I was a questioner starting at a young age, but had a devout belief in God/Jesus as a Catholic until I was 9 years-old. I was a logical-thinking child. I did not understand how just one group would go to heaven and other good people would go to hell. I could not understand the claims about God being all-knowing, hating evil and all powerful, but let child be abused from parents even if they prayed for it to stop. In college all the science that I learned supported my view that if there was a power higher than a human, it was humans as a group. It also did not help that I went to Catholic school, and saw "The Scary Dying Suffering Jesus" every day at church and before school. Really, a dying suffering dude, at a place for children, it is very odd when you think about it.

I also remember walking the long walk to school from church in long cold winters. The girls wore flouncy skirts with just tights and were not allowed to wear pants like the boys, after I while,Then, I also figured something was not quiet right with the whole church situation but could not name it. My lack of belief, as another person stated, became deeper as I was able to think abstractly as a child.

when I was 14, I had a science teacher who spent more time on the scientific method than on the actual discoveries of previous science. he would bring it up all the time, show how it related to shit like dating choices, learning to skateboard, everything, as well as showing how it developed the science that we do know when the lessons were about established facts and theories. He just hammered it in.

I started looking at everything through the lens of the method, and the logic behind it, and started seeing massive discrepancies in my religious beliefs and the bible, and the things I'd been told about my religion. I kept digging at it.

I immediately became skeptical of mainstream christianity, like within a couple of weeks of starting the journey. I started looking at fringe christian groups, the hippy groups, and that didn't pan out, so I started looking at other religions, at that point still trying to hold on to some kind of spirituality. Nada.

It took 4 years of exploring a lot of beliefs and systems, but by the time I was out of high school I was an Atheist.

I was about 5 or 6 when I admitted to my family I didn’t believe in Santa Claus. They were pretty forthcoming about it. I figured if Christmas celebrated Santa and Jesus that if one didn’t exist the other couldn’t exist either (oh the logic of a child). I kept that connection secret because I thought I wouldn’t receive any presents if I didn’t play along ?
It wasn’t until a few years later that I figured out what an Atheist was, better arguments for my position, that there were more people like me and that I could be a good person without a celestial overlord. Some of us are just so made that we can’t believe!

One day in my late 40's I just woke up to realize that I didn't believe in the Christian dogma. It was shocking to me. I felt like the rug had literally been pulled out from under me and I was falling and. falling down the rabbit hole like Alice. I had been a believer I think, hook , line and sinker all my life. The accumulation of things along the way finally made it through my intelligence and blew the fog away. Free at last.

I was born one!

I never became an Atheist, I always was one. As a child, when adults told me about god I just looked for proof before believing, just like with everything else, and there never was any.

Reading the bible cover to cover began the process.

My path to atheism was very different. My family (including my extended, very large family) consisted of Irish Catholics. We went to mass regularly, said grace, etc. However I thought it was all wrong at a young age (probably at about 8-10). I have always been a very avid reader and read the bible (both old and new testaments). I also read many other things. I read everything with a very CRITICAL eye. Religion quickly made no sense to me. It was very obviously made up to control people.Science and the natural order of things did make sense however. So, I very deliberately became an atheist. I kept it to myself (mostly) but by my late teens I just put it all out there. Still do!

I was born and, after a few years, started to hear stories about a magic wizard who lived in the sky. I assumed right from the first time that these were just stories like Jack and the Beanstalk, Winnie the Pooh and all the other stories I heard. The dinosaurs I saw in books, though, were real - there were whole museums full of fossils to prove it. So in other words, I was born an atheist; it came as quite a surprise when I found out some people believed the sky wizard was real too.

It was very gradual, but I was having serious doubts in grade school. Too many inconsistencies.

