Not at any time really. Like you I grew up in the UK, and like many here I had no specific religion given me except school R.E. . I looked at many religions but none seemed to offer much to me. Then while wondering if I was somehow strange in not needing religion, it occurred that if as they all claimed, all religions offered salvation and spiritual knowledge only to insiders, then most people except the chosen few would be left out, or at least be left believing the wrong things. That seemed such a poor, silly and unfair way for god to behave, it could not be squared with the idea of a god of goodness, or one with enough wisdom to frame the physical laws of the universe, which still fill me with wonder. Then I realized that if there was a higher intelligence behind the universe, it chose not to communicate via religion, or any other means I can see, and then it occurred that if the intelligence did not communicate, it either did not exist or it intended us to live as if it did not exist, therefore its existence or not was irrelevant to life as we live it. And from that source of agnosticism the final step to atheism was only a small one.

I was born into a secular home. I remember my father talking to me about religion as he was putting me into bed. I was 4 or 5 and he told me about the different beliefs people held. It was more involved than a child of that age cares to hear but in the end, I was told to pick my own path. I think I chose well.

I'll struggle to answer this question with definition as I don't believe or disbelieve in gods. I simply don't know and anything I would offer to this discussion would be an opinion with which I don't think there would be absolutes.

I don’t ever remember truly believing. It always seemed like a strange concept.

By the time I was 16 or so I was convinced the whole god thing was a giant hoax perpetrated against humanity. I have been a confirmed atheist since.

Extraterrestrial experience. If that had not happened, I would still be a believer. I kept my experience a secret for years until I saw a psychiatrist in Virginia for medication I thought I needed. The psych was a bit shocked by what I had to say that he ended up referring me to a nearby hypnotherapist. It wasn't until she told me and the psych that my nightmares weren't just nightmares, but that the events I was seeing in my dreams really happened. I'll leave it at that.

For me, I studied ancient and prehistoric religion. Now, I already had decided that organized religion was not for me. But it sealed the deal. Science has absolutely no proof of God. Also, I see so many people with mental illness which religion compounds the problem.

Never really had a realization. It was more like I slowly lost my grip on it. When I was young, I wanted to believe. I became depressed before my teens, in great part due to my doubts. I wanted the peace and joy it seemed to bring to my peers and elders; the ignorant bliss of a person certain of themselves and their place in existence. I just couldn't.

I can't say exactly when it happened, but I believe my subconscious was athiest before my conscious was aware of it. Anyone else have this perspective?

age 15, figured it out all by myself! it had nothing to do with books or religion; it was just that i had thought there was a god and realized that there wasn't.

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