I was raised a Catholic, and spent 12 years in a Catholic School. We had to attend mass during the week and once a month we went to confession according to grade level.
I was sitting with my class in a pew inching my way toward the confessional one morning trying to think of any sins I had committed during the last 30 days.
Usually we would quietly whisper our sins among ourselves, and that morning I asked a couple of my classmates what they were going to confess to the priest just to get some ideas, but to my young mind there was nothing I could come up with that day, and I decided that I had't sinned and therefore had no sins to confess.
When it was my turn to go into the confessional I simply got up out of the pew, by-passed the confessional and move forward to sit in the pew further up where students who had already confessed where kneeling down praying in penance.
Just as sat down I suddenly felt immense pain as my earlobe was grabbed by one of the nuns, who pinched and twisted my flesh and body up out of the pew.
She wanted to know why I hadn't gone into the confessional and I told her it was because I had no sins to confess.
She said surely a boy as rotten and evil as I was had sins to confess, and she dragged me over to the confessional, still gripping my earlobe in her bony claw and said I would be next.
After my next classmate existed the confessional she threw me inside. One inside I knelt, said the required "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. My last confession was 30 days ago"...and then sat quietly in silence, crying softly to myself.
I was so scared, and when the priest asked me to confess I simply made up some sins, something like having lied to my parents, and stealing an extra cookie during lunch, etc...basically I lied and committed a sin while confessing sins.

When I came out the nun was there glaring at me, and later when we returned to our classroom she singled me out, and told the class how horrible I was and only an evil child filled with sin would try to avoid penance.

I endured other forms of abuse at the hands of both the nuns and priest at the school and parish, but it was their bullying and physical abuse that got me to thinking that the whole religious thing was a hoax.

Needless to say I hate nuns.

I saw this on another post and I wish I could attribute it. "Teach a child one religion and you indoctrinate them. Teach them all religions and you innoculate them".

Since I started Catholic elementary school. I don't remember what I believed beforehand. Maybe I thought "if Santa isn't real why should god be?"

I grew up without any religious training. We kids have never stepped foot into a church with my parents. Later, I asked my mother why she didn't teach us about religion. She said she didn't want to force her beliefs on us. I have to respect that. My mind was open. When I was in my 20s, I felt like I was missing something so I reached out to books. Christianity didn't make any sense to me. The Jesus story..... God incarnating to man? No. I don't get this. My spiritual search took me to Islam. At first, I was fascinated with it but later I realized it was the same hellfire, sin, and damnation of Christianity. I became disenchanted and walked away. Then I moved to spirituality and feel very comfortable here. I am home now.

In my teens, once I saw that church members were no better and sometimes worse than the people they demonized as atheists.

It started in my early teens. I knew it was bullshit when people couldn't answer some simple questions like.. where did god come from.

I remember being in Sunday school at about age 10 or 11. We had been taught to be reverent and to sit with our arms crossed, heads bowed, and eyes closed during prayers so that we could hear the "still, small voice" of the Holy Spirit speak to us. I usually had one eye open looking around the room to see if everyone else was buying it ;-P

I think it was around the age of 12 or 13 that I started actually thinking and realized that there were problems with religion. I continued to go to church for a few more years, but I totally quit going after I was about 15 or 16 years old. The older I got, the more I rejected religion. I was fortunate to have well-educated parents who allowed me to think and question freely.

Around 10. I had to go to a catholic elementary school and we were actually forced to do penance every first Tuesday of the month. I actually made shit up and ven told the priest that just lied to him. My experience there and not understanding,if we have some omnipotent being, how can people and the world be the way it is. I got smart and starting questioning everything.

I was probably somewhere around 9, but stopped believing at 14. At aged 5, all I could remember was being confused and weirded out by all the adults passing out, screaming and talking in the babble language they call speaking in tongues and remember never being able to ever see this man called God and Jesus that left me wondering why do they have to be invisible.

About 5 or 6. My more detailed answer is in the about me on my page. Long story short, I compared the bible to Dr. Seuss Green eggs and ham.

When I was a child & god did not make my mother stop beating me.

2011. In India where honour killing is such a huge thing! Also when I saw what politicians and religious people do (all over the world) by twisting religious texts, their intent and manipulating people.

When I saw my sister in a coma with leeches under her tongue, trying to get circulation in her chin. My baby sister, with her second time having cancer. Loosing her chin bone, and having to have her leg bones be her new chin. This is a woman, who always does for everybody else, never herself. It tipped over the edge, when my daughter's best friend died from brain cancer, and left a 14 year old with no mother, no father, no family. If there is a God, he does a piss poor job at it.

