I wasn't raised in a religious family. I did have a child's Bible with lots of pictures in it that I used mostly as a stepping stool.

When someone is brainwashed from childbirth, you have a kid who feels horrible and guilt ridden, always crying (literally) in secret and praying to god to forgive his doubts and to give him more faith. He lives his life knowing he doesn't deserve anything including life.
It's horrible and it takes a long period of time to escape it, maybe not fully ever.

I was about 8, it all just didn't seem to make any sense and the older I got the less sense it made until finally what really made sense was that it was all bollocks ?

Probably about age 7 when I had to make up stuff to say at confession. The nun said if you thought you didn't have sins to confess to, you were a liar, which was a worse sin. I had no choice ... I had to lie so I wouldn't be called out as a liar. Way too heavy for a 7-year old.

Quando comecei a ler.

This is a good one for me I was in infant school so going back 34/5 years ago I was obsessed with dinosaurs and we had a vicar come in once a week to talk to us all about “god” after one particular lesson on creation I asked the vicar if Adam and Eve were the first people he created where did the dinosaurs fit in and I was told not to be silly they didn’t exist and quite quickly for a 7/8 year old I replied “but dinosaurs have had loads of books written about them and we’ve even found dined yet there’s only one book about god” I was told to be quite and sit down from that moment on I knew religion was a lie!!

For me it was between the ages of 10 and 13 when I gradually decided that spirituality of any kind was stupid and a waste of time.

When reality began to come into conflict with faith

I started thinking it was ridiculous when I started questioning things. I would research an argument a theist said and found all the holes in the argument and in other arguments. Eventually everything that had me believe in a god fell apart and I slowly stopped believing.

I have a hard time quantifying it since religion always "made sense" to me because in my sect of Judaism we said that God wasn't Gandalf on a cloud in the sky controlling everything but that power and divinity and idea of creation is a force that's inside all humanity. Which allowed me to consider myself both agnostic and a Jew. The first time I ever found myself seriously questioning religion and arguing was July 2014.

It's never made sense to me. My Grandma read Aesop's Fables and Ancient Greek Myths to us when we were kids. Relgion seemed just like those stories growing up. I never went to a church though, so I didn't have adults in my life pressuring me to believe in fairy tales. Now I watch debates between Christopher Hitchens and Matt Dillahunty and Richard Dawkins and I'm entertained! These religious people seem so absurd

Coming of age and knowing I was going to be drafted for the Vietnam war; watching Walter Cronkite nightly news on the body counts. Kept asking questions, absolutely no logical or free thinking responses. I was drafted, did not go to Vietnam but kept questioning, “Why?”

When I was a teen, it was my brother, actually, who made me realize this. He watched a lot of videos on the internet, like the AmazingAtheist and videos where people anaylzed the horrific stuff in the bible. From there it was me seeing stuff about inconsistencies, how the ark can't possibly hold all those animals, etc. Like a slow buildup of realization and knowledge.

In college, I took a great books class. During junior year, we read and discussed the bible (not all of it, but several books--Genesis, Exodus, a few others I don't remember). We had two professors who would lead our discussions, and one was a well known Calvinist (he was some kind of very minor radio personality). Our discussion ended up on Satan, morality, and absolutism, and I had questions--I was basically using the Socratic method on myself to figure this out, but using the professor as a sounding board. I asked the professor if evil was basically disease, destruction, dysfunction, chaos, disorder, etc. He said yes. I asked if Satan was absolutely evil. He said yes. I asked if that wouldn't mean Satan was a being who was absolutely diseased, disordered, destroyed, dysfunctional, chaotic, etc., which implies a being who doesn't (indeed CAN'T) exist. He said no, that one being could be absolutely evil, and Satan was that one being. That really made no sense, but I accepted it for the sake of argument and then asked, well if God is absolutely good and Satan absolutely evil, then they are in a stalemate forever (there could logically never be a winner or a loser, as they would by definition absolutely counterbalance each other forever). The Calvinist professor said that was true, except for at the end of time when God throws Satan in the lake of fire. DING! I was an atheist. I almost heard an audible click or bell in my head. It was just a bridge FAR too far. I couldn't even accept what he was saying for the sake of argument...not even on a "story logic" level--and suddenly I couldn't accept ANY of it for the sake of argument. It was just totally crazy nonsense. It wasn't even a very good story (I was a lit major).

So many responses, thank you for sharing everyone

I choose to start not believing in elementary school, when they started going over the Crusades and Dark Ages. There’s no way something as important as chronicles and timelines should be snuffed out because of a quest for a “God”.

Same here

At around 10 years.

It hit me all in an instant. I was 11 and wanted to be a priest when I grew up. A teacher said he went to a different religious ceremony each week to hedge his bets. I thought to myself. There are virtually infinite religions and if only one is right, my odds of finding/being that one are 1/infinity, aka zero. At that point I prayed to Good instead of God and never looked back. If there is a God and it’s not evil, I think it’ll like me. If not, I’d rather suffer with the righteous than live in bliss with the select.

Same. My father was agnostic and I only ever went to church when we were visiting friends at Easter or Christmas, or going to a wedding or funeral. It has always seemed rather creepy and cultish to me.

It was my early 30s and this community me see all that religious stuff was harmful in ways I didn't think of.

I can remember having questions about religion ever since I was a kid. Experiences in my childhood made me question how God could let bad things happen? How is it we go to church but don't follow through on the basic tenets of love, peace, acceptance, compassion, etc? How can I, a child, make a promise to never lie again? Very confusing. I never understood war, and how God could be supportive. The nails in the cricifix came when I watched the Zeitgeist movies for the first time. A long time coming but many connections were made that finally put me over the top.

I went a Catholic high school. Every Friday one of the priests who taught us would hear our confessions. I was dating a girl at the time, and each weekend we would usually go a local drive-in theater. As those of you who went drive-ins with your boy/girl friends back in the day may understand, each Friday I would confess the same "mortal sins" my girlfriend and I would commit at the drive-in the same priest - and receive the same penance. It occurred me pretty soon that what my girl and I were doing wasn't evil, and that the whole confession thing was b.s. Looking back - that was one of my first clues. Quite a few years later I heard from a classmate that one of the priests who would hear my confession had regularly invited one of my high school classmates over the rectory for sex. The saying "judge not lest ye be judged" come to mind.

I don't remember exactly when, but I was between the ages of 8 and 12. I was with my father flying remote controlled airplanes. Mom was probably at church. I recall asking my dad why we weren't all together, he responded "Church is for people who don't have other hobbies." I continued to attend the church of model avation into my late teens, with my dad, usually on Sunday mornings.

Mid 30s here.