I was born to muslim parents in a muslim country. So yes, like everyone around me I was given healthy doze of indoctrination at home and at school...

What made me start questioning was the time in secondary school when our science teacher taught our class to keep "open mind" and ask lot of questions and at the same time I was rebuked/punished by religious studies teacher for asking so many why/how questions about Islam.

Back to present, I sometimes have healthy debate with my 65y+ parents where I try to explain them evolution and tell them about astronomy and eventual human expansion to Mars. Luckily they are very friendly and fascinated though they can't let go of their beliefs. I tell them its ok, its not their fault.. Its hard to let go

I was raised Lutheran. I tried my hardest to believe, but I always had questions no one could adequately answer. I couldn't reconcile all the inconsistencies of scripture, or the hypocritical behavior of others. Most of all, the fear of a catastrophic End of Days that could come at any moment terrified me to no end. I always chalked up my misfortunes in life as the logical consequence of my weak faith. As I grew older, however, I started to realize that those capable of the unwavering faith I had envied weren't any better off than I was, and in a lot of cases, they suffered more than I ever did. It finally dawned on me one day that God did not reward faith because there is no God.

Raised in a pretty moderate/liberal religious upbringing. We went to church once a year for Easter. It was shortly after I decided to get more involved with religion did I start seeing through it. It all started when I began reading the so-called holy book. It was pretty difficult to remain a christian after thoroughly examining my beliefs--but let's be clear they weren't even mine they were more accurately passed down and imprinted on my mind by my parents. No longer being religious was more of a realization than a choice. I literally ran out of good reasons to retain my beliefs and thus, could no longer hold them.

Mixed reviews from my family. I actually found out that two of my family were not believers after telling them my stance. One being my grandfather (he helped unveil a new church and even helped fund it when he was younger, but says he still attends for social and cultural reasons) and the other being my brother. My father and mother still don't accept it (they're both moderate/liberal christians), they shake their heads disapprovingly all the time (it's been 4 years). My sister gets pissed off when I point out to her that she's a believer for terrible reasons, reasons that have perfectly rational explanation available. She a mix of liberal/moderate christian and new age mixed together--super confused. She does realize that fortune tellers for instance is considered the occult, right?

When I was growing up I bought in the religious bs and very briefly thought about becoming a pastor. it was positive until I started to doubt there is a god in my early 30s. I wish I had the courage back when I 31 to do away with religion/bs as I do today. I to doubt based on why I'm still single and having a hard time finding a date. Why was my friends lives better than mine. I followed bs with no question. How christains treated gay people was one of reasons I left the bs of religion/god. The final straw was a family member what to believe and what cult of christanity I should belong to. I thought god was leading to be catholic, but this family member told me it was wrong. Your baptist you should know better. It wasn't her right to tell me what to believe. So, I saw no point in believing in god and fairy tales of religion. You know what's sad for a brief time in my mid 30s I considered becoming a jw. if, I told my closed minded family, I would be disowned by all of them. Which might not be a bad thing.

I shouldn't be frowned on because I"m bi sexual. I have the right spend my life whoever I want. No matter there gender. If I marry a man, it's my choice and not my family. One day I might get off the fence and be a gay man. I'm considering taking my fam out the picture and living my life as a open minded person. I've been happier in last 2.5 months as an atheist, than all the decades of religious bs. The people in here are nicer and open minded and I can be myself.

I was raised catholic, but I've never really believed in it. They could never answer the simplest questions

Wondering where to start! Was raised in a Bhuddist cult so being surrounded by Irish and Italian Catholics made me the odd man out. Heckling them after catchecism with quotes from Einstein was my favorite sport, my bad revenge for bullying, long story. The real problem is getting rid of Bad Religion without thowing out the good deeds and philosophy which is helpful even if you are a fairly radical Athiest. With a B.A. in science I have no use for money grubbing, creedal sects but I am tolerant and a practicing Unitarian Universalist .

I was raised Episcopalian. Baptized, confirmed, served as an acolyte on Sundays. Mom taught Sunday school and is still very active with the church. Way too active, if you ask me... To the point where the answer to everything is "Pray about it." and "God will provide."

I stopped going to church during my teenage years and officially came out as an atheist recently. It just never took with me (science and logic always won out). However, my mom is in denial and still treats me like a believer.

My siblings and their spouses and kids are religious as well but at least don't pressure me. Dad is very laid back and keeps to himself so all in all, I can't complain. It could definitely be much worse.

