My deconversion was very gradual. Yes, there were questions now and then, but I did my best to answer them and the ones that stumped me I just figured would be answered by god himself at some future time. By the time I admitted to myself that I was an atheist, I'd probably really been one for a few years. So there's no particular moment I can point to where I decided that religion was a crock. It wasn't until I realized I did not believe in god that I climbed out of my bubble and started to learn more about religion and atheism. I didn't learn the stuff that would've made my decision easier until after I'd made it.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
