I was never there in the first place - stopped believing in fairy stories at a very young age.

Interesting story from my father (dec) - as a young man in the Great Depression years - saw whole families evicted from their homes because they couldn't pay the rent. On the pavement, kids, beds, kitchen stuff - everything those poor people had. The landlords were the churches. From that day on, he gave up on organised religion..

Wasn't raised to be any one religion. Grandma gave me a new testament bible when I was like 8, read it over summer. Closed it at the end and thought "people believe that shit?" ?

I was raised in the southern Baptist Church ever since I can remember. Even as a kid I always wondered about so many contradictions I found myself discovering in the Bible. I have had to read it multiple times and found it frustrating that there were soooooooo many interpretations to this book. Either the book is perfect and it means what it means or it's not. I especially find it frustrating how the church picks and chooses what they will and will not tolerate. I've personally never experienced more anger, hate, resentment and judgement than I have when dealing with anyone off the Christian faith. Don't get my wrong, there are some beautiful believers out there that make the proud, but they are few and far between. itself had been used as a tool for power and control in our history and still today. I became an atheist the day i heard my sister tell me that all gay people go to hell, as well as those who weren't specifically following the path of the Calvinists Christian theology. It was that moment when I realized that there are millions of people all over the world who truly believe that their is the only way to heaven, to god, and no matter how good a person was they could still go to hell for simply not agreeing with a theology. The Bible is man made.i don't know any other way to put it. In a thousand years I don't think it will be any more relevant than the Greek religions we now myths. had caused too many wars and too many people have died all in the name of . I think in the beginning of civilisations when we could not explain many things, it was reasonable to associate those things with a higher power. It's also reasonable to assume that was used in a large part to provide moral order but who really knows. None of us were there to witness it. If anyone can honestly think that someone cannot do great things and be a great person without god then you are probably part of the problem. I appreciate the Christian faith, and I think it had done wonderful things for a multitude of people. I will never try and take that away from someone. But it what it is, it is faith. Not fact. And let people live their lives. Christians miss out on so much beauty and diversity in the world because of their sheltered beliefs and instilled judgments.

I was raised in a not so religious family, who occasionally attended church as Baptists... I really wanted to find whatever it was that so many of my friends seemed to have with faith, and more often attended church with friends. (Lutheran, Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, and a few others) but no matter what church I went to, it always all felt fake, and silly to me.

I just couldn't seem to feel whatever it was that they felt.

Even as a young child, I was fascinated by the theory of Evolution, and absorbed everything I could at the library, and from PBS... Attenborough was a hero of mine, and I loved all the material he had a hand in.

Growing older, I didn't really choose sides in things. I accepted that people had faith, though I couldn't really put my finger on mine. I still wanted to believe in a God, I suppose... It was a popular thing to believe in.

Finally, without guidance, or interpretation from anyone else, I picked up the Bible, and just read it. This was when I was 30ish... That's what turned it all around for me. When I finally looked at this book with my own eyes, and actually studied it, without being guided through a sermon, or some scholar's take, I realized what utter crap it actually is.

I always leaned towards science, and the understanding of the world it lends; but now I also have a total disregard for all that is spiritual also...

And now I feel complete. The world makes sense. I have more questions than answers; but that's real wisdom.

I hope this is useful.

I typed a VERY lengthy answer to this question, but decided not to share it—at least not as a reply to a question—because it was approaching a small novel in length and I wasn't near to done yet. The short version is this ...

I'm the daughter of a hippie mother. We moved a lot. We experienced a lot. We tried on a lot of religions for size. When you get exposed to that many of them, it's difficult to take any of them very seriously.

While that upbringing contributed to my agnosticism, what really sealed the deal was the Internet as it existed in the 1990s. I wanted to have intellectual conversations with people from all over the world. I tried to find it in chat rooms. (LOL) But eventually I stumbled across an atheist chat room and, mixed in with the typical flirting and A/S/Ling, was the intellectual conversation I was looking for. That's when I realized, "These are my people."