I moved to the Bay Area for grad school 20 yrs ago and really enjoyed the laid back atmosphere. Now I'm back in the Bible Belt to be near family but definitely wish I was back in California on many occasions.

I was raised in a mildly Christian family
I like X-mas on a certain level
I never found evidence / proof of god and gave up
my family is pretty chill about it

I went to one year of private episcopal and six years of private catholic school. For the education, later went 3 years to private catholic university... for the girls.

Brainwashed as a child from birth to age 13 - Jehovah's Witnesses. Our idea of fun was our nightly bible study. As I aged I began questioning many things I read in the Bible and when I asked questions, I was quickly put in line and asked to basically shut up and let the elders/NY do the thinking. I didn't want to be a zombie for the rest of my life so I joined the Army as soon as I could, and distanced myself from all things JW. In my adulthood, I tried many different churches/affiliations/religions and I witnessed pretty much the same in every one...

that is...just show up, shut up, listen, believe, pay your tithe, and come back in x days to do it over again. I wasn't about that...I actually wanted to formulate my own ideas, beliefs, etc., based on my own research and critical thinking. Because of this, no religion has ever fit and I'm fairly certain it never will.

I was raised Pentacostal until about the age of 10... No makeup, long hair, can only wear dresses, fire and brimstone, etc. Then Evangelical until I was 17. I started questioning from very early on, but was terrified of the aforementioned fire and brimstone... so I kept on praying and asking God for a sign he was real. Eventually though, signs not forthcoming, I came to terms with the idea that God as the Bible defines him makes no sense. And then I went through my shrooming period, and the rest is history. Lost my fear of hell, came to terms with the idea that there is probably no higher power, and just started living my life. My religious family doesn't like it, but has accepted it for the most part. I've been an atheist for about 20 years now, so its old news for them.

I got off pretty easy. My wife at the time (#2) was a believer, but was one of those rare theists who didn't particularly care if I shared those beliefs. There was zero argument or friction over it. She later died and still later I remarried to a lifelong atheist. So -- maritally, zero problems relating to changing by beliefs.

During my deconversion I was thousands of miles from siblings and elderly parents. My parents died before I was "out", as did my oldest brother. One of the remaining brothers isn't practicing anymore and the other one knows how to mind his own business. He's 75 and I'm 61, so ... hopefully we're both too adult to get into kerfuffles about such things.

As to why I started questioning -- the short answer is that my religious faith did not accurately explain or predict outcomes in my actual experience. Too many surprises. Too many good people dying from accident or disease (wife, mother, brother). Too much 'splainin' to do. And no explanations forthcoming. Later, I found even better philosophical reasons, but that was the proximal cause of my apostasy.

It took a long time for me to sort out in my mind the core problem -- religious faith is a failed epistemology (theory of knowledge). It's not even a theory, really, just the credulous acceptance of unsubstantiated assertions. This is common to all religion.

Since I had been suckled on the anti-intellectualism of Christian fundamentalism, it took me awhile to overcome my tendency to confuse a respect for the scientific method with scientism, to get past all the arguments from incredulity about evolution, etc. But eventually I had my mental furniture properly rearranged.

Does it still impact me? Not really, although there are spectacularly bad decisions I made as a believer that remain, so to speak, "the gifts that keep on giving". For example I was widowed as described above but that was my 2nd marriage. My 1st marriage was emotionally abusive and went on way too long because of the divorce taboo, thus changing the course of my entire life in various ways. That marriage occurred basically because I wasn't raised to understand anything about mate selection beyond "marry a good Christian girl". However ... I played a role in that too, one of willful ignorance, so I don't particularly blame the church for my personal problems, either.

I was raised in a Baptist family, indoctrinated as a child by my sister who often promoted hostility against other Christian denominations. I tried my best, but I truthfully never took to it once I realized I was bullied as much in the church as I was out of it. My half sister who is Cherokee is an atheist. I have far too many stories of my experiences but I'll say poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was who inspired me to break it off

My family were protestants. They were not heavy into religion while I was growing up. After I left home they became zealots. I visited infrequently after that.
My father died quickly of a heat attack. I comforted my mother and stepped up the visitation as she became frailer. I did not pay attention to her religious fervor. I visited her in the hospital a few days before she died. I think she was happy with me.

