How did you become atheist?

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Permalink Reply by Jennifer Nicole on March 3, 2010 at 8:13pm

I can't quite tell you. I guess I just became more cynical and applied more logic.

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Permalink Reply by Goz on March 5, 2010 at 12:12pm

I really don't think I was ever really a xtain..I discovered early on prayers didn't work. Yeah,I recall never liking church,but I remember the moment sitting in church as a kid when i realized it was all bs.

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Permalink Reply by Objection on March 3, 2010 at 8:19pm

From a really young age I was really into dinosaurs, and therefore science, and when I came across arguments between scientists and the religious, my bias led me to favor the scientists' stances. I was apathetic to religion. I really did not pay attention.
Then one time in elementary school, I cussed, and some kids told me that gawd will send me to hell for it. We then got into a "nuh-uh" "uh-huh" match :) I said, he doesn't know I cussed, so I won't go hell. They said godd is everywhere and also, he is controlling me. I argued back, saying if he was controlling me, then how come he is making me say swear words? I don't remember much else, but at that point, I thought religious people were utterly dumb.
In middle school, I argued with my cousin in favor of atheism (it was a friendly match).
It wasn't until about a year ago that I stumbled onto yahoo answer's religion & spirituality section, and, taken aback by the torrent of logical sins committed by christians, I became active in that site for a few months, in an effort to de-convert a few theists. I was getting weary of it, however, and I left the site a militant anti-theist. It was eye-opening experience for me. It was the first time I heard about the persecution of atheists. I also found a large community over there, and I realize now that I am actually more alone in my views than I previously thought. Thank goodness for my secular upbringing - it saved me a load of headaches.

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Permalink Reply by Bill Hebner on March 5, 2010 at 10:53am

Hmmm... Let's see. 13 years of Catholic School. 6 of them as an altar boy. Never ran into any lech priests, by the way.

Began living in sin with my wife. When she got preggers with my daughter, I only married her for my parents and her grandmother's benefits. My religiosity was almost gone.

Wife hit by a car. Watched it happen. Was told by people that "god has a plan for her" and "god is testing her". Her response to that was "I'll take a C- !" Clinging by a thread now.

While she was recuperating, my oldest was in CCD, after-public-school religious education. I had no way to pick her up after classes. They offered no help but badgered me for the balance of what I owed for the classes. It was a Lutheran church-goer from a toddler/mommy group my wife attended who gave them a check.

During this time, my wife's grandmother, dying of cancer, was told by the same church to get the hospice priest for last rights and sent a visiting priest to say a prayer at the wake. The dude couldn't even pronounce her last name (it was easier than "Smith"). She was a long-time patron of this church, rarely missed a Sunday mass, and always handed in those collection envelopes, even though she was on a fixed income. Organized religion bit the dust. I was basically a nominal Agnostic at that point.

Several years later, 2000-ish, I gave that up and went completely to the "dark side". It was primarily based on logical thoughts and has been reinforced over the last decade. As far as I'm concerned now, even if the biblical god exists, I want nothing to do with him. He's either too self-important or too oblivious to the world's problems and, therefore, is not deserving of worship. Odds are waaaay greater that he simply is a figment of deluded imaginations.

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Permalink Reply by Jared Lardo on March 5, 2010 at 4:45pm

I don't know. I can tell you how I realized it, though: I did the rationalist (species of philosophy) thing to do and reasoned. Not on god at all, but on the afterlife. By way of this sort of exploration I became aware of the limits of cognitive space. I explored every possibility, using as rigorous a technique as possible and discovered that I was trapped. It was like I was on the Moon and trying to run to the kitchen to check on the pizza rolls in the oven. No matter what I did or where I went, I was trapped. Put mathematically, there was no solution available to any rearrangement of variables and conditions that let my course intersect the afterlife and know right then whether it was there and what it was like.

Somehow, this investigation lead me to something like this:
"I can't find that there's the afterlife. I can still believe in it, just as others can and do."
"I do not."
"Why don't I? There are all the reasons that so many cite, because of which I could believe: the bible or personal revelation, for examples."
"I don't believe those. As to why I do not ... Processing ... Processing ... The curves don't intersect; I can't know why I don't believe those things."
"I still could. There's God and church and community and ... for which to make a jump and fudge the numbers."
"I don't believe in God."
"Holy fuck what the fuck did I think! I can't not believe in God ... ! People who don't believe in God are a strange people that I don't understand, and they're not me!"
"No, no... I don't believe in God. I don't actually think that He exists. Why else, given what I've been exposed to, would I not believe all those fudge-the-numbers, "No you can't see my work" reasons for believing in the afterlife?"

By the time I'd realized that I didn't believe, I had not believed for a while.

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Permalink Reply by Garrick McElroy on March 5, 2010 at 5:20pm

Pretty much just over time. I love science, and it just becamse the logical choice in the end.

