Nope. Like you I began questioning the narrative early on. It never made sense to me and the questions I asked were never answered. The hard part was learning to live around those who bought into it, including my parents.

Absolutely none. I read about other myths before I read the Abrahamic ones. They were just stories and I have seen nothing about them that makes them real... or contributes to someone being a loving and caring person. My ex wife has a ton of issues, and I can't tell you how many stem from catering to domineering parents that were pointing her to different denominations and telling each other they were wrong.

Yes, I think it was because Jesus didn't bring me a pony one year for Christmas. No, wait. That would have been Santa Claus.

Watching too many people arguing about issues in Bible...I used to love to talk with preachers..and I believed and still believe Jesus was about love...If you don't get that concept you've missed the boat...I can not stand a person going to church all the time and are hateful, arrogant and just down right mean......then have the nerve to judge me cause I said fuck.....huh

Nope. Education, logical and critical thinking, and an open mind willing to question all that I had been taught won over in the end. Thank God!!!

Not something bad but something good. When I was very young I figured out that I valued truth over fiction and after analyzing church (fiction peddled as truth) stories I discovered Faith (assertions based without evidence) claims were not consistent with realty. This taught me to question all faith based claims.

I always felt like it was weird, silly, and unbelievable... at age 10 and 11 my parents had me in a Catholic school because the public school outside the base we were stationed at was not accredited with the state. The Catholic school was. I was stunned at how many things about the Catholic religion were tweaked different compared to the Baptist upbringing I seen. I mean stuff like purgatory I had never even heard of as a Baptist, yet it was mentioned almost daily in Catholic School back then. I really had a sense of "How are these religions getting all this different crap out of the same book?"

Lived in Italy for 4 years after that and it becomes clear the Catholic church is a financial machine. And not a very friendly one either. One day I'll tell the story of the Catholic Orphanage I worked at as a Boy Scout overseas, for some kids Eagle Scout project. Grim, grim, grim. First time I saw my Navy Pilot dad cry.

That was as a kid... where it seemed stupid and ugly.

As an adult Ive learned to hate it. My parents retired to a small town where my mom grew up. They started attending church regularly and my mom even started playing piano. My dad has slid slightly right wing, and now mumbles anti-abortion stuff from time to time. But my mom... She has gone from saying stuff like...
"See that little girl walking down the street? I feel so bad for her. Her mom is in jail for drugs. Apparently she is here in town living with her old step dad who was married to her mom back when she was like 3 to 7 yeara old. Now 13 and he's the only family she sort of has, and he's a drinker. I pray for her."

And after a few years it became...

"See that girl? She's the new little slut in town
Her mom is in jail for drugs, and all the other relatives are dead. Somehow she is living with the guy who used to be her stepdad when she was little bitty. He has his other kids every other weekend, and he's always drunk. He's probably raping her and its just a matter of time before she gets shipped off for selling meth!"

My mom has literally gone from being concerned about all people to openly despising most of them. And its not old age. It's fire and brimstone hateful Baptist rhetoric rolled out every Sunday.

Boredom happened.

yes, being sent to Sunday fucking school when I didn't like the normal school that much.

I was born.

My family growing up was one of "devout" atheism. There have been changes along the way. But I remain 100% atheist.

Yes. I attended Church. At 4-ish, I was having nightmares that were just horrific. All of them were biblical in nature. This went on for several weeks and my parents pulled me from church.

As an adult looking back, I'd say someone in bible class was a wee bit too sulfur and brimstone for the youth.

I have never seen any good reason to go back.

Yes and no. I was psychologically abused for sure with the restrictions like never even talking 1 on 1 with a girl until late twenties. Also berated and almost kicked out of house at 17 for "sinfulness".
However, what did it for me was loneliness. I had no friends because the church we went to was so small; and i started to doubt how a perfectly logical and self evident truth could be so devoid of people following it. Then internet provided me with all the truth/answers i had been looking for.

Church!

I was raised Mormon (my mother converted after marrying my dad, he never has converted). I don’t remember anything specifically bad about church, other than it taking FOREVER and people always handing me babies to hold. I do remember when I was 8 and getting baptized that I begged my dad not to make me do it. To the point of a crying tantrum. He eventually talked me into it to make my mother happy. I’ve always been resistant to church and I don’t really know why. Now that I’m an adult, I’ll stand quietly while people pray but I avoid any and all religious buildings and activities as much as possible, regardless of the denomination.

Not really. It was mostly observation in early childhood that things in the Bible didn't add up..the "loving god" who tells Moses to slaughter men, women, children, and ANIMALS, and to stone the person who picked up a stick on Saturday.

From repeated observation and non-scientific sampling, I am left with the strong impression that traumatic experiences more often than not tend to induce people to cling tighter to religion. Then it is the pious, self-righteous, judgmental reactions of the supposedly loving Christians toward other people's suffering that can lead the others to start questioning, thinking more critically as these hypocrites illustrate just how hollow their claimed paradigm is. Once skepticism is introduced, the growing awareness of simple facts does the rest.

My husband did. He was 8, 9ish I think? He was very studious and religious, haing read the entire bible twice over by that time. His church caught on fire and he couldn't reconcile how a good, just God would just let that happen. It all went downhill from there...

I wrote you a book and deleted it. Yes i didnt believe in god as a child. Personal reasons.

my father disgusted me on so many levels. he was a phoney, crazy, religious person. enough said.

Somebody tried to convince me about a belief system that was the dumbest thing I ever heard of.

Honestly I looked for god didn't find either him or anything else so I looked harder and saw the truth gave up hope embraced nihilism

Reading the Old Testament..so much rape, stoning ,pillage, human sacrifing, and general smiteing that it struck me as very strange as a child...and as an adult..so full of contradictions and hypocrisy...all seemingly encouraged and sometimes perpetrated by God or who ever he happened to be directing his will at the time. Just dreadful nonsense....

Well, many things, good & bad happened to me as a child, but none of it had anything to do with my atheism. I loved Science Fiction & Fantasy (still do), but I early on realized the difference between fiction & fact, or at least reality! Tho I didn't become active for years I just stopped believing the "story". It made no sense to me. The actions of the nuns & priests in Catholic school didn't help bolster their claims, either, but that is not what led to my unbelief. I just could not reconcile the narrative with what I observed, & the more I observed & the more I learned, about anything, the more this was so.

I was born a catholic and we had some not so nice nuns and a very arrogant bishop where I came from. Not that I had to suffer from it. For me common sense tells one that there cannot be a god as it says in the bible.

Yes.