Why are you an atheist?

[Mr.Obvious]

Short answer;
Because I find no compelling evidence to convince me of the existence of one or multiple deities.

Long answer;
I was brought up slightly religious. Turned out later on that my parents didn't believe but had my siblings and me baptized and taking religion rather than ethics in school for the sake of our grandparents. I used to be very gulible, however. (Not saying all theists are gullible, but, it was a trait of mine.) Plus I really did like the idea of a God and believed I had a connection with that entity. I was convinced and, ashamed to admit it, a right little haughty prick to those who didn't believe.

My turning away from religion came far too late for my taste and took me a while. I started losing my faith at the age of 17, in my second to last year of high-school. I went from catholic to concidering myself more of a protestant to 'just a Christian' and eventually someone who believed in something and based that on the Christian faith, without necessarily being sure that faith was true. By then I was 19 or 20. I didn't like that I was losing my faith and wanted to do anything to stop this, on the one hand. On the other, I found it quite hard to admit I could possibly have been wrong about something like this for practically my entire life. "I" couldn't possible have been wrong, now could I? "I" couldn't possibly have spent almost all of my time believing in something without a basis? And yet the clips on YouTube and such from the atheist POV made so much sense. I decided I had only one last option to try; to do something I should have done ages ago: Read the bible. Not just the odd story or verse here and there that we saw in school. No. That book had to be the source. It had to hold something to reaffirm and ground my blind beliefs. How could I call myself a Christian if I didn't read it all the way through. So I set to reading it all the way through... I don't think I made it past Leviticus.
It wasn't just that the book was boring and didn't hold anything to help me. It was simply also that it was such an awfull book to draw morals from that I felt sick to my stomach. I'd finally gotten to the bottom of my unfounded claims and found nothing but a rotting pile of corruption, warmongering, hate and a surprising amount of incest. I think that was the last time I've cried that wasn't for a lost loved one.

I felt lost and confused and angry. Mostly at myself. I didn't really want to, but I admitted I didn't believe in anything concidering religion anymore and set to calling myself an agnostic. A word I preferred over atheist but I learned about a year later wasn't the correct term. (Agnostic Atheist)
It's unfair, perhaps, to say that it freed me and that I became a better person for leaving my religion in the dust. But it's hard for me not to see it as such. I was a late bloomer in the case of puberty. And to be honest, I feel I didn't fully exit it on an emtional state until somewhere at the age of 17/18. It was a time of reïnventing myself and coinciding with this journey of self-discovery in leaving Christianity behind I became more fit, more social and far less egotistical. I used to be a genuine, whiny little asshole. I think, if I'm honest, it was this change which allowed me to reëxamine my views on the religious, rather than the other way around. But in my mind the two will Always be linked, for me personally.

I never thanked the girl, Julie, who set me down on this path. I remember it well. We were in class having a discussion. She advocated that psychic mediums were real and could help police in finding murderers and victims. I ended my counter-verdict, passionatelly, by telling her that when she came right down to it, she was believing in something without any actual evidence whatsoever and that that was silly. Believing in something without evidence was stupid.
A little voice inside my head spoke, immeadiately after. "Well, that's hypocritical, innit? What evidence do you have for Christianity?" I don't think I said a word for the rest of the day at school, wondering why the hell I'd thought that.
The journey was awful. But I became happier than ever before.