I grew up in a strict muslim family with a very very religious dad. I believed anything he was telling me about islam and was very proud of this religion of peace.
My opinion shifted when horrible terrorist attacks happened right next to me. I witnessed the attack that occured in Paris on 2015 and killed 130 people. I know an 8yo child that lost both of his parents that night.
These events made me think about the so-called peacefulness of islam. I started to look everywhere I could, in every sources just to prove myself that the terrorists are not muslims. Eventually, after a year and a half of search I came to the conclusion that the terrorists are the ones that follow the true islam, and my family is actually a bunch of fake muslims that talk about the peace that isn't here.
Today I'm living as an agnostic in a middle of a religious family that doesn't know about my faith. I fake the prayer and the ramadan. I can't wait to love my independant life.

When I came out as gay many of the so called Christians dropped me like a hot potato. Christians can be the meanest people on earth. I feel so much more me now that I left all the baggage behind me. I'm at peace with myself.

I suspect I may have been born this way.

Raised by an atheist single mother. Looking back I think she was a monotheistic megalomaniac who had no need for a god beyond herself.

Also .....god sent his son to earth to save the inhabitants who then tortured him to death.....and god is cool with that......seriously?!?!

I realized at a very early age that I was allergic to bullshit and religion is loaded with it. It just never made sense.

I was lucky,,,,,,our parents raised us to be atheists,,,,god was like Santa Claus, and told us not to discuss it with our friends because it would just upset them.......so, we were spared the hard process of removing all the religious cobwebs from our minds....still, I wanted to know what is was all about so I got a bible and read it.....a semi fictional historical account of the near east handed down from the Stone Age and early Bronze Age.....full of magical events many of which were borrowed from other neighboring people,,,,,interesting read but nothing in there was very compelling as a religion.....I did like the sermon on the mount and some of the beautitudes and psalms......and I can find ammunition in it to confound the super religious but uneducated folks who carry on about their politically correct notions,,,,say of abortion.....and tell them that the bible speaks of "the first breathe of life",,,,never hear from them again.

     I was one of those Christians that thought the bible was 100% correct and without any contradictions. I also took it as literal and that the earth was 6000 years old.

I had an atheist friend at work that would ask me questions about different things such as the problem of evil and evolution among others. With a lot of his questions I either didn't know the answer or the answer I did give he wouldn't buy.
So I set out to prove him wrong. So I started to listen to a lot of Christian podcasts. But I also wanted to know what Atheists "believed" so I started to search for debates between atheist and Christians, and evolutionists and creationists. I ended up finding Dogma Debate back when it was still good and had Aron Ra and Rachel Nannon Brown on as the cohosts. I first started by listening to all of the shows that were debates and because I appreciated how they treated other people that held opposite beliefs than they did I ended up listening to all of their backlog. But because of the evidence for evolution I would ask myself if I was wrong about something the I was certain about what else could I be wrong about.
I ended up listening to a number of atheist podcasts including The Thinking Atheist and The Atheist Experience.
During that time my friend at work got Audible and let me use his account and I also listened to a bunch of Atheist and science book since we are allowed to use headphones at work. I also listened to the entire Old Testament since I had already read all of the New Testament. I really wanted to know what the truth was so I spent a lot of time looking at both sides.
After about a year and a half I called into Dogma Debate and talked to David Smalley and was on his show. I told him how I was questioning my faith and how if Christianity was true then why do apologists tru to jump thru hoops and play word games. It wasn't to much longer after that that I was able to admit to myself that I no longer believed in god and was an Atheist.
Because of how I came to be an Atheist I don't by that you can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into.
I was raised in The Assembly of God. I didn't have any negative experiences with my church. I really enjoyed going.
One of the hardest things for me to do was to come out as an atheist to my wife who is uber religious. After I did my home life sucked so bad to the point that I filed for divorce which hopefully will be finalized in May.
I'm so much happier now and at peace with my life. I definitely would never want to believe something if it's not true.

