth and connection amidst complex human emotions.  FOLLOW ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux  GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK! https://peacefulparenting.com/  Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!  Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!  You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!  See you soon! https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025

Transcript

00:00All right. Hope you're doing well. Question from an ex-listener, and I really do appreciate

00:09these questions. I ask for them, and thank you so much for bringing them to my attention.

00:18And so, here's a question, and it is, are you an atheist based on refutation of the teleological

00:26or cosmological argument, or both? And how would you express your refutations? That is a very, very

00:35good question. So, I have an entire book about this, so I'm gonna just get personal. I'm gonna

00:47get personal. And I'm going to talk about how I became an atheist from being, I would say,

00:54extraordinarily devout in my younger years. One of my first memories is of playing with

01:04my cousin at my aunt's house in the attic. And there was a song by Cliff Richard playing

01:11on the radio called Power to All Our Friends, to the music that never ends. And I remember,

01:18I've talked about this on the show before, I remember there being a very cold eye that

01:25disapproved of the song because it was secular. And the funny thing is, is that Cliff Richard is,

01:32I believe, quite a Christian, does a lovely duet with Van Morrison. Whenever God shines a light or

01:39something like that, it's really, really pretty. So, that's neither here nor there.

01:43So, I will tell you what happened to my faith. I will tell you what happened to my religion. I will

01:52tell you what happened between me and God. And I hope that you will forgive the indulgence in

02:01personal history. Because the arguments I've put forward out there, whether they're theological or

02:07cosmological, whether it's by design or the nature of the universe, I've already talked about that quite a

02:13bit. And I've mentioned some of this stuff in passing. But I think it's important to understand

02:19if you're interested. And it's not just my journey. I think this is the journey of a lot of people in

02:24the West. I think it's important to understand how people end up giving up on faith, giving up on

02:32religion, giving up on God. I don't know if it's some, I always think of it as some sort of vague

02:38Anglo-Saxon thing. Just this relentless empiricism. What's factual, what works, what's real,

02:45and the evidence of the senses and all kinds of good juicy stuff. For me, it's always been important

02:51to be practical. And I know that's not an argument. I also know it's annoying to say,

02:56well, what I believe is practical, what you believe is. I don't mean that. And I'll sort of

03:00explain it as I go along. And I'm just grappling my way through these particular thoughts and ideas.

03:06And again, I really do appreciate the question. All right. So let's get started. So I was very

03:10religious when I was young, truly believed in it all. I remember being in boarding school. I still

03:17had some remnants of faith by boarding school. I went to boarding school when I was six. So the memory

03:24I had was probably when I was three or so. I remember very clearly being 10 months of age or 11 months of

03:30age before I could walk. And by about three years of age, I know I still had very deep belief in God and

03:38faith in God. And I think by the age of six, it was still there, but mostly gone. And before that, I think

03:49at the age of four or five, I think I was cynical about it. And I know, what a prodigious four-year-old

03:56cynic. So, you know, again, I know it's annoying and just bear with me as best you can. If it's

04:01any consolation, if it annoys you, this precociousness, it annoys me first. So just to be aware

04:06of that. Because I very clearly remember my aunt, I would stay with my aunt quite a bit. This is my

04:13father's sister. Well, one of them. I had three sisters. And my aunt would take us to church.

04:20And I remember she gave me five pence to put in the collection box. And instead, I put it in my sock

04:31because often after we were at church, we might go, I'm not sure what my plan was, but we would go

04:40and I think I could get a candy bar for a penny or two. And I figured at some point I could get a

04:45couple of candy bars, chocky bars, instead of putting money in the collection plate.

