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

In nursing school, my mother became an atheist after being raised Catholic. "I realized a woman cannot turn into salt," she said.

After dropping off us four kids at Sunday school, my parents went back to bed. They chose First United Methodist Church because Dad went there as a child. Dad never went to church while we were growing up.

My parents were great when I announced I was an atheist. "I don't want to go to church anymore," I said. "That's fine," they replied. Their blasé reaction was a relief.

Reading the bible and observing the people that attended church.

I was born atheist, I was introduced to various god hypotheses and they were all incoherent (they don't even make sense in theory) so I rejected them and remained unchanged.

I was at a catholic elementary school being brainwashed and reading the bible. Third grade. This God didnt seem like a good person asking Abraham to kill his son. Wtf I thought.

Being born to atheist parents? No one ever needed me to have a god so I didn't need one.

A questioning mind -- one that does not blindly accept whatever someone says is the truth.

I got sent to catholic school in another country and I would always get lashed by the teachers because of asking how come people were a lot older in the Bible than they live today among many, many other "heresies". Then when I got home I would also get it from my parents because that was an expression of God's love, because if you don't break your child's spirit they will rebel from God. It was pretty horrible at the time considering I was under 10 but I'm glad they never broke me.

Masturbation?

Being an evangelical Christian for most of my live. Ironically I have follow the scripture “look for truth and it will set you free”. Well, now I am free. After studying scriptures of many religions I get to the conclusion that all of them can’t be right, some have borrow something from the others. As well those days science of brain, mind can explain things which some times age we couldn’t grasp and understand without looking for something supernatural.

For me, the belief system came in pieces.

But the path started in eighth grade and we had a unit on mythology as part of our English curriculum.

The teacher stated that myths started as a way to explain the unexplainable, and this little light went off in my head that correlated that statement with my then Catholic upbringing.

I didn't become a stone cold non-believer on that day, but that's where it started.

I never really accepted the stories as a child. Later, I realized there's no evidence to support the bible's claims and its stories all come from older myths.

Being forced as child for Sunday School at the local Methodist Church in Des Moines Iowa,I must have pushed back very strongly, as a few weeks later no demands were made for my attendance. This was about in the late 1950's.

Sadly a very rude professor who didn't think anyone can be agnostic, you were either Atheist or you had a religion.

I flunked Catholicism class. My Mom (a devout x-tian) could not understand. I couldn't get every methaphor right when I was quizzed. I actually thought math and science would be useful for me and I can forget religion. It worked!

Analyzing people, civilizations and history.

As soon as I started to grow out of youth I started to believe in science more than a God. I think its amazing the storys of how others came to be agnostic/atheistic.

I never had to start it I never was theistic in any way - I never think of myself in either of those terms just as godless.

So many Contradictions in the Bible

I honestly have no idea. There was no single epiphany or even a specific time-frame at which I can identify as when I became and atheist. I don't feel like I even made a thoughtful and conscious choice in the matter. I suppose some may claim the devil made me do it. LOL

Thinking, reading the Bible, Qoran, Tora and realizing they are the same -- trying to get mankind to live in harmony. All have failed.

Simply was born into it, the same way that most believers are.

I went to a catholic school from 3rd through 7th grade. In the early days I was very much a believer and accepted it all as true, but I slowly started seeing the cracks in what I was being told. I was told that God is love, but I didn't see a lot of love in the church. I think the defining moment was one time when one of the nuns was telling me a story about the devil following a girl home from school. According to her story, a girl was followed home from school every day by a man wearing a trench coat. She knew it was the devil because one day she turned around to look at him and say that he had hooves instead of feet. After she told us the story I thought to myself, "I am never going to believe anything you tell me ever again". And I didn't. After I started looking at everything I was being taught by the church objectively, it was all revealed as the total bullshit that it is.

was forced on me as a child. As I grew older I came to realize what BS it all was and made a gradual shift from heretic to atheist.

I was raised in a Baptist church from the beginning. It wasn’t an immediate thing but rather the result of years of questioning that led me to personally not believe.