I was raised going mostly to conservative Baptist churches and was taught that everything in the Bible is the literal truth. Of course, not everyone agreed on what that literal truth was.

I left organized religion because I saw that church going Christians were no better than anyone else; and quite often were much worse--to include some of the preachers.

I always detested the idea of Hell and grappled with why the god of the OT seemed so different form the god of the NT. I reached a point where my head was full of all kinds of questions and doubts; and I finally allowed myself to investigate them. It was terrifying, but I could not stop myself. It was a little over a ten year journey from believer to atheist; and, it is a journey I am so happy to have made.

In my late 20's I decided to study my religion (Moronism) in detail, so I could convert my thinking friends. As it turned out, I discovered that the founding prophet of Moronism, Joseph Smith, made prophecies that did not come true. He was a false prophet. So, I asked the local church leader for help in sorting this out. As a result, I was excommunicated for apostasy. (Morons are supposed to listen to their leaders and blindly obey -- no thinking allowed.) This excommunication was the best thing the Morons ever did for me.

Then I went from one Xian church to another, looking for truth, but I also researched the Bible and discovered that the prophets therein were also false prophets. I also found many contradictions in the Bible, and stories that were scientifically unsound. So, I left religion altogether, proclaiming it to be a scam based on mythology. I could find no cogent evidence for the existence of gods, so I became an atheist.

I jumped when I finally came to the realization that most of what I was taught was a steaming crock of bullshit!
There was no emphasis on love and compassion.
The judgemental, hypocritic attitudes toward anyone who thought differently than the"so-called" church was crazy.

Today, I despise anything religious. I don't trust "so-called" Christians, Evangelicals or any of it's minions.
I particularly loathe the Pimps (preachers) who lead the blind.

I was never a fundamentalist so to speak. I was always a little skeptical, even at a young age. There are several instances that made me realize religion was nonsense. There’s one that sticks out purely because it ruined a friendship with someone whom I considered my best friend.

My friend was involved in a pretty horrific car accident when I was 17. He struck a logging truck head on while they were both traveling about 55 miles per hour. He survived but was unconscious in ICU for about three months. After he was finally released, the church goers at our high school pretty much convinced him that God had saved him. Funny how God could have just not let him hit that logging truck in the first place... Anyway, we were having a party one weekend. We saw my friends car pulling into the driveway, but it was being followed by a van. Turned out to be a church van loaded with people from school who were on a crusade to save us delinquent kids from the sin of partying. We had been drinking all night and it was around 4am. They pretty much swarmed our party. I had one girl literally trying to grab my hands to “pray” with me and she was extremely persistent about it. After I got away from her, I went to found my friend and asked him why he brought all these people. He started talking about sin and all that bullshit, then immediately wanted me to come to church the next day. I didn’t want to be rude. I had just spent the last several months sitting beside him in ICU, thinking he was going to die any minute. My response was, “Look, man. If by some chance I am awake, and sober at 8am, I will go with you.” I knew that wasn’t a possibility since I didn’t get home until around 7am to pass out drunk in my bed. Next thing I know, I’m hearing my name and being shaken awake. It was my friend, and one of the church girls from earlier. He had used the hidden spare key to come into my house, and take me to church. The conversation basically went like this:

“Dude, get up. You gotta go to church.”
“What? It’s like 8am. I’m still fucking drunk. How did you get in here?”
“Come on.”
“Sorry, man. There’s no way I can go. I told you if I were awake and sober. That clearly isn’t the case.”
“Come on, man” (He starts to pull the covers away from me at this point)
“I’m not going. I’m going back to sleep. You and your friend go and have fun.”
“You gotta go to church”
“I don’t have to do a goddamn thing. I think you and your friend should go.”

They both start to physically try to grab me and pull me out of the bed.

“Come on.”
“Dude. Get the fuck out of my house.”

They start trying to pull me out of the bed even more.

“What the fuck?! Get out of my house! What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

I pulled myself away from them and ran out of my room to my parent’s room. They were already awake and about to come see what the yelling was. I pretty much burst in their bedroom and slammed the door behind me. I told them what was going on, and my mother got up to tell them she was about to call the police. My friend and the girl were already at my parent’s bedroom door when she opened it. They were coming in there to get me!

It took my stepfather and the threat of violence to get them to leave.

Anyway, that’s my summarized story.

I was a missionary!! Finally could not accept religion saying my gay friends were going to hell, and couldn't accept that one specific denomination of people in a particular place had THE only right take on god and religion. That is beyond absurd. And..... why do we think we need an answer to our questions. I believe it is ok to say we don't know.

Even at my most faithful I was never a fundamentalist.

It was a process.... I had doubts as a teenager- why would people who were good people but were of a different faith have to go hell? That made no sense for me, but I just brushed it off at the time. Then higher education played a part. Then my father's funeral. It was the typical "we'll see him again in a better place", after all of those years of hearing how you don't go to heaven unless you repent. He died in prison, convicted of molesting my great niece. He had molested my sister and me too. He denied it all, but hey, he's going to heaven! That didn't send me to the "other side" on its own, but it helped me see through the bullshit.

reading the Bible for myself

Ex 4 square evangelical.

Read the bible front to back. Couldn't believe it, read it again and haven't touched one since.

Born an intelligent skeptic. At age 5, Bible stories were too far-fetched to me. Like Grimm's Fairy Tales and Brer Rabbit. Just made-up stories.

Inwardly rolled my eyes in Bible school. Decided I was an atheist at age 13.

"That's fine, honey," my mother said. "I became an atheist in nursing school when I realized a woman could not be turned into salt." She laughed.

See my expression at age 5 in this photo with Santa? Barely controlled disdain.

