As a person who use to preach I didnt have an aha moment. It was more like I dissolved away due to too many inconsistencies and also I started thinking for myself. I can't stress how important it is is for people to think on their own.

Flip back through old posts there are hundreds of these

Why would "God" give me a brain but demand I blindly follow zealots and charlatans?

I am agnostic because I do not think that anyone or anything would create a being that would inflict such pain and suffering onto another being in the name of their god.

The point you make reminds me of what I notice sometimes in illusions, where the magician requires a certain odd set circumstances to make some seemingly astonishing thing happen. If they could ACTUALLY do what it appears they are doing, why do you need a stage here, and a curtain there, and box concealing step 4 there, etc. The only reason a god would need a book for his illusion is if he isn't really a god, but a bunch of people who wrote books for various reasons (and some of the reasons are so obvious that you have to be dumb, or pretend to be dumb, not to know what they were--people are getting sick from eating shellfish? well, put that in there: god says no eating shellfish).

And that in itself is a good start, for me none of it makes sense. Welcome to this site enjoy, have fun, learn.

I came to my conclusion by simple logic. Atheists love to state the simplistic obvious, then make a totally unjustified leap to an absolutist verdict: there is no proof there is a god by any definition, therefore there is no such thing.
Well there's no proof there ISN'T a god of sorts either, but I don't go around saying that means there IS one!
We simply DON'T KNOW.
YOU make a great point: if there is a god, it may not be a "supreme being" at all, and in any event it's highly dubious he'd ask a few chosen "holy men" to write books on the subject...why would a REAL god care?!?
If it's ridiculous to think such a thing, it's also ridiculous to think the opposite: why would god not care? Why would "god" have a separate consciousness at all? Maybe god is everything and is a collective consciousness...and yes, maybe there's no such thing.
I just wish we could get beyond this vacuous "debate" and figure how to live our lives as beings free to do what we will regardless.

Don't think too much. You are free. So don't waster time and energy on God shit. Just enjoy your freedom.

No "ah ha" moment. Perhaps the very earliest spark was when I missed church one Sunday and I wasn't any worse for wear.

it didn't take much complicated logic for me. i was 15, i'd discovered that my folks had been wrong (in innocence, not lying, just wrong) about something i'd bought into, and decided to examine all my beliefs. it was no more difficult than it would've been for a christian child to realize there was no santa claus. it just made no sense to think there was any such thing as a god. i didn't worry about why this or how that. i had no especial expectations of the god in which i vaguely believed. there was no disappointment or anything like that. i just realized it wasn't real, that's all. i knew there was a word for someone like me: atheist. it wasn't like "oh i think i'll be an atheist now."

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There are probably 1000 posts like this. Me, I lost my last grandparent in 2003. I prayed for her to come back, realized she was never coming back.

I was brought up in a very religious home and a the supernatural aspects of christianity were always referred to as absolute and mater of fact so often that you can't help but think its true.God does miracles, its just his thing so I guess damn near anything is possible. I remember coming to the realization at about 17 or so that one of the nicest , kindest, funniest and just straight up cool people i knew was not going to go to heaven, sadly he was going to burn in hell for all eternity because he didnt do the things that i had been taught you were supposed to do. I had my doubts before that but that was the pivitol moment .. at that point i realized that there was no way that could be true.. and if it indeed was I did not want any part of it... a God that would fry my friend was just too big of an asshat to deserve praise.

I am a nurse. Throughout career have seen a lot. I used to be believer but no longer do. I have questioned myself and religion a long time. The stories are just stories. I claim title of humanist. It is people that cause problems and people that can fix them.

Growing up my family was not religious. I was aware of Christianity, but in about fourth grade I heard there were other religions and figured they were all likely not true.

The stories show a complete disregard for the truth and have no evidence to support them. There may or may not be a God but one thing for sure it isnt the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu Gods. Buddism is more philosophy than a religion, as it teaches enlightenment.

Once I realized religion had distinct functions for members of society it made me realize that religion was created from within people's brains and was not an outside force of supernatural influence. It is a social contruct. So it took some university classes in sociology and in anthropology to get that 'ah ha' moment. That was in the early 80's.

The whole Moses story is just as untrue as the Jesus story. In all likelihood neither of them every existed. There were never any Jewish slaves in Egypt and there is no record of any Jewish uprising in Roman occupied Israel. No historical evidence at all, and especially in the case of Jesus, where their is claimed to be direct contact with Roman forces, it's clear that it never happened because the Romans kept fastidious records (we've found sales receipts for lumber deliveries carved into stone tablets, for instance) and none mention anyone named Joshua, Jesus, Emmanuel, Yeshua, or Christ or any other name attributed to Jesus. We have, however, found documentation that would suggest that the Jesus myth was started by the Romans 300 years after his supposed death as a Urban myth meant to destabilize the Jewish religion and give Romans a better foothold in the region during the reign of Constantine I.

Learning a lot about the history of the early church and studying geology.

I am using brain, so it's much more likely that (there) isn't Orthodox Supreme and Angels and all that stuff.

Growing up, my parents took me to church. I never felt any affinity, connection or sense of belonging there. Not to any part or person. Then, when I was about 7 or 8, on one of the Sundays before my First Holy Communion, the priest brought me and another boy to the front of the church. He asked us both if we could keep a secret. I said yes and the boy said no. The priest then gave him a little religious medal and told him to show everyone. Then he told us both to go back to our seats. I felt so empty, cheated and confused. I realized that's all church and religion ever made me feel, empty, cheated and confused.

Welcome to asylum. Enjoy your stay.

I can't say I ever had an "ah-ha moment".
I was born an atheist, and indoctrination didn't take.

There is not only no "proof" of any deities or the supernatural, there is no verifiable evidence, facts or data to support the claims of theists that any god(s) exist.

go to you tube and watch the experts ie, sam harris christopher hitchins richard dawkins and they will lead you to all other experts unfortunately we lost christopehr to cancer but there are loads of very learned men who will explain perfectly the reason not to be religious

Proponderance of very convincing physical evidence from different types of measurements ( carbon dating, tree rings, fossils, math exc..) that give explanations for the reasons we got here and prove the religious explanations wrong.

My a-ha moment was when I was 16 or so and my mom told me a gay friend was going to hell. It was too inconsistent with the person being kind and friendly. I stayed a nominal Christian for many years after, but that was the first crack in the foundation.