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 I don’t believe in God, because what evidence there is is based on ancient, outdated, fantastical literature and the very clear point of it is gap of knowledge explanations, control and order attained by fear.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.

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.

At age 8 when I stopped believing in Santa Claus.

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.

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.

Right after I started being able to understand geologic time. For a long time I couldn't fathom the time scales. Once I could... The walls fell

Always.

Probably about 12

In the womb.

I'm not sure if I ever believed in God or if I ever truly subscribed to the Christian doctrine. I was very young when I realized I was supposed to believe all these things they spoke about in church were real. I guess I thought we were all pretending. Upon discovering that we were not, that I was supposed to really BELIEVE in God and Jesus and angels and Satan, I immediately wanted nothing more to do with church. When I started saying out loud to people that I equated piety to superstition, and no longer considered myself a Christian, that's when I felt changed and renewed. That's when I felt I had emerged from darkness and was no longer lost.

When I was 19.

I was a Hindu till then. Wide variety of gods to choose from, no rules whatsoever, even if there are any rules nobody forces you to do anything.

Then began to learn about other religions and their concept of god.

Then started reading atheist literature and attending science lectures.

Threw away all belief in god and learned to live confidently without the aid of invisible deities.

19 years old

I myself have always questioned but I have to say I became 100% agnostic atheist 2 or 3 years ago

At 25, after I took a hard look at religion and questioned every reason I gave myself to believe in a deity. Turns out, none of the reasons could withstand scrutiny.

I was raised in a christhian home, read the hole bible when i was a kid, but for me it was Music (Heavy Metal) that gave me the confidence to begin questioning stuff and not to be afraid of the consequences of freethinking.
A friend of mine gave me this Iron Maiden album at age 14, and i was afraid of listening the song "The Number of the Beast", because i could be sent to hell, so i just skipped it every time hahaha. But i really liked the music, so eventually i lost my fear and started questioning everything, and when you do that, then you realize that just... there is no god!

6th grade so about 11 years old. I grew up in the bible belt where you're looked at in disgust if you're not Christian. When I got old enough I didn't care and started questioning religion.

College

Thanks to God for the blessing of loosing faith in him gradually since I was a lamb hanging around, and then he set me free the day I became a holy bull

Early 20s, I guess. I never really called myself anything for a long time after I stopped believing in my religious upbringing, but at some point I identified as an agnostic atheist.

12. I asked a whole bunch of questions to a vicar that came to the school, and he fumbled over most of them. "How could Noah fit every single species on the ark? It would need to be the size of Africa! And if God wanted everyone dead, why not just kill them himself, he's all powerful? And how come there were miracles, real ones, but aren't any more?" Stuff like that. I got a bunch of "well that's just the way God works" BS and I just thought...nah. It's all crap.

It's funny, but I have never believed in the supernatural, but I never really thought of myself as an atheist until I was in my late 20s. It never really mattered what I identified as. Religion didn't play any part in my life. It wasn't until I realized how harmful religion is that I felt the need to distance myself from it.

I was in 6 grade, I was extremely bullied by my fellow Christians students. Guess fairy tails just never set in for me.

About age 8. i started asking a lot of questions in my United Methodist bible class, and wasn't getting any good answers (think Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory on a theoretical roll) ! It was pretty much an instantaneous process. Then, I continued my education, and became widely read, and traveled, and still wasn't getting good answers. That's because there are none. Many people's beliefs are based on fables - the end.