I believed very much when I was young but when my brother died when I was 11, I started to question what good was God if he took loved ones. I remember distinctively at the church service listening to "God's will" as the reason he had died. It didn't make sense to me. He was killed in a car accident and I knew that. I remember asking lots of questions. By the age of 19 I knew I didn't believe in God but didn't verbalize it till I was in my 50's. I would tell others who would ask that I did not believe in organized religion this worked well in the New England area but is really tough where I live now in central NC. Where I have been asked point blank if Jesus Christ was my savior. I said no, and then was asked if I was Jewish. The thought of not being religious didn't enter their mind.

I questioned if there was a god and religion is bs when I was in my early 30s. I started to see how christains treaded gay people and others that didn't fit the mold. I considered becoming an atheist in my early 30s, but chickened out. I do wish I found the courage in early 30s to become an atheist like I have in my early 40s. It sure would have been easier to find a partner no what gender they might be. I'm proud to say I love to marry a man if it came to be.

I'm a little ashamed to admit I was considering becoming a pastor in my late 20s. I'm glad I avoided that train wreck.

I became an atheist at age 13, when I realized the Bible is just a book of stories written by men.

After being raised Catholic, my mother became an atheist In nursing school.

"I realized a woman cannot be turned into salt," Mom said dryly.

I was asking questions that went unanswered in bible camp when I was 8. The doubt really grew from there. I left the church and became agnostic at 13... atheist in my early 20’s.

i never concerned myself much with organized religion, and the organized religion, such as it was, in my family was secular judaism. i came to the realization at age 15 that there was no god (later to be expressed "were no gods" ) but it didn't even occur to me to challenge judaism itself, since while it was (and is) a large part of my cultural identity, religiously i was just a sort of believer in a personal god who was my confidant when i wanted him to be and didn't interfere much in anything. so he became a fictional character and that was that. judaism doesn't actually disallow doubt (or disbelief).

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I'm going with grade school. I've never been religious but never really thought about religion until I was 10 - 12 or so. I went to vacation bible school a couple of summers, and really saw the tricks and techniques that teenagers were taught to brainwash younger children.

Mostly they told stories of personal experiences that were ridiculously outrageous. I thought, 'If this shit is true, why do they have to lie to convince people?' I still see stories that make me wonder how it's not obvious to adults.

In retrospect I had some reservations about religious faith as early as the onset of adolescence. But it didn't result in meaningful questioning until my mid 20s, and didn't result in full-on self-identified atheism until my late 30s.