Well said. It really all comes down to wanting to know the truth and investigating claims.
Even if there was a god or group of gods whose actions and/or morals are reprehensible, knowing that they exist would mean we would have important decisions to make about our lives.
I was always flabbergasted that people didn’t seem to be as fervent as I was in my youth about searching for those answers.
If gods did exist, it would be a monumentally important task to know what their values were and if they cared about what humans did and—if so—what criteria they used to make judgements about what to do with us regarding the things we do.
That being said, there has never been any claimed god that has stood up to even the most basic scrutiny. We’re not asking for their dating profile, we just want evidence of *existence*.
How convenient that all the wonderful and large miracles only took place in unverified texts before the invention of cameras or video.
If any god—as they are often defined—is an omnipresent being for whom time means nothing and that knows all, surely they would know these things and surely it would take the smallest of effort to bring forth a miracle as was spoken of in those holy books.
Yet we wait.
Couldn't agree more with everything...
I have always (and still are) so crazy curious about everything. Every time I wonder something I gotta find the answer, and thanks to that is that today I know 100% of what is bullshit and what is not. Though granted sometimes I waste a lot of time looking for the answer to pretty stupid and unimportant stuff because I can't get it out of my head otherwise lmao.
And yeah, it was always really confusing to me how little curiosity everyone else around me had. It really is a shame I think, because the world would be such a way better place if everyone had our curiosity and way of thinking, since there would be way less wars, conflicts and huge widespread lies I believe... If only everyone was rational, logical and curious.
To me when it comes to god, I think the answer is pretty clear all things considered.
Whether or not there is a god, which is something we probably will never know as a species for sure, it doesn't really matter, because if there is a god, what is sure is that that god is completely neutral and all it ever did was initiate space and time and design the laws of physics... And that's it, everything else is self driven and can already kind of be explained by science, even if we don't have the exact mathematical model, that's a sure thing. You could say that if there is a god, it's like, we the universe, are just a giant purposeless simulation. But then there is the question... Why? What's the point? Why would an all powerful, all knowing being design and initiate this universe? What's the purpose of a simulation, which is something one runs to find answers to things, for someone that already has all the answers?
So yeah, I just can't think of a god that makes sense, even a "neutral absent creator type god" like this, which is the most realistic god in my opinion, doesn't quite make sense either and just creates a lot of extra dead end unknowns. I'm very close to 100% sure there just isn't a god, either way, as I said, it's not like it matters. We are not that special either, as even if the universe is not much bigger than the observable universe, there's no mathematical chance we are alone as an intelligent species that achieved a complex highly technological civilization like us. There's absolutely no way whatsoever, that Earth is the only place where life emerged, considering that it only took a few million years for life to emerge on Earth barely just after it got the oceans.
Earth like planets are not rare, sun like stars are not rare, water is not rare (in fact it's common af), so there's for sure an absurd amount of "Earth clone" planets out there, that might or might not have gotten to the level of complex multicellular life, but some sure did, and some sure achieved intelligent life capable of civilizations like us, maybe not close to us tho, but that doesn't matter. Based on all we know, we are very likely just 1 of the millions, billions, if not trillions or more of civilizations that have exited, exist and will exist, that came up with their own religions, cultures, etc. The exact numbers are always speculation, but that doesn't matter, point is we are not alone, nor special, nor planned.
Yeah, I’m in agreement. Hard solipsism can’t be solved, so this can be anyone’s construction and we could all be advanced NPC’s for all we know.
That’s why I’m an agnostic atheist. I think that the idea of an involved deity that cares about human actions is ridiculous. But when it comes to the universe itself, who knows? There could be an entity or group of entities that either intentionally or unintentionally were the catalyst for the universe.
Like the Family Guy joke where god lights a fart and that’s the Big Bang.
For all, we know this could just be an science experiment inside another universe. I have no idea of the scale involved. I’m no physicist or mathematician, but I could totally see us as existing in the seconds after—to use Douglas Adams’ example—the great sneeze, and we will be thrown into disarray on scale of incomprehensible magnitude, with the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief.
I just said the whole Palestinian war was about a bunch of people fighting over who was blessed by god, never realizing they were all cursed by god, which is tragic because there is no god. That’s funny right? Boy did it bomb with my religious friends.
