Welcome to the community. I became an atheist once I read the holy babble from cover to cover.

I was raised Catholic and even went to a Catholic school during my elementary years. I am pretty sure I was a believer - but at those ages it is rather hard to tell. When I was Middle School (finally being exposed to non-Catholics for an extended period) I started realizing that Catholicism can't be the only way to God/heaven because there was no way my new Protestant friends were going to Hell. At this time I also became obsessed with ancient cultures and started seeing the ancient myths had a lot in common with the Christian beliefs and my own research into other religions showed me that Christianity certainly wasn't true. When I went off to college I was a still a Believer but in a more New Age sense - I believed in souls, the afterlife, a prime mover, and a few other supernatural things. The real change came in October my first year at college when I went to see a play called 'On Ego' the main premise of which was teleportation and what makes a person themselves (basically, Star Trek teleportation where they break down your atoms and rebuild you perfectly on the other side). That play really shook my belief about souls because I agreed that all our personalities and sense of self is in our neural pathways - I went back to my dorm and began looking up debates about the existence of souls, god, the afterlife, etc. By the end of the week I was an atheist.

I went to a St. Mary’s and was part of the Catholic Church for a short amount of time. But I was mostly around new age pagan influences.
After a while it was fairly easy to lose the faith and altars but I kept the cat.

In my case I was born into a freethinking family and therefore have never been exposed to any religious indictrination. For this I will be eternally grateful. What is your own story? I’m sure you will enjoy posting and replying on this site.

Denounced god at 16. Never believed in organized religion. Welcome