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Permalink Reply by mojo5501 on March 5, 2010 at 8:00pm

I was raised in a Lutheran family...conservative branch, Wisconsin Synod. I attended Church and Sunday School my entire childhood and was a faithful Christian, believing in the Gospels and singing along with everybody else. Until I reached my teenage years and rebelled and didn't want to attend services with my parents who embarrassed me just by existing (I was one of THOSE teenagers).

In college I didn't attend Church and met a wide variety of people. Including my first atheist. He was a great guy and funny and Mel Brooks-like. It was an eye-opening, mind-blowing experience. Like the illuminating candle in the dark metaphor of Carl Sagan. I loved hearing my friend debate why Judaism and Christianity didn't make logical sense in the modern world. He was right.

I was also taking classes in cultural anthropology and sociology. I especially enjoyed reading research from areas like sociobiology and social psychology. This all brought me to where I am today: an atheist. And my 2 children are being raised without religion. My son is attending the same university I did! I hope the Bible Thumpers don't grab him...ha ha. That would be ironic, wouldn't it? If he FOUND Jesus in the place I lost him!

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Permalink Reply by faith the atheist on March 6, 2010 at 2:26pm

Up till I was 9.I was a sheep.I believed whatever my mom and the church told me.When I was nine I believed in "God".But really didn't know much about religion.The preacher a my mothers church was wanting me to get baptised.I was thinking why?i chose not to get baptised around that time my mother started taking us to a different church.I started thinking about things and decided with all the evidence to prove evolution I was Atheist.Now I'm 13.I've been Atheist for three years.Im not out yet because of how strongly religious my family is.Im slowly trying to tell them.

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Permalink Reply by Michael on March 7, 2010 at 1:58pm

Four years old. The Sunday School teacher was telling us about the angel that told Mary she was pregnant with Jesus and I thought, what a load of rubbish. I spent eight more years in Sunday School and never believed a single thing they told me. Jesus walked on water! How dumb did they think I was...

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Permalink Reply by Javier Garcia on March 8, 2010 at 11:42pm

I had been leaning towards it for years; stopped going to church (Catholic) over a decade ago; prayed, but finally had some jarring revelations about mental and physical health - in that I had been relying on the laziness of prayer and faith to ignore significant problems. Specifically in the love of my life who had serious personality disorders; I lost her from not taking a more scientific and enlightened approach to her issues.
That, and just snapping that a great deal of suffering in the world is due to the excuse of "God works in mysterious ways". If only we had spend a fraction of time, effort, and cash that we did on theocracy, over say 50-100 years - and directed it to medical research. Then we would not have anywhere near the number of victims of cancer, serious mental (brain chemistry) disorders, etc.

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Permalink Reply by visual@rchitect on March 9, 2010 at 1:06am

I'm not too sure, but i clearly remember the first time i traveled by aeroplane. As the plane ascended above the clouds, i can remember wondering where all the Gods were...... i think that was the end of my theistic journey. I must have been 9 or 10. However, i had never particularly lent towards theism anyways.

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Permalink Reply by Beave on March 9, 2010 at 11:39am

I was raised in Pentecostal churches from the time I was knee-high until I was around 16 or so. I was reeeeaaallly into it, too. I attended all the revivals, and spoke in tongues, and hit the floor a few times (all of which is very embarrassing now). After I was baptized I sold all of my secular music and devoted myself completely to christ (which again, is very embarrassing to look back on). I think I started to become jaded and disillusioned when the church I attended had a bit of a civil war within the congregation.

The pastor had started busing kids in from the projects and poorer areas of our community, to get 'em a good dose of olde-timey religion. I still respect him for that, I think he had good intentions, but the outcome wasn't what he expected. They attended the youth group on Wednesday nights, and were a very welcome addition to those of us in attendance, but the Sunday morning regulars thought otherwise. They began to complain to the pastor because these poor kids from less-than-stable backgrounds weren't bringing any money for the collection plate. They basically told the pastor that if they didn't start contributing, he could either stop busing them in, or they (the regulars) would find another church. My pastor and I both left the church shortly after that.

That was the first time I really noticed unchristly behavior in the church, and it disgusted me. I soon started to ask myself questions about my religion, and others as well. At first I just wanted to know why it couldn't be possible that god had created all of these religions and we were still all praying to the same guy, but just calling him by different names. I still kept reading my bible, though, and believing in my Jesus. After a little time in the military, and some travel, I began to ask more questions. I started to read and hear arguments about some of the uglier parts of the bible, that I hadn't been taught, which led to arguments about the historicity of the book. Eventually, after I couldn't rationalize the historical contradictions or moral ones, I began to doubt. It just ate at me for a few years before I could admit I didn't believe it anymore. I've told my family, which was really pretty easy. It turned out that Dad had never believed, but didn't want to say anything because church meant a lot to my Ma. Telling Ma was easy too, because as it turns out, she had been quietly having her own inner struggle with the issues of suffering in the world, etc. We had both given up faith at about the same time. I don't talk to the extended family about it because they are still very holy-rollin', hard-line fundies, but since we just don't talk about it, we get along fine. I'm almost certain they know, but no one brings it up. No harm, no foul.

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