It started with a Lie about Santa, Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny! When I was a child around 7 or 8 I stayed up as late as I could to see Santa, no luck. I then started thinking about how does he get into our house with a wood burning stove? In through a key hole? It didn't make any sense to me. One year I was bad and I still received a gift, LOL! Finally I figured there was no such person and my parents told me I was right. It hurt. I kept wondering why my parents would lie to me. Then when they dragged us to our Ceremonies I asked why we had to go. Their response was, "to give thanks to the Creator", Who I asked. They couldn't prove to me who the Creator was. So I kept going like they asked and finally when I was 14 I told my parents I didn't believe them or in a Creator. As the years went by I researched other religions and asked about their beliefs and in a way this was my attempt to see if I could follow another and as I learned about the Bible, it too made no sense to me. Finally at the age of 54 I gave up in trying to believe or have faith in anything or anyone.

I stopped believing in gods

Growing up in a church and seeing all the bullshit set me on the path of enlightenment.

Common sense and facts

My brain

Reaching the age of reason.

I'll try to keep it brief. (Or maybe not? A story is only really understandable in its entirety. We'll see how it goes, I guess.)

We were engaged. We were in an accident. I lived, he died.

Now, though this story starts with tragedy, it is important to note that the tragedy was not the REASON that I became atheist. It was merely the jumping-off point, the event that led to questioning and reasoning.

So anyway, I lived. And, for some reason, everyone wanted to praise God for that fact. This didn't sit quite right with me. Aside of the fact that my survival was obviously due to the efforts of medics, surgeons, technicians, and the one unnamed passerby who pulled me from the burning vehicle...there was still the inconvenient fact of my fiance's death.

"Wow," they said, "God must have been protecting you!"
"Really?" I said, "So why wasn't he protecting my fiance?"
"God protected him, too! God took him to heaven!"
"What? That makes no sense! Is death the blessing, or is life the blessing? Pick one!"

I thought about it some more. If God was in the business of protection, wouldn't it make more sense to protect people BEFORE a tragedy? I thought about other tragedies too - tragedies worse than my own. God started to look pretty incompetent. I started to get angry.

But then, quite suddenly, it dawned on me!

"Hey!" I thought, "Things seem to happen EXACTLY like they would if there was no god! Cars crashes can be explained by physics! Death can be explained by biology! Love and fear and other emotions can be explained by neurochemistry!"

My belief in God, and my anger at him, fell away. It was as though I could see clearly for the first time

Because I don't believe in fairy tales or Santa Claus. I'm not a fool.

One of my 'philosophies' :

Why should anyone suffer (what they consider to be) foolishness in silence ?

I sincerely wish NO ONE did that.