I was about 10. I was in a Catholic school, and a priest came to discuss 'spirituality'. I asked if my kitty would be in heaven with me, and he said NO. That is when I became an atheist. I was basically friendless, except for my kitty, and without her I wanted nothing to do with heaven,
I finished up in that school, with my hands about raw from sister superior slapping my palms with a ruler!
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I was about 16 or 17. Looking around at the people around me and I realized I was just like them. Bigoted, know it all, playing the "Who is more pious than me game," looking for ways God intervened in my life to make me special, and witnessing to whoever would listen. It was all a big sham and I knew it. Every Church in town was doing the exact same thing to keep its membership up. Churches were just businesses selling false hope and fables to the ignorant.
"Churches were just businesses selling false hope and fables to the ignorant."
For a price...praise the lord and pass the basket!
I was zero.
I was born an atheist, and I'm proud to say that I farted in the font when the vicar poured the water on my head. I was briefly indoctrinated in Xtian nonsense at school in England, but finally recovered my sanity and freedom at the age of about 13 in New Zealand. I'm always amazed that adults take religion seriously.
Dang-it, Algebe and Cyber. You beat me to it. Yeah, I was zero. But over the years between then and maybe my late thirties I had Christianity (Baptist/Methodist) shoveled into me. Took me a few years to puke it all up out of my system, but I have been making a splendid recovery these past couple of years.
You are correct, we are all born atheists..it's the adults who try to ruin our lives!
Always been an atheist, realized I was an atheist when I looked up the word "god" (Thought I was agnostic before.) That happened around 16.
I had a choice...to sit next to the right hand of god without my kitty or not believe he existed. I chose the later.
I was never either or.
@Kathy Re: Kitty
Yeah. Exactly. How can they expect you to be happy in heaven if you cannot have your kitty with you? I know I would be totally bummed if I couldn't have my two pups with me.
Edit punctuation. I'm really pooped tonight. Last few days have been exhausting.
@Kathy
All our dogs, cats, budgerigars and tortoises went to heaven (some said a separate animal heaven), except for one really bad dog who went to live on a farm.
I wonder why parents feel the need to deceive their children with fairy stories. I knew what death was. As a child, I saw dead birds and fish, and even a dead person (an unwrapped Egyptian mummy in the British Museum). And when I was eight, a old neighbor lady gave me a couple of shillings to take her cat on a one-way trip to the vet.
Your love for your cat was real, you got to hold your cat, and spend every day with your cat, and your loss was real. Easy decision to make to love your cat then to love a "god" that you never met and there was zero proof for.
I was about 10, Kathy, when I too learned that my church said no animals went to heaven. It didnt stop me believing but it was the first serious rift between me and religion. What sort of heaven doesnt allow animals and pets? Anyway they lost me somewhere between 30 and 40 over other issues..they had deep tendrils in me.
I never believed the religious stories that my parents were telling me. But at school they scared us off using the idea of "hell" so I believed just to save myself from hell. Then when I was 17 I had to think about that again because I felt already in hell when they made me follow strict and injustic rules that were made only for women.
(In my opinion all religions are the same but I'm talking about Islam)
I never was not an atheist. Although I was forced to go to church between 6 to 13 years, I never believed any of that religious bullshit. It never made any kind of cognitive sense to me. The first Sermon I ever heard was about that Original Sin Ideology. Even at the age of six (actually was 5y 9m), my thought to the preacher was, "Are you really that stupid?"
Imagine that, my very first thought about religion was "stupid." Although I was forced into becoming saved and a believer, I still had enough intelligence to actually not become one of them.
In actuality, whenever I think of the Absolutists, I also think of the Borg, "Resistance is futile."
rmfr
When I was little I went to Catholic school, but I don't know if I've ever actually been one. Ever since I was little I've been obsessed with prehistoric life and later (in a lesser degree) with astronomy. As I kept learning more and more about it and as I got older I realized none of those Christian stories made any sense.
I think I was 12 when I decided to not view myself as Christian anymore, only go to a church if absolutely necessary (for funerals or weddings) and if I do never go get their communion cracker.
Compared to a lot of people here I'm lucky to be born in a country like Belgium, where religion isn't strict or anything and the majority of people don't care what others believe.
I actually kept going to Catholic school until the age of 19, but more because of certain study directions I wanted to follow just happened to be given at a catholic school nearby. By then they didn't try to brainwash us anymore during religion class and it was more about morals and the lot than actual bible stuff, so it wasn't that bad.
I was an atheist until I went to Kentucky to visit Ken Hamm's place where I could see how dinosaurs lived with man and the replica of Noah's Ark that proved the flood.
Oh wait, wrong question....
Don't know if I can actually pin point a time. I don't think I ever really believed the crap they were pushing, but the prospect of eternal hell did scare the shit out of me as a child. Definitely by the time I left for college at 18 I was a non-believer, but I just sort of left it at that and didn't think about it much.
"sister superior slapping my palms with a ruler!"
strictly barbaric....i know this kind people and doing when i was an altar boy before....
very delusional and easily offended nuns..superstitious and very rude...
About 15. It's been a good 3 years of self discovery now that I don't have to apologize for who I am. If anything, I feel free. Free to be me, think what I want, love who I want, learn what I want, pursue my own goals. I'm no longer the clay mold my pastor and my extended family wanted me to be. After all, the young mind is like quicksilver in the hand. Clutch it, and it darts away. Religion clutched too tightly on me, and lost me along the way.
My daughter is a born atheist. When she was about 4 she handed me a book on the French Revolution with a picture of a man being led to the Guillotine. "Here Mommy, you will like this book. It is about religion." I read the book because she had recommended it and was terrified about what her concept of religion is.
I think my son believes in coffee and donuts and helping people.
I have always believed in God.
Reading the comments above, I thought of the following. I heard about a psychological study that found out that sociopaths do horrible and sadistic things to people because they have no fear. A lot of the 'religious' people you seem to be describing appear to believe that atheists are evil sociopaths because they have no power that they fear.
I find the concept that so many people's concept of God and morality seem motivated purely by fear truly terrifying. My concept of God was always to try to do the most good I could for as many people as possible with every fiber of my being because we are all connected. The pain that you feel is my pain as well.
I left the Church when all I could see were sadists trying to create as much misery as possible.
Wow. I was about 7 when the family dog died and my Roman-Catholic father told me that dogs don't have souls, only people do. So I decided if it wasn't good enough for my dog then it wasn't good enough for me either.