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When did you start to identify as an atheist/agnostic?

Was there a specific instance where you started to identify as an atheist/agnostic, or was it a gradual process?

AshleyM1997 4 Oct 4
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1

It was a gradual process to get there, but I made the decision to become an atheist in February 2015, and pretty much identified as one from the very beginning.

Looking back on it, it wasn't just one instance, it was many instances that kept leading me on the path towards being an atheist. It was an "A-ha!" moment when I took the plunge, but it still took years of "soul" searching to get there.

3

pretty much always

1

16 years old

3

There was for me. It's quite funny how some memories stick with you so well. My mother who is now what I call a spiritual atheist (one who doesn't believe in a soul but feel as long as her body returns to the Earth without being cremated she will unconsciously live on as nutrition in plants and animals.) I kind of like her philosophy. When I was born, she was a Catholic, and my father was an Atheist. She insisted on sending me to Sunday school and church. My father would tuck me in at night, and we talked about all kinds of things. He'd tell me stories about what the Earth was like a very long time ago, and he would ask me questions about God and then ask why I believed it was true. I gave the typical 5-year-old responses. He told me that he didn't believe in God. At five my father was the smartest man in the world to me and if he didn't believe I didn't believe. It's odd, and this is the part I remember so well, but he told me he was disappointed after he had just told me I shouldn't just take peoples word for it. He wanted me to think before I believe. I've written this story before on other sites, and the responses were negative toward my father. Most said my father shouldn't have done that to me at five years old. I disagree, I never felt unloved by him, and his disappointment kept me from indoctrination. I'm sure it was the last thing he wanted to do, but when I asked him years later, he claimed to have no memory of that night. I don't think I believed him.

I did that with my daughter too. I have always made it a point that I want her to make cognitive decisions not blind ones.

Sounds like you had a wonderful father.

0

I was about 7, in Sunday School. They told me Jesus wants to save me. They asked me if I could hear him knocking at the door of my heart. I cried and said yes and they were moved and gave me kool-aid in a paper cup and a cookie. But I cried because I felt nothing and I said yes because I was ashamed and afraid. Over the years the more I doubted the less I feared damnation. It wasn't till my teens I realized I could find my own purpose in life. And I was in my 20s when I realized the oblivion of death was not infinite darkness but the same oblivion I was born from and would someday return to. "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it." - Mark Twain

1

I started to "come out" as an atheist at around age 40. I had been living in Texas, and working as an attorney, and felt intimidated to express my views due to the common belief that atheists are amoral. I didn't want to be judged by family, friends, judges, and colleagues. At a certain point I just decided to face the backlash and be open and honest when the subject came up. I certainly felt more self actualized and honest which helped me to become a better person.

Jayd Level 2 Oct 5, 2017
0

10 months ago when I came to terms that all the miracles described by main stream religions where a mixture on coincidence, scientific phenomenon and myths.

0

I was about 22 years old and I'm now nearly 71. It was a gradual process and I was in the closet except for maybe two people until just two years ago when I retired.

1

I didn't start calling myself an atheist until I was 10 because that's when I started using the internet and I didn't know what to call a person who didn't believe in God before that.

0

When I was 5 my parents made me say Jesus could live in my heart and I didnt want someone to live in my heart. I was scared put off and I think I cried. At 12 I was a skeptic and remember questioning "proof" of religion vs science. College - full atheist maybe sooner. 21 realized all the implications. : )

1

For me, it was a pretty gradual process. I was raised in a Christian household and sent to a Catholic school until eighth grade, so my beliefs were pretty strong until then. I went to a public high school and discovered a whole new world, new music and started questioning things. It was in college that any doubts I might have had vanished and I knew there were no gods. Critical thinking and learning about other cultures, studying mythology and history... really opened my eyes. This is one of the reasons I think the first two years of college should be mandatory and available to all!

0

I was never raised in any religion by my parents my Mom grew up Catholic but my Dad hated religion.
Over the years I never gave it much thought either way, I simply didn't care until a few years ago.
Then I started to get interested in politics and I started to become very angered by the far right, evangelical GOP politicians who were trying (and in many cases succeeding) in getting their religious beliefs passed into laws.
This all made me look at the concept of a god and the more I thought about it the more ridiculous it was.
Now at this point in my life, god is no more real than the tooth fairy.

