I'll just copy and paste something I've said before, in the most condensed state I could find. I've shared this more than a couple of times:
Reading the Bible cover-to-cover twice got me started. Figuring out that one's beliefs ought to be justifiable helped. Growing skepticism (I believed all kinds of crazy stuff, God was the last of those I gave up, not the first, I just couldn't keep giving the God idea a free pass), I realized how much you want something to be true has no relationship to whether it actually is true, I started valuing truth over comfort, I learned there are naturalistic explanations for the origin of the universe, and I learned about logical fallacies and burden of proof. My religion professor wouldn't cover atheism for a reason that I realized was fallacious, so I did my own research. So about 15 years after my 2nd reading of the Bible, I realized one day that I'd become an atheist, though I can't tell you exactly when I stopped believing. I just know that one day I checked the contents of my brain and realized the sort of tenuous, 'I want to be open-minded and know I can't prove God isn't real' space for the God idea I had been maintaining had disappeared entirely so I no longer had even the faintest concern that God might be real left.
Reading the Bible cover-to-cover twice got me started. Figuring out that one's beliefs ought to be justifiable helped. Growing skepticism (I believed all kinds of crazy stuff, God was the last of those I gave up, not the first, I just couldn't keep giving the God idea a free pass), I realized how much you want something to be true has no relationship to whether it actually is true, I started valuing truth over comfort, I learned there are naturalistic explanations for the origin of the universe, and I learned about logical fallacies and burden of proof. My religion professor wouldn't cover atheism for a reason that I realized was fallacious, so I did my own research. So about 15 years after my 2nd reading of the Bible, I realized one day that I'd become an atheist, though I can't tell you exactly when I stopped believing. I just know that one day I checked the contents of my brain and realized the sort of tenuous, 'I want to be open-minded and know I can't prove God isn't real' space for the God idea I had been maintaining had disappeared entirely so I no longer had even the faintest concern that God might be real left.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.