I was devastated at first. Then I realized I would rather live in reality than what made me feel good. I would say Matt Dillahunty and Christopher Hitchens were my greatest teachers.

I always doubted the bible. As far back as 10 years old after my younger brother died. I was a fence rider for a while, riding the bull to become a closet nonbeliever. About 4 years ago I said "fuck it" and stopped pretending.

I was taught from an early age that the Bible was the inerrant word of God. When I got serious about my relationship with god, I started reading the Bible for myself. When I did, I had to start doubting more and more of it, as I realized they weren't true. It was a gradual slow process, and I chipped away more and more useless, or downright bad information until finally there was nothing much of value left.

I don't know for sure if there is a God or not. I do know that religion is man made bull crap that isn't worth the price of toilet paper.

My transformation was slow. The thing that finally made me see the truth was my friend telling me, "you're an atheist, you are just having a hard time admitting it to yourself". I examined myself and realized she was right.

I don't think I ever had an "aha" moment. Rather, I've been questioning for as long as I can remember (back to 3 years old), and it was a gradual process of realizing what was what. If I had to guess, I would say I was in my 20s.

This is at least the tenth time for this question.

The biggest problem for me was that religious faith did not at all explain or predict experienced reality. My life was full of unwanted surprises. I got tired of it and started dealing in reality.

Being abandoned to many times. Just the judging and religious hypocrisy

Around the time that school and church just started to contradict each other. I remember around the third grade, when I learned about Dinosaurs at school, only to be contradicted by the Adam & Eve story in the Bible. No one ever talked about this glaring conundrum, but I needed answers. It seemed that the Christians were playing a serious mind game.

I was living in Central Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I had a crisis in that if A is true and B is true, then perhaps there really are fairies and elves. I found myself walking along looking under leaves to see if anything was there and realized that my belief structure just did not add up. That was 45 years ago. I have read and questioned ever since, but have only become more certain that there cannot possible be any god.

The breakthrough for me was realizing the god of the bible doesn't exist because the bible is bullshit: inaccurate, contradictory, absurd, non-compassionate, forged, etc etc etc.

In Jewish Sunday School I got upset reading about Job? How could a god be so cruel?

Learning about the Holocaust-still have nightmares to this day - How could a god let it happen?

My parents constantly chastizing me as a child "god is going to punish you"