Nothing. I never had a religion to shift from.

Raised ELCA Lutheran, did the Confirmation thing. I questioned things ever since I was a little kid in Sunday School. My tolerance was pretty high and I kept going because singing in the choir was the only option for keeping my voice in training, and it was a small town, so this was expected of me. I didn't have the self-worth to refuse. But once I moved out of that town I scarcely ever set foot in a church again.

It was a combination of things. Family is Methodist and I always had questions that were "blasphemous". Questions like "If the heavens and the earth was created by god, where did God come from?". Even after being sent to Chrysalis, which for those that have never heard of it, is a weekend full of locked doors and brainwashing. Didn't work on me though. Eventually I did my own research and watched a few documentaries like "Zeitgeist". Very eye opening.

Despite being born and raised in the Bible belt, I only went to church for weddings and a few funerals. I just never had a connection to the church. As I grew older, I questioned more and more.

We are ALL born atheists. Every last one of us.
After that, it's all about indoctrination.
For me, it didn't take. I always knew it was bullshit. Even as a child.
None of it ever made any sense. When I heard the word, and understood what atheism was, I embraced it completely. I had to hide it for a little while because I was still a kid and it wouldn't have been tolerated by my parental guardians. However, as soon as I was old enough, I was open about my lack of belief. I've never made any effort to hide it from anyone. Consequences be
damned.

Hypocrisy 100%.

I spent several years reading, studying, thinking about what I knew, but had to process and, even though I had never believed in God, I was indoctrinated all my life. I had to dispelling the fear based beliefs, to catch up with my intellectual beliefs.

It was just my using of logic, reasoning and critical thinking while reading the Bible.

Average intelligence

One word. Hypocrisy

i didn't shift away from religion. i just realized there was no god. i was raised as a secular jew. i had nothing against which to rebel; i was not rebelling and i still consider myself a jew, as well as an atheist. there was no trauma attached to my realization. my realization was caused by an activity i see so little of around me. it's called thinking.

g

My dog! my best friend when I grew up, and I could not accept that he was an inferior being placed on earth for my convenience. He was my equal! Different, yes, but equal!

Learning more about science, the scientific method, and the blatant nonsense of most organized religions. Some of the spiritual aspect and love-your-neighbor-as-yourself is OK (not for me, bit it isn't nonsense) but so much just doesn't make sense. And of course, the dogmatic nonsense that wilts under even just a bit of critical thinking.

Mom tried to make me into a preacher, so I had to read the bible her way......a piece here, a piece there,etc. When I realized she was cherry picking the passages for me, I read it from cover to cover. that's when I figured out that it was no more real than Bambi, or Peter Pan

My shift against religion came from several different sources. I wasn’t thrilled with religious views when I was 11 and my family became more religious at the request of my older brother. I felt I didn’t have a say in what to or not to practice. I had gone to a religious school and saw a number of the religion teachers being narrow-minded. I remember one teacher going on a rant stating there was never a reason to talk to girls. After school I started doing my own studying including looking into the heavy sciences. Physics and evolution made more sense to me than some creator setting things up and using archaic understandings of the universe at large. One of the real influences after this point was Richard Dawkin’s “the god delusion” because it gave me a community and helped me from feeling as isolated as I had in the past.

The lack of evidence of 's existence.

It was a process for me. I started a twitter account to help atheists understand ity. Over a period of about two years I gradually came around to the realisation I have No evidence for any . I was a . My wife is still a strong and this causes some discord within our relationship, as we have six children. Feel free to contact me for any further questions.

A simple one word answer: education. The realization that supernatural phenomena are not real. Recognizing there is no “God of the gaps.” That humans are just another life form. The Earth is just a tiny speck of water and rock in an infinite Universe. That evolution is real. I could go on and on.

My parents forced me to attend the Lutheran church that my mother belonged to as a youth, yet neither of my parents still attended. They donated money, but didn’t participate. Both sets of grandparents attended however and I was exposed to the Bible and became aware of the major tenets of the Lutheran faith. Although I atttended the necessary classes to be confirmed, Sunday school and church involvement was more of a social experience for me. I met kids from other parts of town I wouldn’t have normally met. It was about camping, boating, sports, and most importantly, meeting girls from other high schools.