04:52So just empirically, again, by maybe four or five years of age, because this was before boarding

04:57school. So by four or five years of age, I was not devoted to God, the church or religion, but was

05:06instead apparently devoted to chocolate and the slow rolling destruction of my teeth. So it's always

05:15been interesting to me how I went from that level of devotion to cynicism to hiding five pennies in

05:25my sock. And here's the funny thing. And I very clearly remember my aunt saying, do you have your

05:33five pence? And I'm like, yeah, show it to me. And I was like, oh, it must have fallen. Oh my gosh,

05:40I wonder if it fell in my sock. I mean, just honestly, the most ridiculous stuff. And she kind

05:45of, I'm sure, let me get away with it or whatever it was, right? Oh, it ended up in my sock. I think

05:49I put it in my sock for safekeeping or something like that. But I didn't get my two to five candy

05:55bars. So what had happened in the interim? Of course, it's pretty hard to recreate your thoughts

06:05at such an early age. And I don't have, obviously, I didn't have syllogisms. It was all feelings,

06:12experiences, instincts, sort of you name it. And so it's hard for me to recreate this

06:18in any accurate manner. So I have to kind of look at the circumstances and try and figure out what was

06:26going on that my faith just kind of drained away. I think it's John Irving who was talking about the

06:30faith of a priest as a sort of a stick insect that was climbing up a bathroom wall with a shower

06:36raining down. And eventually it just gave up and let slip. Certainly by the time I was in boarding

06:43school, I had some affinity for religion and I enjoyed some of the religious stories, but I was

06:49not religious. I prayed because I was supposed to, but I did not pray anymore to God. Now, I had not

06:59encountered any atheists or any atheism. I had not read, of course, at that age, any works disputing the

07:08logical consistency of the existence of God. I hadn't read or seen exactly a lot of comics based on

07:17radical skepticism of theology and so on. So I lost my faith with no intervention that I can recall.

07:29Now, my mother is not religious. My father at that time was an agnostic to my knowledge. He later,

07:38later on in life, much later on in life, he became devout, devoutly religious. But my mother was not

07:44religious. My aunts were. I don't know that my father ever talked to me about religion at that age.

07:53But my father was profoundly irresponsible. I mean, as I've said before, he played a tennis game while

08:00letting me crawl around the tennis shed to the point where I ended up drinking weed killer, almost

08:05dying. And so I don't recall any irreligious, anti-religious, or even non-religious consumption

08:17of anything. In the media, I don't remember anything. So I lost my faith due to circumstances.

08:28Or, I mean, to be more accurate, due to my interpretation of circumstances, which, of course,

08:35as everyone knows, is not always the same thing, to put it mildly, right? So I lost my faith due to

08:42circumstances. Or my interpretation of circumstances. So what were those circumstances? I mean, I think

08:48it's a big and important question, because I clearly am far from alone in losing my faith as a

08:55child. And I think a lot of it indirectly had to do with World War II, but we'll sort of get to that

09:02over time. And again, I appreciate your indulgence. I hope this is of interest to people. For me,

09:07it's always very interesting to work through particular patterns of thought, or to figure out,

09:11you know, why I would give up on something as essential to my identity

09:14as my Christian faith, to give up on it. Or, in a sense, to see it evaporate within me, because this

09:22was not a reasoned process. I didn't sit and think, well, this doesn't make much sense, and that doesn't

09:26make much sense, and all of that. But it just kind of evaporated. Like, you know, if you have a driveway

09:33and it rains, and it's summer, then you get these pools of water, and then the pools of water

09:39dry up pretty quickly, and then next thing you know, you look, and they're gone. And that was sort

09:44of my experience. And I think that cold, sort of sore on eye of God that I experienced when I was

09:50younger, and this could just be like a British thing, like growing up in England. England is a

09:55cold place, man, emotionally. And the sort of stiff upper lip, the frigid reserve, the class

10:03consciousness is a cold, cold place. Not a lot of hugs, not a lot of comfort. And I think

10:10a lack of comfort, a lack of kindness, a lack of gentleness, a lack of warmth, really, I think

10:20in the British culture, chills the distance between me and God to, like, interstellar length.