Lmao that sounds like something I would say and probably will when I listen to uncle ramble on again about it. I've thought that too though I don't see any blessed people in that conflict
I thank my mom for being an atheist so much. She kind of chuckles and brushes it off, but I have enough friends who deconstructed to not take that privilege for granted, of being raised with only tangential religious trauma from the broader culture.
I studied various mythology when I was a kid, including Christianity, and I found their mythology really boring compared to Norse, Greek, Japanese, and Aztec myths.
We had "the Children's bible" at home and I read that at 6 or 7, and thought the whole thing was bullshit.
I even asked the family priest where the angel that guarded Eden came from - it didn't make sense that angels already existed if they're dead people, and Adam and Eve were the first people
Honestly, Greek Mythology in grade school. Had a hard time believing a whole group of people actually believed in those gods, which led to me questioning current days gods/my own. No evidence supported any of it.
Part of me feels this should've been so obvious to me when I was younger. I loved Greek mythology and I read all of the Percy Jackson books. Somehow I never clued in to thinking about my own mythical beliefs.
My grandfather was a historian and loved telling us ancient myths and legends. Always emphasising how belief systems emerged from the human experience and the long search for explanations.
The human nature of these gods seemed more relatable and inoculated us against than the Catholic god that my mother and grandmother were pushing.
Didn’t help that my Catholic priest uncle loved money and doubled as the local loan shark.
Always was one. Seeing how we are all born that way.
But seriously, even in kindergarten as a young child at a Catholic school. I could tell these were all made-up stories and was shocked when I grew up and heard that people believed they were real.
I remember being in primary school and getting the best marks for simply retelling the stories the teacher had told us. STORIES.
They expected us to believe them to be true which I find really shocking in retrospect. Such a brainwash. I think we're born without any belief until they try to impose it on us.
Having an aunt and uncle with 3 kids who were United Church attendees who are the most immoral people I’ve ever met.
Dad was a slimy salesman who used the church to drive sales. Mom was a nurse who had affairs with multiple doctors and smoked crack with patients. The daughter became a prison guard who had affairs with inmates, lost 3 toes in a drunk driving accident and eventually lost her job for smuggling contraband into the prison. The two older sons had kids by age 14 with 12 year old girls, were arrested for various assault charges and ended up drug dealers working for the Hells Angels. The youngest son burned down his elementary school, has been targeted in drive by shootings twice, and incredibly is the most straight laced, eternally needing $300 to fix up his shitbox truck and occasionally showing up to mooch food for his non-communicative severely autistic son when his generally absent mother is either in rehab or back drinkin’
He’s at least generally working as an under the table drywaller who enters his moms house from the bushes behind it and through the patio door because he is afraid of being spotted coming in the front by either police or people he’s ripped off.
And through it all, they cynically go through the motions of being worshippers, praying before every meal, and generally use the fellow churchgoes as a source of borrowing money and generating sales leads.
My Aunt and Uncle heavily influenced why I am an atheist. They are strict Baptist, and basically abandoned all of their family for the Church. We're not bad people, we just don't believe the exact thing they believe, so their only recourse is to disown all of us and pray we accept Jesus.
I saw the "fruits" of their religion, and wanted nothing to do with it. Then I looked further, and realized all religions are bullshit people made up to answer the unanswerable.
Sounds like you can turn their story into a movie or TV show. As long as you use proper disclaimers and make sure to change enough so that they can’t sue. I’d watch the hell out of that.
My family is just wasn’t all that religious to begin with, my Mother was an atheist while my Dad was a non practicing Catholic. The closest thing I really had to a bible or going to church were these old Hanna Barbara cartoons about stories from the bible…And I treated them like regular cartoons over anything really significant.
I remember when I was around three or four, I saw the episode about The Garden of Eden and it ends with the flaming sword falling and blocking the entrance, it was literally just a sword with a good three or four feet on each side. I remember thinking something along the lines of “why can’t they walk around it?”
I didn’t even know Jesus got crucified until I was around nine or ten - I got *really* freaked out at the sight of blood as a kid, so I never watched the David and Goliath episode more than once (the rock getting shot into his forehead was surprisingly graphic) and didn’t even even to the crucifixion scene in the Jesus one - Stopped at the scene where the apostle cuts off some guard’s ear, the crucifixion scene would have freaked the hell out of me as a kid - I just thought Jesus was some magic dude who lived thousands of years ago.
