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When did you become Atheist/Agnostic

At what age did you reject the religious teachings of your parents?

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LauraUU 6 Mar 19
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31 comments

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13

Born an atheist, stayed that way. 😉

me too!

8

I was just done with it..though after 18 I left the door open..then slammed it shut by 25..lol

7

I never believed. I asked questions based on curiosity and incredulity. Never got a single sensible answer. I finally announced at 17, a bit over 60 years ago.

6

My whole family is made up of fundamentalist Christian conservatives.

From as early as 5, I remember questioning but being too afraid to say anything. Questions I did ask were met with, "Well, that's something you can ask god when you get to heaven," or "lean not on your own understanding." Or some other silly rhetoric "god works in mysterious ways" and the like. I tried to believe, but I never truly did. I flat out stopped at 14, and began secretly researching other religions. I was about 20 when I came out as a heathen. Lol

5

My mom was religious, I never believed any of it.
I was about 17 when I became an atheist.

5

I was raised Catholic, and remember questioning the nuns in Catechism, when I didn't understand the stories from the bible.

My teacher, Sister Mary Michelle, was concerned and told my mother that I was a "Doubting Thomas" which I didn't fully understand the reference at 7 or 8 years old.

So one Saturday, I walked up to the convent and knocked on the door, to speak to Sister Mary Michelle to ask her to explain some things that were puzzling me. When she came to the door, she was dressed in regular clothes with her head uncovered and everything. I ran away without asking my questions!

It was an "aha" moment, kinda like seeing the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.

5

Theirs one thing that the Bible says that is Correct....The Truth will set you Free!
Started Doubting at an early age. Parents weren't religious, but grandparents were devout southern babtists and whenever I went with them to church I hated it, so rarely went, Phases of real doubt, more deist than theist, Agnosticism, then back to Christianity, Then full blown Atheism a couple years ago. Seeds of Doubt planted again when I moved to Utah (Land of Mormon) started learning about how the LDS church started. Then I guess, I stumbled on a few debates between atheists and theists....Theists got crucified (pun intended) by their opponents every single time. The more I learned and studied how holy books and religions came together, and listened to Theists try futily to defend their religion the more I kept saying, Yep.....I'm an Atheist! Intantly Fear, doubt, Shame, and Worry about Death and Dying were gone, I had more compassion and love for others...All those things that religion is supposed to give you, I get from being a decent human being who strives to get better every day.

5

In 2014 I was reading an article [whywontgodhealamputees.com] and after I read it I said out loud .."There is no god" It was very liberating but I was also scared .. Started reading Sam Harris,Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins and it was like I was watching TV in black and white and now seeing the world in color. This 9 min cartoon also cemented my belief in NOTHING

5

I started asking uncomfortable questions early. Then, fifteen years later finally came up with my own solution: take out the one thing that is causing the headaches and makes zero sense. Here I am.

4

Attended Catholic school in first grade. Had a bad experience with the nun. Started to question at that time.

My bad experience with a nun happened in 2nd grade at Catholic school. What an awful mean person she was. That planted the atheism seed for me.

4

My parents were pretend believers really and used sunday school to get some more peace as they never went to church on a reguler bases.

4

I had to learn about the Bible and how it came to be. Then I became an agnostic!

3

For me it was a progression. I started around the nineth grade when I attended an all boy high school. I had a religeon teacher that gave us both sides to the stories in the bible. From there I became spritual, then went to agnositic, finally becoming atheist.

3

Natural born nonbeliever. By my teens I had already starting reading about the facts of religion to co firm what I suspected.

3

My parents we're hippies and God was the smoke they exhaled after a really big bong hit.

3

It was partway through college when I seriously started to doubt my upbringing and what the Catholic Church was peddling. By the end of college I was in a confusing agnostic space, but within a couple of years of graduation I had adopted a weak/soft/negative atheist position and that's where I remain.

2

I never believed that I can remember but came out as a atheist at age 12 when I found out there was a word for what I was and that there were others like me.

2

My parents were non-practicing Catholics until I was about eight. They joined an evangelical baptist congregation around that time. I was extremely uncomfortable with the way the people of this church displayed their faith. So many were ”moved by the spirit” and I never felt what they claimed to feel. That led to my exploring, then deciding what my own beliefs were.

0

Recovering Catholic. forced to follow mothers religion, remember sitting in CCD (sunday school) reciting from the Baltimore Catechism thinking it was a bunch of bologna.. (I didn't know the words "bull shit" at age 8

0

I was raised Mormon, and I knew as a teenager that it was bogus. I left the church as soon as I could, on my 18th birthday. I didn't have a much of a choice until I officially became an adult. Since then, I've only stepped foot inside churches for weddings.

0

I was around 36

0

I was raised Chatholic and started not believing in my 20's, I considered myself an agnostic in my 30's , and really did not become a non-believer til I moved to the bible belt.

marym Level 4 Mar 25, 2018
0

My parents never forced any type of religion upon me!
They baptized me!
I never believed in any of it!
Seem too much like a "Get out of Jail card" when you did anything Bad or horrid!
I did attend bible classes in elementary school to meet girls, hence too get out of class and to get close to the girls that appealed to me.
Well worth the effort at the time! LOL!
Like the Qur'an, the Bible and the Torah, I just could not figure out how one was suppose to hate and kill others, yet be love and saved by your god(s) you worshipped that seemed to be the same as those other individuals god(s)!

Hence, always an ATHEIST even in War within third world countries!

0

As a child and into my early teens, i tried to believe, but by age 14 I had goen atheist. However, I didnt' come out as atheist until I was 23.

At age 23, i decided to come otu as gay, and in order to remove my parents arguements, I also came out as atheist at the saem time. So, I kind of hit them with a double whammy.

My strategy worked well. Without the support of theri religious objections they really could not argue it.

0

My personal epiphany (pun intended) was during a forced Sunday School lesson. Tried to convince us that every animal on the planet fit on a single boat. The question about the inevidable incestuous relationships was never answered.

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