This my story.

I was raised in a catholic household by my parents. My parents were never that religious but took me to church and I took my first communion. Luckily, my parents got me an astronomy book when I turned 7. This book showed the vastness of our universe and the Big Bang theory for kids. I always read the nonfiction aisle in the libraries. Slowly I connected similar topics. God or I don't know? I picked the I don't know choice. I began peeling away at prayers at church and realized how foolish it was to me. I began researching atheism and here I am in middle school, commenting on an atheist community, being a freethinker.

That's my story.

Why am I an atheist? Because gawd made me that way ya big silly.

Who knows? Maybe it's because I'm not satisfied with the popularly accepted answers to the larger questions about life. Maybe I'm not biologically predisposed to faith healing. Why are people who they are? One thing's for sure, asking them isn't going to fetch any definitive answers. Why? Because people make stuff up as they go. It's not like that's happened before, right?

Some of it is a certain predisposition of one's tendency to trust or distrust, some of it is weighted by environment - society and culture, some of it is by examining the evidence lying in facts.

For me, I know man will lie, cheat, steal and generally use his fellow man for his own ends. Making stuff up to create for himself a properly orchestrated scam is much more palpable than some pie-in-the-sky, cockamamie story about powerful ghosts selling eternal seats to some favorite afterlife scenario in trade for a mere human life span of part-time praise, worshiping and goody two-shoeing.

I was raising in devout Muslim family, since i was young i was bad at praying and memorizing Koran the teachers of madarasa used to beat me. I remember when exhausted from hunger i used to break my fasting and i could no longer hold on. when i started university i met different people from different countries different believes. and i asked why is it difficult that people can't figure out the right religion.one word that despised me was calling non muslims (kaafir) infedels. by age of 23 i started to think free and concluded that religion is just man-made political sort freak of philosophy to control and benefit from gullible masses.

I was born a Southern Baptist and grew up going to a tiny little church around the block. I did truly believe for a time, even quite zealous at times actually. I tried reading the Bible at a young age, but the required KJV of the bible made hard on my 8 year old self's patience. I never really enjoyed church. To me it was just a place where old people went to be nice (went to my grandparent's church) and eat and listen to an angry man scream of the world's wickedness from where I sat in the small Sunday school room.

Although my parents and grandparents went to church every Sunday, they were never opressingly or even overtly religiously motivated. They believe, even passionately so, but were considered less devoted. I grew to hate Sunday mornings, and the whole pretense of organized religion shattered (though I was still Christian). I stopped going to church at 12, and religion was shoved out of my mind.

My religious doubt and questioning grew when I was 14 simply from studying world history, and I became what might be called agnostic theism and a sort of nominal Christianity. I didn't claim to know, but I would call myself Christian and choose not to believe that one of my best friend (an atheist) and his parents was eternally damned. Evolution and the big bang made much more sense than God, and there was no reason to believe Christianity made anyone morally superior.

At 15 I had my first two girlfriends, and both times I was with them I went to their church and pretended to be an orthodox Christian. My mom felt I was using the church as way to hang out with girls. I realized she was right.

A few events happened between 15-16 which challenged whatever faith I had left. My grandfather died, my mom grew ill, and my family got loaded in financial trouble, which made me very poor. My step dad and I got into fights and me my mom moved into one of her friend's house. I dwelled on death a lot and figured there was probably no afterlife, no soul. This terrified me and I clung to God in one last moment. My last genuine prayer "God please exist!" Then I finally realized that God, no gods exist, and I told my mom and my girlfriend, the former disliked, called me a liar, and then begrudgingly accepted. The latter said nothing of it, but dumped me a few days later.

At 16 my atheism was rather weak and infantile, but as part of my quest to accept the souless condition, I watched religious debates and read New Atheist books. I became rather avid and zealous by the time I turned 17. It has cost me a girlfriend (unbeknownst to be the daughter of extreme religious fundamentalists, I pity her honestly) but has also strengthened bonds with nontheist that I helped convince out of their weak theism into agnosticism or atheism, but also with philosophically minded christian friends, at the cost of harming relationships with friends who were dogmatically, unshakeably Christian.