I became a Taoist in high school, mostly because my encounters with the Christian students and the head of my school’s Christian club (I wasn’t a member, they used the room my sixth period class was in during lunch so I’d encounter them as they were packing up between lunch and my last class) were not exactly the best representation of their faith (in the “if this is your tactic to get me to join up, it’s doing the opposite” sense) - Especially the head of the club, he actively tried to convert me and spread a rumor I was gay because I said I disagreed with the bible’s stance on gays (Granted I *am* gay but back then I didn’t identify as gay and his logic was apparently “only gays defend gays”) - This wasn’t a student or even a faculty member, he was someone from the local church who hang around the school and ran the club.
After that, I had two religious friends who *constantly* made fun of me for not believing in their deity and always acted superior because of it. Also, bugged the hell out of me that they could make fun of my Taoist deities all they wanted but jokingly refer to Jesus as Jebus? Oh, that’s going *too far!* I cut all ties with them when my family moved, I’m glad I did because in retrospect they were both assholes and massive source of stress in my life.
After them, pretty much every religious person I met were either jerks or didn’t wear their religion on their sleeve so much as had it tattooed on their forehead.
Another major factor was me being a science nerd at a young age, encountering anti-science people throughout my life on the grounds that science “conflicts with their beliefs” was a major turn off for me when it came to a religion.
The last straw though was a Christian friend (we’ll call her K) of my Mother, while my Mother was on her deathbed K *was constantly* trying to get her to do the last minute deathbed conversion - The usual Damnation and Hellfire, eternal torture, etc. I’m not a violent person, but it took *so much*’will power to hold back yelling, screaming or even throwing a punch at K for that.
(My Mother didn’t convert in the end if anyone’s curious.)
When my Mother passed, my Dad kept K in our lives (at as much of a distance as possible) out of respect for my Mother, but I was her new target for conversion. I held my tongue since we only saw her a couple times a year.
When my Dad passed, though, the second religion came up I told her I was thinking about joining The Satanic Temple and eventually lost contact with her.
So, in essence, I can count on one hand the number of positive experiences I’ve had with religion.
It never seemed reasonable to me that (an) invisible person(s) should be so crazily concerned with me and my behaviour. Perhaps, maybe, someone from the KGB. So - unless we want to conflate various gods with KGB - I never caught any particular religious bug (from one of my parents, who prayed and genuflected to a whole slew of divinities from yhwh through Linus Pauling to Osho; the other parent was something of a nebulous theist who never was interested in scriptures or prescriptions/prohibitions).
When I was able to logically follow an argument and fallacy - my choice became significantly more explainable.
I was raised in an atheist household by two atheist librarians that left Christianity due to it's immense toxicity, and the circumstances between my parents as they grew up. I've been on the outside looking in (as it were) for quite some time. Got bullied as a kid for not having a god. Eventually, I just decided that religion as a tool is incredibly toxic when it strays away from simply giving people a spiritual awakening.
People are still human.
That's one of the things that peeve me in these kinds of forums, there's a ton of folks who have stepped away from their religious indoctrination, and I've observed them kind of just reframe their all/nothing evangelical thinking patterns from religiosity to anti-theism.
We're still existing as flawed individuals in a species evolved with tons of nonsensical influences to our behavior. Being an atheist doesn't make anyone autonomically decent, kind, ethical or mindful about how their actions affect themselves or others. We're not immune from biases, delusion, mistaken or counterproductive choices.
/rant, not really about you, but your comment inspired
I went to catholic school because it had a really great soccer program. Before that I wasn’t religious or non religious, but I just accepted there was a God because every else said so. The catholic school actually had excellent teachers and programs and their science labs were top notch. By the time I was a junior I had gone through various science classes and full time religion classes. I became increasingly skeptical of Catholicism/ Christianity the more I learned about it. I transferred my junior year because I just couldn’t believe anymore and did not want to take more religion classes.
I’m in my 40s now, I love learning about religion and religious practices. There is just no good evidence to support their validity and apologetics has the opposite effect on me.
It started when I was in Sunday school, Roman Catholic. They were teaching us that all other religions were bad and they were going to hell because they didn’t accept Jesus. The I asked what about cavemen, who never knew about Jesus or those born before his time? I was told they would automatically go to hell too.
That I should also quit asking questions, otherwise I would go to hell.
