In high school, I began to question certain doctrines. For example, as a Catholic I was taught that unbaptized babies that die won't go to heaven but would go to Purgatory instead. I failed to see how a newborn child, without sin, was punished because no one baptized him/her. Here's another - eating meat on Friday was a sin. Until the 1960s when that was changed and it was OK to eat meat vs. fish on Fridays. I recall as a adolescent forgetting it was Friday and eating a hot dog then running home to my mother crying because I was going to hell. There were many more things I questioned. This sort of crap made no sense to me later. The other issue was seeing the hypocrisy of so many parishioners. Shoplifting/stealing, lying, cheating on their spouses, then acting sanctimonious during Sunday Mass. Oh, and then there was the parish priest who was sleeping with a high school student. Need I say more?

Getting a divorce and seeing my entire church turn on me, reading the Bible in the original Greek and Hebrew and realizing that 98% if what I'd been taught wasn't even in the Bible, the Facebook hate memes posted by childhood evangelical friends during President Obama's terms, and especially during the last election. I felt ashamed and sick I'd ever been a part of that group.

Not one certain thing. It pretty much never made sense to me. I remember being around 8 years old and asking "How do we know the bible isn't a story like Cinderella?" Parents only came back with "you gotta have faith". When I was 12ish I asked "why do we think people had to come from a magical God? It could be as simple as a little bit of liquid water was on the right rock in our solar system" eventually in middle school I learned what atheist meant and was like "oh! That's me!" When I told my parents it was in passing. "Oh, I don't believe that, I'm an atheist" which I admit was an unfair shock to them but they weren't hard on me. Just a big pill to swallow really.

The most significant turn for me was when I was in an upper level history class and we actually discussed the historical facts surrounding some of the biblical settings, like Egypt. Then there was the fact that the man known as Jesus Christ (some histories don't even acknowledge the certainty of his existence) had died 200 years before the Bible was written.

And of course, I have read the Bible, the whole thing. The contradictions alone make your head hurt, if you're paying attention. If that wasn't bad enough there are the references telling you to be sheep throughout the Bible. Do you know that sheep are the stupidest animals on the planet? They will literally stand in a ditch as the water rises and drown, if there is no sheep dog or shepherd present to herd them to higher ground. To me that says they are telling you to be dumb and easily led ... nah, I think I'll pass on that. Thanks.

My childhood religious training was harsh and punitive. I often felt afraid to go to sleep, fearing that "god" would kill me in my sleep and I would wake up in "hell". I was repeatedly told that I was a bad person. I felt guilty and ashamed of myself. I was often told that every illness and every crisis was a punishment from god. So, I became atheist.

Between the ages of 3 and 12 I lived in a household that consisted only of me, my parents, and my father's aunt (I have no siblings). My parents were church-goers, but (luckily for me) far from fanatical: they went once or twice a month (taking me with them, of course). Only my great-aunt was insufferably religious, but not in an evangelical way, more in a strict Presbyterian sort of way — no games, whistling or excessive noise allowed on Sundays, for instance. I think it was she who started me thinking this whole religion thing wasn't all that great.

Then there was Sunday school, which I utterly disliked. It was on Sunday afternoon, so if it was one of those Sundays that I'd been to church in the morning, I'd lost pretty much the whole day. And it involved learning by heart some bible verses and bits of the shorter catechism, which made even less sense than the bible.

My great-aunt died when I was 12. I think by that time I was well on the way to being an atheist, and when I found out that Sunday school, unlike day school, wasn't actually compulsory, I simply stopped going. Church itself I didn't mind so much, and I can even remember one sunny, frosty Christmas morning that I practically dragged my parents there. But I was already on what my mother would have seen as the slippery slope away from faith. After a number of months of futile attempts at prayer, following the guide at the back of my hymn-book, and after reading Fred Hoyle's The Nature of the Universe, I decided that Christianity was not for me.

My mother was very unhappy about it, and always hoped I would 'return to the fold'. My father never expressed an opinion at any stage, as far as I can recall.

Too many things in the bible did not make sense to me. I always babysat my younger brothers and sister and cousins and family friends children. I could not accept god killing the first born of the Egyptians who were innocent children. What kind of god shows his power by killing the most innocent and the most vulnerable.

I’ve always been lucky.

GOD made me do it

Hmmm... i wish we would of had something religious in our family to put some fear in my dad to keep him in check... he was such an asshole to us kids. He didnt want kids .. he wanted brats to do anything he wanted. Im sorry to say this but us little guys needed a father not a boss.

