I believe we are ALL born atheists. We're indoctrinated by the adults that surround us. I was raised catholic. It didn't take. I always knew it was bullshit. I knew everything I was hearing was false.
The more I heard from the RCC, and other religions, the more I knew it was all garbage.
As soon as I heard the word "athiest", and understood what it meant, I knew
I was one. It's the only thing that's ever made any sense.

Born atheist and never indoctrinated into any school of thought other than to read and learn. Never found a reason to believe in any supernatural being.

You're not born as anything (in terms of a belief) you get that from the people and the environment they raise you in.

There is a well known saying that if you introduce a child to religion you have a follower for life. Of course that is not 100% true because children do grow up and question their upbringing. I would not call myself of a great mind. I think and ponder things for a long time before making a decision. It was the same when I grew up in the Jehovah's Witness cult. My father firstly become a JW and as a consequence his young family followed. Now I am glad to say I left when I was 19 but had to move out of the area as all my friends then were JW's. Even today some of my family are still followers and I have given up trying to persuade them to get out. My father I am sure when he died realised that this cult was not the true religion he firstly believed it to be. I am sorry to say I never really got to have a good discussion with him on it. I am now married to a non practicing Roman Catholic and she brought up my daughter as a RC. She is now 23 and has two degrees which she studied hard to achieve. So she is very intelligent and I hope she sees Religion for what it is. As Karl Marx said "the opium of the people".

My Dad was never a believer. My Mom was the only kind-of-religious one in my family except the vast majority of the time she seemed to forget about it all together. In her old age she said that she did NOT accept Jesus Christ as her savior but assured us she was a Christian. That seemed to satisfy her her sense of reason as well as meet a need to satisfy her Christian parents (long past). I married a Jewish woman and my Mom was surprised to hear our kids would be brought up Jewish (now all Atheist). My Mom thought, since I was a Christian (I wasn't), I should send the kids to Christian Sunday school half the time so they could decide for themselves if they wanted to be Christian or Jewish. My Mom seemed to think I should pass on the Christian training that I never got onto my kids(?) I thought I might become Jewish but ultimately that seemed just as hocus-pocus as Christianity. After getting a Bachelor's degree then a Master's degree critical thinking pretty much took over completely and now we are happily Agnostic.

I believe that everyone is born an atheist and then religion is forced on them as children. I was brought up southern Baptist but had doubts at around 10 . Finally figured out that I was an atheist at 15. I didn't even know what it was called till then.

I was brought up religious but not really religious I went to church because a lot of others were doing it. Then logic came into my life and was thinking how can any of it be real! Sure as hell if Jesus ever exsisted no way he died for my imaginary sins when I done none. A big guilt trip they put on all of us!

We were all born atheist. Have you ever seen a newborn baby with Catholic parents kneel on a prayer rug facing Mecca? We aren't born believing in gods we are indoctrinated into a religion or we don't become religious.

Born and raised Lutheran and eventually moved to the Methodists, kept at it till my 30s mostly to please my father. Finally couldn't take all the hate dressed up in a bow and gave myself permission to reevaluate religion and how it didn't fit for me. I wanted to look in the mirror and be proud but couldn't with Jesus F***ing Christ in my heart. Dad was disappointed but learned to accept it. Would love to be able to say that rationally but emotion creeps in when I look back at the journey.

Of course the old chestnut which is brought up by God believers is that there has to be a creator to make all these things. To my mind that is Juvenile thinking. I recently saw a lecture on Youtube by a professor saying that the Universe and even several Universes were created from nothing, I know this is very hard to understand and I cannot understand it now. But for these religionists to say that God is the sole maker of the Universe because everything had to have a creator , falls down when you ask "Who created God" this is followed by a stoney silence and the response that God always existed. Therefore their argument falls over. I think we are still at the beginning of our knowledge of the Universe and how we got here. At least intelligent people can now get away from this God myth which has plagued mankind for centuries.

Well, we're all born atheists. We are taught gods. We're basically all atheists. When you were a JW, that was the god you believed in and none of the other ones. Muslums believe in a different one but only one of them. Christians believe in yet another different one and so on. Atheists just don't believe in any of them.