Now I have mellowed a bit in my zeal, but I still hold my humanist values close to me and don't see any reason as of yet to suppose there is anything supernatural, which is, after all, the best reason to disbelieve in gods.

Leaving religion is a very personal experience, as well as denying God's existence. People speak of their reasons for believing in God as a personal connection. This personal element in belief cannot be denied, even though atheists are more inclined to appreciate logical appeals, religious people often don't, so we can't ignore the very personal reasons people find their way to atheism or humanism. I enjoyed sharing

Why did I become an atheist?

The catalyst to me becoming an atheist was the concern expressed by my devout sister-in-law (“Cindy”) regarding my spiritual welfare. My wife comes from a very religious family, though she and I have not been church attendees for over 15 years. Last summer, Cindy asked my wife why we did not go to church, “It’s important.” she said. My wife responded to the effect that I was having issues with God. “Well, he can research it,” Cindy said. When my wife related this conversation to me, I thought, “She’s right. After a lifetime as a scientist, I can do some background research.” So I did.

Let’s first go back over 50 years to the tiny village in England where I was born and subsequently went to church with my family and to school where Christian religious stories were taught. About this time I also started my lifetime journey as a scientist. I accepted the biblical stories, God the Creator, the Virgin Birth of Jesus, his crucifixion and subsequent resurrection, though they never made sense to me. My logical science and illogical religious beliefs existed side by side, but compartmentalized in my brain. And that is the way that I lived my life for another 40 years or so. There were times when my wife and I regularly attended church and were quite active in it, though I never had a “born again” epiphany. There was always that feeling that religion just did not make sense.

When a new molecule is synthesized or discovered, as scientists we use a number of different analytic methods to probe its composition, structure and function. I theorized, naively, that I could take a similar approach to try to understand God. I made the assumption that if God existed, it would be the same one for all religions. Therefore by studying how different religions worldwide viewed God, the insights gained would illuminate the essence of God. Alas, after three months of study, I was no closer to that elusive goal. What I did discern was that the interpretation of God by the different religions was a strong reflection of the current culture in the corresponding part of the world.

Fast forward to last summer. In response to Cindy’s suggestion, I started my research with “Scientific evidence for the existence of God.” The results were abysmal. The arguments were of the generic type, “I don’t understand how evolution could have created something as complex as a human eye, therefore God must have created it.” There were logical non-sequiturs in the arguments that invalidated them. I moved on to “Arguments for the non-existence of God.” I found the Atheist Republic. The more I read, the more these arguments and rational thoughts made sense, something that the core tenets of Christianity never did. The clincher was delving into the deep history of Yahweh/Jehovah/God/Allah. This was one of a number of minor warrior gods who was later elevated by his followers to omnipotence, omniscience, etc. Yahweh was a human invention.

The results of my research were tumbling around in my brain. Then one day I thought, “I am not a believer, I am an atheist. There is no God, no Devil, no Heaven, no Hell; the Bible is just another book. You have one live to live, so live it with joy to the fullest extent.” That realization was a moment of supreme liberation. Suddenly, things made sense. The conflict in my mind between science and religion was obliterated.

“Thank you, Cindy.” For the rest of my life, I will be grateful that you urged me to “research it.”

I think I started swaying towards atheism when I was around six. All the past christians in this thread can agree with me that Catechism/Church School/ or as I liked to call it "Nap time" was by far the most annoying and boring time of our lives. Having to wake up extra early to go to a class where they basically cherry pick "good" verses in the bible to fool us into thinking that God was amazing AND to also have the Ten Commandments drilled into your head for the "Theology Exam" you needed to pass in order to get communion was pretty fricken dumb. But besides all of that, I did listen a couple of times about these people and their so called "Savior" and I gotta tell you... Ash from Pokemon was a whole lot more interesting than this guy named Jesus. I found that Catechism classes were too much of a hassle for a kid, shoot I'm sure it was a hassle for every kid in that damn class. Why on Earth would you force kids who can barely tie their shoes, and force them to understand Jesus and the Holy Trinity? That was my first whiff of Indoctrination. This is where I became an Atheist for the first time, just for the convenience of it really. However being only six at the time, my mind was east to manipulate so when my mom told me that "Jesus love you and everything about you" I couldn't argue against that... I mean shoot it was my mom! She HAS to know the truth *sarcasm* So after a few months of skipping church school and playing on the playground instead, I was indoctrinated by my mom and put back into those forsaken classes. But this although effective, was not the end of my young skepticism.

