I was raised Pentecostal, educated by independent Methodists and my family was full of old time religious fire in general. I played along, read and studied the whole bible, memorized many verses per Christian school requirements, spent time of my own praying and studying the Bible to try to get close to god. Kept asking for help and concentrating and pleading devoutly and hearing nothing but a mental dial tone.

Fell off my practice by the teen years and was more of a hippy Christ apologist by then, thinking for sure organized religion is wrong but there’s still an underlying message of value and most Christians just have it wrong. I still believe that to a certain extent but throughout opening my mind in college with psychedelics, philosophy, and comparative religious studies with eastern views I came to realize most of the good stuff in Christianity was stolen from philosophies thousands of years older.

At that point I’d probably call myself a “spiritual” agnostic and Buddhist. Then I found out that my biggest issue of family trauma ever was 100x worse than I thought and that the last and only thing of importance I had ever prayed to god for had received the biggest cosmic middle finger of all time. At this point I had to accept that god is either a) evil and hates me or b) he absolutely does not give a fuck or exist for any practical purpose.

As I practiced yoga I uncovered memories I had blocked out for years. I realized how much trauma religious people had truly put me through, how being a child and believing them had caused me to do damage to myself, and became vehemently antitheist. Now that I know what I believe and don’t believe I would consider myself an agnostic-atheist, Buddhist, Taoist, and TST satanist. Dudism and church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster also have a place in my heart. Seems I have more religions than ever, but the crux of all of them is this: let the dogma, drama, and bullshit go. Create your own religion if you need one. Test and apply your beliefs internally, not to others. The point of life isn’t to follow someone else’s rules to reach some promised endgame. It’s to sing and dance with the music as you go along. The destination is an illusion, all we have is the journey.

Many things turned me from religion. I could never wrap my brain around the concept of original sin. That's just ignorant. College and reading took me the rest of the way. It was a rather long process but I'm better for having done it. The sense of guilt and shame that religion instilled in me left me. I'm good without gods.

I was encouraged from a very young age (5 years old) to think for myself. My father told me I didn't "have to follow the herd." My father was an atheist and my mother was raised as Southern Baptist, but kept it to herself. I'm pretty sure she was a believer, but never spoke to me about it or tried to encourage me to believe. I suspect that was because my father was so opinionated about it.
They did expose us to church from time to time so that we would have some knowledge of what it was all about. But I was naturally a very independent thinker and I remember sitting in a church around the age of 10 and being offended that I was supposed to believe I was born a "sinner" and was supposed to feel guilty and repent/accept Jesus/apologize for just being human. It rang false to me, even at that young age.
I did attend church regularly one year when I was about 13. That was strictly because I had a crush on a boy there and especially because of the teen social group. We went skating every week. LOL

Raised by an Episcopal father and a non-practicing jewish mother...I went through all the rituals...Sunday school, confirmation, even got married (when I was 21) in an Episcopal church....but that faded away as I got older.

Going for science as a major had a lot to do with it. Reading "Sermons in Stone" by Richard Ordway (a teacher at SUNY New Paltz, a college/home town I'll be driving to soon) was the turning point.

BTW; I'll be staying near you, in Wyetheville WVa, this coming Wednesday night (June 19th). If you'd like to get together for dinner (on me) let me know...there's a nice Chinese restaurant (simply called Peking) in town right near the Tesla supercharger....if I get in around dinner time (ETA 8 PM) I'm dining there. Message me if you're interested!

I was born an atheist, and indoctrination didn't take.

I used to ask lots of questions. I was told to keep quiet. I was labelled "sky child". I was Hindu, then tried Christianity out, same nonsense! You're not allowed to ask "impossible" questions. It was seen as insulting and disrespectful. Someone layed hands on me and rebuked satan. It was absolutely laughable, and I did laugh. My head hurt when I got home. They intended to floor me (throw me to the ground forcefully) and when I kept my balance and didn't fall down , they hit harder. Writing this makes me want to laugh out loud again.

Like every child, I was born a nonbeliever. I got lucky and had parents who didn’t believe either.

I was raised to have common sense. Not to so much to hate Religion but have a sense of humor about it.

There was no coming to being an atheist for me. I’ve always been this way.

I think it was through a thousands small cut that brought about the death of any irrational thinking. I know it started early. I was raised Catholic, but was kicked out of Catechism classes at 11. I can remember sitting in Mass and the predominant thought that was always in my head was that it was bullshit.

Obsessed with dinosaurs as a kid, I grew up in a very fossiliferous area, in a country where the social pressure to 'believe' was not particularly intense. I was told by the youth leader at the church I attended that I had to choose between the church and evolution. Guess which one I chose...

I was raised a Catholic none of it makes sense. The priest at our church when I was 5 - 6 years old had a Lincoln continental my dad had a 4dr. Chevy station wagon yet my dad didn't ask for money every Sunday. being taught problem solving using logic in a public school kind of wrapped up that.

In 2003 my last grandparent died. I was praying for her to come back. I stared up at the ceiling, waiting for a sign. Nothing happened. Lots of people say it takes a long time. I became an atheist at that point. I turned to Satanism after that. I guess to fill a void. Now I am spiritual, but not religious. I get a lot of shit for saying that.

