Listening to George Carlin’s bit on religion when I was 14. I laughed so hard, and it sewed a seed of skepticism inside of me.

I started to wonder if life was preordained or free will. If God knows everything before it happens then it is preordained. If he doesn’t know then it is free will and he isn’t all knowing. If it is preordained then all people in hell he knew would end up there and made them just to punish them for what he did. That didn’t make any sense so I started questioning everything in my belief system. I am now completely atheist.

I went to Bible college and in my New Testament class we were going over a passage in Timothy about how men and women should behave. The first half of the verse was about how women should be silent and submissive. The class agreed that women should do this. The second half of the verse was about how men should raise their hands while they pray and the class agreed that was a cultural thing and men didn't have to do that now. There were no reasons given; no explination as to how to decide between what we should follow and what is "cultual". This lead me to belive it was all BS.

First time they told me Santa was fake but the sky monster was real.

Well, once you find otu the truith about Santa Claus and the Easter bunny, and then you are told how Grimm's Fairy tales are just stories, and the storyies bout the ancient Greek gods were only stories, it does kind of fall together into place that the bible stories re lso just myths too.

Not sure what age. Slowly, over time. But certain doctrines were big factors for me.
Like Hell. It's just such an over-the-top punishment. Even the worst Earthly death, imposed by the sickest psychopath is better. Arguments that we all deserve it and God is actually merciful for saving anybody felt hollow.
Homophobia. This doesn't square with nature. It also doesn't square with how I've ever felt about homosexual friends and family.
Age of accountability. If we are all innocent until a certain age, and go to heaven because we couldn't make moral decisions, then abortion (if you believe life begins at conception) sends more people to heaven than evangelism, I'd bet.
And it goes on and on, but those are the ones off the top of my head.

Doubt occurs when your prayers are not answered. Also, doubt occurred when science explains what was once unexplainable . Doubt occurs when one gives up superstition and looks for explanations in science with good evidence.

One of the wake up calls was realizing that ALL my "prayers" were being answered..even the unwise ones, that went against Bible teaching. I finally was forced to admit that everything that seemed to be supernaturally happening was because of ME, not god.

Physics indicates that we are participating in creating our own universes/reality:

“I regard consciousness as fundamental and matter as derivative from consciousness." – Max Planck, theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics

I think I was about 7, went to a Catholic church with the semi-religious parents and was exposed to its teachings which included their utter hate for Eve and her evil of eating the apple. That plus the persecution of women since and I concluded then that it was all bullshit, how could something that's supposed to tach people to be good and pure condem 50% of its members (at least)?!? Nope, I wasn't buying it!

After Trump got elected. You think I am kidding. No, his evangelical followers have shown me that they will support Trump even when he is doing things that go against their teachings. Please don't ask me to list what those are. Just my opinion. And do not get me started about folks who blow others up in "God's name".

As science progressed, humans found explanations for what they did not know before. For example, in ancient times, humans believed in many gods that controlled things such as thunderstorms or vegetation to name a few. Then, as our understanding of the natural world grew, they threw away their gods and then slapped the god label on the next mystery for them. Based on this, I define God as an ever receding pocket of human knowledge and is therefore impossible to disprove but also holds no evidence aside from the fact science can not yet explain what they claim god to have done.

I always had doubts. I figured these doubts would eventually disappear as I got older, because church was generally filled with old people, so they must have come to terms with their doubts, right? I even WANTED to get rid of my doubts, because I felt sorta guilty for having them. But these doubts only grew, and here I am.

My parents never pushed religion on me, so I was always questioning it even from a very young age. I was raised Jewish, but it was always emphasized that we were Jewish "culturally" and not religiously, so I always accepted traditions from a cultural standpoint; to me, getting together for holidays was always about the food, anyway - there's a running joke about Jews: "We were persecuted, we survived, let's eat."

A build up of events for me. Being of a cerain age, during my childhood we had the Beafran problem. Hundreds of thousands of starving people. At school, we prayed for them and raised some money, but they still starved. They are today around 40 years on. Then bit by bit, I found that prayer didn't work. Then with religious education (compulsory in England) we studied the bible. Once you try to get an early teenage head around all of this begatting, the whole publication just falls apart under questioning. Contradictions appear. Then why just one son, at that time.... It's all just a lie, just a power trip.
Historically, athiests have around since when humans invented gods as quick answers to shut the stupids up.

I was raised Catholic but it never made much sense to me. I was a curious child and asked many questions. The answers I got about religion seemed inadequate or begged more questions. After a while I quit trying to believe the non-sense. As a mature adult, I had to decide for myself what did make sense. I discovered that evidence, logic and rational thinking works a lot better than just believing something based on faith. Faith is what we use to believe Santa Claus exists. Should we use this same method to believe a god exists?

I was a Sophomore in college and taking Anthropology 101. Early in the semester we had already learned about many different cultures/tribes, along with their particular religious beliefs. I kept thinking how silly their beliefs were. Then one day, I had a bit of an epiphany and just decided that Christianity was equally as silly and made up as all the rest of them.

I was in my teens when I realized religions did not pass any logical sense.The more I learned the more I doubted.Fairytales.

Was raised Catholic and taught that “Faith” is the answer to anything. Doesn’t make sense? Have Faith.
I read the Old Testament in middle school as a novel and it was very clear that God was similar to Zeus. He’s portrayed as a cruel asshole. Obviously invented by man to be used to control the uneducated.

I’m not sure I ever believed. We were forced to an evangelical Baptist Church multiple times weekly by my parents, til at age 15 they could no longer force me to go. I’m the only atheist/agnostic in my entire family, and I recall many occasions of trying to present science/physics/facts to them...to no avail, so I quickly stopped!
The earliest memory of a ‘WTF’ moment: around age six, during a sermon on Noah’s Ark. I was INCREDULOUS at the outright fiction I was hearing. I looked around at all these gullible crazy people, and felt a little lost: THESE were the grown-ups?!

What "started" it all for me, happened very early on. I was taught that God is all powerful and everywhere. God loves us all equally.

HOWEVER, to ask god for forgiveness, you MUST talk to the Priest! And if you REALLY want God to hear you, you should have the Priest talk to him for you!

Wait! Whaaaat?!?!

I was suckered in to Mormonism for a few year (actually quite a lot of years) when I got out by coming to terms with the fact it was a pack of lies, I applied the same reasoning to religion as a whole and some came to realise, religion generally was just as stupid as Mormonism particularly.
After that I just became aware that I did not believe a word of it, it was not even a conscious decision, I simply could not lie to myself anymore and more importantly, I could not be frightened by such childish lies anymore.

I had to know everything and was studying to be a Pentecostal minister from the time of my late teens. I could never live up to the religion. I tried time and again but ended up later with a mind full of guilt that always followed me and made me feel bad. Around 2012 (maybe earlier) I found Jerry DeWitt videos on You Tube. As this man told his story he was telling my story. In short order it followed that I am a non-believer and that gods are imaginary. The fact of a book speaking of a god is nothing new. There are many such stories. Today I believe in none.

When man invented it.

When he told me sex before marriage was a no no !