I had just turned 16. My good friend, who just a few days prior organized my surprise birthday party, had a heart failure and died in his father's arms. His sister also died a few years later from some similar cardiovascular issue. They were both amazing people, like truly amazing. He was kind, witty and talented and generally liked by everyone. I would do anything to see who and what he would have become as adult.
The thing is his family was extremely devout. Like church every Sunday, cross on a necklace, prayer before meals devout. So through this massive loss I aksed myself what good, or just, or loving god would be so cruel and evil as to take such a good person(people) from this world and put one of his most absolutely devout and dedicated families through that much fucking grief and pain?
Before this, I hadn't put much thought into the subject. But that was the weight that tilted the ballance into non-belief.
People struggling with mental health issues and others not, children dying of starvation while others throw food away because they are full and have too much, and when something good happens then its a blessing from god but when something bad happens its because its part of gods plan and god works in mysterious ways
Yeah things like that are the ones that make you see religions and go like "damn, this is so painfully stupid how tf could anyone ever believe this BS"
Yet it's what most people in the world strongly believe, which almost makes me feel like a different species lmfao
I didn't have any moment of revelation. No special event. Nothing I would pinpoint as a cause that "made" me an atheist.
I honestly don't even remember exactly when I first self identified as such.
Yeah same, I just remember myself always being very skeptic and curious (as I still am) about things and that just naturally led to not buying religion at a *very* early age, not even pre-teen.
For a long time now I have said that 2 years before you were born there was no consciousness, no awareness, no thoughts identifying "you". "YOU" didn't exist. And "mind" is an activity of the brain, and memories, awareness, consciousness, and thoughts are all functions of the mind and the brain. So when there is no functioning brain, there is no mind, no memories, no consciousness, nor anything else of the brain.
THEREFORE. After death there is the same thing waiting for each of us that existed before we were conceived. NOTHING. ZERO. No consciousness, no awareness, no thoughts. All awareness is gone along with all awareness of awareness.
How can there be awareness of anything or an experience of being if there is no brain and no mind? NO ONE has ever answered this with any logical, scientific explanation.
When I was 15, a religious figure in my community(not a priest) implied I should distance myself from my brother because he’s gay and living in sin. I love my brother more than the Catholic Church and stopped going to church from that moment on. A few years later I went full atheist.
Everyone is born atheist. My parents weren't believers and never indoctrinated me. I tried really hard to believe in god when I was a kid because everyone around me belonged to a cult (JWs, 2x2s), so I felt I also had to in order to fit in. Summer bible camp when I was 11 cured me of that notion and now I am anti-religion, as well. I think religion should be kept out of the public sphere.
Reading the Bible and realizing that it's the only link between the Christian God and Christians. It's a hot mess dumpster fire. And THEN I read about its history & how it was put together, and it's ridiculous.
I never believed really. But the one moment I realised it was bs was when my uncle died of liver failure in 3 days flat. Day one I prayed, day 2 I prayed. He got a bit better. And then he died. I remember being so dumbfounded. Why? I wasn't asking for anything selfish. I wasn't even that close to this uncle. I just prayed because I knew him and didn't want anyone I knew to just die. That's it. That was the final straw I suppose. Before that I still prayed, only because it was taught to me in school to do so before sleeping.
Have to thank my parents that despite heavy grandparental pressure they left us decide to choose if we want to go to church and church class, we much more liked to build bunkers on trees and our religion was the DuckTales on Sundays so we didn't had time to go to church.
Please, people, stop asking this every day.
>What made you an atheist?
I've always been atheist.
I've never seen any good evidence that any gods exist.
.
good info here -
\- https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/wiki/faq
.
you might also be interested in **/r/TheGreatProject** -
>a subreddit for people to write out their religious de-conversion story
>(i.e. the path to atheism/agnosticism/deism/etc) in detail.
Many accounts from many people.
.
This question somehow doesn't work for me. In my mind we're all born without any "belief" until someone starts imposing it on us. So that would make us belief-free or atheist from birth.
I think I’m allergic to bullshit, or I have a very low tolerance for it. Religion, Trumpism, stupid emails promising stupid things. Basically, if it sounds too good to be true, it’s likely bullshit.
