Age of Deconversion

[Belacqua]

I agree the thread is mainly addressed towards deconversion.

I haven't gone through this, since I was raised without any religion. 

But I wonder if commonly "deconverting" at age about 12 to 14 has to do with the kind of God that people have been thinking of.

From infancy to maybe 12, kids will picture God as the sweet sky-daddy, and if you pray to him he'll protect you from the monster under the bed. That image of course can't survive once a child starts thinking for herself a little bit. Then the whole thing starts to seem unbelievable. 

At that point a lot of people lose their religion and assume that's all there is to it. They reject the Sunday School Happy Jesus version and walk away, and don't look at the reason that serious grownups might believe in a different conception of God. The theologians' version of God requires a little bit of effort to learn about, and since they've already walked away they don't want to bother with it. That would explain why so many of the anti-religion atheists on forums like this one can only imagine God in the same way an infant does.