My parents took us to an evangelical Baptist Church, til I was old enough to refuse to participate, and refuse to go.
I have never believed. At age six, I realized it was like Santa: just a story. In that church there were a couple of truly good folks. Outside them the place was a snake pit of envy, infighting, power struggles between factions, and hypocrisy. I hated it, and despised some of the people, especially those who were cruel/bullies, and those who did nothing to stop it.
My family remains religious and has no understanding of not believing. I feel sorry for them, that they need this delusion to cope with life. At times in my life, I was a seeker. Tried Buddhism, then Paganism. More as the idea of an impersonal system or natural energy, than gods.
When my youngest brother was diagnosed with Glioblastoma brain cancer at age 49: It confirmed what I had always known. There’s no god/gods. I still don’t speak to family who, instead of grieving, say they don’t need to be sad because he’s in heaven. No god worth his salt would have looked at our family: and zapped the best one of us. Why not me, lifelong heathen?! There is no sky daddy, no plan being overseen, no heaven where we reunite with lost loved ones. Life is random chaos, and we have to make the most of it while we’re here.
Same family bases all morality on the Bible, and believe one cannot get that anywhere else. My moral value is that hurting others is wrong. It’s always been there, the basis.

When I was 12 I asked logical questions and the church had no answer.
Such as why would an all loving god allow pain and suffering.
The contradictions were just too much

I never been taught any religious thinking or theory back in my native nation, however, since I moved to the states couple years ago, I felt the US is not an atheist friendly nation. For example, I have never met somebody completely disagree with the evolution theroy in my whole life, but here in the US, I met a lot of people believing in heart that a religious figure created whole thousand years ago. And some of my friends doubt if I'm a good person without a religious belief -- and that's very ridiculous. Actually I'm felt little offended in that moment.
English is my second language, so sorry for any English grammar or word choice error in advance.

I started questioning as a child, because religion just didn't make sense. About as soon as I was able to read well enough to read the Bible for myself, I started questioning it and getting in trouble - age 7 or so. To make things worse, I read through the entire children's section of our city library, giving me lots of exposure to science and different mythologies. I asked why our creation and flood stories were supposed to be the one true version. I asked why the church taught that the world was created literally as explained in Genesis when there were TWO stories there that contradicted each other - and neither agreed with science. I kept asking questions and kept getting in trouble, though I was trying so very hard to reconcile everything. I was desperate for it to make sense! C.S. Lewis said once that he was dragged into Christianity "kicking and screaming" by his intellect, and I was just the opposite.

My first husband was a youth minister, and because of him I had the opportunity to see how the sausage was made, so to speak - what goes on behind the front everybody puts on at church. That was disillusioning!

The final straw was hearing a whackadoodle in Sunday School talk about how he'd finally been given understanding of part of Revelation while visiting Disney World. When he saw the animatronics, he realized that they filled the prophecy that said, "and the stones shall speak." I burst out laughing, thinking he had to be kidding - and found myself the center of attention. Nobody else in a class of about 20 adults was laughing! They'd been nodding along with him, finding his tale perfectly credible. I got up and took myself out of that class and that church and never went back, and I've never regretted anything but that it took so long to do it (I was in my early 20's).

I was raised in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN), evangelical and Pentecostal. We spoke in tongues, rolled on the floor, women had to wear dresses. My first venture into freethought was when one of my Sunday school teachers told us that listening to Rock and Roll would doom you to hell. My mom said that wasn’t true. We were subjected to weekly altar call (where they would remind us that we could die on the way home and end up in hell), the movie A Thief in the Night (with Christian beheadings), and all kinds of guilt.
I quit church at 13, but still had the fear of hell, Armageddon, the mark of the beast and all inside me. My best friend, at 18, sat at our kitchen table and spent hours just asking questions that have no answers regarding the Bible and it’s literal teachings. From that day forward, I’ve been an atheist. I came out as an atheist after reading Hitchens God is not Great. I donate to FFRF, CSI, and support David Smalley through patreon.

A religious retreat.
I was raised Irish Roman Catholic, so there was never any alternative for me. I actually started in my late teens to take my religion seriously and take study classes to improve my knowledge of catechism. As I progressed I found it more and more difficult to undertake the double think necessary to accept the teachings. One pet subject, what happens to the handicapped in heaven? If they get 'better' then they are not the same people.
Anyway, went on a retreat in my twenties, with a group of novitiates. Fasting, prayer and meditation. Listening for the spark of God. We were supposed to relate this to the group for discussion. One young nun had daily ecstatic visions.
I did not hear anything , knowing full well I was just listening to my own inner dialogue. Eventually went to my confessor, had a heart to heart, I was bursting to know how to connect and he just groaned and went " Oh just make it up, like the rest of us"
Light came on, and became brighter ever since.