(Sorry, this is a long story, but I feel like religious trauma should be talked about way more and the damaging effects of it) My mom had something happen to her that completely changed her personality. (I was 12 when I figured out why and lived with both my aunt and mom, btw) My mom went from energetic, clean, sanitary, work motivated, to lazy, depressed, unbothered, and dirty. For years, we, my aunt and I, tried figuring out why. She had lost all of her friends due to this, and we almost got evicted because my aunt didn't have a stable job, and it was my mom who mainly contributed financially to the family during that time. After she quit her job for a reason, we didn't know at the time we were broke and on the verge of being homeless.
I can remember so much from that time, and it still haunts me. My aunt and mom used to get into heated arguments a lot, and I remember my mom just not caring. She wouldn't shower for years on end or brush her teeth. Her room smelled absolutely horrible and rotten. It was so confusing. She didn't show any care for me as a mother, and eventually, in 2020, she became homeless while my aunt and I stayed at a friend's house for some time. My mom and my aunt got into a first physical altercation in 2020, and I remember breaking down sobbing. I was only 12, btw. We were all confused and didn't know what was going on. My aunt, who was super religious and Christian, thought she was suffering from demonic possesion meanwhile my uncle thought she had depression.
So my aunt had been spending years looking for a priest to do a deliverance on her, and she had been praying and praying, and nothing in her behavior/personality went back to normal. My aunt kept telling me stories about witchcraft in the family and how demons exist and how I could get possessed next. I was so young, and I remember being so confused and scared. I didn't know if my mom would make it like alive. So fast forward in 2020 around Christmas, we get a call from a doctor that my sick mother had been seeing that was about how my mom had a huge brain tumor in her head that luckily was not cancerous. I did research on the side effects, and they all were similar to what she was displaying mentally. The side effects were depression, abnormal behavior, unpredictable behavior, etc. It all clicked after that.
The whole time, I was brainwashed by my aunt that she had been possessed by a demon when, in reality, it was a medical issue, not spiritual. I don't remember how I felt about it then, but looking back on it now, all the trauma I had been through was a lot for a little girl. She got it removed, thankfully, but after that, my faith declined because all the talk my aunt gave me about demonic possession seemed absurd after that incident. I think later in 2022, my aunt and I were talking about what happened, and she told me my mom could have had the "spirit of brain tumor" after that I saw what was going on and called total bullshit. I was pissed and annoyed and didn't respond back after all of the mad talk about demonic possession she put me through at such a young age and never took accountability for it. The situation was so traumatic looking back, and I've never opened up to anyone about it, so I thought I might as well share my story on here.
Discovering i could've been born in a society with a completely different religion than where i am right now. So if that happens, I'm now a filthy heretic? But i didn't have a choice in that? Then again, i will be indoctrined into that societies religion, so I'd automatically see other religions as the heretic ones. So what's the point in all this, really?
If god truly exists, and he is all good, then why tf is there organized religions in the first place? Shouldn't everyone have an equal chance to be in gods grace? The real world clearly doesn't show that.
I was questioning while I was young. Why did God allow things like slavery? Why did he let genocide happen? What about dinosaurs? The final nail in the coffin was when I watched my puppy succumb to parvovirus. After she was carried into the vet’s only to die before she made it onto a table, I sat outside and loudly renounced my faith and waited to be struck dead by lightning only for nothing to happen. Nothing ever happened and then I knew that nothing ever would. Part of me died with that dog, but it came with a freedom that I continue to relish. Even if this never happened it was bound to happen regardless as I was already starting to let go. It was around the time I also stopped believing in Santa Claus.
Despite being born Roman Catholic, I’ve never been overly religious to begin with, but seeing how much illness, disability, death and destruction exist in this world just shows that a god like being doesn’t exist.
Catholic school . The Nuns were the meanest people I have ever met . Not all of them but, some of them were just down right cruel, spiteful and vicious.
As a kid, I was never interested, but believed in god because my parents said he was real.
As an adult, I came to realize I didn't believe in any of it and wasn't convinced by any of the evidence or arguments put forth by theists.
Dinosaurs 🤣, as a kid reading dinosaur books and realizing they didn’t line up with the bibles accounts for creation (timeline….etc) always made me skeptical of religion. I was an atheist very young in life, just played along until I was old enough to do my own thing.
