I thought we were going into a York Peppermint Patty commercial...

I was lucky enough to be raised as a generic, non-churched "Jesus loves you and be nice to kids, pets and old people" Christian, but nothing more than that. I escaped the heavy indoctrination of Sunday school or bible-thumping, and I was encouraged to read whatever I wanted.

I credit Joseph Campbell for helping me see that all religions are equivalent, and science for helping me see that they're all pretty much equally impossible.

I was once a true believer. Family got me into god and religion and I knew they could not be wrong. Then came studying for the ministry and later many years in limbo. Out of that study I finally came to realize there is no evidence for gods. None of them! No evidence at all. Some people claim to be atheist simply because they do not like ideas of gods or church. They know the least of all. I've found the bible to be mostly bogus with unfounded stories. Other holy books are pretty much the same. Gods are not trying to contact you or instruct you.

Then we have the true believer that is told that if he was born in Iran he would not be a Christian. He would be a Muslim. He doesn't get it. I've even had some of them look at me and ask just what that means. They just do not get it. Totally brainwashed.

I was fortunate be brought up Catholic as a formality only. I don't remember my parents ever going church, reading a bible, or praying. I went through the rituals, but by the time I was 8, and opened a children's bible, I already had the seed of doubt. The harder I tried believe, the more difficult it was. The more I read, the more ridiculous it all seemed. I suppose you can't force yourself believe something your logical mind can't accept. So I was never a true believer and have no regrets.

I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school for 12 years. I started having my doubts when I saw priests doing uncharitable things, like refusing to give Communion to a lady who did not have a scarf or chapel veil. Later, as I went to schools (universities) that weren't Catholic, I realized how much I had been indoctrinated and, quite honestly, lied to. I studied comparative religions, and saw that there was no one religion that felt true. It took me a couple of years to wrestle with the conflicting ideas, until I finally realized...I don't think there is a God. I am now agnostic/atheistic.

I enjoyed reading you guys stories it's nice to get different perspectives and reasons why people gave up their religion or if they even were believers in the first place I appreciate the the responses

i was raised in a secular jewish family. we knew we were jewish but we didn't go to shul except for weddings and bar/bat mitzvahs. i know we celebrated passover and the other holidays but we didn't go to shul for them. it was a home thing. we didn't talk about god; i received no actual religious instruction. i never read the bible (not old testament; bible!) when i was 14 i decided to get into it and i began going to shul by myself. i enjoyed it. i also went to talmud study once a week, but i had no background in it, and it was alien to me -- fascinating but alien. after a year of that i decided i'd like to study more but didn't particularly care to hang out with the other people my age who were studying. they seemed like prematurely old people somehow. that's not a reflection on judaism; that's just the crowd who went to that particular class. so i stopped going but didn't think anything of it in terms of belief in god. that was just something i took for granted. god was just this friend i had who observed my life when i needed a witness, which was often. then when i was 15 i had a realization about a completely unrelated matter that my parents were wrong about something on which i had just taken their word, so i decided to catalogue my beliefs, in my head anyway, and see which ones were true and which were just me going along with what i'd been told. god went out the window pretty fast. it wasn't traumatic and i didn't stop being a jew, or feel betrayed, or rebel, or anything like that. i just realized there were no gods. easy peasy. i mentioned it casually to my best friend and found out she didn't believe in any gods either. she'd been raised catholic. i don't know how she came to her conclusion or if it was as easy for her.

g

I was influenced heavily by my grandmother. I soaked it all in like a sponge. Lived and breathed God until I turned 41. I'm 42 now and I have suffered tremendous hurt after leaving my faith. My church and godly beliefs were my foundation. I suffered severe depression after coming to the realization that God was non existent. I'm thankful for my mind being exposed and woke. But the struggle is real for some. I friended an atheist. First atheist I had ever met. We would discuss many topics and one happened to be God. After listening to their point of views I began to question things for myself. Many questions I could not answer. I was determined to find my own truth. I did. It was a tremendous and terrifying experience for me. After a year Im more free and relieved. Im learning how to cope with life without my crutch aka God.

I have never really believed but I have wanted to believe at times in my past. Really wanted to believe. It was met with deafening silence.

I was dragged to church every Sunday as a child, practically everyone in my family is a firm believer.. but it never took hold. I have an antisocial personality "disorder" that I am pretty sure I was born with.. and one of its symptoms is always feeling like an outsider. So I always felt out of place in church, an observer. As an observer, I learned at a young age that religious people are fucking weird when practicing their religion. Eventually the church asked my grandparents to stop bringing me as they could tell it just wasn't sinking in.

Plus, when you grow up with a schizophrenic parent who spouts crazy religious crap and have your family tell you that it's all make believe in their head.. then hear a pastor say the same crazy stuff and everyone nod their heads in approval, it makes you wonder.

I tried, for the sake of family and friends, but the only reason they could get me up and dressed for church every week was the donuts. I LOVED those donuts! And the arts and crafts in Sunday school was fun. I also excelled at bible verse challenges because of my competitive nature, so they were providing even more arguments against their mythology, because I didn't just memorize, I understood. (They can blame my mother for that... she grounded me from the library one summer so I raided her shelves of books instead of re-reading - for the 10th time? - my children's classics. It's amazing how your understanding expands when you start reading Taylor Caldwell and Jacquelin Susann... at 8.)

I was born an atheist, just like everyone else is.
My family tried indoctrinating me, it didn't take.
I never believed any of it.

I was indoctrinated into the religion as a child, I believed it firmly, my family, mainly my mother encouraged me to read the Bible and “know it’s truth” I did so, my little brother and I completely our first communion at an earlier age than other kids due to our knowledge of the thing that the Bible taught, this was probably in middle school a year or so later I realize I didn’t believe these things either due to their immortality, the contradictions, the knowledge of other religions, or my knowledge of science, but I knew that science and the Bible did not mix, at this time I started looking for a religion based on science, and of course when you search up science and religion the mental disease that is Scientology pops up, I look at it and thankfully realize that shit was nuts. I kept researching but found nothing and then I found the term atheist and I knew that that was the only defensible position. I came to terms with this realization and I wanted to tell my little brother, I told him what that meant and he started sobbing, he told me you can’t not believe in god, I don’t want you to go to hell, he kept repeating this. I was mortified, my brother was terrified for me, in order to make him stop crying I told him, I told him I was agnostic, which now I know that what I actually meant was deist, he stopped crying, but this stuck with me and I kept going to church cause a had to or they’d be suspicious. I couldn’t understand a god that would put me in hell for simply not believing in them, I went on to complete my confirmation as an atheist in high school. In high school I was with my older brother, his girlfriend and my little brother, the girlfriend mentions that she doesn’t believe in god, and I unintentionally said me too and that’s where my older brother found out of my disbelief, he was angry, a few days later it was thanksgiving and my mother says who wants to say grace, and my older brother says why don’t you ask your son who doesn’t believe in god to say it. And this was how my family found out. Thankfully they didnt take it as bad as I thought, we get into disagreement here and there but nothing serious.

Every infant worships his/her parent, usually the mother, as a god. This worship is often later mis-directed by the parent towards a mythical entity.
I know that this is true at least for myself, because I retain vivid memories of my infancy.