That when you die you are just dead! (I was 42 before I heard the virgin birth debunked! It takes as long as it takes!)

For me it was a long, slow process. I kept pushing away my doubts- after all I was always taught not to be a “doubting Thomas”. It was when I started reading atheist literature that it started to solidify.

When the astronauts made it to the moon and they weren't in "heaven" AND Carl Sagan! I was 15. Conformation came from Hitch, Dawkins, Tyson, and has anyone seen Ricky Gervais new special Humanity? SO so FUNNY..... And with age seeing how no one is spared from lifes shit... no matter how much faith they have.....

I never had an AH HAH moment. It just evolved over time. I had a priest tell me why prayers aren't answered. He said God says, "NO!". Well that didn't make sense. A million people pray for peace and God says "Nope!". This is a all knowing and loving God. If this God creature or entity controls ALL then why would this God be so mean and allow all the war, killing, death and pestilence to exsist? So it becomes obvious that there is no one or thing listening. We are here for some unknown reason and we suffer and enjoy what ever this is until such time as we fall over dead. There for sure is no God as portrayed in the Bible or Koran or any other book. There may be some source something but we have nary a clue and never will.

When the church (mormon) wanted me to be baptized for the dead.

While in high school, in church we were reading the old testament, while at the saem time in school we were looking at Greek mythology. I always had doubts, and so it wasnt' so much of an Ah Ha, moement as ti was a tipping poi9nt where the house of cards just collapsed.

I was teaching a Bible Study at my church. I wanted to do a thorough job so I studied each lesson ahead of time. I started to see problems with the Bible. I tried to explain them away at first but eventually the only logical answer was that the Bible is not the word of God and that it is the greatest fraud perpetrated on humanity.

The day I was baptised... in a hottub.

To put it simply, my choice to be religious was my teenage rebellion. I grew up in a house that was very non-religious and my mom was very controling. So while most teens were growing their hair long and skipping school and getting into trouble as part of their teenage rebllion years, mine was cutting my hair short and going to church. Man, she was pissed when she found out I had been baptised.

But I digress!

The point is, I was already suspicious of the Jesus before I ever started attending church. And when I did start going, it was one of those big ones. The ones you see on television that obviously have way more money than they deserve to spend on massive stadium style churches. Casey Treat was the head pastors name and in Seattle you could watch him on television every Sunday. Well, to cut a long story short, everything clicked the day I got baptised. It was on stage in front of a thousand cheering people. And there was a hottub. A big one. And the second my body went under I was like, "this is dumb". I went home that night and never went back.

Most popular question. 2 posts already today lol. questioned at 5 left at 16.

I become more wiser and was intrigue in asking question why what when and how with a very inquistive mind

When David Silverman presented the problem of evil in his debate with Frank Turek an Turek was trying every way he could to get out of answering his questions directly because he had no real answers. David Silverman had to stop him from dodging the questions many times. The lack of honesty I saw in that debate really opened my eyes and I started to recognize it so much more after that, especially when I hear my family talk about religion.

I was raised in an uber strict big Irish Catholic family. (Was that redundant?) I can remember sitting in class preparing for my First Communion and thinking...uh oh....I'm not getting this....and everyone else looks like they are. Yikes. My little-kid questions were not respected or answered adequately. I learned to shut up and put up. The AHA moment was when I finally found out that there were other people who did not believe in god. I was a young adult when that happened. Interestingly, my older brother and I were on the exact same page the entire time but we never talked about it until we were in our 50's. I let my two boys make their own decisions....one is atheist and the other is on the fence agnostic/atheist. By the way, I love R. Reagan's 'I am an unabashed atheist who isn't afraid to rot in hell". I hope that kids being raised with no voice see that commercial and find some support in it.

The first time I saw grown men have a religious argument when I was maybe... 14 or 15.

My moment would be very similar to if one of you had a conversation with Travolta or Cruise regarding their faith. I buzzed the nurses to remove some crazy lady from my room after I came out of a coma at the age of 6. She wound up being the hospital's chaplain.