There wasn't really much talk of religious things at home, just an expectation to conform. Methodists were pretty complacent when I grew up. Questions were confusing to them and simply ignored, so I had to learn things for myself.

A good education!! Logic and reason took over in 2nd year of high school! Thank you mom!

I questioned everything from a very young age. I recognized flaws in every story I was told. I grew to trust science over myth and continue to this day.

Going to church. Seriously, church was utterly boring for a 5-year-old like myself. I was so restless and bored, and I came to see church as an hour of torture that we had to endure in order to prove that we were good people. Also, there were all these images of Jesus with happy little children surrounding him, and I thought, "What is it that these kids see in him that I don't?" I mean, it's not like Jesus was handing out candy or playing ball with them. How boring. In that sense, I don't think I ever truly believed, because, quite frankly, I didn't care if God loved me or not. Then, as I got older, I made the following realizations: there is no tooth fairy, there is no Santa Claus, there is no Easter bunny, and, quite logically, there is no God. My family was fine with my disbelief in the first three. But that fourth one? Woah!! I was really confused as to why grown ups still latched on to God even though they could so easily let go of those other three. They all seemed like childhood stories to me.

Science and common sense. Also a resistance to dogmatic group think.

Time, learning and one pivotal moment (too long to print here) got me on another road. The coffin to religion was finally nailed shut by my relationship with a lifelong atheist from a Moslem country.

Out of 7 kids in my family, only one is still practicing and the rest are atheists.

Being a minesterial student, I started learning about the origins of the Old Testament and Christianity. I didn't give up my faith after college, but I had my doubts. As I kept studying these origins on my own , I realized that Christianity was just a man made religion I finally concluded that there was no god. All religions are man made.

Why most people are kept from knowing the information taught in colleges and seminaries is beyond me. People need to know that their faith is based on myth. And I realize that some people would still hold onto faith, since it's based on emotions and not facts.

I was a voracious reading in gradeschool and was on a mythology kick.I saw the overlap of various themes especially the resurrection between cultures and realized Jesus wasnt a new thing

Puberty hit. My hormones told me one thing and the Church another. Both were wildly inconsistent so I'm not sure why I went with my hormones but once I made that decision I never turned back.

Christian Leadership training and its inability to address moral issues and problems with Christianity.

It just didn’t make any sense to me. Even though for a few years as a child, I said grace and would go to church occasionally. I always had this thought in the back of my mind that it just wasn’t adding up. Reading the Bible just felt like reading a book full of tales that were supposed to have metaphors to the unrealistic stories with the impossible in reality miracles. The creation story in genesis is what really got me. God setting up two people to fail then punish them for exactly what he knew they’d do. Cain’s Wife coming out of nowhere from Nod when we are supposed to be all linked back to Adam and Eve. God regretting making mankind when he would have already known that. God testing Abraham in one of the most horrible and child abuse type of ways. What really did it for me is the creation of Hell. Who the hell in their right mind would even think to create such heinous place, especially when god would already know who and who wouldn’t be destined to go there.

My family is wrong. I was grateful that my mom was nicer to me once she joined a church but entirely resentful that she quit because of "the saving grace of Jesus" rather that because it was wrong to emotionally and physically abuse a little girl. I mean 'what would the people at church say'.

Turns out on of those lovely church ladies let her husband molest her little boy. Then committed suicide when she was refused access to her grandchildren.

I tried hard to find an idea of god that made sense to me, I never did.

I don't consider myself as the abandoner, but rather the abandonee. My journey started with the death of my Dad when I was 8 years old. "God took him", was what they said to me. My Dad was my world, and this being in the sky that never did anything good for me, took one of the only people who ever had. I started reading the bible and I had an epiphany, when I realized that it was like listening to my 80 year old grandma with dementia. There were total inconsistencies, and nothing made much sense to my world. I was not forced to go to church after my Dad's death, but I was forced to watch TV preachers. If anything can turn a child into an agnostic, it's the 700 club.
I started reading other religious texts in college, and I learned that organized religions were pretty much the same... Love those that are the same as you, and hate those who are not. I'm not much of a hater, I just can't hate someone because they believe in something I do not. I would say I wasn't built that way, but since I don't believe I was built at all... Paganism gave me an out, but it was temporary because it insisted I believe in more than one god. It was difficult enough to think there was one sky daddy up there sending punishment to me, and taking those I loved away. I couldn't handle several no matter how nicely they were portrayed.
Two books influenced my current belief, Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett, and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. Both basically say people created gods, and the gods only way to remain viable is to have believers. When belief stops, gods die. In other words you all are serial killers and don't even know it.