Alright, so finally getting around to my bio. I was born a poor black boy... sorry, old Steve Martin joke.
I was raised conservative Catholic, although in fairness, I don't recall there was a whole lot of the heavy dogma in the house that Catholics are known for. Possibly the worse was being made to memorize the Apostle's Creed. Yuck!
I turned atheist mostly during my high school years; can't quite recall if the process was complete by the time I started college, but it would have been close. It wasn't due to any traumatic event; I just dared myself to consider the possibility one day, and things started to make sense. There was one last burst of religiosity in the 9th grade due to being sent to a Catholic High School, although that school didn't have much to do with my change.
Full BioI would later change to liberalism; I voted for Reagan the first go around, against him the second time. In hindsight, I guess I really was always a closet liberal, influenced by a conservative family in my youth. I recall playing devil's advocate in debates with my parents about things like the death penalty and environmentalism (environmentalists were terrorists back then). Any one remember the TV movie "The Day After" about the start of a nuclear war from a small town perspective? That was a huge influence in my conversion. But otherwise, my change to liberalism was similar to becoming atheist in that I had opened my eyes and thought things out for myself.