I was teaching a Bible Study at my church. I wanted to do a thorough job so I studied each lesson ahead of time. I started to see problems with the Bible. I tried to explain them away at first but eventually the only logical answer was that the Bible is not the word of God and that it is the greatest fraud perpetrated on humanity.

I never had an AH HAH moment. It just evolved over time. I had a priest tell me why prayers aren't answered. He said God says, "NO!". Well that didn't make sense. A million people pray for peace and God says "Nope!". This is a all knowing and loving God. If this God creature or entity controls ALL then why would this God be so mean and allow all the war, killing, death and pestilence to exsist? So it becomes obvious that there is no one or thing listening. We are here for some unknown reason and we suffer and enjoy what ever this is until such time as we fall over dead. There for sure is no God as portrayed in the Bible or Koran or any other book. There may be some source something but we have nary a clue and never will.

While in high school, in church we were reading the old testament, while at the saem time in school we were looking at Greek mythology. I always had doubts, and so it wasnt' so much of an Ah Ha, moement as ti was a tipping poi9nt where the house of cards just collapsed.

I've knew all my life.
Unfortunately my own mother's hypocrisy revealed how much religion was bs to me when she would be in church raising her hands up to the "lord", crying in the aisles and shaking from the "holy Spirit", but would come home and continue to drink, smoke and cuss up a storm that Sunday night.
I realize church was a side show when I saw that people came to church to be seen.
Church kept up your reputation in the neighborhood...
And don't even get me started on that "holy book"...

Many years ago when George carlton explained it in a comedy routine.

Praying and then realizing that it was likely that I just placeboed myself. After that happened, I began examining my beliefs for the first time. I even read some of the bible. I examined these beliefs and concluded that I had no good reason to hold them after about two years. I think it finally clicked after binge watching debates w/christopher hitchens, I was finding it hard to find good reason to continue holding such fragile and unsubstantiated beliefs. It's easy to be a christian when you don't read your own holy text and just parrot the watered-down version taught to you by the priest. Afterall, ignorance is bliss.

When the astronauts made it to the moon and they weren't in "heaven" AND Carl Sagan! I was 15. Conformation came from Hitch, Dawkins, Tyson, and has anyone seen Ricky Gervais new special Humanity? SO so FUNNY..... And with age seeing how no one is spared from lifes shit... no matter how much faith they have.....

When the church (mormon) wanted me to be baptized for the dead.

The day I was baptised... in a hottub.

To put it simply, my choice to be religious was my teenage rebellion. I grew up in a house that was very non-religious and my mom was very controling. So while most teens were growing their hair long and skipping school and getting into trouble as part of their teenage rebllion years, mine was cutting my hair short and going to church. Man, she was pissed when she found out I had been baptised.

But I digress!

The point is, I was already suspicious of the Jesus before I ever started attending church. And when I did start going, it was one of those big ones. The ones you see on television that obviously have way more money than they deserve to spend on massive stadium style churches. Casey Treat was the head pastors name and in Seattle you could watch him on television every Sunday. Well, to cut a long story short, everything clicked the day I got baptised. It was on stage in front of a thousand cheering people. And there was a hottub. A big one. And the second my body went under I was like, "this is dumb". I went home that night and never went back.

it was gradual for me. I think being on social media and having a variety of friends and being more and more disappointed and let down with Christianity in America. it just led me on a journey to finding authenticity within my faith, which I could not find. But eventually it just melted away with being afraid of calling myself atheist, to now feeling somewhat comfortable when talking with people online. Thankful for this new social media outlet agnostic.com app.

it was gradual for me. I think being on social media and having a variety of friends and being more and more disappointed and let down with Christianity in America. it just led me on a journey to finding authenticity within my faith, which I could not find. But eventually it just melted away with being afraid of calling myself atheist, to now feeling somewhat comfortable when talking with people online. Thankful for this new social media outlet agnostic.com app.

