One year
after 26 years studying theology continusely .

Around five or six I smelled the bullshit. I didn't know the word for it until my teens.

At age 6. I never could believe the BS that was being told to me. I always thought about the poor people that we helped and why this God would not help them.

I was never a believer, but neither was I an atheist at first. With time my youthful agnosticism has matured, like a fine wine, into a full-bodied, robust, textured, proselytizer-proof atheism. I would not know how to put numbers on that timeline.

I was a preteen. my family never forced me to go to church. i kinda remember sunday school but don't think i attended past 7 or 8. religion to me was just grownups transferring from santa.

I went to Sunday School but never took any of it as fact. Never believed in a god. My mom asked when I was 11 if I believed in god, I said no. I was raised in a secular home.

8/9 right in there.

12. Told my mom. She still made me go to church for a few years after. Got sick of my questioning her beliefs, and the bible. Really hated my jokes too

I've been agnostic my whole life. I didn't realize/accept that I was atheist until about about 38 years old.
I was intercepted in my driveway one day by two young mormon girls, being a smartass, I said "no thanks, i'm an atheist", it actually felt good to say it out loud for the first time.

Then my (current) wife and I got together, and I was delightfully surprised to find out she was an atheist. From then on I was unashamed to reveal my lack of belief to anyone.

It has caused some difficulties in my family relationships, as most of my family is, well, I won't say they are religious, but they do believe.

Agnositicism started young. I want to say around 8. I grew up in a very dysfunctional and abusive household, and my mother was schizophrenic and a devout Catholic. She would tell me and my siblings that God would save the children and the meek and those who could not fight for themselves. However, when my stepfather was raising hell in our home, i would pray, over and over that i would be saved from this monster that abused us on a regular basis.

God never came. Years later, I was an addict and living on the streets. I was still trying to figure out what was out there, whatever it may be. I was eventually picked up by friends and taken home for an intervention, as I had a breakdown over everything that had happened to me. I came out to my mother and told her the sexual and physical abuse suffered at the hands of my stepfather (there was proof from my dad), and she denied it ever happened, as it could have only happen to her (even as she had witnessed some of it).

That was when I became atheist (and stopped talking to my mother). Everything i had been through and remedied was on my own without help from Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit and my family. No one stepped in, no one helped, nothing. I did it. Me. Numero uno.

God was just a power ploy to control people. There are other supporting reasons, but that's the main jist of it.

It was such a gradual erosion that I can't really pinpoint it, but I am guessing somewhere in my mid-30's.

I was raised in a secular family. I think I first became aware that our Sunday morning routine was different than my friends in the 5th grade, maybe. We lived way out in the country, so we didn't see what other people were doing, and they never saw that we weren't going anywhere.

Born into a non-religious family, lot's of neighbors took my sister and I to church, but that didn't last long for me as I asked to many questions and the teacher couldn't teach her lessons. LOL First marriage was to a christian man who didn't go to church every Sunday, but would go and expect me to go with his family for the holidays. I tried to get involved to please his family as I was a California gal and trying to fit in at a little church in Indiana was hard for me. I was different. I played that game for a few years then decided what I was seeing and hearing in the church didn't seem good or honest to me. After divorce I tried a few other churches looking for more information but found they were all pretty much the same, men in charge, women having to submit to their man, women never in charge of anything but pot luck church dinners and maybe a Sunday school class. Stopped going to any church and started reading and investigating as many religions as I could. Came to the same conclusion about all of them, people who put "faith" over reason and science were just dumb. That was in my late 30's. Still didn't say anything to most people I knew as they were all christians/religious. When I turned 50 I didn't care anymore what others thought of me so proudly took my place as an Atheist. Been happy as can be ever since.

I never accepted that "He died for our sins" bullshit . It must have been the third grade. Make no sense at all but all I could do was play along.

Not sure, active in the church because of my family and slowly lost faith through the years. Guessing around 25-30

Around 13 or so.. I can remember the moment it happened. Through no real choice of my own I was confirmed as an Anglican and standing in church one Sunday shortly after that ceremony the minister asked the congregation to mindlessly repeat the phrase, " I am not worthy enough to pick up the crumbs from under the lords table." I was significantly confused about what I had done to become so unworthy. Upon reflection I decided I had done nothing so heinous as to warrant such an idea. From there it was a natural extension to wonder what other manipulative untruths were being fed to me by such "nice, nice" people. In the end I just decided that there was no lord and hence no table or crumbs to pick up. That conclusion has been working for me just fine ever since.

