A lot of the time it seems that Christians go from Christian - - > Deist - - > Atheist

My process was more complicated than that.

My parents sent me to church my whole life, but I didn't become a Christian until I was 26. During college and for several years after, I didn't go to church at all. When I started going to church again when I was 26, I quickly discovered that I didn't fit in.

Since I was new to the church, I had more of an outsider's perspective. I noticed a lot of hypocrisy and contradiction between what the New Testament said regarding how Christians should live their lives vs. how Christians actually lived their lives.

I found Christians to be extremely judgmental and unfriendly.

Since I didn't fit in, I stopped going to church for several years, although I continued to believe that the Bible was true.

Gradually, I started question if the Bible was really true. One thing that I noticed was that all of the Christians that I knew were very unhappy. This seemed illogical to me because the Holy Spirit should make a Christian happy, but the opposite always happened. Also, I knew people who were "weak Christians" and "strong Christians."

I noticed that people who followed the Bible very carefully and became a strong Christian were the most unhappy people. I noticed that they were always fighting the "sin nature," and they were always going through a cycle of sinning, feeling guilty, confessing, and sinning again. It was textbook obsessive compulsive behavior, exactly like the behavior of someone who had bulimia.

So, I started to seriously question whether the Bible was true or false. I started to look for contradictions and errors in the Bible, and I found numerous errors and contradictions. I finally accepted that the Bible wasn't true.

I'm not sure I would call myself a Deist. I believe that a creator god might exist, but I wouldn't go so far as saying that I believe that one does exist. I do not believe that there is any scientific proof that a creator god exists.