We all know how kids love asking questions when their young, and I for one am all for that. May be annoying the first couple of times, but hey I feel pretty smart teaching them about the universe. Back to the story, it seemed like every chance I got, I would ask my mom or dad about catholicism. I would say things like "If Jesus got rid of all the sin of the world... Then why are there people still sinning?" And "Why would God send his son to take away our sin? Couldn't he have done that himseld?" You know... Basic stuff like that. Though it seemed that my parents were having none of that and told me to be quiet and let God into my heart. In other words, "I have no idea". So when my questions went unanswered I pretty much gave uo again and reverted back to being an atheist. Cause why not? I'm around nine years old when I do this again so I've reached the "Age of Reason". Pretty soon I would be questioning God towards my Catechism teacher who would always lead me to more confusion with obscure bible verses that was supposidly "evidence". This pretty much solidifed my lack of belief in a God and I would remain unchange for quite a long time.

Another reason as to why I left my religion was around the time I became a teenager. Like right when puberty set in. Puberty hit me fast and hard, by the time I got to sixth grade I had grown pimples all over my face and weighed around 200 pounds. I was basically a gigantic ball of puss, pleasent isnt it? Well this led me to feel extremely self conscious and lonely at times since I was constantly being bullied everytime I went to school. This in turn made me question God even more, I had been juggling the thought of there being a God or not before but now was further proof as to why I shouldn't believe in such a myth. I would try prayer each night and ask God to protect me from being made fun it, in which the next morning it looked like God forgot my prayer. So I was left with an Ultimadum, could it be that this was a journey God was sending me on to further enrich my love for him? Or was this simply a result of puberty skewing up teenagers sense of morality due to hormonal changes? I went with the logical desicion. In no way would a God had made me go through that. I like to think God as an abusive boyfriend and the worshiper as the victim.

God: "FUCK YOU I'm going to make you Miscarry your baby!"
Worshiper:"It is Gods will!"
Pretty fucked up relationship right? In the end after fighting depression and eventually beating it without the help of a God. I started high school losing weight and improving my social life. I'm a junior now and have a fantastic atheist girlfriend. Though I go to a catholic school, I still do what my inner child did before and question everything that is taught to me in that school. In a way it's helping me realize how much religion is pointless. Thanks for reading this if you did lol.

I reckon I've been atheist all my life (I'm now 62 years old), but didn't really experience any stirrings of disbelief until about age 12, and even then I wasn't familiar with the concept of being atheist.

I was raised in a mildly Presbyterian household, being sent to Sunday School and Church each week, until, around 50 years ago, I informed my parents that I no longer wanted to attend. They weren't regular attenders themselves, so they didn't cause any fuss, telling me not to go any longer if that's what I wanted.

My reasoning back then was along the somewhat simple lines of, "Well, where did God come from? Who made him?". During the intervening years, the more I have read of the Bible and other written works by fellow disbelievers who have a much deeper knowledge of the Bible than I will ever have, the stronger my disbelief has become. One volume in particular which helped to formalise my views is "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Now this work is by no means perfect, although I'd have to re-read it before I could highlight what I see as its flaws. However, it does manage to articulate some of the thoughts and feelings that were swirling around my young head all those years ago.

More recently, "Godless" by Dan Barker has been a very interesting and informative book.

To sum up, something Eddie Izzard said (I think? Quite possibly others have said something similar also) struck me as a good summation of how we can all coexist without the need for a God : "If we all live our lives adhering to the so called Golden Rule of not doing stuff to others that we wouldn't want done to ourselves, then there's no need for any Gods, religions or Commandments."

Well, that's about it,
Alan (My real name)