This question comes up in various guises from time to time, but that's OK, you can't be expected to read all that went before! Here's a slightly edited version of what I wrote in response to an earlier question on the same subject:

Between the ages of 3 and 12 I lived in a household that consisted only of me, my parents, and my father's aunt (I have no siblings). My parents were Presbyterian church-goers, but (luckily for me) far from fanatical: they went once or twice a month (taking me with them, of course). Only my great-aunt was insufferably religious, but not in an evangelical way, more in a strict Presbyterian sort of way — no games, whistling or excessive noise allowed on Sundays, for instance. I think it was she who started me thinking this whole religion thing wasn't all that great.

Then there was Sunday school, which I utterly disliked. It was on Sunday afternoon, so if it was one of those Sundays that I'd been to church in the morning, I'd lost pretty much the whole day. And it involved learning by heart some bible verses and bits of the shorter catechism, which made even less sense than the bible.

My great-aunt died when I was 12, after which it was just me and my parents. I think by that time I was well on the way to being an atheist, and when I found out that Sunday school, unlike day school, wasn't actually compulsory, I simply stopped going. Church itself I didn't mind so much, and I can even remember one sunny, frosty Christmas morning that I practically dragged my parents there. But I was already on what my mother would have seen as the slippery slope away from faith. After a number of months of futile attempts at prayer, following the guide at the back of my hymn-book, and after reading Fred Hoyle's The Nature of the Universe, I decided that Christianity was not for me.

My mother was very unhappy about it, and always hoped I would 'return to the fold'. My father never expressed an opinion at any stage, as far as I can recall. It wasn't until much later (after his death) that it occurred to me that he might have been a closet atheist or agnostic.

I was raised a cultural Christian with a twist. My daughter still has a fork and a spoon as proof of my baptism/christening on the 1st of October 1955, almost a year after my birth. That was one formality to be ticked off. I have absolutely no recollection of that moment. Perhaps if I had I might have become a believer.
There were far too many twists in my personal sphere to take any religious element really seriously.
Nominally my father was a Protestant of the Lutheran kind. So "his" side won the baptism competition. My mother was a Catholic and they had made a better offer for the wedding. There was probably no Lutheran church in a profoundly Catholic town of the profoundly Catholic Rhineland.
Once I started to get to know the people around me the religious division became clearer and according to my mother I started to understand the world with it deviations. One day I mention that someone was a Catholic. My mother asked me how I knew. "She's a girl."
So I had amalgamated sex and religious affiliation: My mother, my grandmother, all my mother's aunts were Catholics and they were all married to Lutherans. So for me it was evident. The problem was that somehow the dominant god was a Catholic and a man. I thought this was rather implausible and I gave the whole idea a miss. I stopped thinking about what was supposed to be the prime motive of the various religions.
When I was about 4.6 I thought I should give it a go and start prying. Because I knew that my brothers would mock me if the caught me I hid under my parents' massive oak bed to do the deed. I guess the was just too much metal in the frame and the spring mattresses and the whole bloody thing probably acted as a Faraday cage and my prayers didn't make it to their destination. Perhaps I didn't fold my hands properly, there is a difference between the Catholic way and the Protestants'.
Christmas came and the little bicycle I got was blue. "Fuck (free translation)" I thought. And rather than considering that the god or one of his helpers was colourblind. I never went back to my prayer den under my parents' bed.
I remained an interested observer but never thought about embracing the idea of faith into some sort of divine authority. But I continued to pretend to be part of the plot and attended some sort of afternoon induction into the stuff. My brother had made a ton of money and gifts.
The mental pain caused by these silly sessions was only alleviated by the presence the cute girl I had ever seen: long black hair with the matching eyebrows and a poetic first name. Her eyes were dark and mysterious. We were about 13 at the beginning for this silliest of courses and 15 at the end.
There was a hitch. All the participants also had to attend church on Sundays. As Caesar, the inventor of salad, is supposed to have said. "Trust is good - control is better" We were issued with a card upon which the preacher had to sign. My stupid brothers always changed their signatures. This implied that I had to invent churches further and further way.
During all those years the question of the existence of a god never really took root in my brain.
My parents never raised the issue. Furthermore we had connections to people from all different persuasion and got to know a jolly archimandrid, some sort of Greek Orthodox ringleader. We got to know Muslims and my little "girlfriend" was Jewish.
I was 19 when I thought that I wanted to make the statement that I didn't identify with all this bullshit. My decision was triggered by a remark of a teacher in charge of religious education: "We should send the tanks ..." The year was 1973. This assholes comments woke me up. I got up, grabbed my gear and went to the courthouse to have my name taken off the church register.

