When, Where, How and Why did you become Atheist?

[Mister Agenda]

When you think about it, the only evidence a theist has really got is themselves. if other people can't see why faith is so great just from knowing them, they've already lost any arguments. I've not heard any atheists complaining about, say, Christians being too kind, compassionate, and nonjudgmental.

[bambi_swag]

Hit with a shit load of spaghetti.

Poop does have the tendancy to roll up into a noodle every now and then. But what does that have to with your deconversion?

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Seems like you had a experience with Catholics. Are Catholics the main Christian denomination in Australia? I have zero experience with Catholics.

And we don't have kangaroos either, since it's Austria and not Australia. Just a little bit removed. Only smack on the other side of the world.

Yes, Catholicism is the mainstream.

Do the Nationalist Anti-immigrationist Church folk ever bother you? Europe seems to have a huge rise in nationalist right-wingism these days, especially in the East. For your sake, I hope it hasn't happened to your country yet.

[Minimalist]

I was a catholic.  I took a long look at the people who were preaching this nonsense to me and decided I did not want to be like them.

I was 11.

[abaris]

Do the Nationalist Anti-immigrationist Church folk ever bother you?

What church are we talking about exactly?

[TheRocketSurgeon]

What church are we talking about exactly?  

My parents banned television (not the TV set, just "television", which came from The World™, as in anything other than what our church taught was okay) when I was five. We were allowed to check out books and movies from the library, with parental approval, of course. Though my parents cited the evangelist whose sermon convinced them to throw our cable out, as a way of "keeping Satan and The World™ out of the home", it apparently backfired, because I developed a love of mythological/fantasy literature and science fiction. The former showed me just how silly religious beliefs can be, or rather, how transparent; the latter showed me what my own culture looks like when looked back on from a distant future. Neither was flattering to my own carefully-cultured belief structure. Yet I went on believing... the others have rightly pointed to the term "cognitive dissonance", isolating the Believer parts of my brain from the "actually know things" parts of my brain.

Unfortunately for my parents' beloved religion, I also developed a deep love of encyclopedias and technical/science books, chemistry sets, and observing things/creatures in nature, during my roam-abouts on the island where I grew up. Eventually, this would lead to a degree in biology/chemistry and a career in environmental science/field biology. 

What actually torpedoed my religion was twofold: 1) because I was so bright, my church "selected" me for training in Christian Apologetics (or as I like to call it, ChrAp), specifically with an eye toward "disproving" the beliefs of other sects of not-fundamentalist-enough Christians, such as Catholics, but also applying ChrAp to "wrong" faiths, like Judaism and Islam, and 2) my increasing knowledge about science was increasingly at odds with the dissonant parts of my religious upbringing, though I managed for a surprising amount of time to maintain the dynamic tension.

Finally, when another evangelist-preacher came to visit our church and began to teach us Why Evolution Is Wrong™, his sermon was filled with so many completely, astoundingly wrong  ideas about the actual claims of science that a well-read 17 year old could easily spot them. At that moment, I had the shocking realization that not everything I learn in church is factual.  By the end of that afternoon, I had begun the process of examining my belifs, ironically now using the very ChrAp model I had so long used to "disprove" other sects on my own religious ideology, and was effectively an agnostic by that evening.

It took me another five years of comfortable agnosticism before I began to encounter Creationists again, on my college campus, about the time I was getting ready to graduate with my degree in evolutionary biology. As I studied their methods in preparation to assist one of our professors in the debate to which he had been challenged, I was appalled at how bad  their misrepresentations actually are, in a way I could never have realized with only an amateur's knowledge, at age 17. This began a series of conversations with my girlfriend (and debate team partner) that culminated with me realizing that I am not only an agnostic by philosophy, I am an atheist by opinion.

The fingerprints of mankind are all over every religion, as plain as day to anyone who really looks. And yet, each of those sects will look you in the face and swear that all those other faiths are wrong, but theirs is the One True Faith™. For all the science I could show you to prove that the Bronze Age tribal sheepherder/warrior priests didn't know a damned thing about the world in which they lived, while writing down "the revealed truth" from the Creator of All™, the main evidence I have against religion is that everyone else is wrong except the faith of the religious fanatic to whom I am speaking, no matter which sort (s)he is. Religion is manmade, if only people had the courage to admit that their own faith is as silly to everyone else as everyone else's faith is to them.

In the words of Robert A. Heinlein, "One man's religion is another man's belly-laugh."

[abaris]

Yeah, but I wonder what this has to do with Austria. He replied to me being from Austria. Might be, he still doesn't get the distinction between Austria and Australia, but if anything can be said in favor of our churches, it's them fighting Xenophobia wherever possible.

[Edwardo Piet]

In all seriousness, I've never really believed, I've always been an atheist.

Maybe as a small kid I thought there was some 'guy in the sky'. Maybe. I don't know really because I never really thought it through or cared much.

And I always thought the stories read to me in the Bible were just stories. I thought they were Fables like Aesop's as I always loved Aesop's Fables as a child.

When I discovered years later that some people actually literally believed that shit I found it hilarious and started writing a piss-take of the Bible alongside my brother when I must have been like 12 and him 8 or 9. It involved God travelling over the faces of the water 'on a micro-scooter' and God sticking his 'giant purple pulsating boner' in a volcano to block it up. The things you do when you're a kid eh?

[Faith No More]

I've noticed that people around d the 12 thirteen mark become Atheist. Maybe it's the hormones and atheism is one giant hormonal rage? jk

That's when a child's reasoning skills really start to get developed, and they begin to forge out his/her own identity.

That's when I became an atheist, but I think the way I was raised was a recipe to make an atheist. I was raised with a strong focus on the scientific method and was exposed to religion every Sunday without indocrination. In fact, my parents never, ever mentioned their religion except for the two times I have brought it up. Combine exposure like that to religion with an emphasis on empirical evidence and there's a good chance you're going to get an atheist.

[abaris]

Combine exposure like that to religion with an emphasis on empirical evidence and there's a good chance you're going to get an atheist.

Needless to say, school had a very strong influence on my upbringing. I never ever doubted biology and the age of the world and neither did my parents. They took me to natural history museums when I was little and my father always used to point out the age of the dinosaur skeletons displayed there. Even before I could grasp the concept of millions of years, I got that they were very old. But this also was the age of the Flintstones on tv. So things might have been a little murky.

[Edwardo Piet]

I think it's all about indoctrination or lack thereof. I think that an intelligent person can believe in bullshit if they are brainwashed from an early age. I think people who are atheists from a young age and never indoctrinated and then end up genunitely taking the Wholly Babble seriously years later, is either a moron or needs help - or both.

May be exceptions but I ain't seen any yet!