What made you become an atheist?

[Whateverist]

My father was very religious but fortunately for me he was in the navy and not home a lot. My mother was a believer but didn't read the bible, didn't talk about it a lot and didn't take us to church when he was away.

I picked up only a sketchy knowledge of Christianity and the bible. I had no notion of god as anything other than Jesus. My self made concept of Jesus was that he was all knowing and morally perfect. In any situation I thought he would always do what's best. Somehow I knew there were people who did not believe in God and I thought they were the worst sort of ingrates.

My highest desire was to become a person who would be good company for Jesus in heaven. I thought he'd be lonely because so many people just wanted to worship Him and I could not imagine that would be welcome. To be worthy, to my mind, meant figuring out what was best morally in every situation and then choosing that. Following rules wouldn't enable you to become good company for Jesus but thinking for yourself and standing behind your choices could make you worthy. I used to imagine what Jesus would do in a situation but I never tried to follow a set of rules.

So this lasted until early grade school and then it started seeming pretty unlikely that there would be any after life and as much as I wanted to meet this guy Jesus his existence just felt less and less likely. I remember being 10 when I decided once and for all that I was done with religion. I would have liked for it to turn out otherwise but there was no way I could believe it was so.

Since then I've been an agnostic atheist. I probably have less anger toward religion than most atheists because I was never really duped by anyone other than myself (with a little initial help from my parents). My wife was raised religion free and is happily atheist.