I was around twelve years old and I had a moment where I thought to myself that the entire thing sounds like a fairytale. All the bible stories really didn’t help either. They all seemed more like the bedtime stories in books. Later in 8th grade, when I started in science class and we were learning about biology and evolution, it made so much more sense to me than the story in the book of Genesis. I asked my teacher, who I will not name, if there were any books I could read outside of class to learn more about evolution. He wouldn’t refer anything to me so I decided to research it. I found a copy of “The Blind Watchmaker” in my local library. By the time I was done reading it I wanted more. I can’t place a specific moment as THE moment but between the age of twelve and fifteen, I had stopped believing. I didn’t “come out” until I was twenty-two.

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 believe it was 2nd or 3rd grade, during catechism, the nun teaching the class was telling stories that just didn't make sense to me. When questioned, she flustered, got angry, and couldn't answer. I wanted to believe, but it wasn't making sense. By 4th and 5th grade, the nuns had labeled me as a "doubting Thomas" and my parents stopped making me go to catechism, so I was never "confirmed" in 5th grade, like my brothers and sisters. I felt that gave me license to be non-religious and think for myself. I was the only one of my 4 siblings who didn't get married "in the church" as an adult.

Over the years throughout my childhood, after being told I had a guardian angel watching over me, I couldn't understand why that angel, or God himself, wasn't protecting me from things going on in my home that were clearly wrong.

I came to realize that this guardian angel was really my conscience and that God was likely a metaphor for all authority. I disliked authority, as I could see it was often a selfish entity with an agenda which wasn't always fair. I learned to think for myself, trust my gut feelings more, and slowly unlearn the concept of blindly following authority.

Took a long time to be free of the prison of patriarchal authoritarian rule, because it was so deeply ingrained in society all around me, and I felt alone in my departure from religion, but access to library books questioning religion, shining a light on a more scientific view of the world helped with my transition in my twenties and thirties, and then when I could access the internet right from my home on a borrowed computer, I realized there were others questioning and discussing the transition online. I found my lifeline!

It came in layers. It started with 2 contradictions in the bible (and then grew by leaps and bounds). A perfect god couldn't have written and imperfect book. Without the book, no jesus. My religion? A good way can't be built on an evil book. After you take away everything MAN says that god says...god is very quiet.

It didnt' happen all fo a sudden. It was/is a gradual process.

my realization wasn't even about religion per se. i just realized, at age 15, that there were no gods. i was raised a secular jew. i still go on high holy days when i am well enough and i LIKE the sermons, but you have to know that there is no fire and brimstone in judaism. i liked the sermon about recycling! i don't have to take the god thing literally.

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