It was more like a few "ah ha" moments. I abandoned faith in stages, between ages of 17 and 20. First and easiest was the church. Just witnessed too much hypocrisy and realized what a thoroughly human institution it is. Second was the Bible as infallible word of God. I was an exchange student at 18 in Germany, and we had religion class in public school. Quite the eye opener for me, to see it was far from being Sunday school. That teacher ripped the Bible to shreds metaphorically, pointing out countless contradictions and factual errors that church had always glossed over. Finally, the idea that God was still up there watching over me, waiting for me to screw up; that was my last notion to go. The fear of being punished if I was wrong had hung over me. Home from college the summer after my sophomore year, dutifully attending church with my parents to placate them, pretty doubtful about it all by then. I was chatting with the pastor's wife, and she asked about school. Then she carefully admonished me to "be careful" going to secular university, "because that secular education can sound so logical, so reasonable, but worm its way to getting between us and a relationship with God." I remember that moment thinking, Lady! If your faith can't stand up to reasoned scrutiny, what good is it? It clicked for me that my doubt of the existence of God was no sin at all, rather it was simply honesty. And any God that is supposed to be both omniscient and all loving would never condemn us to eternal torment simply for that honest doubt. To do so would make God an oxymoron, an impossible contradiction. That was the moment I stopped looking over my shoulder and let go of the final shreds of belief.

Every time I learn something new that supports a scientific perspective is an aha moment for me. It's been a slow gradual process for me, and continues to be as I understand new concepts based on science and reason.

For me it was a long, slow process. I kept pushing away my doubts- after all I was always taught not to be a “doubting Thomas”. It was when I started reading atheist literature that it started to solidify.

Most popular question. 2 posts already today lol. questioned at 5 left at 16.

I become more wiser and was intrigue in asking question why what when and how with a very inquistive mind

When David Silverman presented the problem of evil in his debate with Frank Turek an Turek was trying every way he could to get out of answering his questions directly because he had no real answers. David Silverman had to stop him from dodging the questions many times. The lack of honesty I saw in that debate really opened my eyes and I started to recognize it so much more after that, especially when I hear my family talk about religion.

I was raised in an uber strict big Irish Catholic family. (Was that redundant?) I can remember sitting in class preparing for my First Communion and thinking...uh oh....I'm not getting this....and everyone else looks like they are. Yikes. My little-kid questions were not respected or answered adequately. I learned to shut up and put up. The AHA moment was when I finally found out that there were other people who did not believe in god. I was a young adult when that happened. Interestingly, my older brother and I were on the exact same page the entire time but we never talked about it until we were in our 50's. I let my two boys make their own decisions....one is atheist and the other is on the fence agnostic/atheist. By the way, I love R. Reagan's 'I am an unabashed atheist who isn't afraid to rot in hell". I hope that kids being raised with no voice see that commercial and find some support in it.

My moment would be very similar to if one of you had a conversation with Travolta or Cruise regarding their faith. I buzzed the nurses to remove some crazy lady from my room after I came out of a coma at the age of 6. She wound up being the hospital's chaplain.

There was no "a ha" moment. It was a graduaal realization beginning at about age 15 through about age 19..

Seeing how full of crap and self righteous religious people are. The are full of religion yet have 0 morals.

For me, it is the key word is 'Righteous'. They all want to be 'Righteous', which is fair enough, but are they actually 'Righteous' or merely 'Self Righteous ??'

No "ah ha" moment over religion for me as I was a skeptic even as a child. I did sort of have one over supernatural phenomenon when I read a book about pyramid power and it dawned on my just how stupid it all was. I subscribed to Skeptic Magazine and never looked back.[skeptic.com]

My nature has been to question everything, so I was already edgy at a very young age when I stumbled on the book "Why I am NOT a Christian" by Bertrand Russell. I read it with lively interest without even knowing who Bertran Russell was at the time. The rest is history, I have been guilt free pretty much my whole life thanks to that book.