My divorce. I worked at a church for eight years but once I got a divorce, I was no longer welcome.my eyes were opened. Hypocrites rule. I always struggled swallowing the religious pill in the first place but was brainwashed as a child into believing even if you don't believe in Christianity or particularly Lutheranism, it's better to be a church member, mainly because you are part of the family. Well my life long extended church family really let me down.

Raised in the Presbyterian church (or at least mom tried). I escaped from Sunday school once at the age of 8. Was found heading home on my own by the police.
But: A classic Liberal Arts university education, then serving in Vietnam, pretty much confirmed to me that there is no god, and Nature is indifferent.

I grew up in a very religious, fundamentalist "family," although since my mother died when I was 9 I have no idea what she believed. My father and step-mother were very involved in religious activities. I remember first challenging magic and gods when I was 9 or 10, but I don't believe I ever took religion seriously. My father's new family was grossly dysfunctional, so nothing they said meant about god, religion, magic, or ritual much to me. When I was 15, my father said "Live in my house, go to my church." That summer, I moved out.

Raised Protestant. My parents used the bible to justify child abuse in the home, including rape. Still, I was dutiful and spent many long years trying to believe in a god or gods. Experimented with different religions and spiritual belief systems until I finally admitted that none of it made sense to me.

I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic schools for 12 years, but had doubts and disagreements with the church from an early age. I realized on my own, sometime in early grade school, that it was impossible for both creation story in the bible and dinosaurs predating humans by millions of years to be true. When I was 13, my English class was given an assignment to write a persuasive essay for a diocesan contest for "respect for life" (a conservative Catholic euphemism for anti-abortion). I wrote my essay on my reasons for being pro-choice. By the end of high school, I no longer considered myself Catholic. I did some searching throughout my 20s in both Christian and non-Christian denominations. I dabbled in paganism, which I still do sometimes, mostly, I think, because I dig the accoutrements and history, but I do also still think there could be something to connection with the Earth and the universe, and some power to intentional thought, etc., although I don't really believe in deities, per se.

I always wanted to be a mother, more than anything. In my early 30s, I had worked in social services for years, and had seen children and adults who had been traumatized beyond any hope of being able to function normally, and parents who should never have been allowed in the same room with any child, let alone have their own, while dealing with my own infertility. I watched family members who are terrible parents have baby after baby during the same period of time. And then I was diagnosed with a chronic, disabling illness at the age of 32 that has caused significant pain and further hindered my dreams of having a child. And that was the final straw for me. I just can't believe, with the things I have seen and experienced, that the loving, omniscient, omnipotent god I was taught about exists. There are other things I believe in that some in this community may scoff at, like psychic phenomena and the possibility of some kind of afterlife, or even the possibility of some kind of sadistic or indifferent creative force, but a loving god? Nope.

RelIgIon.

Deuteronomy. My dad gave me a Bible when I was a teenager and his Pastor in his church was good at saying if you had a question and you need an answer hold the Bible by it's spine and let it fall open. You will find your answer somewhere on that page. For some reason this Bible always fell open to Deuteronomy. Well my mom pretty much is Deuteronomy, and I couldn't figure out how a wise and loving God would think the way she treats people was okay and actually treat people that way himself. That was what prompted me to really do research and figure out why so many people believe this crap. And now I know.

Raised Catholic. Went to a Catholic grade school, was even an alter boy for a few years because that's what you did. I don't recall ever believing. Even as an alter boy it was more entertainment than a serious thing. Making faces at your friends while mass was going on or using that little dish for communion to tap friends in the throat while priest wasn't looking. A few times we even drank the wine after mass was over while cleaning. At 6th grade went to a public school and all that was over except for the usual Sunday church which I had to attend until old enough to refuse.