There was no "a ha" moment. It was a graduaal realization beginning at about age 15 through about age 19..

it was gradual for me. I think being on social media and having a variety of friends and being more and more disappointed and let down with Christianity in America. it just led me on a journey to finding authenticity within my faith, which I could not find. But eventually it just melted away with being afraid of calling myself atheist, to now feeling somewhat comfortable when talking with people online. Thankful for this new social media outlet agnostic.com app.

it was gradual for me. I think being on social media and having a variety of friends and being more and more disappointed and let down with Christianity in America. it just led me on a journey to finding authenticity within my faith, which I could not find. But eventually it just melted away with being afraid of calling myself atheist, to now feeling somewhat comfortable when talking with people online. Thankful for this new social media outlet agnostic.com app.

It was more like a few "ah ha" moments. I abandoned faith in stages, between ages of 17 and 20. First and easiest was the church. Just witnessed too much hypocrisy and realized what a thoroughly human institution it is. Second was the Bible as infallible word of God. I was an exchange student at 18 in Germany, and we had religion class in public school. Quite the eye opener for me, to see it was far from being Sunday school. That teacher ripped the Bible to shreds metaphorically, pointing out countless contradictions and factual errors that church had always glossed over. Finally, the idea that God was still up there watching over me, waiting for me to screw up; that was my last notion to go. The fear of being punished if I was wrong had hung over me. Home from college the summer after my sophomore year, dutifully attending church with my parents to placate them, pretty doubtful about it all by then. I was chatting with the pastor's wife, and she asked about school. Then she carefully admonished me to "be careful" going to secular university, "because that secular education can sound so logical, so reasonable, but worm its way to getting between us and a relationship with God." I remember that moment thinking, Lady! If your faith can't stand up to reasoned scrutiny, what good is it? It clicked for me that my doubt of the existence of God was no sin at all, rather it was simply honesty. And any God that is supposed to be both omniscient and all loving would never condemn us to eternal torment simply for that honest doubt. To do so would make God an oxymoron, an impossible contradiction. That was the moment I stopped looking over my shoulder and let go of the final shreds of belief.

Seeing how full of crap and self righteous religious people are. The are full of religion yet have 0 morals.

It was gradual for me. It started with seeing hypocrisy and inconsistency in my religion but I still believed it. I started going out on the web to defend my beliefs and prove we "had it right". Came across information that slowly poked holes in the armor. This finally gave me the mental liberty to start actively researching. Picked up a book by an ex leading member of my religion and that was that. All pretense vanished, and I was free!!!

When I was in the Navy and the chaplain was more concerned about my reading Playboy Magazine than the killing of people with weapons of mass destruction.

My ah ha moment was a visit to a children’s hospital. What is the purpose in all the suffering , why is there a Hell for more suffering. A all powerful God that demands are worship should at least be logical instead of demanding blind faith

I always questioned faith from as early as I can remember so haven't really had an a-ha! moment but I think the moment that crossed the T's and dotted the I's was 9/11.

I moved to Utah for school and started questioning what I believed in. I saw what those around me believed and realized there was no evidence for any of it. I had never been religious, but the questioning led me to label myself an atheist.

Pretty early. I was born with an "invisible" birth defect. Caused a lot of trauma, and wasn't something spoken of so much of it was/is internalized. Followed all their "rules," and after "praying" for relief, then being told, because there is nothing worse in a church than an honest question that challenges belief, neither God nor anyone else really gave a shit and it was most likely because of "sin," even my child's mind knew it was a con. Like others it took time to fully act on it, but that's the way that goes sometimes. Hard to break what's been pounded into your skull as absolute truth, especially when everyone around you is nothing but a magpie squawking lies. While I try to maintain respectability regarding others' beliefs, I still find it amazing that Christians spend so much time bitching about the result of traumas they themselves inflict on those they love, all in the name of their god, never realizing that they are the cause of another person's misery. Or maybe they do, and it is just a symptom of their mental deviance. Sorry for the tangent.