Why are you an atheist?

[Joods]

Like the subject says, why are you an atheist? Have you been an atheist all your life (never pushed into any religion) or have you been converted recently?

I was a Christian for the first 11 years of my life, but it was something I was forced into by my parents and school etc. It was when I moved to secondary school (at age 11) that I started to doubt God and religion. There are just too many religions out there with completely different beliefs, it is impossible to know for sure which is "correct". I became unsure of what I did believe, but later realized that I literally couldn't believe that any form of God existed. You only have to take a look at the world to realize that.

Because the idea of bowing down to an invisible being is just stupid.

[Fake Messiah]

I was a Christian for the first 11 years of my life, but it was something I was forced into by my parents and school etc. It was when I moved to secondary school (at age 11) that I started to doubt God and religion. There are just too many religions out there with completely different beliefs, it is impossible to know for sure which is "correct". I became unsure of what I did believe, but later realized that I literally couldn't believe that any form of God existed. You only have to take a look at the world to realize that.

No way you were a Christian!! But can I ask you this: from what I understand you and your wife are atheists, but let's say you have kids do you think your parents will put pressure on you to baptize them and perhaps even send them to Sunday school?

[Agnosty]

 I am bitter about the wasted years and the lies I was told.

Me too and your story is similar to mine.  I think of it this way: if I weren't bitter about that, I'd be bitter about some other thing that happened to me instead because perfection can't exist.  Every positive attribute comes at the expense of a negative one.  For instance, lots of muscle costs agility and increases caloric requirement.  There is no way to say how I would be if I were raised differently, but I'm sure I'd regret something.

[ShirkahnW]

I have only become an atheist half a year ago. I started to think about my faith as i encountered a young earth creationist. I thought that his views were absolutely stupid and so I looked into the topic to debate him. As I got in contact with the material i discovered people like Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. through them I graduately became an Atheist and tend towards Antitheism nowadays.

[KevinM1]

Mainly for the necro-posting.

Oh, and baby eating

[DodosAreDead]

Mainly because I prefer to do things on my own terms. I just don't like paying attention to or following something written in a book. I don't like praying because it's a waste of time that could be used productively. I don't like referring to god because someone who we don't even know for a fact exists, is getting undue importance. I'd rather look up to or idolize actual humans and people who have lived and proved that they are exceptional, even though they're gonna have flaws, just like everyone else. 
It's just not in my nature to follow a particular religion, regardless of whether I believe god exists or not. (I don't).

[siouxdax]

Though I was never baptized, nor confirmed, I was raised Catholic. It was around age 11 or 12 that I started seeing the cracks in religion. I dabbled in other things just explore: Tarot, Aleister Crowley, witchcraft, etc.

But then I discovered what was then a relatively new branch of science: particle physics and quantum mechanics. I had always been quite good in all of the science classes I took throughout school. Astronomy didn't "impress" me. Cosmology scared me. But when it came down to the very small; the things and actions at and below the atomic level, I was mesmerized.

But, at least in this case, you can't have classical physics without quantum physics, though they have yet to be unified.

Sorry to get a bit off-topic, but it was this, combined with my growing interest in cosmology (I faced my fears), that lead me to believe there is no need for a god.

And barring this information, if there were a god, and at my death were to confront him, I would spit in his face. "How dare you create, only to destroy, then allow such unspeakable things like war, hunger, death, disease, SUFFERING. And we're to be your children?"

Without going on for countless pages, that the reason why I am atheist. Ironically, I collect iconography, and related.

-siouxdax

[GrandizerII]

I got over deism eventually because all my argumentation for deism amounted to nothing more than special pleading. Before deism, I was a Christian for a fair period of time (but only really believed for a small portion of that time). I got out of that when it got too intellectually burdensome for me to keep defending the faith, seeing that I had no solid basis or grounding for it. Yeah, I understood the Gospel and appreciated its power to attract the emotionally vulnerable, but it all turned out to be a lie. There is no such thing as a "born again" Christian.

[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.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I was born an atheist, like everybody else. Never lowered my standards.