Were you religiously affiliated before becoming atheist?

Nope. Wasnt even baptized, my dad is a self proclaimed agnostic and my mom just doesnt give a shit about religion. Thank goodness

As far back as I can remember, religion was always a part of my life because of my mother, and she regularly played musical-religion, jumping from one religion to the next. It made it easier for me to eventually get a grip on reality in part by seeing her experimenting with different religions. So while I was taken to many churches of many religions, I'd say by the time I was 12 years old, I was already doubting, questioning, and heading down the path of atheism.

Yes, no? I was raised Chaotic, I mean Catholic. But I never bought any of it. Dragonlance had a more realistic origin story than Christianity. I spent a few years as agnostic but eventually became an atheist because no supernatural explanation of life made any sense at all.

Mom and stepdad are both christians and made me come to church every sunday and even go to "bible school". I always was sceptical of the practices and stories but did believe in God. But to me it always was a creepy thought that some dude was always watching what I was doing and judging me. It turned me into an extremely self conscious person.

Over time I kept thinking about it and it became less and less logical.

• "Why this God and not whatever other religions believe?"
• "If this is the correct God, how should people in India know and why is God such an asshole about it?" (my mom said "oh they know but they refuse to believe, so it's their fault". Bullshit)
• "Why are the stories in the bible so inconsistent and everyone interprets it differently?"
• "If God can do anything he could actually talk to us not make a mystery about it all"

So at some point it clicked for me and I completely lost believe in basically anything supernatural (including ghosts).

I do believe the church community is a good thing for some people and if it doesn't scam people out of money I'm the last person to try and convince these people otherwise.

Permanently Deleted

My family was (is, for the most part) Christians, though last I heard my dad is thinking of converting to Judaism. I went to church every Sunday, and Awana (kids bible program thing) every Wednesday, I earned a free trip to bible camp through my church multiple years running, cuz I wanted to go that badly... All that to say, I tried, okay? I really tried. I WANTED to believe in God, and Jesus, and all of it. I just ... Didn't.

I never felt the euphoria that other people claimed to feel, I never felt anything but fear, cuz everyone said God and heaven and hell were real, and I did NOT want to end up in hell, but I didn't feel shit. I was convinced for a long time that the lack of feeling was because I wasn't really "saved", that's I'd messed it up some how, or lost it. And I really did not want to go to hell, so that was pretty upsetting.

But ultimately I never really believed deep down. I thought the flood story was dumb, I thought praying was dumb(I still tried it, trying to feel the damned feelings), I did not have a "relationship with Jesus". I was confused on a lot of points, especially where the love of Jesus conflicted with my republican families political opinions.

When I was in my early teens my grandpa died, and at the funeral some relative or other assured me I'd see him again in heaven, and I remember thinking, "Now that's a weird thing to actually believe." ...That thought came out of no where. I was still trying to believe at the time, and I think that was the beginning of the end. It was a slow end, with a couple more tries at various churches, but I really just used church for socializing from then on. Socializing and hedging my Pascal's Wager, you know, cuz I really (and I can't stress this enough) did not want to go to hell. I wanted to at least be able to tell god I tried. Just in case.

So yeah, god, and random internet people, I tried. But there wasn't much faith to lose.

I just tried my hardest to believe in God (evangelical Christianity in my case). I tried to make it work with what I know and my morals. Just in the moment I thought I worked it out, a new issue or paradox occured. It took me a long time to confidentiality and absolutely say: "You know what? All of this is bullshit." And finally a big knot inside me loosened. At this point I can't even remember why it was so hard, but it felt like you just had to believe in God, because that's traditionally the thing you do. And well, mum does so and she surely can't be wrong?

Not since I was old enough to make my own choices. I can vividly remember hiding behind my house when I was a kid, I don't know how old I was, trying to avoid going to church. As far as I can remember, I never believed. In fact, for the longest time, I thought people were just "playing along" so to speak, because that's what I would do whenever I was dragged to church. I was older than I would like to admit when I realized that people really do literally believe in all the dumb shit in the bible.

