Around 1968 I remember hearing "God is love" - letting children starve in Africa and letting innocent men die everyday in Viet Nam, didn't seem too loving. I knew then that something didn't add up.

Growth is the only evidence of life. Continue.

@VeronikaAnnJ

Not this question again. Please do a topic search before posting. Once again:

Why I am an atheist

Since age 13, I have been an atheist. I realized the Bible is just a book of stories or fables like Grimm's Fairy Tales.

Beginning at age five when I had to go to Sunday school, I scoffed at ridiculous Bible stories: Jesus rose from the dead, a woman turned into stone, parting of the Red Sea, Noah's Ark, etc.

Michigan had a hard winter when I was 13. Bored and restless, my brother Lee, 10, and I read the World Book Encyclopedias together.

I was inspired by rational philosophers Spinoza and Descartes. They were bravely anti-theist (anti-gods), anti-church and anti-clergy in the 1600s when heretics were burned at the stake. They had to go into hiding.

The writings of rational philosophers Spinoza and Descartes inspired the European Enlightenment. The Enlightenment Period of the 17th and 18th centuries emphasized science and reason over faith and superstition.

From age 12-14 I became more Skeptical of the Catholic Church as I became more aware of political issues happening across the United States such as Same Sex Marriage. At age 15 I saw an old 2005 Bill Maher Standup clip where he says you can drill out Catholicism just like you can drill out mercury. At that very moment I became an atheist.

Just curious, what is it about Dawkins you are not a fan of? I have several of his books and his book The Selfish Gene in particular really jibed with how I see how the operates. Even with that though I don't know if I would say I'm a "fan" so to speak of Dawkins, but I'm not anti-Dawkins by any means either. I've just read some of his books and really liked that one in particular but other than that I don't follow or treat him like a celebrity at all. Basically if he's a good person great, and if he's a dick then that's just what it is but it doesn't really matter much to me personally because I'm not extremely invested into his life.

I went to the Methodist Church growing up.
At the age of 12, I had to decide whether I wanted to go through confirmation classes to become an adult member of the church.
I told my parents I believed it was all nonsense.

I was raised Lutheran in a catholic neighborhood and when I was a pre-teen I had difficulty understanding why i was shunned by the parents of my friends, especially when my family didn't seem to have the same prejudices. When I turned 23 I married a catholic girl and needed to go through a series of approvals to get married in her church. It was then that I started to study religion and once you look at it all objectively you marvel at it's stupidity.

With the ministry pushed at me from my teen years, I rebelled and got away from that idea but had a lifetime of much guilt and grief because of it. Many years went by with these bad feelings. Somewhere about 2011 or so I discovered Jerry DeWitt on You Tube. He seemed to be telling my story and then for the first time the "scales fell off my eyes" as the Buybull says about Saul of Tarsus. These days I am sort of a preacher in reverse and I operate on logic and evidence.

I was born into a Moron (oops, Mormon) family, and was brainwashed to become a Moron (oops, Mormon). I even served a 2-year mission in Argentina at age 19-21. I married a Moron (oops, Mormon) woman at age 25, and we had two children. In my late 20's, I became determined to prove Moronism true, in order to convert skeptical friends of mine. I researched the scriptures for proof of their accuracy. Instead, I discovered false prophecies, contradictions and impossible stories. I took my findings to the bishop in charge of our congregation, thinking he might be able to show me where my research had gone wrong. Instead, he initiated my excommunication for apostasy. That excommunication was the best thing the Morons ever did for me. I did, however, lose my family. My wife took the children and disappeared. Later, I was served with divorce papers. It took some time to get over the loss of my family, but now I am free from religious bondage, and living a much happier life.

I experienced something science has yet to discover. I found out what I "believed in" was not as I believed it to be. After taking my experiences that science cannot yet explain and researched for myself, I find It can be observed by historical documented text and a scientific understanding of cognition that Jesus character is Angelic lord of host Lucifer the devil. So, I no longer consider myself Christian.

Read all the sacred religious books as part of a paper in theology class (studied in a catholic university) and after reading all of the main ones with critical eyes, came to the conclusion that all of them were full of shit. No real journey.