We were learning about Noah and the flood in a Methodist Sunday School. When I tried to picture an entire world covered in water, I realized how impossible it would be. I was about 7/8, and began questioning everything the church taught. It never stopped until i was agnostic, then atheist. I thought I'd found like minded people on this site, but I've discovered even here, some people have been intolerant and judgmental if it differs from their thinking. SMDH A world so full of hate and violence is ready for a large dose of tolerance.

I became an atheist because I stopped believing in magic, that all occurrences had to have a logical explanation even if you don't know what that explanation is at that time at some point someone will find one. I suspect that because I was an avid reader of science at the time and science required evidence and faith required none and therefore it was magic and did not exist. That is about as good of an explanation as I can give as I was ten at the time.

I think for those born into religion it is a process of gradually doubting and discounting religion.

As children we want to believe what our parents tell us, even if it makes no sense, we accept their authority even if we dont' really understand. As we get older we doubt those things that doesnt' really make sense, and if free to inquire, (some families severely punish inquiries or doubts), manage over time to figure it it is all just nonsense based on myths.

Religion was never discussed in my house growing up... it took me half of primary school to figure out that people believed the stuff they taught in our religious education classes (in a public school too, don't even know if it's legal frankly)... always thought it was just more fairy tails.

A lot of the teaching at my Catholic school about the bible did not make sense to me. When I asked too many questions and was told not to question the word of god and to have faith and to just believe, I knew something was not right.

Wondering why I was taught to fear god-a means for my parents to control me beginning in my adolescence.

Just don't buy into it. It took years but I'm here and now.

It was a long path for me. I was always interested in truth over fiction and knowing the things that everyone believed were true but are false. But it took a long time to let go of the biggest lie of all.

I always knew. My parents used to say the lords prayer every morning before my dad went to work.
I asked my mom why? She said that his Mom had done it and he found it comforting. By the time I was 8 I was asking questions to everyone I could find about the contradictions in the bible, why women could not be priests ( based on old testament) when christians said the new testament was what they based their beliefs in. I asked my parents and they both said they were Atheists.

I always went quietly until about 5 years ago when I would bring it up when people asked me to christmas concerts and started complaining about the war on Christmas etc.. I am much more outspoken now than ever before.

Questioning the ridiculous ideology of the Catholic religion

As a kid, I recited the Lord's Prayer with everyone else because it was what everyone did and I didn't really understand it; I can remember it verbatim to this day. More recently, I realised just how dangerous that is. I recited that prayer every day in school assembly. What if they'd been more vigorous in instilling these Christian ideals in me? I might, to this day, be a sincere believer in that bullshit. I got lucky. I'm terrified by how close I came to mental slavery.

i think from your chice of answers my cognitive dissonance answer comes from a and b

I was a non-believer before I knew what a believer was.

I studied Anthropology and Philosophy. That’ll do it every time.

For me, it was experiential. How 'religious' people were the most hypocritical, exploitative, power-hungry; and, how they used religion in their everyday lives.

I began asking tough questions at an early age. The answers were inadequate and prompted further digging. It didn't take long at all before the fog cleared.

I was studying Catholic theology and ethics and found I fundamentally disagreed with certain ethical answers and the deontological principles used to arrive at those answers. From there it led to questioning Christianity, looking for alternatives but eventually giving up on organized religion, then taking a philosophy course that presented some really challenging questions about God, the soul, personal identity, etc., and that helped me take a necessary leap from theism to agnosticism (briefly) and then to de facto atheism.