One doesn't DECIDE to stop believing in a god, if one has believed in one. one just no longer believes. if you were a jw and left, more power to you; it takes guts to walk out on that as there is some heavy brainwashing, nay, mind control going on there. kudos to you. i was raised a secular jew, still consider myself a jew, but an atheist as well. believe it or not, that's not a conflict! i am culturally jewish but have no religion and hold no gods. as i say, i was raised quite secularly i didn't have a battle on my hand. as for science, i don't think there is an everything. there is too much to know. i'm okay with that.

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I was brought up Roman Catholic. As I matured I questioned the practices and beliefs more and more. Finally I couldn't even fake it any more. I believe in something because the basic elements of the universe had to come from somewhere. I just don't know if it was a God. All this cheap in the Bible, etc is just that, crap. Man trying to make reason out of the randomness of the universe.

I suspect we are all born apatheists. We don't care about theology until it is drilled into our heads.

Raised by Catholic parents, never serious about it. Became a JW in my early thirties and I was a believer. That was until I did some "worldly " research on 607 BCE which is a pivotal date in JW dogma. This is the year in which Jerusalem was invaded by the Babylonians and they destroyed the temple. Well according to JWs but not to the rest of the world. That was it for me, the whole house of cards fell and I quit. A year later I was an atheist and remain so.

Born into catholic family, raised methodist, Atheist since late teens early 20's.

Was always agnostic although my parents did try taking me to church and temple and as a teen i studied many neliefs and religions because i wanted to educate myself but always remained agnostic

I was brought up a Baptist until in my 20s, then I spent 15 years as a Methodist. I spent 10 years in the Unity Church and 10 in the Church of Religious Science and 5 in the Unitarian Universalist Church...and here I am without any religion at all! Just free to live a life!

Thoroughly indoctrinated by the crazy backwoods Pentecostals, Apostolics, independent Methodists, and Baptists around here mostly, 9 years of Christian school, vacation bible schools and everything short of missionary trips or seminary school. In those circles the JW and Mormons were considered the crazy ones, and, well, they were only half right. They always underestimated the number of crazy cultists at play here. The crazy is coming from inside the house. Always had my doubts but devoutly suppressed them until teen years, college and beyond brought more and more to light and forced me to think a little more critically.

I recently watched a program on TV about religion both recent and old. A young woman who I think was an authority on Religion answered the question about religion both old and new. For example the RCC has followers running into several million , the largest of the Christian Religion. Muslims now have approaching a billion followers worldwide. Some of the minor religions just a few thousand. So which is the true religion she was asked. Her answer impressed me. They are all ridiculous the old religions as well as the younger religions. Just  because the older ones have been around for so long then their numbers will be much more than the newer religions but that does not make them true. 

I remember sitting in Sunday school (Methodist) finding everything that was said utterly ridiculous. I may not have realized I was an atheist at that age, but I certainly was a skeptic.

I was raised Lutheran, and as a child was brainwashed enough to "believe". I always questioned God and the questions became more profound aas i went through my Catechism years, thanks and reasoning for why the world works the way it works as God's purpose became really troubling for me. The nail in the coffin came when I was 16 and my Mom died of colon cancer. I just couldn't comprehend how a "loving God" could take a good person like that in such a miserable way and let less than savory people live long and healthy lives. At that time i say and re- evaluated my beliefs and found that God made no sense and served no purpose other than to ease the fear of death to those that were mentally weaker. I am however thankful for my religious background because it gives me insight to otherside of this great debate and allows me to use what I've learned about christianity to point out the flaws in it. My wife on the other hand was raised in an atheist household. We now raise our 5 children as atheist, but I keep my childhood Bibles and Catechism books to teach them about Christianity (as fictional works of literature) so that the can be prepared as they enter life without us and can argue their point. And if they do choose to decide to become religious they will do it on their own terms and not be forced into it.

I too was raised to be a JW and remained one until I was nearly 40. I went from true believer to atheist but it took awhile.

I don't know what other choices there are ... people either have always been unbelievers, or became unbelievers.

My guess is most people are deconverts. I certainly am one ... former evangelical / fundamentalist.

I was raised Catholic. It was a long slow journey away and finally an epiphany that brought me to where I am. Honestly, as far back as I can remember, I could always find something about christianity that didn't add up for me. The epiphany came when I stopped making excuses for all those things that didn't add up, and accepted reality.