Well, since NO child is actually BORN religious, only to parents or a parent who MAY/ not be religious, the child is usual forcibly introduced to religion whilst it is still too young to realise it is happening.
Yes, I'm sure there is at least someone who will disagree with my above comment, however, in the 164 child births I have personally assisted as a Mid-Wife, I have never once witness a new-born emerge from the mother wearing ANY religious insignia what-so-ever, crossing itself or offering up a prayer in any shape nor form.
I was born into a family where my Father was an Atheist and my Mother came from a background deeply involved in some very ODD variation of the Seventh Day Adventist type belief system, i.e. no using electricity, etc, on Sundays, etc.
She made great efforts to ensure that I was sent, every Sunday to 'receive' religious 'instruction' but my natural curiosity, fostered by my Dad, won out every time and without exception my asking questions, etc, got me EXPELLED from Sunday Schools and from School Scripture Classes.
I still have almost EVERY signed letter of expulsion that I was ever given to take home for my parents to read, expelled from every church including the Catholics right through to the Methodists, Lutherans, etc, etc.
Of course every expulsion got me a verbal tirade,and often physical punishment from my mother, but my father would simply say to me, " Keep it up my boy, you are learning to THINK for your self, ask questions and expect answers, that is the best way to really learn." That is something I passed on to my daughter and she continued it on relentlessly no matter what.

Started asking questions at Sunday school that were not answered, was discouraged from asking those questions and told that I should not question gods plan and\or reasoning!

Thankfully even though my parents are Christians, they encouraged me to think for my self and never criticized my questioning everything!

I was raised Presbyterian but never did believe. At age 17 my church group sent me to Alaska to help build a church. They did not know I was not a believer--they just assumed I was.

Had a 18 year old partner and we lived in a fishing village and ate fish every day. We worked 6 days a week and then church on Sunday.
One Sunday I was too exhausted to go to the church. This made my partner quite upset. He thought
I had a duty to go to church. So, after some argument I blurted out "I am not a believer!" Right then he blindsided me and hit me in the head. I was bleeding profusely and no continuation of the fight.

Later my partner was sent to another place and I stayed in Petersburg Alaska. [this was long ago even before Alaska was a state. ] I was told I was not to work on the church any more and instead was to read the book of John. I was happy to do this. So, I read that book but also read parts of the Old Testament. And then I was very sured there was no Christian God of love.

My brain works in mysterious ways..... ??

I’m pretty sure I always was. I had doubt very young in childhood and didn’t even know the words agnostic or atheist.. let alone their definitions. The whole religion thing made no sense from the start. The evolution from agnosticism to atheism took a bit longer.

Luckily I never had a religion...was born into a freethinking family.

@GlaslowII
Good for you, and shout out to your uncle!

For me, the deal breaker was reading the Quran in my mother language, i.e. Persian, followed by the history of Islam. I never looked back since.

I heard people reading from the bible and suspected it was crap. Then I learned to read myself and knew that for a fact.

I was born an atheist. Like you, I have never believed in a god(s).

I began to feel twangs of empathetic dissonance seeing good and decent people who happened to hold different beliefs from me as totally unworthy of going to hell ... a good God wouldn't judge so harshly, I thought. That may have been the beginning of my rethinking of the attributes of God. But it was the problem of evil that broke the spell entirely, and opened my eyes, for the first time, to a life without God.

I was raised in a very catholic household and then sent away to a horribly abusive catholic youth ranch for troubled teen girls. After three years on the ranch going through countless inhumane traumas and even being exorcised I officially turned my back on any idea of religion.

I became agnostic when I went through puberty and abstract thinking clicked in.

I had the usual childhood brainwashing of religion. I was told i must attend Sunday school for my soul to be saved by a gang of Christians that visited my estate. At secondary school in Religious education i spent more time growing eyes in the back of my head because of an unruly bully we had in the classroom who would punch other children in the face when the teacher wasn't looking than listening to the lesson. Where was God then?
Anyway fast forward another Ten years and i attend a fellowship called AA and that's when the force-feeding and the brainwashing of God really went into beast mode for me.
I was told that to stay sober i must pray every morning and every night to stay sober, plus attend as many meetings of AA as possible.
I did that for Eighteen months and i still drank again and to top it all i ended up in and out of homeless hostels in the UK for the following Twenty months after.
After going through all that not only did i realize there is no God but i saw that while i was praying to fictional entity i was not dealing with my problems properly.
The biggest frustration waking up one morning and realizing that you have wasted years putting your trust into lie who not even there to help you, when you could have spent the same amount of time doing a better job yourself.

I am very analytical, brought up as a Baptist but never could believe blindly. Now I am an Atheist, just seemed the natural evolution of being analytical.