How did you become an atheist?

[tkolter]

So, can you tell us about how you became an atheist? Was it a process or an instance when you dropped your god belief? Did someone help you along, or influence you? Or maybe you were always an atheist? Please share your story. 

Never been anything else. Expelled from Sunday School on my second visit, age 7, for asking awkward questions about Noah's fArk. 

I told a young lady recently that I was an atheist and she seemed shocked. After a moment of contemplation she said, "Well, it happens*, people get abused..."

I told her I was never religious so that didn't apply. She grew more confused then. "But how?"

"I wasn't indoctrinated in any religion."

"I wasn't either!"

"You parents were..."

"Catholic."

"And you are..."

"Catholic. But that's because it makes sense!"

"Catholics are the ones that eat their savior?"

"Now you're trying to start a fight!" 







*You know, like hurricanes hitting Mexico or something.

I READ the Bible, then other religious texts, growing up going to Lutheran schools K-12 and in High School my final year came out as an Atheist to everyone and simply told the pastors I wand actual empirical evidence of the extraordinary claims in the Bible or other interpretations of a deity in order to believe. It was on their shoulders which ,well, they didn't like. I left the Church formally that year.

[Edwardo Piet]

I changed the title of the thread from 'Why are you an atheist' to 'How did you become one[an atheist]', since I think it's a better way to put it.

It is. After the original title I was tempted to give a smart-ass answer like "Because I don't believe in gods."

[KevinM1]

I grew up in a culturally Catholic, barely practicing (like, I'm nearly 36 years old, and I've been in a church maybe 6-8 times in my life) family.  I learned the general idea of god and Jesus (the Holy Spirit/Ghost has never made any sense to me), and had a general belief in it even if the whole "Jesus is the son of god, but also god" thing was weird.  I didn't understand it, and just regurgitated what the adults around me said regarding it.

That said, I was incredibly skeptical even when I was young.  I remember flipping out and crying when I learned I was baptized because it was done without my consent, and what if it was the wrong god?  And I remember thinking that meant I would be forced to go to church, which I absolutely hated.  Catholic church in New England in the early-to-mid 1980's was a dreary, frightening experience for me.  Dark, dank buildings, where some guy you don't know is lecturing not just me but the adults about stuff I didn't understand, with everyone moving in unison at seemingly random times, and reciting/chanting weird shit in the most Borg-like monotone.

So, I went through a long phase of my childhood where I kind of believed in my own flavor of god, an ideal (to me) imaginary friend, but questions and doubts remained, and none of them were ever answered in a satisfying way.  It didn't really affect me much in my daily life, though, because, like I said, we didn't actually practice the religion most of the time.  As I got older, I just thought less and less about it.  

When I got into UNH, I went through one of those forced "I love everyone, spirituality is real, maaaaaaannnnn" phases before just admitting to myself that what I thought and vaguely believed in as a child simply didn't exist.  It was my own creation, done at the gun barrel of peer pressure, and worthless.  I never actually believed in god because the version of god the people around me believed in was itself is so contradictory that there was nothing to believe in at all.

TLDR; Always an atheist, didn't realize it until my early 20s.

[Excited Penguin]

You should start with the TLDR bit if you expect some wouldn't want to read all of that. Otherwise, only those who would read it would find it at the bottom

[Heat]

The responses are just going to be repetitive.

Essentially I was christian, I go to a christian school(still do), and started questioning my beliefs, unprompted. So then I decided to look up arguments online, like "How to beat an Atheist in an argument" trying to get confirmation bias, and in return got a lot of videos disproving it. My favorite channel was "Friendly Atheist" because he disproved all the previous misconceptions I had about atheists, in a friendly, non-condescending manner. Still I didn't like hearing these things that contradicted my belief, I started watching The Atheist Experience, and basically just exploring all the different arguments. After about a month or so of this, I decided that I was agnostic(Without knowing agnosticism and atheism are two different questions), my agnosticism was basically me saying it was a 50-50 chance, which followed shortly after with admitting that it probably wasn't a 50-50 chance and declaring myself an Atheist.

It was really just a personal journey, which will be a common trait with a lot of the responses on this thread. I remained open minded throughout, even though I didn't like it at times and saw it depressing I made an intellectual commitment to figure out what I personally believed/disbelieved, and whether my belief had any validity to it, and now here I am.

[Excited Penguin]

The responses are just going to be repetitive.