To be 100% honest, I was never really aboard the ship of biblical bullshit, superstition, mythologies, arcane rituals, etc, though my 'mother' tried her damnedest to force me up the gangplank.
I started questioning all that garbage from around 8 years of age, found that it reeked worse than road-kill on a very hot summers day.

there were too many rats on the ship I was on... and I was NEVER a fundaMENTAList...

I grew up in an Evangelical setting. Around age 16, things just weren't adding up for me. I questioned others in the church and their answers did not satisfy. I moved away from being actively Christian, but could not choose one way or the other. I was stuck in the ingrained way of thinking that saying god/jesus dd not exist was not an option. It was like I never even thought about it being a possibility. (Kind of like what you don't know that you don't know).

Then one of those great coincidences of life occurred. I was at a used book sale and found "Holy Blood, Holy Grail: The Secret History of Christ. The Shocking Legacy of the Grail" by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. It was a tough read. Not because of the material but because the authors really did a lousy job of keeping your attention. I almost stopped reading several times. It also didn't help that the authors presented their case in such a way that they basically built their case from the ground up with small details first and then finally at the end brought it all together.

BUT when they finally did put it all together, it blew my mind. I suddenly saw that NOT believing in god/jesus was an option in life. It took a few more years to shed the "what if I am wrong" doubts.

So basically mine was a combination of personal situation coupled with with logic. Thank you for the question.

I think it was a combination of things. I developed some self-esteem and couldn't take the guilt trips anymore. Went to college and studied some science that wasn't religious propaganda. Couldn't stand how they were constantly hating on gay people. The preacher standing up in church and saying why you should vote for whatever crazy politician of the time just because he was religious. Mostly logic, science, and how they treated people.

My area was general fundies. OK. All fundies. I tried for twenty years and it never fit. I gave it up thirty years ago and am the better for it.

Not me Catholic

As I get older, it's becoming clearer that the only real history is to make others better than others. His or Her story. I will never know the real truth. Because I wasn't there.

I became a sun worshiper,
Why? Well, for one reason, I can see it, there's no question that it is real and that it is there. It gives the planet life. What more does one need?

Being told what to think and believe by pastors isn't as satisfying as developing my own understanding of the objective world. Pastors have their words. I have my hands.

I grew up in Roman Catholic sub-culture, Irish-Italian, it was great. But not great in inculcating complex belief systems. In Catholic schools through high school in the 70's, we were taught to doubt, to question. My doubting and questioning were not addressed adequately and I fell away.
Later, when I had a kid(and believer gf), I tried it again in evangelical mode.
End of the day, still didn't catch, and few years later threw it all over...
There you go... ... ...

I never joined this ship of fools equal to Santa Sleigh and Rudolph Red Bright Nose flying reindeer sailing the skies midnight December 24-25 sixty 2 years ago I was 5 years old pissed all the adults were telling me cruel lies like crucifixion and hellfire.....come on now alleged vaginal virgin birthing an alleged baby gawd in a dirty donkey stable rules the cosmos under a single Bethlehem star ????? I never ate candy eggs on dogshit lawns laid by boy easter bunnies either

This is a very good question, that I could spend hours discussing. I haven't been a member very long, and have sort of waited for this question or one similar to it to pop up.
    I was a member of two fundamentalist churches (not at the same time). The first one was a church in the mountains of Virginia. I was head of men's ministries there. The second was in the Houston area. I was not in leadership at this church, but prior to both of my associations with these churches, I was an ordained deacon, missionary, Sunday School teacher and original board member of a Mission organization that worked exclusively in the northwest of Haiti.
        While I was a member of the literalist, inerrant, fundamentalist, evangelical Baptist church, I found myself tripping my way through the Bible, often times reading many things that either didn't make sense, were contradictions, in error or inaccurate. When I asked questions, the answers were either very vague, or the ones answering them would carefully deflect my attention away from the question I asked by saying such things as "you're asking the wrong question", or " you're taking that out of context". When I said that there were contradictios in the Bible, they would immediately ask "where are they, can you show them to me"? This was, obviously, what I call a 'shock question' as it is very doubful that folks would make that statement and have a list of those verses or passages in his/her pocket.
            One of the inerrantists' biggest display of double-standard arrogance is when they speak of Darwinism. Things like "How can you tell a Darwinists is lying? Their lips are moving", or "You cannot talk to a Darwinist about evolution without first agreeing with everything they say. Then, and only then, can the conversation continue". Well, if you want to speak to an inerrantist, literalist Christian, you must first agree that the Bible is 100% inerrant, 100% true, and 100% accurate before your conversation about the Bible can continue. Evangelical, inerrant, fundamentalist, literalist Christian worship inerrancy to the highest degree, easily more than they worship Jesus Christ.
                I have begun putting all of the things that I interpreted as errors and contrdictions within the Bible down in writing, and I have walked away the church. If I ever go back, it will not be in a evangelical Baptist church. Too much politics and not enough caring about other people outside of their circle of influence.The Bible say to love your neighbor as yourself, not to love your neighbor as long as he/she thinks the way you do. 
                    Finally, there is this: If you tell me that you cannot do something because your God says you can't, that is fine. I will support your decision. However, if you tell that I cannot do something because your God says I can't, then you will have a fight on your hands. 
                        These are some of my observations. If an inerrantist tells you that the Bible is flawless and without error, they are lying. That is how I see it.

It was bible study. I was like any other believer until I studied too much bible and read it through a couple of times. Most people do not know that the book as we have it today came about some 300 plus years after Jesus and it was arranged to seem as if it all told one continuing story. This actually explains the contradictions. Nobody was giving you a "roadmap" and there was no god trying to tell you something.

What is a fundamentalist christian? Another chrostian sect?