Born and raised secular, so I agree with the prior comments as to the use of "choose"... I identified as an agnostic for decades until I bothered to really look into religious beliefs and found that it wasn't the "I'm on the fence" position that I had thought.

Atheism isn't a choice... it's a conclusion.

It chose me.

I stopped believing in god(s). Kinda left me with no choice. ?

By pure common sense and lack of proof. My family wasn't religious, but I was baptized without my permission as a baby.

Age of reason

I always was a nonbeliever.

I was never on board with the whole religion thing but it is only in the last few years that I started labeling it... even way back when. when I used to refer to myself as Catholic it was only because my family was Catholic, not because I was doing any Catholic things, LOL

Atheism is the default position of all humans. We are BORN atheists.
Everything else is indoctrination.
In my case, the indoctrination didn't take and I rejected it all at a very young age.
I knew it was all bullshit really early on.

I wouldn’t say that I “choose” atheism or “come to” it. To me, it’s the default position, everything else has to be explained.

I didn’t choose to be atheist, life made that choice for me. If it was up to me I’d probably still be Christian well actually no I take that back, I’d be Norse pagan.

Slowly. It's like realizing Santa isn't real. It makes less and less sense and then one day, you give in.
I admit, I was terrified at first. What if I am all there is to depend on? What will people think? Am I hurting all the people that love me?

Nothing else makes any sense.

Because facts make sense and myths do not.

When I realized that my prayers being completely ignored were a lot like me just wishing for shit I wasn't gonna have.

I didn't come to it. I recognized it as the natural outcome of a whole series of thoughts and reactions I had been accumulating over a period of ten to fifteen years.

I didn't choose it. I came to a conclusion that has atheism as the label.

I'm agnostic. Or agnostic atheist. I didn't choose it. I just am. My religious upbringing was that I was raised by a divorced mother who explored many religions during my formative years.

I didn't choose it per say as much as I would say I found it. My parents split when I was 3. My dads family was extreme fanatical Catholic, My mom was always a questioner. I played the role as a kid around my dad. Did the first communion/confirmation thing as I really had no choice as a minor and then left home to join the Army at 18. The more time I spent in the army the more hypocritical my participation in religion seemed to me. It really came to a head being stationed in West Berlin and being told how the bad over controlling East German government was supressing free thought, controlling assembly and forcing indoctrination while at work, but then hearing how I should bow down and submit to the lord in mass. All the give yourself to the lord, submit, god has a plan crap just seemed to be too close of a parallel to the stuff I was being told was bad at work. I felt they were equally as bad and left religion. I was 23

I came from a Catholic family and was raised that way, but it wasn't until I met people with horrible diseases that I started to question the existence of some all benevolent, all powerful, and all knowing "god". i myself was diagnosed with a brain tumor as a kid, and the idea that "god" would be cool with that doesn't sit well with me. Also, science.

I was never raised in religion. I am the default.

Calling the way we are born an 'ism' doesn't fit into my perspective on life; given that one comes to the isms either voluntarily from a non-believing state or involuntarily having had perceptual faculties savaged by deluded parents who didn't (still might not) know better, with a virtual deluge of misinformation before reaching the developmental level of independent reasoning.

It’s about not making a choice for me.

Having very religious family and having one of them telling me what dogma I should believe. My beliefs are no else's business.

It is a spectrum from "uber" to "neutral". On a scale where 10 was maximally "uber" and zero is liberal Christian, my family was probably a 7.5 in an environment that was, constitutionally, about an 8.

But my reason for leaving the faith would have been the same regardless of how authoritarian / literalist / inerrantist my group was. All religion suffers from a fundamental problem: it is based on a failed theory of knowledge that neither explains nor predicts experienced reality.