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 would say I was swinging like a pendulum for years between belief and lack of belief. Then, I watched a Psych 101 course on iTunes University from Paul Bloom (a professor at Yale). He was talking about Alzheimer’s and I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it gave me this sudden dawning that we can’t possibly have souls. If disease can completely devastate our personalities, memories, and essentially dismantle who we are, then we are simply a personality of our brain’s functionality, and once that functionality is impaired or ceases, then we too cease to be. I don’t believe in God, because what evidence there is is based on ancient, outdated, fantastical literature and the very clear point of it is gap of knowledge explanations, control and order attained by fear. It doesn’t hold water, so I had to let it go.

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.

At age 8 when I stopped believing in Santa Claus.

As soon as I realized that religion is BS, back in high school. I come from a predominantly atheist family. I got brainwashed when we arrived in the US (2nd grade) and the Jewish organization stuck me into Hebrew School. I was just getting over one kind of brainwashing while undergoing culture shock, and thus fell for the 2nd set of brainwashing. By hs, I started observing how many different religions there are in the world and that they are constantly fighting against each other, even within certain variations of their own beliefs (like different types of Christianity). I also noticed all the brutality going on in the world, and was wondering where is that omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and all-loving god. That's when I figured out that there is not god, by the end of 11th grade. I switched hs my sr year, and there people already new me as atheist.

I tried so many Christian churches throughout my life. My 32 y.o. daughter died of an accidental overdose and it shattered everything I believed. I was told that God would never abandon me or give me more than I can handle.WRONG! My trying to undoctrinate myself has been a long and odd process. But once I realized there most likely isn't a god watching over me, I decided how I wanted to live and felt such liberation. What I didn't expect was at 59 years old, when I came out 5 years ago, that I would lose friends, not to realizing just how Christian America is and how in that, there is some real bigotry against anyone who doesn't believe as your run of the mill Christian does.

It started in about 6th or 7th grade. I had some really disturbing religion teachers with really fucked up worldviews. Some of them seemed so unhinged and unreputable, I think everyone in my class grew a bit skeptical. When Brother David, the only redeeming figure of the church, jumped in front of a train -- our religion teacher told us all he was going to hell. They never had a service for him. I remember being disappointed to find my friend was being confirmed Catholic. I was already halfway through 12 years of Catholic school as a Methodist and their intolerance made me much more prone to resistance. I refused to do the sign of the cross or kneel during mass. I felt isolated when I had to cross my arms over my chest when everyone else received communion. When I asked one of my teachers about reincarnation, I was laughed at (and this was maybe 4th grade). The constant slights bred contempt. I clung to my traditions in the Methodist church up until 8th grade, feeling they belonged to me and I needed to defend them. I was baptized but never confirmed.

When I was about 13-15 my parents decided to start going back to church. They brought us to one with a live band and the drums would give me headaches. I liked the quiet hymns and my grandma's organ playing. We never made friends there. Everyone stayed in their cliques and would give praise so loudly and obnoxiously, arms high above their heads, it felt incredibly insincere. They forced me to go on a white water rafting trip I didn't want to go on, which fell apart and became a sleepover at some church lady's house I did not know at all. I wasn't friends with anyone, I didn't make friends, and I'm glad no one tried to take advantage of my vulnerability because I was terrified of it happening... I didn't know them at all.

All throughout high school I would spend mass daydreaming and being generally uncooperative. We finally made it out of sacred scripture and into world religion, and my beliefs and understanding of the world gained more clarity.

I even stopped cooperating at home, where after refusing to say the blessing, I was beaten and my food was thrown into the next room. I already knew that it was a false display of Christianity to begin with and I had no more respect for it anymore. So of course you would throw the food you asked me to bless and be violent. It was definitely gone by then.

If it weren't for my grandmother... I'd never have seen the good in Christianity. She was the only real one I knew, and much of her advice still stays with me. Much of it fueled my resistance to the constant performance of belief, and I'm so grateful she helped sow in me the seeds for my own self-determination.

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.

pretty much always

16 years old

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. : )

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!

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.