Joe Campbell's books did it for me. His intelligence is infectious.

Being kicked out of church at age five for heresy before the Koolaid and cookies were served.

Learning about the Holocaust at 10 did it but my parents forced me to go to Sunday School till 16.Then I gotup at Confirmation and denounced god. My parents promptly shipped me to Israel on a Bible Study Tour.

Taking a good hard look at what I was trying to force myself to believe and realizing it made no sense at all. Leaving was the only logical choice. It really helped when I asked the simple question of "why?" And noticing that no one has a good answer that made sense. Because they don't know either, I could see that the nonsense was everywhere and they were forcing themselves to believe it too. It became so obvious I could no longer ignore it.

There were lots of reasons that led to me leaving religion first was from studying the bible and learning how dumb it was. I was sitting in church on day and it just hit me I was in a cult so I got up left and never went back. I looked into other religions but after my mother died I stopped searching and excepted there was no god and it was very liberating for me. It wasnt that she died that made me not believe I would say I just grew up alot after her death.

Back in ‘61 I attended a Baptist seminar with some folks from Auburn. As I sat there, it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t believe anything that was being said. On the way back in the car, I openly expressed my opinion, The others were surprised, but offered no criticism or arguments. Other than for funerals I haven’t been back. I am not an atheist, I just reject Christianity as presented by traditional churches.

It was finally being honest with myself. If Jesus was God's representative on earth...or God himself, and I couldn't follow the reprehensible god of the old testament, how then could I follow Jesus, a person that represented (or actually was) this morally bankrupt deity. I had always thought other religions were silly...and now I felt the same way about Christianity....and at that point I was an atheist. That was over 3 years ago now.

I tried to kill myself after a long losing battle with bipolar disorder, when I was in treatment no one from my church showed any concern with anything other than when I could come back to teach, I was their youth minister. I have never understood how people can be so blind to their own hypocrisy as much as the people I have met that call themselves Christians.

Mine was. ."Who exactly are we singing to.( praise and worship time of the service)..this doesn't make sense anymore. Also I found it funny how they called it a church PROGRAM and a service. Who exactly was the one getting serviced. Was it us or the clergy.