What Religion, If Any, Were You Before You Became An Atheist?

[Tracyt90]

I'm just curious as to what religion everyone was before becoming an atheist, and what was it about your religion, or about your beliefs or therefore lack of that led you into atheism?

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I was never really a full pledged member of any religion, but I was for a few years in my adolescence, into Wicca, I learned a lot and practice the religion as a "hedgewitch", but I started to realize that you can have all the faith in the world and it still doesn't matter. I started to detach myself from Wicca and from the notion that religion is a necessary component to life.

[jason56]

Relaxed Catholic (Irish Mother).

Never really thought about religion until I was 23 (now 35). My boss at the time was a Turkish fella who fled Turkey to England when he was young, for political reasons. He was firmly against religion and forced me to question it.

Never looked back. He was right.

[mamamia88]

Roman Catholic. I had to attend and pretend to care for a long time. don't know if i ever believed. Liz Hurley did more to convince me hell was real then they ever did

[Minimalist]

Catholic....probably why I despise the bastards even more than protestant fucktards.

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

I attended the Mormon Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) with the rest of my family early in my childhood for the same reason every child attends anything - because my parents told me I had to go so I went. I eventually figured out how to get out of going because I never honestly felt like I had any reason to want to be there. Eventually, I figured out why and I became the person I am now, religiously ever since.
This would have been when I was about ten or eleven, give or take. I didn't tell anyone until years later but the reception of that news went rather well and none of my relationships or friendships changed. My friends, as I've discovered, have a similar outlook and are either atheists themselves or agnostic, which didn't surprise me given that I've known them for years, but it was interesting that I had gravitated to these people and only found out after.
When my mother remarried she began to attend a methodist church with my new step-father, so my immediate family is no longer Mormon but certain aunts, cousins, and grandparents still attend.

[Welsh cake]

This is a difficult question for me to answer philosophically, because my deconversion process was rather long drawn out when I think about it.

Before I became an atheist, I was a deist long before I acknowledged that critical change of position in my core beliefs, I was irreligious. I was pious in the sense that I still believed in a god, and it had relevancy in my life to some extent but was aberrant to the 'denominable' Christian orthodoxy in that could not care for the fiasco of getting up early on one day out of seven that was supposed to be my one-day off to worship a god I recognised, or simulated in my mind at least, as a 'superior being' would not care for or even want our devotion, and by worship I mean stand up, sit down, and kneel when told to by Emperor Palpatine.

[Dotard]

Christian

[orogenicman]

I was an atheist before I was anything else. So I just returned to my roots.

[OnlyNatural]

I was raised non-religious. In my teens I became a Christian, because I was depressed and lonely and the whole idea was comforting at the time. It seemed like an easy solution to my problems: go to church, pray, listen to the platitudes of other religious people, remember that God loves you, etc. Then I went into a dangerously deep depression that lasted for years and years. My Christian friends turned their backs. I fucking prayed endlessly for God to take the pain away. Near the end, I finally realized that no one was listening.

Going to university finally put the nail in my religious coffin. Any lingering faith I had quickly deteriorated and died. I got help for the depression, from real live people and real medical treatments, and finally got better. I learned more about the world, steadily felt healthier and happier, and here I am today, a strong and satisfied atheist.

God won't solve your problems, because he doesn't exist. And belief in him is a pretty shitty placebo, from my experience, because of all the guilt that comes with it. Atheism is freedom for the mind, and much more conducive to sanity.

[muhtesem insan]

I was a semi-muslim between 8 and 14