10:27Because if a culture worships God, which my culture, the British culture, if a culture

10:35worships God, and the culture is cold as hell, then God must be cold. I wouldn't say cold

10:44as hell, it seems a little blasphemous, but God must be cold. My father, cold. My mother,

10:50crazy. My brother, cold. My aunts, cold. My cousins, cold.

10:55Cold. I mean, 23 years ago, I married this wonderful Greek woman who's very warm. And

11:03I mean, it really did thaw my heart, let me tell you. Cold, cold, cold. A very little

11:09spontaneous joy. A very little happiness in the presence of children. A very tense, a

11:15lot of frustration, a lot of eye-rolling, a lot of icy politeness. A cold, just such a

11:23massive distance between people. And that coldness is also the case in Canada. It's

11:31also the case in the US, from what I've seen. Certainly was the case in South Africa. So,

11:36maybe it's a wasp thing, I don't know, but it's just cold. Cold people. Cold, distant people.

11:42No warmth. No hugs. No deep inquiries into how you're doing. No, how's your heart. No,

11:50you know, no real empathy. No deep consideration. No sensitive listening. Just cold. Broken.

12:00Anti-tribal. Shattered connections. Enormous distance. Now, of course, two world wars,

12:07the Great Depression, and you name it, certainly contributed to all of that.

12:12Or maybe, maybe I should say, it was not so much that it was a cold culture, but it was a culture

12:18that was dissociated through shock, PTSD, and the massive hemorrhaging blood loss of millions of

12:24its inhabitants. And I find modern culture very cold. I mean, you see it on social media all the

12:30time. There's almost no warmth. I mean, if you think about it, right? There's almost no warmth. I

12:35mean, I will say to people, you know, like, I'm really sorry that happened to you, and you have my

12:39deeper sympathies, big hug from the great beyond and all of that. And I mean, I feel that, and I

12:45really do care. You know, people have sad stories, but it's cold as a whole. I'm not sure why,

12:54but Western culture, again, some exceptions, of course. Italians are quite warm. Greeks,

13:01of course, but for a lot of the Western culture, it's just cold, distant, icy, removed, guarded,

13:10really guarded. Not like I had a conflict with the listener, and I recorded it. I'll probably put it

13:16out at some point, but just cold, just cold. And that coldness, I don't know if it's a kind of

13:21superiority, not for the listener, but just what I experienced as a child. I don't know if it's a

13:26kind of superiority, I don't know, but there is a sort of smug superiority and guardedness to that

13:31kind of coldness. And so, I experienced my culture as cold, my aunts as cold, my father as cold, my

13:38mother as distant, my brother as cold, distant. In boarding school, you got caned, cold, distant,

13:45the woman who was in charge of the matron, like a real nurse ratchet style, you know,

13:50Louise Fletcher from one flew over the cuckoo's nest, like just cold, cold, white, angry, white-hot

13:58anger, and cold, if that makes sense. I know hot and cold. The priests, cold. No warmth, no empathy,

14:07no curiosity. And as a sensitive boy, who had had more than his fair share of heartaches,

14:15some warmth, some hugs. I wrote about this with the character Catherine in my novel, Almost.

14:22Just warmth. Can we get some warmth anywhere? Of any kind? You know, you'd get injured. You'd fall

14:31down, you'd taste blood, and have a loose tooth, bloody nose, and, ah, been to the wars, have we?

14:37Been to the wars, have we? It was cold shit, man. God. Just ice people. Inhuman robots.

14:44It's cold. Stiff upper lip is like a noose around your heart. Not any particular passion,

14:51just this icy, shallow, empty rage. I mean, I remember when I read, when I was in my single

15:01digits, probably eight or nine, a book called The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris, I think it was,

15:07about how crazy people go in cities. I don't think it's cities, but... So all of that coldness,

15:12you know, if you were homesick at boarding school, nobody cared. And that's, I think,

15:18why we went through all of these various hobby horse hysterias, the conquerors and the paper

15:26airplanes and things like that. Just dissociated. Cold. We were not social animals. We were cold,

