In my case I never had a religion. My father was a freethinker and raised me the same way. We were just encouraged to read and think and were allowed to make our own minds up. I think I am extremely fortunate.

You don't become... is not a religion!

I see that many of you became an atheist at a very young age or just didn't grow up religious. This is quite interesting and surprising. I no longer believed in God when I was maybe around 17-18 years old but maybe deep down inside I always knew that religion was a sham.

Probably when I was old enough to think on my own, so around 4? Religion never made sense. I didn’t listen to my parents, and they are real, why would I listen to some people who swear a god is real because they said so?

Also I paid attention in school when we talked about mythology. ?

I wasnt raised with religion, as a kid i met people that were, i was quite curious. The most i got was from my dad saying basically, if there is a god, shes an obese black woman because wouldnt that be fitting with how shitty everyone is. I went to a vacation bible school around 7 or so cuz my bestie always went every summer. They told her parents i couldnt return because i asked too many questions. That when i completely wrote off mentally the "god" possibility

I can’t remember the exact age. I’d always held an innate naïveté to life. I thought “God” and spirituality provided a comfortable explanation for the things that happened which couldn’t be readily explained.

As I got older though I found myself dismissive of God and then openly hostile. I found the idea of a vindictive, emotionally needy, psychotic, totalitarian, sky daddy abhorrent.

I suppose it was only in my early 20’s I would openly call myself an atheist. Not because I sought division amongst my peers but because I couldn’t morally stand by either gross indifference or petty meddling from an unaccountable being.

During my teenage years — a fairly gradual process, accelerated by reading Fred Hoyle's The Nature of the Universe and learning science. But the seed of doubt was probably planted when I found out the truth about Santa, embarrassingly soon after telling a friend that I believed in him. Why was God any different? Assurances from my mother that he was altogether different were only a temporary reassurance. (I've written about this at greater length in some of my comments on other posts.)

I had always questioned religion from am early age. For example, how the world could be populated by just two people. It just isn't genetically possible to accomplish. There was a period where I put my questioning aside, mainly to please my mom, but it was always there noticing the inconsistencies. It wasn't until I went to college that I finally broke away and let the questioning take over. I had always noticed how unfair this world was and question how a supposedly loving God could inflict cancer and pain on young children. How can a loving God have that as apart of his loving plan? That made absolutely no sense to me. That's when I realized that there cannot be a God because that was the only reason that would explain childhood cancers and diseases. What also never made any sense to me was that this planet has been here for over 4 billion years. Why would this god character create a universe and then sit back and not touch it until around 6 to 4 BCE until approximately 33 CE? Why all the billions of years of non intervention? Not only that, why interact with only a small portion of the world? There are so many other areas in the world that thus God character could have made himself known, but no, just in the middle east. Then why no more intervention after that? I think the world during WW1 could have used an intervention, or what about the Holocaust? Why would he let over 6 million of his supposedly chosen people be exterminated?

There were just too many questions and inconsistencies that had no answer to them. So, I would say I had the thought process of an atheist at a very young age, but fully embraced it when I was about 18 or 19.

After leaving the Mormon church in my early thirties.

Not a huge epiphany or tipping point for me, was more an organic type of thing but in my 30s I’d say.

I was 11 and going to a private “Christian” school when one day I was shamed for having icons in my church. I was raised Greek Orthodox and attending a southern baptist school. Ever Wednesday was assembly and in front of the entire school was called out. I lost my beliefs that day and asked my parents to transfer me to public school. They said no so I got myself kicked out. Have questioned everything even more after that.

I knew I wouldn't be a theist when I was introduced to religion while recovering in a hospital at the age of 6 after suffering from multiple seizures, a coma and memory loss.

as a kid i was in foster care and i saw the back stabbing and hypocrital behavior of members and everytime i met a "good christian family" they were opposite behind closed doors

I'm not so sure that you "become" an atheist per se. It's more like you are raised to believe a certain paradigm. You accept because it you are young and you are told to. All along you had a nagging feeling that the questions you asked
were never being answered. satisfactorily. Then when you get out on your own and can ask questions from sources other than those your were typically surrounded by, you realize that you were aware all along that you already knew the answer to your questions yourself. It's more of an "awakening" or a "realization" than a becoming.

I was never a believer. the only times I've been to a church was for a funeral, or a wedding.

I grew up around oppressive Mormons who pressed me to become Mormon. My mother was non-religious and didn’t press the issue. The pressure and being part of the poor led me to be anti-thetical, which eventually resulted in me being atheistic. That was about eleven.

I grew up with a mother who doesent idetify as christien or any religious instatutions but his really spiritual and by the bible wich at times can get on my nerves being that she constently brings the bible up or says that it is only cause im young that i don't believe and that i will one day etc but as far as i can tell i never really did i always was on the side of logical critical thinking even as a kid but i started voicing my none believing around 7 years old
and my mothers even if shes says she respects my belif or lack there of never whats to talk about how i see the world or brings it all back to god in away i find it both funny and closeminded

Without any outside pressure I was born without any religious fantasies. There was nothing to change that until I started at a very backwards (by UK standards) high school. They tried to choke me on christianity, but it was too late. I'd already believed and then rejected the santa thing and the logic couldn't be swayed.

When I started working a full-time job.
I realized it was bullshit.

Its when you look around and start seeing all the suffering and hate in the world and see nothing being done about it except for trying to profit off of it, thats when I knew there was no god, and I was probably 10/11ish.

That life can feel like a huge disappointment, at times, is a normal part of it.

So you're doing it right.

Keep that in mind, and this too.

There will be times when you ask yourself, "How the hell did I get here... How did I find myself in this situation?"

Both brace yourself and embrace these times because that's when the magic happens.
No one learns anything, or much, when times are great.

What's making you feel this way?

Just keep in mind for now that things are always changing. Situations, circumstances, events, people around you, opportunities and feelings - change.

When I don't feel good about something, I always say this, "I won't be feeling this a week from now."

Does that work because it's true, or did I make it
true by thinking it?

Who cares? It works.