Any Atheists here who at one time denied evolution?

[Mr.wizard]

Honestly, when I was believer I never doubted evolution because I never knew enough about my religion to realize it contradicted it. I believed in god and identified as catholic because that's how I was raised, it wasn't until I was around 14 when I really started to question what I believed. I went looking for verification of my beliefs and instead wound up an atheist.

[Brian37]

That was one of my triggers, Cecelia.  One of the first ones.
I was raised fundie Protestant.  I remember assemblies in the Church school I attended, that proclaimed why Evolution was a lie.  My parents believed (even my Father, a very intelligent, college-educated man) that all of the "fossil evidence" was either deliberately faked or misinterpreted.
Then I changed schools.  I went to a public high school and made friends with a girl whose parents were biologists.  When I told them what I had been taught about evolution, one night over dinner . . . they were kind, but I will never forget their faces.  They clearly were looking at me with a mixture of horror and pity.  That - - was significant.  These intelligent scientists were looking at me like I was somehow mentally deficient.
It took a few more years, science classes, and reading, for me to be SURE that my Parents and those Preachers had been very wrong.  That, of course, paved the way to more questions about science and religion.  First stop . . . fundamentalism was wrong.  But even more mainstream liberal Christianity gradually lost its hold.  The idea of Deism and Polytheism and Spirituality and all of that . . . tried, studied, and abandoned.  But I was in my mid-40's before I finally proclaimed that I was an atheist.

Yea, for many, the escape isn't sudden. Many are indoctrinated some left, which isn't so bad, and some right "everyone else is evil", but it can be a long trip for many because of the lingering "I don't want to end up in hell" crap. So you go along because you see everyone else going along with it, and you stupidly think they cant all be wrong.

[Edwardo Piet]

Belied in evolution ever since I learned about it at like 9 years old or something.

[abaris]

Nope. Even our rather conservative school system of the late 60ies and early 70ies went to great lengths to teach us science and not fairy tales. And my father took me to the museum of Natural History to show me creatures that lived millions of years ago. Hell, living on the ancient shores of a primeval ocean, I collected fossilized shells when I was a kid.

So, no. I never believed in creationism.

[robvalue]

It is amazing to me that so many people think that if they can discredit evolution, magical fairy tales win by default.

Wrong, buddy. Maybe in your own head. But in reality, you have to actually have positive evidence for your position. Just because you can't imagine any other alternative than evolution or magic, it doesn't mean there aren't any.

So just stop it with trying to trash evolution, please. If you don't believe it, that's fine. But you're not going to convince any sceptic about magic drivel by slinging mud at science. The only possibility left is that you're aiming it at people who don't have critical thinking skills, which is pretty skanky tactics.

If people want to have a proper, sensible discussion about evolution, that is cool. But that's not possible when the theist is desparate to shove their God into any perceived shortcoming. It's also not possible if the theist refuses to actually learn what it is first.