Don't know. It's hard for me to pinpoint for the simple reason that I never gave a shit. When I was a child, I was mildly afraid of what that guy named god could do to me and my loved ones. That's what I was told, not by my parents, but by priests and so called theologists.

For the longest time of my life I've been a deist with an I don't care attitude and wiccan insterests. My god concept was of a neutral being that didn't give a rats about what we are doing on mother earth. Which made much more sense to me than an omniscient, all powerful and judgmental god.

How long have I been an atheist? Well, probably a bit more than a decade, if you want to call my deist phase religious.

I don't really remember ever believing, but I do remember wondering why grown-ups believed at about 5.

6 or 7 - I've never been a believer.

I'm starting to feel like I was even more gullible than I thought, with people claiming they thought it was all bull at such young ages. Did you just not have authoritarian parents back then, or something?

I'm sure it depends on how hard indoctrination is pushed. In my case I never received any religious "education" from my parents so I was lucky there.

I stopped believing sometime midway through my junior year of high school.

(January 24, 2015 at 2:24 pm)robvalue Wrote: I'm sure it depends on how hard indoctrination is pushed. In my case I never received any religious "education" from my parents so I was lucky there.

I had to go to CCD once a week from second through eighth grade, but we never really learned anything. Looking back, maybe that was because there isn't much you can cover before you get to something grossly immoral. Ironically, I think that the fact they taught me so little artificially extended my theism. I was never a very avid believer, so I didn't really read the Bible much. Once I actually started thinking about religion, I almost immediately became agnostic, and soon after, atheist. If they had attempted to push religion on me more aggressively, it may very well have backfired (though if they had done so starting from a very young age, I don't know what might have resulted from it).

I always struggled with the fairy tales of Sunday school. I never believed these things actually happened. Even at my young age I suspected that children's stories are for children. I figured it was a way to make boring church more fun for kids with stories and coloring books.

In my 20's I looked around at being "spiritual". Mother earth and karma, this kind of belief. I was a faux hippy. I loved the style, but not the life style.
Karma was the hardest belief for me to let go of. I did truly believe that there was "something" that kept the balance of good and evil, outside of religion. "Things happen for a reason."

Someone did some very terrible things to me in my early 20's. This person murdered his wife, then killed himself, a couple of years later. This solidified karma for me.

I believed coincidence proved that there was something out there controlling it.

This changed for me about 5 years ago in my early 40's. I started analyzing things critically.

I'm sorry to hear you went through that Kitty

(January 24, 2015 at 2:20 pm)Chad32 Wrote: Did you just not have authoritarian parents back then, or something?

Looking back, I had the best parents I could wish for. My father owned two small shops selling spare parts for cars and was a mechanic by trade. He was fascinated by science and by the universe. His favorite shows on tv were indeed science shows and he encouraged and inspired me to be curious. My mother was a housewife as was usual in the 60ies and early 70ies. Both loved to travel and to broaden their horizon and both were mild catholics, who didn't do anything to indoctrinate me. Looking back I think they only went to church because all their friends did too. The only advice I got at home was to be good to others and to stay curious.

(January 24, 2015 at 2:20 pm)Chad32 Wrote: I'm starting to feel like I was even more gullible than I thought, with people claiming they thought it was all bull at such young ages. Did you just not have authoritarian parents back then, or something?

Nope. I went to Sunday school when I lived with my mom so she could nurse her hangover uninterrupted. lol

My grandparents went through the motions, basically said believe in God and you will go to heaven. Try to be a good person and you will go to heaven. Their thing was to believe they would see their friends and loved ones again. They were never big pushers of church.

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(January 24, 2015 at 2:48 pm)robvalue Wrote: I'm sorry to hear you went through that Kitty

Thank you, rob.