15:34competitive, competitive, distant, ice people, caustic to each other, as distant from each other as we

15:43were from our own hearts and our own experiences. So, given that everybody who worshipped God was

15:50distant, God could not worship closeness. And that was not really a syllogism, but just very much my

16:00lived experience, right? Everybody was distant from each other, cold, censorious, judgmental,

16:07aggressive, hitty. The only passion I saw than the white range, the white rage of tight-lipped

16:14disapproval was my mother's florid raped into Adam's passion, which was craziness. How could I get close

16:22to God when everyone who worshipped God was cold? So, clearly, if everybody who worshipped God and

16:30prayed to God for guidance was cold, then God must be cold, cold, cold. A witch is pressed at absolute

16:40zero. Because if people were praying to God and said, you know, how should we live? How should we be?

16:46And everyone was cold and everyone prayed to God and everyone took instruction from God,

16:49then God must be cold. Because if God was telling people, be warm-hearted, be open-hearted,

16:54ask people how they're doing, connect, right? That's the E.M. Foster thing, like, only connect, connect.

17:01So, if everybody took their instruction from God, but God was, then God was cold. Everybody who was

17:08cold took their instruction from God, therefore God must be cold. Which is why the eye that hovered over me

17:15a great distance when I was three or so in the attic with my cousin was judgmental, cold, negative,

17:24hostile to any kind of earthly pleasures, and demanding of endless self-erasure, devotion,

17:30and self-sacrifice. And that message I got from very early on, that as a man in particular,

17:35as a boy, as a male, you were just supposed to self-sacrifice. Now, I felt stress at all the coldness

17:47around me. Because it meant that I was unattached and therefore unprotected as a little boy, as a

17:53toddler. And I was. I mean, I remember being six or so and crossing the street with my mother. We weren't

18:00at a light. And I dropped my coloring book and I reached down to pick it up. And a car swished by

18:06at high speed so close to me that it drove over my coloring book like inches from my head and hand.

18:13High speed. Crazy stuff. And so, if I didn't feel cared for, if I didn't feel loved, appreciated and

18:22warmly attached, then I was in perpetual danger. I mean, if you don't care about something,

18:30you leave it behind. You ignore it. You children should be seen and not heard, I was told. And if

18:38I was stood in front of something my mother wanted to see, well, I know that you're a pain. I just don't

18:43know that you're a windowpane. So, I think that coldness was, ah, this just struck me now. So,

18:52the coldness was, God worships distance. God praises distance. God worships distance.

19:00If God praises and worships distance, then the only way to worship God is to distance yourself

19:05from God. And I think that's what I did. Because if God commanded warmth, but everyone was cold,

19:12then nobody believed in God. If God commanded cold, and everyone be cold, and everyone was

19:18cold and distant, then I should be cold and distant, which meant, in a sense, since God

19:22commands being aloof as virtuous, then I should be aloof from God. So, in a sense, my faith was to

19:30drop my faith. Since being distant and cold is the ideal, then I should be distant and cold from God,

19:36as God was distant and cold from me and from all those around me who prayed for guidance and became

19:42cold and distant. And of course, it goes without saying, since I've said it before, but I mentioned

19:46it briefly here, none of my relatives asked me how I was doing with a, they knew my mother was deranged.

19:52They knew my mother had been hospitalized for madness, even after I was born. And so, they knew that my

19:59mother was mad and dangerous and violent. And yet, they never once asked me how I was doing,

20:05or my brother to, to my knowledge. So, that's cold. It means that they don't care. And if God says,

20:15don't care about children, which again, everybody was praying to God. And if God says, don't care

20:20about children, then it is good to not care about others. And therefore, it is good to not care about

20:28your family. And therefore, it is good to not care about God. How can God command you to be close

20:33to God if God commands everyone to be distant from each other, which is exactly what I saw and

20:37experienced vividly, daily, nightly? So, no priest, no teacher, no headmaster, no relative. Did I mention

20:47teacher? No, no priest, no teacher, no headmaster, no relative, no friend, no neighbor. No one ever

20:55asked me how I was doing, despite the fact that, I mean, the abuse that I suffered as a child was not

21:00quiet. It was loud and violent and screaming and screechy and, you know, things being thrown,

21:05kids being thrown against walls. Like, it was just crazy stuff, right? And nobody ever asked.