I asked why GOD would let his son be nailed to a cross.

I was about five and not yet fully indoctrinated as a believer because of my age. In Sunday school one day the "teacher" was talking about the ten commandments. I asked if the first commandment is not to kill, then why did we have so many wars. She responded that if a person kills for our country then it does not count and is not a sin. Even as a small child I could see through the thin veil of the lie and it caused me to start doubting more and more of the absurdities that they tried to teach me. There was so much absurdity.

When I first told my mother I was an atheist she nearly disowned me. After nearly thirty years of discussions and rational thought she has converted to atheism too.

Even though I was a minister for several years after going through University and graduate school with degrees in theology, I was always questioning and doubting. Fortunately, the seminary I went to, for the most part, did not object to my incessant questions I was allowed to continue; however, if I had questioned the existence of a god, or their "god." I doubt if I would have been able to graduate. So, when I first really questioned the existence of god was after I had been a minister for several years and found myself unable to truly console my parishioners or myself why a loving god would allow children to have diseases or go through so much pain. Why didn't god answer our prayers in stopping wars? As these questions mounted I went back into history for the traditional proofs of god and, of course, Abelard's seemed to be the only one that people referred to, but it is not an answer. C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity was a well written apologetic but lacked any substantive answers and neither did his book, The Problem of Pain. To say that these are mysteries and that god knows more than we do was a total cop out. So, through my own rational thinking and then meeting professor at a public university who was open and atheist and could show me the illogical thinking of "god', it was easy to feel great relief and leave religion as a "born again" atheist who was free to question, be curious, and be restless about anything and everything. No more taboos, etc. Free at last!

I was about 5. In Bible school they would sing that stupid song, "Jesus loves me." I was questioning how he could when he wasn't here. As I grew I went to church every Sunday because it was mandatory and couldn't figure out why people were doing one thing in church and the minute they were out the door it was a whole different story. Once I left home I haven't gone back.

i was 11 years old in a childrens home being tortured,,,,,,,,,,,,,,the "home" was run by the church of scotland...................

I was twelve when the Catholic nun who was training me for confirmation told me that I asked too many questions and that I needed to accept that I just had to have faith in regards to the things I didn't understand. I asked her, "if God made me and these questions keep coming into my mind, would I not be defying his will if I didn't ask them?" She told me that I think too much and faith comes from the heart. My questions involved birth control, immaculate conception, annulment of marriage, and many many more. Over the next 2 decades, I researched and attended worship services for many forms of Christianity and researched Wicca, Buddhism, Islam, Hindi, ba'hai, ancient religions from Greek, Roman, Celtic, Scandinavian and Oriental origin. I feel the most at home with Shamanistic practices of Native and Central American and Celtic origins with a touch of Buddhism. I don't incorporate a deity, because I do not believe in one, but I do believe that natural medicines in the plants that grow here can cure almost every disease and disorder we face as long as we find the way to focus our energy and the energy we get from that medicine on healing ourselves as a whole. We can sustain, improve, and heal ourselves or destroy ourselves and the only way to tap into the energy to heal or expand our lives and abilities is to focus within, not focus on a fantasy. Everything we need is inside us. Does that make each and every being it's own God? If so, I believe in myself And wish everyone else could do the same without some make believe entity getting in the way of progress!

Sunday school when I was about five. We had to do a Noah's Ark pageant and the story of a genocidal God freaked me out and didn't mesh with the loving God they kept telling me about.

I guess about 6. My sister and I were kicked out of Sunday school because we thought the stories were fiction and laughed when someone tried to convince us otherwise. In, what is now, Year 2 in England, I was slippered by the Headmistress for arguing with the vicar that took RE lessons. That lesson taught me about religious people as well as their religion!

At 6 or 7. Could see no evidence of a god. Seemed to be "just made up".

I've been a doubter for as long as I can remember. I woke up in a hospital from a coma when I was 6. My memory was gone, but I retained factual knowledge. The first night, the hospital chaplain introduced me to religion. After she wouldn't leave me alone, I buzzed the nurses to have her removed from my room as I thought she was nuts. Fortunately, the nurse that responded was a non-believer. I only wish my parents were too.

Around 11 or 12 when the local priest tried to explain to me he was god's representative on Earth. Even then I thought he was full of it.