No I was never religious. I went to a Catholic school where the teachers would read all kinds of books to us. We read things like Clifford the Big Red Dog and even as a kid I knew that this giant red dog didn't actually exist. It was just a story. The Bible was literally just another book to me. For whatever reason I never saw it any different than any of the other books we read, other than it was a super old one and had big words and a lack of pictures. And it was kind of boring.

As I got older and started going to church, I thought everyone just really really liked this book. Like it was such a good book they would all get together and read it and talk about it because they liked the story so much.

Then I finally clued in that, no, these people think all of this is true. It's like they read Clifford and thought that an actual dog the size of a house existed. It was all true, every word. That's also around the time I realized adults aren't all super smart like I thought they were.

I sure was. I was Mormon. And I wasn't just Mormon because I was born Mormon. I was a true blue believing Mormon. I wasn't able to go on a mission so I volunteered my time to go out with the missionaries when I wasn't working Mormon. I was so deep in the faith it made me lose my faith.

There were two people who were influential in my leaving the Mormon church and the funny thing is neither of them was anti Mormon. The first guy was an online blogged that had read the scriptures and realized the Mormon church was not being ran in accordance to how Joseph Smith said it should be ran. He was using early church writings and the scriptures and was calling the church to repentance.

The second person was a woman who was leading a movement called Ordain Women which argued that women should hold the priesthood just like men. I believed that this was most likely true, the bible talks about priestesses so there's precedence but the church leadership shot this down. They said the priesthood has always been for men only and that it will only be for men. Which gave me flashbacks to the 70's when it was that the priesthood was for white men only and never be for POC until suddenly God changed his mind around the time that the church was going to be sued for segregation. I believed at the time that the leadership should at least pray and seek Answers from God but they stated they wouldn't even do that.

So my "shelf" was beginning to crack when one day it was announced that both of these individuals were excommunicated on the same day. Which is strange because excommunication cannot come from church leadership. It has to originate at the local congregation level. So how did these two people causing problems for the church at the same time both end up excommunicated on the same day on both sides of the country. It reminded me of the 90's when a group of church historians were excommunicated for putting out research that disproved the church's claims. It was widely suspected that it was one of the church leaders who just recently came to power when it happened who orchestrated the excommunications (which again is illegal under the church law). That same leader just recently was promoted even higher in the church right before the excommunications I mentioned above about 9 years ago.

I went to bed confused but still an active believer. I woke up the next morning and the first thought that came to my mind was "It's all a fucking lie isn't it" and I just accepted that I had spent the last 23 years of my life living in a cult based on a lie. I briefly considered becoming eastern Orthodox because I felt like they had the best claim to being the "true church" but a few days later I just admitted to myself that God wasn't real either and accepted I was an atheist.

Never religious, parents weren't religious but grandparents on both sides were, went to church a few times with them (and friends families) but never made sense to me

Raised mostly Baptist. As a kid I decided the thing to do was to learn as much about the Bible as possible. As a teen I realized I wasn’t comfortable with the praise and worship part of church. The other bits were boring and didn’t feel like there was much to learn. Then I decided what I should do is just read the Bible cover to cover.

I made it to that story where some men of the lord were hiding from villagers in some dudes house. The villagers wanted the guys and to keep them happy the owner of the house sent out his daughters to entertain the group of men.

It took a while to cope with the massive shift in my reality. Eventually I decided I’d rather burn in hell for all time than worship an entity that requires actions like that from me.

All family was religious, but i grew up just barely avoiding a christian lifestyle. Never read a bible or anything, dont care. Since I was young I've been skeptical of religion since it wasn't forced down my throat. The end result was a lot of religious and philosophical exploration.

These days I tend to hover between absurdism, satanism, and zen. I feel great to be so free in my beliefs! Definitely a good time for athiests to be alive (at least where I live).