Immediately after high school I enlisted in the Army, in which I was trained as a combat medic and later a pharmacy specialist. I became more worldly in my experiences and exposure to other people and cultures. There I began my education in the sciences and the beginnings of my doubts about religion as well as the supernatural. After the military I started college, where I realized that religion was a man made concept and not divinely inspired. I eventually graduated from pharmacy school and have practiced as a pharmacist for over 30 years.

Food for thought: If all religions were eliminated today, including myths and superstitions, would the world come to an end? Let’s envision erasing religions’ effects going back 5,000 years, what would humanity look like today. Now think about this scenario. Imagine what the world would be like if we eliminated all of the progress brought about by scientific research and methods for the last 5,000 years. What would the world look like today? Could mankind go forth and survive?

I grew up in a large Catholic family where attending Mass was not negotiable. Yes, Catholic school can really alter a worldview! What got me wondering at a young age was learning that girls could not be altar boys. I wanted to wear the long robes and ring those bells! Then came the realization that women couldn't be priests. WHAAAAT? And don't get me started about saving our allowance money to give to pagan babies.And then there's the unfairness of
purgatory. As a precocious kid, I questioned everything. Those children's Bible stories? I wasn't buying that stuff about Noah's Ark. There was so much hypocrisy - divorcees couldn't take communion, birth control was prohibited, yada yada. What really affected me however was when my dear, liberal, progressive mother coordinated a girl scout exchange project with a Jewish troop and was publicly chastised by our parish priest in his Sunday sermon. Shortly after that, I worked answering phones in the rectory and observed one priest regularly taking a woman into his bedroom. By then, I knew I couldn't be a Catholic and began seriously questioning the existence of god as a supreme being and the church as a controlling entity taking our money. It took more years and college classes to deny the Bible. Wow, that really started a big argument at one Thanksgiving dinner! There were more twists and turns in my spiritual journey, but these were my earliest seeds of doubt. What did I like about being a Catholic? I got to dress like a bride for my First Holy Communion, I liked lighting candles for dead relatives, smelling the incense and singing hymns. And they sold donuts in the vestibule every Sunday after mass. Oh, can't forget bingo! And of course, knowing we were the only people going to heaven.

Catholic school, native distrust of Priests and the forced atmosphere they created in class, with their “always watching, always judging” attitude.
It have been bitth to a healthy distrust of arbitrary authority. All this compounded by the death of my father, when I wasn’t 10 years old, And observed priests and family offering false consolation and promises of a life after death. A healthy interest in science thanks to a charismatic science teacher sealed the deal. Early teens I had decided that you either believe in science or magic. Fact, or faith.

I was born in a Hindu family, in North India. Religion is life here. As a child I wasn't much involved in religion - the reason being the direct influence of parents who are religious. Absence of religious parents made life flexible. However, in my later teen years, a friend brought me closer to God - the Bhagwat Geeta - the Hindu religious scripture. I was so immersed in religion at that point of time, I attributed every occuring to my religion. After a depressing event in life, I turned to study history of Ancient India and took psychology major to fight depression. The careful study of ancient history - the folding and unfolding of Brahminism - emergence of Buddhism and Jainism - broke some of my misconceptions about my religion. Since then, I have been exploring several other religions to discern how they emerged and how they are evolving today.

Raised Catholic including education through HS which was all-male & military. Personal Belief was never strong and 4 years of biblical analysis was the 'straw'...guess one could surmise that the bible determined my atheism...

16 years of Catholic schools, combined with the religion's perfectly awful attitudes toward women.

I was raised a Quaker in the UK and was uneasy with anything supernatural from as soon as I started thinking. 'Good' rather than 'God' was the main idea in our Meeting so I never really had to leave any rigid beliefs behind. It left me with a powerful sense of duty to others though.

The painful boredom of being made to go to church and Sunday school was a feeling that never left me. I wanted to please my parents, and continued to go to church while living at home. I had always questioned the existence of a god, but felt trapped.