None of it ever made sense. I kept trying to put the pieces together with reality and nothing ever fit. The bible didn't match the histories of the other mid-east countries, especially Egypt. They had no record of any plagues and then moses and a very large group of people leaving the country. You would think somebody would have noticed. Jesus miracles, etc. For all the people who supposedly witnessed these happenings, nobody ever documented it in any way except the bible? Really? I just gave up and grew up.

Read the bible cover to cover. Was so shocked i read it again, and haven't touched one since.

When parents tell you don't worry that if you pray and hope things will get better. When seems to not happen is you find yourself wasting tons of time waiting for some magical creature to fix your problems and it never happens. I was abused by my stepfather and finally left home at 16 could have a lot to do with the not happening part. I had learned that working hard and paying attention is how things get better. My own efforts, not some mythology creature made my life better.

 I've always struggled with the philosophical absurdities and questions of christianity as a kid.

After my divorce, I was confronted with whether I was going to seek a religious or non-religious partner going forward.
I always felt "If i don't get a religious girl, I'm rejecting god" but i hated going to church and didnt want a super religious partner. Confronted with my cognitive dissonance, I decided "if this is real i need to stop beating around the bush" so i decided to try to look into evidence and proof of christianity.
Christian apologists just made excuses and used fallacies and atheists like Hitchens, Harris, and Dillahunty made too much sense to ignore. I basically decided christianity was false within a week and have only grown more convinced over time.

Just taking time to watch and listen and read. I have allergies and asthma. It's kept me less active most of my life than most of my peers so I filled gaps with reading and comparing ideas on various belief systems and practices. The more I would read and watch, the more it seemed to me people will believe and do whatever they want and justify it by referring back to religions that change with times as justification... oddly enough without realizing just how much many of them have changed and much of what they fall back on is actually fairly new, or a new perception of something they don't quite understand to begin with.

Couple that with my own experiences and I just couldn't quite come around to blind belief in something, particularly when the reality totally contradicts whatever given idea or belief presents itself.

I started asking questions where answers were essentially "that would be an ecumenical matter" (Father Ted). I was less satisfied and started looking into the claims and realized they did not fit with observable reality. I wasn't ready to give up the idea of a god-like figure, so I moved to polytheism as a half-way point. These gods and goddesses were defined through nature and didn't have the baggage of being triple omni (a big sticking point for me about the Abrahamic god). Then as I continued to learn and think and question, these gods started to be what they were seen as for many monotheist, substitutions for events in nature. What I suspect really happened was my brain was slowly coming around to the idea that I didn't need a god to explain things and that it was OK to be wrong about some super-beings that were here to watch over me.
So to put it succinctly, first step was realizing the b.s. in my specific case and the second step was letting go of the cognitive dissonance I wasn't ready to let go of just yet.

Although I was raised as a Catholic /Christian, at a certain stage I couldn't accept as evidence what there is of the existence of God or any deity. On the other hand, I also don't accept what many say it's proof of the non-existence of the same entity (ies). If you ask me if I believe in God, I will answer "no", if you ask me if there's a God, my answer will be "I don't know".

Time went by and then one day I woke up. I was tired of beating myself up for always "missing the mark" as Paul claimed we do. I came to realize that god was punishing mankind for something they did not do, and that incest was not a good plan for mankind to get here. God then found a way out for us when he used Jesus who also did not do anything. Scriptures and the perfect plan then became nonsense. I had no ideas of "putting my sins off onto a goat" and driving it into the wilderness. I was not going to paint my doorstep with lamb's blood. I simply quit and I was so glad to do so.

I could give a long story, but it boils down to two things:

1. I grew out of it, just like most children grow out of believing in Santa Claus. There really isn't much difference between Santa and god.
2. I gathered the courage to be honest with myself and have no shame about it. This was much harder and more complicated (as is any person's psychological journey). But I am not afraid to walk away from toxic people in my life and to build my own community.

There was no one single incident. It grew over time. I was raised by my parents to be Catholic and I went to a Catholic grade school. I believed as a child and went through the usual sacraments, but by the time I was confirmed at an age when I was supposedly old enough to be a "soldier for Christ" but not old enough to make my own choice as to whether or not I wanted to be catholic or to be confirmed, I was pretty much done. Before that I had started to see all of the hypocrisy in the church and that so much of what I was being taught made no sense. The nuns that were supposedly teaching me could not answer questions, but just got angry and told me that it was a "Mystery of Faith" and that I just had to believe it. More and more my response to that was, "no I don't". By the time I was in high school I was pretty much done with the whole religion thing, but still had to go to church because I was not an adult. When I turned 18 I said, "no more", and since then have been in a church only for weddings and funerals.

That's the short version.

Read the bible. Read every other religious text I could get my hands on. Realized there was no god. Moved on.

As Carlin said, "I reached the age of reason". I quit going to church at 13 or 14 and quit believing altogether in my early twenties. I never really was into it too much anyway. It didn't make sense to me, even as a kid.