I was raised Christian and went to church regularly, one that had stricter principles than many (No TV, some wore head coverings, met and worshiped at other peoples homes, sheltered from the world, large families, etc.). You generally weren't allowed to marry outside of the church and sex outside of marriage was an abomination. The pastor and members of the church knew each other and visited each other for religious reasons in many cases. I was even told the earth was 6000 years old and that evolution was bogus, and I was told that evolution tells us humans evolved from monkeys and I personally pictured a monkey turning into a human one day and knew that was absurd (misunderstandings can have a huge impact on your beliefs).
One day, I joined a chat app and was chatting with someone that happened to be a Muslim, I was sheltered from knowing much about other religions, so I had a very faint idea on what Islam even was. We talked about God and heaven and I was surprised on the similarity of our faith, we both believed in one God, heaven and hell as a destination, held to similar principles, etc. However, I found out later that Muslims were not saved in Christianity. I also figured out that Muslims believed that Christians are not saved either and will burn in hell. It started to get me thinking the abomination of all abominations in religion: What if my religion is mistaken? I thought about other religions too, and didn't find it inconceivable to think that maybe, just maybe I was born to the wrong religion. I mean, there are hundreds of religions in this world, and they are contradictory (can't all be objectively true). Christianity could very well be one of those false religions. I started to look into defense of Christianity and apologetics. I came across the God debate and atheism and was pretty threatened by the possibility that there is no God, but kept looking at the cases here, including the case for Islam. I critically examined my own faith through this long process. Eventually, after watching many debates (atheist-christian and christian-Muslim debates), I came to a conclusion that the case for atheism and naturalism is not as strong as it may seem and Christianity has a very powerful case, as opposed to some other religions. I remained in my faith and stopped looking into the religion and Christianity debate for a little while. So, Christianity won my scrutiny.
About a year later, I somehow got sucked back into the God and religion debate again and started considering atheism even more. I decided to push theism to even more criticism than before. I looked into the atheological case against theism. To my surprise, the mainstream atheists I watched before only went to a certain level of criticism, but there was a higher and more convincing level of criticism I wasn't familiar with. A good example of this would be the moral argument, I took it for granted the morality was objective, and thought most reasonable atheists would agree, but also thought without a God, objective morality was impossible, so atheists are deluding themselves. However, when I started joining forums, I heard people claim that they believed morality was subjective. I thought about it and found no reason to think morality was actually objective. Someone who claimed that morality was subjective had set up a thread on morality and not one person succeeded in demonstrating that morality was objective, it was an embarrassment for my view, I had no justification other than that I think God exists and therefore objective morality follows. Eventually, I looked at the criticism of arguments and found that the arguments for God I previously advocated for had collapsed before me, there was more to criticism of these arguments than I thought and found no good reason to conclude that God conclusively exists.
From that, Christianity was dead, you need God and Jesus for Christianity to be worthwhile, but there are no good reasons to accept God's existence and no convincing arguments, so why remain a Christian? Other religions have their claims, but they have had no impact on skeptical thinking and science. We got biological evolution, physics, natural explanations, etc. I also had read Bart Ehrman and heard about the lack of historical support for many parts of the bible, including the gospels. A better conclusion to make was that Jesus was a reformist leader that believed the world coming to a near end. Putting the bible into context removes what I previously thought to be biblical miracles. The rational conclusion here is that the bible and Jesus were nothing divine and special. I concluded that Atheism is the most rational position to take regarding religion. I would remain that way unless it can be successfully demonstrated that a deity defined by a theist exists. Atheism had won.
To this day, I remain interested in the God debate, and consider myself a critic of theism.
Note: I also have previously thought of atheists in the same way atheists think of religious people, that is, they are betraying their intellect in that specific area of belief. I thought of lacking a belief in God and naturalism as unreasonable and pure fantasy. To me, saying that God is a plain made up fairy tail was like saying that the world around me is pure generated thoughts by a lab scientist wiring a brain to think it is a person of its own.
One day, I joined a chat app and was chatting with someone that happened to be a Muslim, I was sheltered from knowing much about other religions, so I had a very faint idea on what Islam even was. We talked about God and heaven and I was surprised on the similarity of our faith, we both believed in one God, heaven and hell as a destination, held to similar principles, etc. However, I found out later that Muslims were not saved in Christianity. I also figured out that Muslims believed that Christians are not saved either and will burn in hell. It started to get me thinking the abomination of all abominations in religion: What if my religion is mistaken? I thought about other religions too, and didn't find it inconceivable to think that maybe, just maybe I was born to the wrong religion. I mean, there are hundreds of religions in this world, and they are contradictory (can't all be objectively true). Christianity could very well be one of those false religions. I started to look into defense of Christianity and apologetics. I came across the God debate and atheism and was pretty threatened by the possibility that there is no God, but kept looking at the cases here, including the case for Islam. I critically examined my own faith through this long process. Eventually, after watching many debates (atheist-christian and christian-Muslim debates), I came to a conclusion that the case for atheism and naturalism is not as strong as it may seem and Christianity has a very powerful case, as opposed to some other religions. I remained in my faith and stopped looking into the religion and Christianity debate for a little while. So, Christianity won my scrutiny.
About a year later, I somehow got sucked back into the God and religion debate again and started considering atheism even more. I decided to push theism to even more criticism than before. I looked into the atheological case against theism. To my surprise, the mainstream atheists I watched before only went to a certain level of criticism, but there was a higher and more convincing level of criticism I wasn't familiar with. A good example of this would be the moral argument, I took it for granted the morality was objective, and thought most reasonable atheists would agree, but also thought without a God, objective morality was impossible, so atheists are deluding themselves. However, when I started joining forums, I heard people claim that they believed morality was subjective. I thought about it and found no reason to think morality was actually objective. Someone who claimed that morality was subjective had set up a thread on morality and not one person succeeded in demonstrating that morality was objective, it was an embarrassment for my view, I had no justification other than that I think God exists and therefore objective morality follows. Eventually, I looked at the criticism of arguments and found that the arguments for God I previously advocated for had collapsed before me, there was more to criticism of these arguments than I thought and found no good reason to conclude that God conclusively exists.
From that, Christianity was dead, you need God and Jesus for Christianity to be worthwhile, but there are no good reasons to accept God's existence and no convincing arguments, so why remain a Christian? Other religions have their claims, but they have had no impact on skeptical thinking and science. We got biological evolution, physics, natural explanations, etc. I also had read Bart Ehrman and heard about the lack of historical support for many parts of the bible, including the gospels. A better conclusion to make was that Jesus was a reformist leader that believed the world coming to a near end. Putting the bible into context removes what I previously thought to be biblical miracles. The rational conclusion here is that the bible and Jesus were nothing divine and special. I concluded that Atheism is the most rational position to take regarding religion. I would remain that way unless it can be successfully demonstrated that a deity defined by a theist exists. Atheism had won.
To this day, I remain interested in the God debate, and consider myself a critic of theism.
Note: I also have previously thought of atheists in the same way atheists think of religious people, that is, they are betraying their intellect in that specific area of belief. I thought of lacking a belief in God and naturalism as unreasonable and pure fantasy. To me, saying that God is a plain made up fairy tail was like saying that the world around me is pure generated thoughts by a lab scientist wiring a brain to think it is a person of its own.
Hail Satan! 