"On behalf of the poeple ... Bla Bla Bla" I was finally an official atheist.

I was raised as a Lutheran. Growing up, the only time I remember being beaten with a belt was after I was “misbehaving” in church. I was maybe 6 or 7 at the time, and simply wasn’t paying attention to what the adults were talking about. It was my father’s way of saying “the beatings will continue until morale improves.” What they taught didn’t make sense to my 7 year old self, and made less and less sense the older I got. Of course, I’m the bizarro in my family because I don’t believe the fairy tales. (Wait a minute, nobody but this fella Noah had a boat? I’m supposed to believe THAT?). As a result of the belt incident, I guess I’m more of an antitheist rather than just an atheist. I may not be able to prove whether there’s a deity or not, but I know evil when I see it (or, you know, feel it).

I was raised Methodist. My whole family is still religious. I started to have questions in my teens, and then by my twenties I was just done. To many things missing and I grew tired of being told I just needed to have "faith". I all came to sound like a used car sales pitch. No I'll just stick with science and facts.

I was born and raised in a well known evangelical organisation. I belived as a kid, in the same way kids believe in Santa (hope I haven't spoiled the Santa thing for anyone).

Like a lot of other atheists (and very few Christians) I read the bible, several times in fact. I asked too many questions that there were no robust answers for.

My family reacted by throwing me out at 15 years of age. I was homeless for abour 18 months. I didn't see them again for years but eventually restored contact. There's an ongoing feeling of ambivolence towards them but I don't have the energy or inclination to hate but don;t feel any love towards them either.

I was raised in a religion that taught us that the Bible was the inerrant word of GOD. I had always had questions like "why do good people deserve to go to Hell;" but I accepted what I was taught--basically that it was their own fault for rejecting Jesus.

After years of seeing hypocrisy, racism, adultery, etc. in church after church. I decided I didn't need to go to church to be a good Christian; so, I left organized religion. I struggled with reconciling the God of the OT with the God of the NT. And, over time, I adopted a more liberal attitude toward the Bible, and other religions--thinking that it was up to God to judge whether an individual had a wrong belief--not me.

Despite my reservations about going to a non-Christian college, I started going to a secular college when I was twenty-seven, where I was exposed to information and other ways of thinking.

I heard things that caused me to think/question; but it was when practicing Spanish with a friend that I began to question how anyone could even know the Bible had been translated correctly. After all, even contemporary people speaking different languages had difficulty translating something from one language to another.

Despite my fear and anxiety about questioning what I had been taught to believe, I had to have answers to my questions. Hoping to end up with a stronger faith, I began to do research into the origins of the Bible and extra-biblical myths.

Well, it took only two books to realize that the Bible is NOT the word of any god, but of men: Who Wrote The Bible, by Richard E. Friedman and 101 Myths of the Bible, by Gary Greenberg.

A floodgate was opened and I began reading all kids of books dealing with biblical criticism--from non-believers, ex-believers, and some who still believe in a god.

I realized that the god of the Bible is a myth. But, I still believed in some sort of god. After looking at other religions, I settled into deism. Free from the constraints of my religion, I began to learn, via books and the Internet, more about the science I was taught to fear, ignore, reject: mostly astrophysics and evolution.

I came to realize that there is no need to insert a god for the universe to behave as it does. It actually complicates things as one has to explain how such a powerful intelligence came into being.

My journey from believer to atheist took a little over a decade.

All my parents (and probably my siblings) know is that I reject organized religion. My daughters think I am an agnostic (and that there is hope for me). Once my parents are gone, I will come clean as to the level of my non-belief. I have two atheist nephews with whom I can talk freely; sadly, I don't get to see them very often.

I gradually lost belief in my faith over time and then after being emotionally drained due to religion I began really examijg my faith and found it just didn't hold up to rational scrutiny.

I'm sorry to hear what you have gone through. I haven't really come out to my family out of fear of the same reaction.

I was raised Catholic and for as long as I could remember, I thought, "what if God is actually the bad guy?" One day when I was a teenager and had been more religious because I had been expecting the rapture or some sign, nothing happened. It was at that point that I found the courage to commit to the realization that it was all a lie. I had known for years but was scared that I might be wrong. I eventually said to my self, "If my friends belong in hell for not believing, I'll go with them."

When I accidentally came out to my entire family at thanksgiving saying I was Atheist and Pan they now all disowned me, it hurt at first but I never needed them. I first questioned Christianity when I started studying science in high school.