When after 10 yrs of Sunday School I got up in front of everyone and read my view of god.

When I prayed to God and he told me I was...
Lol

I guess when I understood the definition in middle school. I had never really grasped why we put so much stock in an old book. Parents and preachers had no direct answers for me, just appealed to deepities instead. "What if things got more complex over time?" Preacher looks at others with grin "young minds." "How do we know the bible isn't a story like Cinderella?" Parents "God rewards those with faith." "How could humans come from apes?" Proffesor "through evolution by natural selection and mutation, evidence of which has been collected and scrutinized for past century, available here" cites thousands of studies, discoveries and fossil records. No supernatural appeals necessary.

It wasnt a particular moment for me, just a gradual development

Well, I had the good luck of being born into an Atheist family.

I guess I had the same thoughts for a while, but finally in teh middle if a debate with some one, I pulled the pin and declared myself a total disbeliever, and it stuck.

Some 10 yrs b4, and it was surely not a one day transformation.

No real particular moment, probably early on when I reached the age of reason. Never truly being invested in faith despite being surrounded by it all my life, it's a wonder I came out the way I did. Though I have to say after high school is when my strong opposition and dislike for religion really started to bloom.

No catharsis. No epiphany. I had established that it was all nonsense sometime between 6 and 7, probably closer to 7, but it didn't dawn on me to say anything about it. Everyone around me was playing this game, so I probably thought it was something we were supposed to do. Then, sometime between 16 and 17 ... I announced. There was an explosion. Some screamed. Others wept. Many, tight lipped, walked away. I laughed. For some reason, the realization that these people were actually serious about that nonsense was intensely funny. 1957 was my year. Since then, freedom has reigned.

The first time I ever saw Christianity challenged for real was in 2014 when I came across a debate between David Silverman and Frank Turek. David Silverman straight up kicked ass in that debate and sparked my curiosity in a great way. After that I found The Thinking Atheist and The Atheist Experience. In the summer of 2014 I said the word Atheist to myself to describe myself to myself, lol, for the first time. I'm still a closet atheist today.

It was gradual over a long time. Though I was never a "real believer" (I figured out the Santa, Toothfairy, Easter Bunny, and all their ilk were imaginary before the age of 8) I had the thought that "surely not everyone else is crazy and I am the only sane one!?" But of course, as crazy as that sounds, it is the case! I spent some time "not caring if god existed" / agnostic. I spent a lot of time studying with the idea that I would find the answer....and I did. God is just a fable.

The bible stories never did fall into place when they spiraled off into the supernatural. A talking serpent, Balaam's ass striking up a conversation, the ten plagues, Moses parting the waters, Joshua making the sun stand still, the shadow the dial moving backward for Ahaz . . . it had the ring of fanciful stories like Hercules fighting the hydra and Zeus appearing as a swan to seduce Leto. Whenever I mentioned that to friends, some of them started making way too many excuses and trying to rationalize and explain away the problems of obvious myths, and saying "Our version of magical events is different because it happens to be true." Then I became a sophomore in high school and said, "I'm all done listening to baloney now."

It was a very gradual process for me, between my early teens and early 20's.
It started with learning that people believe in very different gods, the mid point was learning that some people don't believe in any of them, and finally I realised that I didn't believe in any either, and despite searching, couldn't find any honest reason to believe in any.

I hated Sunday school more than normal school at 5

When my SIL said "Well he's an Atheist - like you are - so he has no comfort from religion". I had to realize I really wasn't Agnostic (with a potential belief in a god) but no belief in organized religion. I just plain don't believe. Meanwhile my nephew and I have bonded. More! (I'm the cool Auntie!).

I have always rebelled against any kind of authority....... My father was a tyrant. school was full of dumb ass rules and the military was the most fucked up of all authority. I never took god stuff serious but my mother made me go to church.When I was a teenager I volunteered to pass the collection plate and then when that was done we went out back and smoked or got high and didn't go back in. Later I became president of the church youth group, mainly because there were nice looking girls there. It was a little like footloose, but us kids did alright. In the 60's everything was up for question and authority was beaten back for awhile. I escaped the shackles of the my country right or wrong bullshit and discovered there's a whole world of different and exciting new things and ideas. The civil rights struggle, anti war, women's liberation and within all these there were atheists, non believers, marxists, revolutionaries, Mao's little red book. To believe in a supernatural force was pathetic in relation to the power of the people to change the world. Not only did I become an atheist but an internationalist, a citizen of the world.

I always said to people that it was kind of like being gay and coming out. My family are secular Christians, and I was baptized Episcopalian, but I was never brought to church; it was sort of just taken as a given that god existed, and I never really gave it much thought. Then, in 7th grade science class, our teacher asked about our religion. First she asked for a show of hands for Christians, then Jews, and then Muslims. And then she asked, "do we have any atheists in the class?", and we didn't know what the word meant. When she explained it to us, I realized that I had always been one. The reason I say it was like coming out, is because after I raised my hand, everyone in the class, and soon the whole school looked at me differently, would challenge me like," if there's no god how did the universe begin?" I was really ostracized after that. Even to this day, my ex wife told her mom and she said she thinks people who say they're atheists are lying, they're just saying that for shock value. She tried to make me come to church with them on Easter, like a lot of people seem to think that if you're an atheist that it's no big deal, like it would be for a moslem or a Jew. People really mistrust and hate atheists. You know after 9/11, I read a survey about who people would vote for for president based on religion. Right after 9/11, 30% of respondents said they would be OK with a moslem president, versus 9% who would be OK with an atheist

I think it was when I was about 25 years old,having watched some old documentaries from WW1 and seeing the priest saying god be with you as the troops embarked on a ship to go off to war then thinking the Germans and Italians priests were saying the same thing.50 years have passed and having read Origin of Species by Charles Darwin,having read nearly all of Richard Dawkins books on evolution and Richard Fortey's book the First 1,000 million years and Profesor Brian Coxthe Wonders of the Universe definetely cemented me as an Athiest.

Pretty sure I always knew it. However, I was able to make the cognitive realization when I was about 8, sitting in mass, listening to the priest droning on about one of the letters Paul wrote to the Thessalonians. I very distinctly remember thinking to myself, "this is bullshit". After that, I became increasingly more resentful of being forced to attend mass every Sunday, and having to go through the rituals of First Communion and Confirmation. Then, the hypocrisy of my parental units not attending, while still forcing my sister and I to go, got me thinking about a lot of other hypocrisies. It was all downhill from there.

It was a process. At 6, questioned that there was a god that was watching what did. Then years in darkness. then saw the light, and was an atheist. Not a firm time line.

Got a lot of thot to this"a believer is just a count less than an athiest in believing on religions "

It was probably after I researched other religions and forms of spirituality after I stopped being a Christian. So much of it just sounded made up like the Bible. I was sitting on my bed thinking about a lot of stuff and then just thought, "Well, I guess I'm an atheist now."