Only in the last year, so at age 58. I was born into an family of nominal Anglicans. My parents believed in God and in the historical person of christ but it made no impact on their lives. I became a Christian in my late teens and studied theology. I lost my faith after severe abuse at the hands of other believers and an adult lifetime of observing christians behaving appallingly. I found unbelievers to to be more honest and caring.

A lifelong skeptic, I never believed in an invisible god. At age five, when I was forced to go to Sunday school, I inwardly scoffed at ridiculous Bible stories.

"Mom, I decided I'm an atheist," I said at 13. "I don't want to go to church anymore."

"That's fine, honey," she replied. "What do you want for dinner?"

20 years later, Mom said she became an atheist in nursing school. "I realized a woman cannot be turned into salt," she said dryly and laughed.

I was 50. Born into a Jehovah's Witness family and was indoctrinated from youth up. Started having doubts when I went to college and learned more about science and math. I loved it, but pigeon-holed away my doubts for the next 30 years until I really came back to science and how the bible was just nonsense.

I stopped going to church at the age of 18; was a full fledged agnostic by the age of 22; and an atheist by the age of 26.

It was a long slow process, started at age 20, finished at age 30.

I was brainwashed from childhood to be a Moron (oops, Mormon). I abandoned Moronism (oops, Mormonism) at age 28, when I discovered that the founding "prophet," Joseph Smith, was a false prophet. I explored other Xian religions after leaving Moronism, but discovered that the biblical "prophets" were also false prophets, and that the bible was full of contradictions and non-historical myths. At that point, at age 34, I became an atheist. Free at last!

45 - It was a difficult time for a number of reasons. Religion got caught in the middle because it didn't fit with what was happening. I was a Mormon and people I knew who were not Mormon showed more compassion and caring than did Mormon family members. I will never forget telling a Bishop that non-Mormon people I knew just seemed to be better people overall and he agreed with me.

44
I finally realized, science makes sense. Religion does not.
I was born in 55, realized reality in 1999, at the age of 44.

It was a process between 17 and 27 years old.

I left my church at 15, but still believed. All belief fell away quite suddenly at 23.

I was in church several times a week. Choir practice, bell choir, bible study, Sunday school, services. When I was 13, I read my first "grown up" book. "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert A. Heinlein. It made me realize that there were more than a few options & beliefs. I began to see the hypocrisy of the people in my very small town. Being assholes & drunks during the week, then showing up in their Sunday best to pay god to forgive them. I really started questioning the Pastor, Sunday school teachers, bible study leaders about parts of the bible. Their answers were not satisfactory. When I was around 14 or 15, I went to a tent revival with my bible study group. What a fucking circus! It was there my own hypocrisy hit me. I didn't believe in that shit. It just made no sense to me. I never went back.

I had doubts since the age of 8 but the ignorance of childhood coupled with the fear of burning in hell forever made me fairly religious until I 18-19, although at the time I still wouldn't admit to it, even to myself. I was 25 when I realized it was all bullshit and was finally honest with myself that I was an atheist. Some habits die hard though, and I still find that use "God forbid" or similar expressions in everyday speech.

My process started at 17. Reason: science. Little church going, or thought put into religion for the next few years. Final step at 22. Reason: I started going back to church and thinking deeply about what I was being told.

When I was young I was taught to respect my elders and believe without question what I was told. Unfortunately this was applied across the board. Once I was out of school and on my own I began to see that most adults really don't have that many more clues than do kids. And many with some clues don't know how to, or don't make the effort to, interpret them correctly. Only then did I fully realize that you can never take for granted that which you are told by those that are in positions of authority (not only preachers, but also teachers, doctors, politicians, bosses, etc.). Since then I've read extensively about religions, and have found nothing to lend credence to any of them.

I remember thinking. "This is bullshit" at about age 8 or 9, but I didn't formally reject it until age 12 when I announced my beliefs that it was all nonsense to my parents.

I abandoned the religion I grew up in as soon as I went off to college. But I didn't abandon all forms of religiosity (including new age "spiritual" nonsense) until age 59! A formal religion is,IMO, relatively easy to shake. Which is why the "nones" are increasing. But the "nones" are not necessarily, and not even mostly, nonreligious. That's because it's much more of a process to shake off all forms of religious type thinking than merely abandoning a specific religion.

In my mind about 20 years ago. Officially I knew there were no gods at all by 2012. What I find strange is that people think I need a god as my life gets nearer to its end. (This is how religion works.) Sorry, folks. I cannot pretend and there is nothing to go back to.

159

24. The questions leading me down a path contrary to all I'd been taught began near the end of my undergrad years, and the decision was set in stone by the turn of the millennium.

I think we were all brainwashed to believe starting at birth. I was about sixteen before I really started to doubt the nonsense.

I left organized religion in my late twenties. I became an atheist by my early forties.

Church (southern Baptist) was my life in highschool. All my friends were through church, went to church summer camp, etc. I was always curious and would ask a lot of questions in church. I even went to a Christian college.

At college I knew something was off and ended up transferring to a regular state college. It was until after college at around 22 or 23 that I started really inspecting what I knew and why. With the help of the "four horseman"s books and YouTube videos, I eventually admitted that I didn't believe in God anymore, bit it took time to get to that place.

My family and a lot of my friends still believe so I'm kind of a loner a lot of the time now. (Currently 33 years old).

Twenty years old while studying Aboriginal culture at the University of South Australia. I just couldn't wrap my head around how these people were expected to "accept Jesus Christ into their hearts as their personal Lord and Savior."

I'm 46 years old now.

I didn't believe in the Bible at 7 but didn't stop going to church for 25 more years. What a waste.

Became increasingly certain the year before high school, but looking back i can't see that i ever saw it as anything but ritual with which i was forced to comply.
Being brought up in the Latin mass era of catholicism, (altar boy), the absurdity and banality of the ceremonial rites was strongly inculcated before any concept or understanding of a divine being was instilled.
Thus i never "lost the faith" or abandoned the god concept, (despite what the priests told my despairing parents), i just never hooked on to the scam in the first place, mostly through being a poor student.

I went to Catholic school until second grade. They drilled us on religion. Mass twice a week and Bible study I think every day. When we got to Mentor, we were enrolled in public school, but my mother sent us to PSR. I think that's where it started. The PSR teacher would tell us stuff and we would contradict her because even at our ages, we knew the Bible better. I think that initial discordance and questioning set something off. Within a few years I was so disinterested in mass I would spend the hour counting the lights or ceiling panels. It took several more years for my mother to let us stop going. For years I never gave it much thought, never prayed, never practiced in any way. It wasn't until my second year of college when my Anatomy & Physiology professor taught a lesson that ended, "So some day, I'm going to be walking down the street and I'm going to see you at a protest. I'm not going to care what side of the street you're on, but when I walk up to you and ask you why, you better be able to tell me or I'm going to march my 120 year old ass back up here and change your grade." And then the epiphany: I SHOULD have a good reason for every single thing that I think can do. So I began to examine everything to make sure I had reason to believe it, and God and religion was easily tossed in the trash. Instead of it not occupying any of my thoughts, I became a staunch disbeliever. It was around then that I began to debate religion and philosophy online and honed how I defined my beliefs... which now stands at Agnostic Atheist.