21:10And so, I accepted that people worshipped God, and I accepted that this was the result.

21:18And if the result of people worshipping God is coldness, hostility, abuse, indifference to the

21:25suffering of children, and only performative morality, then they cannot be worshipping a good

21:32deity. I genuinely think that I deep down believed that everyone had switched their circuits and was

21:38not following God, but rather the devil. And it didn't make any sense to me, I think. It is all

21:47instinctual stuff. I wasn't reasoning this stuff out. I'm just sort of looking back upon the

21:50course of my life from, you know, 50-plus years on. How could it be good? You know,

21:57when I came to Canada at the age of 11, my brother went back to England for a couple of years,

22:01and there was not one phone call, not one letter asking me how I was doing.

22:05He went back to England to stay with my relatives. It's cold. It's really cold. I assume they didn't

22:11ask my brother how he was doing. If they did, maybe he wasn't honest, but again, they all knew that

22:16I was left alone with the crazy woman in a foreign country that we'd just moved to.

22:20And this was the time when my mother truly lost her mind, like wouldn't get out of bed.

22:24She was turning 40, and the game was up. The wall, as they say, does not forgive.

22:30Cold, cold people. Cold people. How could they be worshipping a good deity?

22:37You know, and it's fun. It was very confusing, because I remember in the sort of color paintings

22:41that were in my Bible, you know, there's Jesus hugging lambs and, you know, Mary cuddling Jesus,

22:48and there was, you know, Jesus seemed kind of dewy-eyed and warm and friendly and yet just cold,

22:55cold people. So it's like, okay, something's not right here. They're worshipping the wrong way.

22:59They're worshipping in the wrong direction. Either God is telling them to be warm and they're cold,

23:04in which case God is not believable even to them. They don't believe in God. Or God is telling them

23:09to be cold, in which case it can't be God, but must be the devil. And then people are worshipping not God,

23:15but the devil and don't even know it. And it just, you know, it just fell away from me. Like,

23:20it just became an impossible conundrum. Like, it cannot be solved. It cannot be solved. Why is

23:25everyone so cold? And again, you can see this. Again, I know it's not an objective metric,

23:32social media and so on, but it's cold. People express vulnerability and there's all these,

23:36you know, 10 people saying, it was a long time ago. Suck it up. Grow up. Doesn't matter.

23:40Right? Quit whining. It was cold. It was cold. And coldness is brutal on children.

23:47You know, I had a, when I worked in a restaurant in downtown Toronto in my early 20s, I broke up

23:52with a girl and there was a Nicaraguan guy. It's like, yeah, how was your heart? And I was like,

23:55none of my friends asked me that. None of my family asked me that. How was your heart? It just struck

23:59me. Boom. Struck me hard. So I know this is not a philosophical argument, but there were

24:05philosophical conundrums that I was instinctively feeling my way past. And I think that's how God

24:12and I parted ways. Now, again, you can say, well, you know, but people are sinners and you shouldn't

24:19judge God by his followers. And it's like, uh, maybe a little. I mean, it can't be completely

24:26unrelated. It can't be completely unrelated. If everyone who worships God is cold as ice,

24:34then that means something that matters to some degree, right? And if you shouldn't judge God by

24:42his followers, then if his followers can't achieve virtue, then belief in God is not the

24:48solution to human evil. So anyway, I hope that helps. I'd love to talk more about it, but I'm

24:53curious to see if anyone's interested in this, these ramblings to begin with.

24:56But I hope that makes sense. And again, I really appreciate your time and attention in these

25:00matters. Lots of love, my friends. Big hug from the graveyard. Bye.

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