0

Probably in my late 20s and I'm in early 60s now -- although I've never fully believed, even as a child. I went to different churches with friends and as time went by, I stumbled upon Eastern religion which made so much more sense. I haven't studied it extensively but its more about looking INward rather than praying to some "Santa Claus in the sky".

0

I started leaving my religious roots in my later high school years, but it wasn't until my early college years when I learned about Atheism and famous Atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins, and found Atheist groups to attend.

0

I was about 15 when I met my first atheist who also happened to be my boyfriend. I realized about a year later that I found the idea of any supreme being being in control to be absurd. I had gone to church regularly from a young age and it never had any effect on me. I usually slept through the service or doodled on the tithe envelopes. I did become angry when I heard a preacher denounce gay people and one day in Sunday school my little brother came out crying because of something the teacher had said to him. That was the last time I went to church. I was 12.

0

I already thought most religions were stupid growing up and I only went to church for the snacks. Eventually i started watching a lot of youtube and seeing all the religion debates about 7 years ago and the atheist switch was flipped.

0

i was 16 and one day i was a christian who completely believed in god and the next day i wasnt. i can't remember when the change happened

0

I did at an early age. I went to Catholic grammar school, and found myself questioning faith around 4th or 5th grade. I considered myself an atheist in the 6th grade, yet didn't make that public until I reached high school.

Because the private (Catholic) schools had a far better education than the public schools I could attend at the time, I ended up going to an all-male Catholic high school. This is where I started to get in trouble because of my lack of faith. I clashed with teachers that taught Religion (shocker, only Catholicism) and Morality (shocking, another bullshit Catholic class) to which I was awarded with trips to the Dean, and multiple detentions.

After high school, I no longer had any ties with forced religion. I'm lucky to have a mother, though a practicing Catholic, respects my beliefs. We don't debate religion, but do talk about it from time to time in regards to current world events.

0

I was raised in a church of god. Soon after high school I started really looking at the bible rather than just believing what the preacher was telling me. I realized in was all just a crock of shit.

0

Around 11 or 12 I think. It was then that I started to question the practicality of the whole deity thing. I never really thought about it until then. Before that I wasn't religious or actively practicing but I never really thought about logistics of religion as a whole. That is also when I decided to read the bible not just the passages that make it look good.

0

My journey was a slow and gradual slide that I often think of as having started in 2008 and culminating in 2014 when I very suddenly transitioned from soft agnostic to hard atheist. It was such a major transition in my life that I remember the exact moment it happened.

0

I went to a private baptist high school and it was probably around sophomore year when it was really cemented in me. I'd always questioned religion and god but when I could never get any answers that made sense, and just kept being told that I shouldn't question it, I realized for certain that it was all bullshit.

0

Our family initially attended a Baptist church. When my father discovered their hypocrisy, we stopped going. A few years later we began attending a Congregational Church where teaching was consistently supportive of American capitalism. I simultaneously attended a catholic high school because the education was superior to the public schools. I was the token tax evasion ("open to all regardless of race or religion" ). By my sophomore year i began my revolt against the catholic church, irritating heck out of my teachers. By college I was seriously questioning the entiore religion thing such that when my high school & college sweetheart and I were getting married, the Lutheran ministoer almost refused to do the ceremony. To avoid shooting at the Vietnamese, we spent a couple of years with the Peace Corps in the rain forest of west africa. During the heavy rainy season, I did a great deal of reading and thinking and arrived at the conclusion that religion is, as Marx wrote, "the opium of the masses." Especially of late I have become even more convinced of the delitorious effects of religious beliefs -- all types. In many cases, it provides s veil or curtain behind which the so-called believer can convince themselves of the reightiousness of their disgusting and severely harmful hatred. I am also convinced that churches should not be except from any of the taxes to which other institutions are subject.

0

never believed.

0

When I was young I was very active in my church but, also very curious. I grew up as a non Mormon in a Very Mormon town and I questioned the validity of secularization. I attended many "different" religions and discovered far more similarities than differences. I questioned why "Christians" would judge and even kill others who didn't think the same as they did.
I 1st questioned organized religion, then became agnostic when I was 14.
After much more experience I knew that there is no God that controls. If we all could enjoy the similarities we share and embrace the differences, the world would be a "heaven".

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