13/14

When I put a label on it would probably be my late teens early 20's. But my beliefs have been basically the same since I was around 10 or so.

My parents weren't religious, though my father loved to study and discuss religions, while my grandparents were. So when I would visit my grandparents they would take me to church and Sunday school. But even as a little kid the description I was given of what was never seemed to fit with what i saw in the world around me.

As a result I basically decided that first, most if not all, religions were simply wrong about the nature of "" if there was one. And could not be omnipotent/omniscient and good as be definition it would have both know and had the power to have made the universe in such a way to prevent suffering.

So by extension either was not what I would classify as "good" and therefore not worthy of my worship. Or not omnipotent/omniscient and therefore not a . And until I saw evidence or someone was able to present a sufficient argument to the contrary I was going to operate as if there were no . As time went on this view just became more clear.

I would say my early 30s, but came to terms with it at 41. I do with I came to terms with at 31, that way I could have been happier earlier in life. I love my liberation from the dark side.

I was around 4-5, really. Some of my earliest memories are of my mother, father, or my grandfather (maternal) reading mythology to me from a large book with a picture for each entry. I'm blanking on the book atm, but I later bought it for my much-younger half-brother and read it to him as well. But, anyway, I had had all these fantastic stories read to me pretty much every night from before I could remember, and so, when I was sent to Hebrew School at the synogogue, or would attend services, it was just like they were reading the same type of stuff back to me. Myths, and legends of fantastic battles, wondrous beasts, cruel masters, and licentious intrigues, and it just fit into that slot with me. Honestly, until we moved to the South and folks started to ask me directly things like "what church do y'all belong to" or "oh, jewish? would you like to come to church with me" kind of thing, that I actually even had to entertain the question of is there a god in the first place. I was eight then, and I couldn't see any difference, in fact my mind had firmly found a great similarity, between the ancient greco-roman mythology, or celtic, or norse, and the bible. It was clear to me, like many things are just apparent to children by the way adults react to them, that these myths were just colorful stories, and were read to me to spark my imagination, and so I just automatically but the abrahamic diety as just another one (or three, lol) in my imagination bank to be brought out on a rainy day when, for some reason, our little black and white TV wouldn't pick up any of the three stations, and PBS, well enough to even try to watch them. I suppose I was also very lucky to go to school where I did for elementary/middle school once we moved to Memphis, as it was a smallish private school, but had a program geared for folks like me, with some form of learning disability. That these folks already had to deal with a very wide selection of children from a multitude of cultures and beliefs that they were already attuned to the fact that they had their own beliefs, and to leave them out of the school but keep them at home, and just do their best for the kids in their charge. Huh. I actually just now had that thought about the teachers and the school. I really was very lucky indeed!

Six or seven years old but I never talked about it till my early teens.

It was in school, I began pondering the differences between atheism, and agnosticism. I eventually decided that the latter was the more scientific approach. So, I guess I must have been about seventeen.

I guess I’d always had somewhat of a tumultuous relationship with Christianity. My grandpa was a Southern Baptist minister, and my dad was a strict Southern Baptist as well. Between being forced to go to church every time the doors were open, and being forced to give up our change jars and piggy banks to the building efforts, and being treated like scum by the same church when our family fell on hard times, and then having a similar thing happen as an adult, I was worn out on organized religion for a while. Then I went back to college and after some science and philosophy classes, I eventually came around to being agnostic within the last few years, so late forties I suppose.

I think I always had my doubts and questions, but by my early 20's I was seriously questioning divinity, and by my late 20's I was a firm atheist. Probably would have been much sooner if I would have spent more time thinking about it.

I was raised Mormon, but I was always the problem child when it came to church. One of my old primary teachers who is out now said she was surprised I didn’t leave the church as soon as I was old enough. Apparently my comments as a Sunbeam (4-5 year old class) were always along the line of “That doesn’t make sense.” or “I tried that. It doesn’t work.” or “That’s just a story.” I was a pain in her ass, but apparently that was what got her questioning things.
I was never a believer, but I played along till I was almost 30, just for family’s sake. I don’t think my relationship with my parents and siblings will ever fully recover (possible exception of little sis, who might be questioning things).