Essentially I was christian, I go to a christian school(still do), and started questioning my beliefs, unprompted. So then I decided to look up arguments online, like "How to beat an Atheist in an argument" trying to get confirmation bias, and in return got a lot of videos disproving it. My favorite channel was "Friendly Atheist" because he disproved all the previous misconceptions I had about atheists, in a friendly, non-condescending manner. Still I didn't like hearing these things that contradicted my belief, I started watching The Atheist Experience, and basically just exploring all the different arguments. After about a month or so of this, I decided that I was agnostic(Without knowing agnosticism and atheism are two different questions), my agnosticism was basically me saying it was a 50-50 chance, which followed shortly after with admitting that it probably wasn't a 50-50 chance and declaring myself an Atheist.

It was really just a personal journey, which will be a common trait with a lot of the responses on this thread. I remained open minded throughout, even though I didn't like it at times and saw it depressing I made an intellectual commitment to figure out what I personally believed/disbelieved, and whether my belief had any validity to it, and now here I am.

That's very cool and inspiring.

[mediocrates]

My original post about this must be in purgatory or something. So, here's an abbreviated version.

I was raised baptist and my beliefs were in line with the typical teachings. The exception being that some of the stories seemed to insane to me; so, I used the typical rationalization and called them metaphors.

I became interested in science. I got into amateur astronomy, bought a telescope, and tried to learn from any source available. I used books, the Internet, and podcasts... The latter of which later had a big role in my de-conversion.

Also around that time, I started listening to a lot of punk music. The extreme left political views and anti-establishmentarianism of the genre doesn't leave much room for religion. I tended to ignore atheist themed songs and otherwise didn't think about it much.

One day, while looking for another astronomy related podcast, I stumbled on "The Skeptics Guide to the Universe." It was the beginning of the end of my theism. I thought I was skeptical already; I didn't believe in psychics or magic. But I was introduced to a world of pseudoscience, misinformation, and logical fallacies that I was previously unaware of and I couldn't get enough! I sought out other skeptical podcasts and started building a critical thinking skill set.

When I turned this new thinking skill on my own beliefs, the teachings of religion began to unravel. It took some time. All the above experiences cooking in my brain like a rational stew. I started listening to the atheist songs and looking for any sign that not believing was ok. Soon, I knew I didn't believe and that it wasn't a choice I could make or un-make.

The day I said the words "I'm an atheist" to another person was scary, but I was met with acceptance. A couple days later I joined this forum.

[The Valkyrie]

I was a good devout Catholic girl.

One day my class was visiting a lab on a school trip when I was separated from the rest of the class and wandered into a small lab.

There, I was surprised and bitten by a radioactive atheist.

I recovered quite quickly but slowly noticed changes coming over me.

My god glasses slipped off and I could suddenly see clearly. I discovered I could read the bible and see through the bullshit.

I even, and this shocked me, learned that I could throw logical and sarcastic arguments against religion via keyboard from my finger tips.

I even developed, believe it or not, a special sense to detect bullshit when it was being spouted at me.

Who am I?

I'm your friendly neighbourhood atheist.

[Excited Penguin]

My original post about this must be in purgatory or something. So, here's an abbreviated version.

I was raised baptist and my beliefs were in line with the typical teachings.  The exception being that some of the stories seemed to insane to me; so, I used the typical rationalization and called them metaphors.

I became interested in science. I got into amateur astronomy, bought a telescope, and tried to learn from any source available. I used books, the Internet, and podcasts... The latter of which later had a big role in my de-conversion.  

Also around that time, I started listening to a lot of punk music. The extreme left political views and anti-establishmentarianism of the genre doesn't leave much room for religion. I tended to ignore atheist themed songs and otherwise didn't think about it much.

One day, while looking for another astronomy related podcast, I stumbled on "The Skeptics Guide to the Universe."  It was the beginning of the end of my theism. I thought I was skeptical already; I didn't believe in psychics or magic. But I was introduced to a world of pseudoscience, misinformation, and logical fallacies that I was previously unaware of and I couldn't get enough! I sought out other skeptical podcasts and started building a critical thinking skill set.

When I turned this new thinking skill on my own beliefs, the teachings of religion began to unravel.  It took some time.  All the above experiences cooking in my brain like a rational stew.  I started listening to the atheist songs and looking for any sign that not believing was ok.  Soon, I knew I didn't believe and that it wasn't a choice I could make or un-make.

The day I said the words "I'm an atheist" to another person was scary, but I was met with acceptance. A couple days later I joined this forum.

Wow, so you just recently came out in public as being atheist? Fascinating.

[mediocrates]

Wow, so you just recently came out in public as being atheist? Fascinating.

Yeah. The whole process from preacher's son to heathen took several years. Did I mention I was the son of a preacher? I might have left that out.