At age 13, I became an atheist when I realized the Bible is just a bunch of stories written by men. At First United Methodist Church in Michigan, I was listening to the minister describe the story of Lot's wife. God turned her into salt because she looked behind her.

My thinking was:

No woman can be turned into salt! That's impossible. This is just a story made up by men to scare females into being quiet and obedient. I'm not a Christian. I don't believe in the Bible or an invisible God. I'm an atheist.

Recently came to terms with it at 46 while living in New Orleans? Just a lifelong search and realization. If that makes sense.

In church, where else?

Funny...I was taking Religion 150 in college. It was a last minute elective because I was late registering for classes. Lol!

I have no idea, only an approximate time in my life, first realized that a god just didn’t make sense to me after I read Darwin’s book on evolution must have been aroun 16 years old.... well now that I think about that.... I was probably in Fresno California when I realized that I didn’t believe there was a god....

Sundayfuckingschool

I think in 2nd grade. Tried for years to find answers to the bs offered by the “good nuns”.
Because I asked why or how, I failed religion class more times than I passed, and when I did pass, it was because they liked my family.
After years of ignoring religion as an adult, telling myself I’m agnostic... eventually assumed I was an atheist... think I was in a foxhole. (Jajaja, not actually)

I was about 16 when I started to question if there actually was or wasn't an omnipotent god that needs a lot of money and whose son is always in jail.

I completely lost all faith in religion when my mother passed and the priest I hired charged twice his regular amount to preside over the burial because she was buried on the Saturday between good friday and easter sunday. Then at the burial in the graveyard he didn't even show.

So yea all organized religion is in it for the $.

That’s a weird question for me. I never was religious, I don’t really know when or where I was when I first labeled myself. I have to answer, Texas. More specifically, Houston region. That’s about all I could say.

1965 I was 13 years old sitting in the livivg room with my 5 siblings , mom our family doctor and maybe someone else. we were told my dad had used a german lugar He brought home from WW2 to kill himself that morning behind the barn. seems his Catholic "god" thought it more important to take him to "heaven" and leave my 33 year old mom and kids to suffer the hell that followed. it was no

I was actually pretty young when I realized I was an Atheist. My parents dragged me to church and sunday school every week. Things went OK until I finally figured out Santa Clause wasn't real. From there, it didn't take long for me to figure out the whole God thing was nothing more than a fairy tale as well. Of course, I wasn't very verbal about it with my parents as a small child because I knew what their reaction would be but as I reached my teenage years, I asserted my opinions more and stopped going to church.

Watching my brother learning magic in our room. I started to see that many things in the bible could be tricks. And writing, well it read like a bully try to extort my friends. Do it or else.

In a Baptist church, the teachers were lying to the little lids about Santa Claus, I realized they were lying about God......

i was standing beside myself

My theism had grown more and more tentative over several decades, just from thinking and reading about how the Bible came to exist. Then, after a year or so of listening to lots of Catholic talk radio (just to laugh at the ridiculous dogma), it hit me that I had to judge the validity of my own beliefs just as rigidly as I was judging the Catholics. I had no more evidence of my spiritual convictions than they do. Hence, my house of spiritual cards collapsed with distinct finality.

I don't remember exactly but I was in church and the pastor was talking about not praying for specific things but rather for God's will to be done. No one could provide an answer for my questions - if a murder victim prayed to be saved and yet they died anyway, how could you punish the killer if it was god's will that they die? Didn't that mean that the killer was carrying out God's will just like the prayer asked. Or maybe the killer's prayers were the one's being answered, not the victim's.

My dad's answer had something to do with 50,000 people dying in Vietnam. My answer was that God obviously wanted them dead or they'd be alive. He didn't see the irrationality of his argument but sure was pissed off by my reasoning.

I've always been a contrary person.

In a sixth grade classroom at a Catholic school. The nun was teaching about St. Maria Goretti, who apparently chose death over being raped. To hold that up as a role model, well, it didn't set well with me. I'd had doubts basically all my life that I can remember, and that kind of misogyny just made it more clear to me that there was something wrong with a belief system that put so little value on a woman's life.

In my street in London on sunday wondering why no one was out to play!

It was first year catechism school, so maybe 4th grade,. The pastor would not ( could not ) answer my question on whygod inventted original sin and why stillborn babies were held in purgatory. I could not deal with such cruel nonsense

4 years old... at church...

I did not know it then but I was in grade school and when the priest stated that those who did not hear the word of god would all go to hell it was to much for me. I asked about why the miracles stopped? Why god would destroy churches with storms and many other questions that did not make any sense to me.

I was in a Catholic high school and if we decided not to attend Mass we got detention. I always chose detention. I wanted to go to public school in my home town and my local church bussed me to the Catholic school in another town. When I got out of high school I had no friends until I made some. High school sucked and I knew the Catholic church was a crock. I was 16 when I stopped beliving.

I was probably a sophomore in highschool growing up in a Luthrenhome ughh.. Trying to make nicies with my dads new wife.. I was already reading about witch craft, it's a parallel becausw witchcraft has God's and goddesses. That was the start, the real realization came just a few years ago. Keeping in mind I'm 41 now. So I've been holding onto that for a long time.

At free school I was about four years old there were about eight of us and one of the things we did was recite the creed together every morning I had never learned it as my family are all athiests and strangely the meaning of the creed was never explained to us - I can't tell you how weird it was I remember that I had a very loud vioice so everyone could tell what bits I remembered. I liked the 'suffered under pontius Pilate' because my dad was a Pilot in the RAF and I imagined him shooting down enemy planes which he did in the war which ended when I was minus three years old . Apart from that, which I thought was just a poem about my dad I was free to learn anythting I wanted - Books were my thing and I read a lot and the characters were very 3D to me, they were my frends - I went to Sunday school a few times with friends who asked me to go with them but found it too boring and the stories structulreless and wanted to get back to real stories so i have never had use of a god .

I was in bed listening to an audio book. I think it was Dawkins' The God Delusion or Hitchens' God is Not Great. Or maybe Harris' The End of Faith. I just kept thinking that I had never agreed more about religion than with what I was hearing. It all started to feel like it made sense, for the first time in my life. Taking off those "god glasses" for a while. Suddenly so much of what I was always confused about made sense.