Non-religious sources that made you question

Did you have any sources that weren’t related to the church or religion that made you ultimately question your beliefs? These are the reasons I left the church when I did- I didn’t find any exmormon content until a few years after my deconstruction.

  1. I took an online psychology class and learned about manipulation and how to get someone to believe something. Lots of the concepts seemed more than a bit suspicious to me.
  2. That same class taught about cognitive dissonance. It was the first time I’d heard the term and it took me about 0.23 seconds to realize it was the cause of almost all of my mental health issues (severe anxiety, never sleeping, always dwelling on issues of morality/church doctrine, etc).
  3. I read the book “The Alchemist” soon after and absolutely fell in love with it. It’s a fantasy book about someone believing in themselves and following their heart, and for some reason it gave me the courage to admit I wanted out of the church.
  4. My then-boyfriend told me what masturbation was and how it was considered a sin. I laughed in his face and said “God wouldn’t judge you for touching your own body- if he did, he’s an objectively bad person, because that’s insane to give someone a body and then make them view it as evil.” I never looked into it, I just found out he was right that the church taught that, and I realized how gross and manipulative purity culture in general was from that one conversation.
  5. I’m a big Swiftie and I realized that I found way more comfort in TS songs than I did from ANY aspect of the church- like, I couldn’t think of a single thing about it that made me feel good, but her music always made me smile. Seems silly, but it was true. I later connected with nature in a very spiritual, fulfilling way and realized if I believed in anything, it was taking care of the planet. So I stopped worrying about church teachings, because what’s the point of living on a spinning rock in the middle of space if not to marvel at the beauty of it all?
  6. I read more books on self-discovery rather than self help. I found a couple by an author named Don Luis Miguel Jr (I hope I got that right) and felt very strongly that there was more truth to his teachings than anything I’d learned in my time in the church, and his books aren’t even religious so much as spiritual and about self-discovery.
  7. I liked gay people. That might be a common topic on this thread, but I just couldn’t believe that being LGBTQ+ could be a sin. That, and intersex people exist, so I knew the Family: A Proclamation was lying to my face.

What about y’all? Anything come to mind?

Edit: 8. George Orwell novels. 1984 and Animal Farm. “All animals are equal, but some animals are MORE equal than others” sounded to me like “men and women both have access to the priesthood power, men are just more equal then women.” And the indoctrination scene at the end of 1984 was exactly how people acted on missions I knew full well that they hated.