How many years have you been an atheist?

[houseofcantor]

I wuz never really anything, then god showed up on the jobsite and made me a prophet. So I became an atheist. Makes perfect sense.

[Blanca]

wow a lot more long-time atheists then I expected. Seems like a lot of people on here figured it out when they were really young. There's a lot of exe catholics.

[Napoléon]

"How many years have you been an atheist"

All of them.

[mamamia88]

Probably my entire life. I went through all the attempted sunday school brainwashing and stuff but it was on a monday and after a long weekend and the first day back from school the last thing i wanted to do was listen to religious bullshit instead of playing videogames so i kind of tuned it all out. my parents started going to church weekly for some reason and i thought if i went through the motions like my parents they would approve of me more somehow. i even went as far as reading the left behind series sad but true. i don't really think i had faith to begin with i was just kind of afraid of going to hell. i don't remember the first time calling myself an atheist because honestly you can't lose something you never had.

[WhatIfGodWasJustAMyth]

Seeing as Im only 14, I have only recently even started using my brain and questioning what I'v been told my whole life. In other words................THINKING.

[klassykow]

Catholic. My 8th grade religious education teacher was a recently reformed atheist (I think it was his wife who made him come back to the church) and his class was great because we didn't actually talk religion much. I was seriously skeptical around the time I was confirmed at age 15, but I thought I'd go ahead and stick with it like someone completing a degree in a discipline they didn't like anymore. I was a teacher's aide for a 5th grade religious education class when I was 16 and felt terrible about solidifying these children's beliefs in something I had dwindling faith in. I really don't know why I did that class… Then, after a lot of thought, I stopped calling myself skeptical and confidently became an atheist just before my senior year in high school started. Now, only about 8 months later, I feel silly thinking that I ever had faith in Catholic dogmas. I'm an atheist now, loving the perspective it has given me.

[BoyWonder]

Formal Calvinist public school education until the age of 17 because that was expected in my social stratum, but my parents were really atheists and never ever went to church again after having the first 3 of their 4 children formally baptized in the fifties. They didn't even bother with the last one anymore.
Engaged in (a)theist debates with 'learned' vicars and ministers, and increasingly whipped their pious asses with simple logic from age 13 (my classmates loved me for preoccupying the teachers and redirecting their attention ). Lost all respect for authority as a result.

Had I known about the church' institutionalized mass abuse of children I would have attacked them physically (and no doubt ended in jail).

Studied Islam and the Qur'An for 4 years in the nineties out of pure curiosity and for comparative purposes (which is more than 98% of Muslims can say).

How come this 'poll' tops out at 21+ years of being an atheist? I've been one for 50+ years!
Is it inconceivable that any Americans were atheists before the eighties?

[Sciwoman]

wow a lot more long-time atheists then I expected. Seems like a lot of people on here figured it out when they were really young. There's a lot of exe catholics.

Took me a bit longer. I was 35 when I became an atheist in June of 1998. Catholic, baptist, methodist, baptist, non-denominational, back to catholic, then about five years of looking for answers. Oddly enough, once I became an atheist, I was not plagued by thoughts of hellfire and such - all such nonsense fell to the wayside in one big heap. That's not to say I escaped scot-free - it took a bit of work to undo the mental and emotional damage and I will always carry the scars.

[Xavier]

I'm 29 now and I don't remember ever believing in God or Jesus's resurrection.

At least from when I was around 8 I was an atheist, and I can remember being forced to pray and sing hymns in church and school and thinking even at that age the whole thing was completely stupid.

I went to a pretty religious Protestant school where they taught Christian beliefs as if they were facts, so I don't know why I wasn't indoctrinated like other people were.

[SavageNerdz]

Was a theist until i was about five, however i didn't realize what that entitled, as my mind was not fully developed.. Therefor I never really left a religion.. However i shall claim to have been an atheist all my life.