What made you an atheist?

[Minimalist]

Close observation of the sanctimonious cunts who walk around with 'god' on their lips all the time.

Some clubs you just don't want to be a member of.

[Joods]

Having the common sense to know better than to believe all the bullshit after so many years of praying and praying and nothing happening in my life that would end the torment of the abuse I dealt with (and still, to an extent deal with).

Some like to say I'm angry at god. They are wrong. It's impossible to be angry at something that doesn't exist.

[zebo-the-fat]

I was born an atheist, like everyone else. The "teachings" of the church always seemed vague and rather silly, when I reached the age to ask "difficult" questions I realised the no one had any satisfactory answers.

[brewer]

Religion and it's hypocrisy.

[downbeatplumb]

What, if anything, made you an atheist?

I was born, grew up not believing in god, kept on going.

[Napoléon]

Rational thought.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

A German medical man named Victor made me an atheist.  He had a lot of help from his hunchbacked assistant, but most of the work was his.

Boru

[Foxaèr]

It was a long journey for me, but the start of it was the wonderful works of Robert Green Ingersoll.

[Time Traveler]

I was indoctrinated into Atheism from a very early age. My parents dragged me to youth programming on various days of the week (where we were taught that no day was particularly any more sacred than another). The Grand Leader would then stand behind his lectern and read from the Old Atheist Handbook, reading passages from John Stuart Mill, Ayn Rand, Bertrand Russell and the like. Then we would all hold hands and sing hymnals like, “There’s things I don’t know, and that’s okay!” and “Evolution, Evolution” and my favorite, “Imaginary beings aren’t real (No Baby, No).” Afterwards, the Grand Leader would read from the New Atheist Handbook, quoting Hitchens, Dennett, Harris and Lord Dawkins. We would then eat crackers and drink grape juice (because we were a very poor congregation, not because these things held any symbolic value), and then be set free into the world where it was our duty to go door-to-door handing out reason-pamphlets and spreading critical thinking.

Some say I was brainwashed, but I don’t think so.

[Simon Moon]

I am a natural born skeptic.

I had no problems rejecting claims of: alien abductions, Bigfoot, ghosts, homeopathy, dowsing, etc, etc., based on lack of demonstrable evidence and reasoned argument.

It hit me one day, that I was not examining my god beliefs with the same level of scrutiny as all those other supernatural claims. As soon as I did, almost immediately, my god beliefs just fell away.

It is my contention, that atheism is a natural outgrowth of skepticism, correctly applied to the god claim.