How long did it take for you to deconvert? What made you change your mind?

[Ravenshire]

Never actually believed except in that vague "mommy wouldn't lie to me" way that five-year-olds have. Tried really fucking hard for a long time, but nothing ever stuck. So much for drippy's A/S/K bullshit.

[Ravenshire]

There is nothing embarrassing about reading Dan Brown novels.... I hope..

No, but having one spur a major life shift seems rather trite.

Nah. Fiction can be just another way of seeing things from a different perspective.

[Thumpalumpacus]

My deconversion took about three years from first doubts to first realization that I'd lost my faith. It took another two years before I realized that reason was the most reliable way to reality.

[Silver]

It took years for me to convert.

I first discovered Robert Green Ingersoll in college, but reading him only drove me sanely away from Christianity.

I still sought spiritual comfort elsewhere, through paganism for years after.

I am not entirely certain what eventually made me an atheist except that I arrived there.

[Iroscato]

No, but having one spur a major life shift seems rather trite.

I had too, though of a different kind. I read Angels&Demons and almost instantly decided to become a writer and write a science thriller one day. I thought to myself - there has got to be a way to do this kind of exciting topic and format, but with an actual understanding of the science and interspersed with a discussion of science vs. religion that is less fatally eye roll inducing than Dan Brown's hack job on this topic. Still, I can't help but loving that stuff.

What was so off with the science in Angels & Demons? Been aaaages since I read it. I vaguely recall there being an antimatter bomb, so there is that. But I want specifics, dammit

[Tolerant_America]

I started questioning if God was real (my mother was deeply Baptist and I went to a Christian school) when I was 11. Literally everyone said "you gotta just have faith, reject science" or some bs like that. My turning point was when we had a discussion I started in my 7th grade classes about if God was real with evidence, and my teacher flat out said "I don't know, I just believe." In my Junior High mind, I'm thinking "I'll find my own answers without a myth" and now I sit here in front of my computer with food on the table (no thanks to God) and a good life (again, no thanks to God). I pat myself on the back.

[Salacious B. Crumb]

Like you, Ian, my de-conversion came about on the internet, watching videos. I was surrounded by religious people, and was fully immersed in it. The Atheist Experience was the thing that got me out of believing in god, but I was watching the classic atheist Youtube personalities as well. It took me 4-5 months of watching the Atheist Experience to lose my faith in god. It would have happened sooner, but I felt I had a few ghostly encounters a few times in my life, that couldn’t be explained away, so I had to do some debunking, which was hard, because I was “indoctrinated” into these ghost and exorcist T.V. programs. I never thought that me, having these experiences, plus millions of others on T.V., could be mistaken. I eventually realized that these T.V. programs with alien abductions, psychics, and ghosts were all full of shit (most of my family still believes in them though), and saw that they were easily explained away by being reality T.V. I realized that these few ghostly experiences that I have had in my life, only happened upon just being awaken from a sleep, and I was able to dismiss it as hallucinations.

Even as devout as I was, the last few years with my faith, I fell out of it in 10-15 minutes. After a few more days of serious research, I had completely confirmed my position, on thinking religion was total man-made bullshit. If you seriously question your religion, and do just a little unbiased research, you will fall out of it, if you’re a truly open-minded person.

[drfuzzy]

Decades.  Like Thena, I was raised Pentecostal, went to a Xtian school. Then about 25 years ago, I started playing the organ in a Catholic Church to make ends meet.  Combine the idiocy I kept hearing from the pulpit with a growing love of Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, etc., I started realizing that I COULDN'T believe the Bible, and I COULDN'T respect, much less worship, a deity like Yahweh - Yes, it's been a slippery slope right into a relieved, much calmer atheistic state of mind.