I was a member of a very strict religion and they focused a lot on religious scholarship. As I wanted to know more, I realized that most things contradicted themselves or didn't make sense. Then I looked at non theist doctrines and of course turned to history. That lead me to see that it was all a fabrication to maintain power over the masses and once science got involved that's when I knew religion and the notion of god is preposterous.

This is also a curiosity for me. Unfortunately, I have not met many like minded people, but I've been surprised that not many people seem to have arrived at what they believe in the same manner that I did. I started questioning christianity in my high school world history class, when learning about religions in the world. Having grown up in a southern baptist church, I was troubled by the belief that only if you were a christian, would you "go to heaven". In my freshman year in college, in another world history course, several weeks were spent on the development of early religions. Over time, it became apparent to me, that god didn't create man, but that man created god.

Religion makes no sense

Actually a little bit of both. I think in my youth which would be my mid/later teen years it was the hypocrisy that really fueled the fire and from there it turned into doubting questioning and searching to get me to my current resting place.

Reading the bible and asking questions in various churches.

Babtized Mormon, first glimpse was the in your face racism of the church, followed, the all mighty being failure to intervene, in so much harm coming to children, and the less fortunate and defensless. War, over and over and over and over that never seems to stop. Final tipping point I realised if you believe in science, and evolution. You can not believe in god

Throughout history, religion was used to enslave or control people. Religion is connected to politics. Redemption is based on believing in one particular entity alone that no matter what you did wrong, what matters is that you believe in him and repent. Most religious people in the world would be the most judgemental ones since they have high criteria in being holly. But then again, those people with religion destroy life more in different ways.

I was born non religious and there was nothing I saw or heard that changed my mind on it.

When my priest stated that anyone who was not catholic would go to hell--Third grade.

Constant praying with NO ANSWERS....ever?!!!
Horrible people, who were devoutly religious!

At age 13, I realized the Bible is just a book of stories written by men.

I was raised catholic, the last straw for me was after the new priest spent 3.5 million to add 4 rows of seats to the church, and drywalling over all of the woodworking, at midnight mass for Christmas he called for a second collection to buy a new baptismal bath thing, he said and i quote "This time, let's leave the 10's and 20's in your wallets and pull out the 50's and 100's" i was straight appaulled. Besides a couple funerals i have not attended another mass.

Experienced reality way too different from reality predicted by the faith.

I was born without religion or a belief in god(s) and never bought any of the lies that I was fed by the church of England at school.

I was only 8 years old when I began questioning the things in the buybull and how “blind faith” is ridiculous. As I’ve gone through the years.. the hypocrisy of it all became more obvious.

The hypocrisy. Eat a hot dog on Friday and go to Hell. Then change the rule. What happened to all those hot dog eaters in Hell. Did they get an out of hell card and some compensation for time spent? Also the extreme amount of time the church took to get up to speed on science, it took them almost 400 years to let Galileo off the hook and admit he was right.

Seeing and experiencing hypocrisy.