It's a long story, but the gist of it is that I caught the nuns blatantly lying to us in the first grade. That's what got the ball rolling, and it didn't take long after that.

Just the other day, had a hole in my pocket and it was gone just like that.

At age 13, I became an atheist when I realized the Bible is just a book of stories written by men.

Was never a believer. My mother dropped off us kids for Sunday school, shoving us into the arms of the Lord. Mom went home to bed. Dad never went to church.

"Mom, I decided I'm an atheist," I told her in the kitchen. "I don't want to go to church anymore."

"That's fine, honey," Mom replied. "I became an atheist in nursing school when I realized a woman cannot turn into salt."

We laughed.

Sixteen months ago. I was tired of all the damn rules, how they treated the gay community, and being told I go to hell if changed sects.

In my mid teens. By the ime I was 15, I had read the bible from cover to cover 3 times. Each time that I read it, I saw more and more that did not make sense. I also hated feeling sinful for having normal teenage thoughts. And, I disliked spending so much time in church, when I could have been much more enjoyable and productive things. By the age of 18, I was an agnostic. Since my late 20s, I have been an atheist.

It was a gradual process that culminated while I was in college. What truly sealed it for me was a Western Civ class I took my sophomore year. Reading other literature written the same time as The Gospels was a real eye opener for me, as was the secular study of Christianity. After that, I had no doubts left at all that religion was a fairytale.

When i started studying science. Science ruined any hope of life after death for me. Science is continually questioning itself. Theories that once were and have been proven wrong are welcome and encouraged. Religion on the other hand will not change its opinion even in the light of new evidence. Religious people have blinkered prejudice, science is fact based, evidence based practice. Religion is pseudo science.

It was always pretty shaky, but the coup de grace came when I found out my brother was gay. Any entity who was going to send my brother to hell for being who he is was out the fucking window. Easiest decision of my life. The whole god belief went right with it.

I never had it.
I was fortunate in that I wasn't raised in a religious household.
I opted to actually read the bible, if memory serves it was a version of King James.
I concluded, that not only was it not a good read, but just chock full of nonesence.
I've heard from many that the easiest path to Agnostic, or Atheism, is to actually read the bible.
The whole thing is so far fetched, I can't fathom how any one would ever take it seriously.

But I've learned over the years that to never underestimate brain washing, and willful ignorance.
I have known, and are great friends with people that "woke" for lack of a better word, and came to understand that it's all a pile of manipulative BS.
I honestly think that is a growing trend, and I will gladly offer what I can towards those who are starting to question.

Freshman year in college. Philosophy 101 and a book regarding the existence of God

It was lost at around 16. But the FINAL finishing end to end all ends with end-of-the-road finality was: Jesus didn't exist! At all. No such dude. Not even as a humble carpenter who went beserk.
The final swing of the hammer?
No Nazareth! Not a little tiny, eensy-weenzy hamlet, not even a single house! It was a graveyard, "for Christ's sa...." Oh, sorry.
So not only was there no Jesus, there was no Nazareth!
That realization just really pissed me off!

I grew up liberal christian, taught that the bible is myth and that, like fables, there are lessons within. Upon departing for college, I was exposed to christian hatred and bigotry for the first time. I have never cared to be associated with those who use religion to justify their prejudices. I’ve been on my own since. It blows my mind that others do not see religion for what it is, a social weapon of man.

Not until my late 40s; I started researching it and it just didn't add up.

By the age of 12, I had a strong enough science background to conclude all the major Bible stories were nonsense.

I was right around the same age. I was learning about things I had once thought a god was behind and started having doubts. Then one day an older friend's older brother said his professor in college said there wasn't a god, and that just made so much more sense to me. So I read and read and eventually came to the same conclusion. The kicker was twofold; I learned how many more gods came before the ones prevalent today, and all my questions about the physical world were being answered with science. It became clear as day by my late teens that humans invented gods. And everything I've learned in the 25 years since has only solidified that position more. Dafuk is right.

I am a born skeptic—didn’t believe what was said in church. So as not to rock the boat I pretended to be a Baptist throughout adolescence. After that I decided that religion is not something written down in some holy book that you have to believe. Rather it is a state of deep awareness, awe, and reverence that you carry in your heart.

I still have my religion.

My grandfather was an unabashed non-believer. I remember him saying more than once, that Hell was living on earth in America as a black man. So I asked him why he didn't believe in the Hell of the Bible, (we were raised Catholic) and instead of answering my question, he told me to ask the nun where the woman that Cain married came from (he had this thing about us finding things out for ourselves). The nun's answer was a call to my mom to have me chastised for questioning the Bible (good children didn't do that). When mom found out that my grandfather had given me the question, the chastisement went away (she didn't really care as long as I was officially confirmed catholic by the church so that she would see me in heaven) but the question created all kinds of other questions in my mind to ask, just as grandpa had wanted. The use of punishment instead of real answers demonstrated that there were no 'real answers' to give.

After checking in on the other god based religions and finding pretty much the same, it occurred to me that they didn't have answers because they never asked the questions, making them poor teachers. From there I came to an understanding that if they didn't have any real answers about the origins of humanity then maybe the whole idea of GODS was BS too. Subsequent research seemed to confirm that all of the 'god' stuff was no more than carefully written books to fool people into giving religious institutions money.

Figured out religion was BS in elementary school when the church asserted things that were not representative of reality. The Star of Bethlehem fable was the story that allowed me to realize the entire book was little more then a children's book of fables.

I started to loose my religion (or faith) when I read Genesis 1:27 "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him..."

Not sure that I really ever had it, but before I was eight one of the churches in the area would come and pick up us kids for bible church. Part of the program was that they would ask about stuff from the bible and correct answers would receive tootsie pops. I never quite understood the big deal, but one day they were teaching us about tithings and how they needed my pennies, the only money I had. Well I felr I needed the pennies more and took a few from the collection. About the same time I got bored & left the service and went back to the bus to wait. Subsequently taking a few extra suckers too.

It was years later that I realized how manipulative of children. I believe I was 15 when I had a term to put with who I was, but 16 was when I officially recognized myself as an Atheist.

i never lost my religion. i just realized when i was 15 that there were no gods. it didn't have much to do with religion itself; my family was never religious.

g

I was 25 and taking a spirituality class in grad school. When we were asked to identify a faith we believed in, I said I wasn't sure. My professor, who was struggling with his Catholic faith as a gay man, said, "That's cool, Tim. You're on your journey." First time I really felt validated in not being religious. I was raised Catholic myself. From that day, I have never subscribed to any religion.

I never really believed I just kept quiet because it was forced on me. Seeing the bad all over how can there be a god of any kind. Religion pushes fear. God is watching you all the time everywhere. If this was true why are there murders, and theft? If god was so good or great as they claim why is their poison plants and animals, weather events that kill so many. Drought and floods all over killing more people. Then you see diseases, and birth defects there can not be a god of any kind because if there was it would not have made these things.

I was raised to be a Mormon. As an adult I began to study the prophecies of the founding prophet, so I could convince others that he was a true prophet. To my surprise, I proved just the opposite. He was a false prophet. Then I applied the same test to the biblical prophets, and discovered that they had no divine gift for predicting the future, either. I did a lot more study, finding contradictions in the Bible, false prophecies and phony fulfillments. I read books on apologetics recommended by my christian friends. All the "evidence" they offered turned out to be illogical and false. It was when I reached that conclusion that I abandoned religion completely and became an atheist.

I didn’t have it to lose in the first place.