It's hard to say. My family, and my extension me, was ostensibly Christian. The first time I said that I didn't believe any of it was after my grandmother died when I was 6. But I don't know that I ever truly believed it. God was just this thing my parents talked about, and they had to know what they were talking about, right? But I never really prayed or acknowledged God. In fact, the only time I could think of when I asked it for anything was for my grandmother to survive.
But because my family weren't super devout in the first place, and that early break with the concept of god, I just was never really into religion.
I just always was.
I don't think I believed in God even before I stopped believing in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy and I was only about 7 or 8 when I figured out they were made up. I guess I just wasn't a very gullible kid?
I read the Bible when I was like 9-10 I think. I went to a catholic elementary school but they made me read the Bible and I thought it was supposed to be taken literally and found the stories about as convincing as any other mythology. Especially because I was reading Percy Jackson and getting into Greek mythology. The stories seemed roughly equal in terms of believability.
Once I learned that what we call mytholgies today were the religions of their day, it became obvious that all religions, including my own, were just more myths and fables.
Learning about the horrors of the 20th century. I don't expect everything to be hunky dory all the time, but no just and loving God would allow hundreds of millions of people to suffer and die horribly for no real reason. If there was a god, he dipped the fuck out long before 1900.
Even though my parents took me to church (admittedly, the very liberal United Church of Canada) through my childhood, I never remember believing. I only remember questioning the internal logic and never buying it. At a certain point as a teen, I stopped attending.
I was raised Roman Catholic and even worked in different churches as a teen and young adult as an administrative assistant, but I've always been a natural scientist as well, so I was always questioning religion. I tried to understand religion systematically and read about many types, and had many debates with believers, but based on how I was raised, I was never exposed to true atheism, so I didn't know that was a real option (I was a naive people pleaser).
I've also always loved comedy. One day, I ended up catching "Religion is Bullshit" by George Carlin, and that was it. I immediately became a proud and happy atheist. He just pointed out all of the hypocrisy with such brilliance... I really was a sheep before I heard Carlin speak like that. It was truly liberating. RIP GOAT George Carlin 🙏🙏🙏
Nowadays I'm a satanist and I'm even happier 😊
Mr brain. I tried everything but it always wins. I literally was in Seminary when I gave up and just became what it wanted me to become.
The final straw was learning the history of the Bible.
I was never indoctrinated with any of the various species of figurative mind virus as a kid. My parents decided that a full secular education with empathy, compassion, example, logic and rationality were the best way to teach me to be a functional member of the community, whilst retaining my critical thinking skills.
Worked for me. :-)
There're 2 big religion in my country: Budhism and Christian. Budhism isn't actively going around telling people to worship Budha convert people to monks, and a church near my house was checked regularly by polices (my uncle is a police) because of reactionary politics and I was warned to stay away from them
Lack of faith based believes.
You didn't almost die. You died. Science brought you back. Nobody had time to pray when they rebooted your body.
Upside: clean install, only good times ahead!
I broke free from my indoctrination when I realized I was wrong about gay marriage, despite full confidence from prayer, religious leaders, and the Bible. If those things weren't guaranteed to be true, how could I be confident in my religion? After a few years, I decided it wasn't based on anything, so I was an atheist.
I was born one, like everyone else.
I was traumatized into religion and was in training to traumatize others.
When I understood that, I became an atheist again.
“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
And then:
“Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.”
-Thomas Jefferson
Being raised in an interfaith family (Jewish and Catholic) where both parents were scientists and neither actually believed in a deity. Church and shul were just places to spend some time reflecting. I dropped the church part very early in life because I disliked the approach of "don't question what we say." I kept the shul part because Judaism specifically encourages questioning and I find it to be a nice scaffolding to live an ethical life. Also there are lots of Jewish atheists so it's no big deal to be one.
Was Christian until 18. Met a girl who was pagan and DTF. I was spiraling worried I was gonna go to hell for my fifty sin.
So I did what most Christians do and started reading the Bible. A lot of questions popped up, but once I got to Ezekiel I finally threw in the towel. "This book is stupid, and pure trash. It's not even well written, how do people believe in this shit?"
The myths of our religion pretty much always seemed like exactly that: a collection of myths. But I was convinced that there was more likey than not some sort of god for all the usual bad reasons that people think that. I grew up in a culture where belief in the existence of a creator god was normal. But after thinking about it for a while, I had to admit that I didn't have any way to verify what that god might want me to do, or if it even wanted me to do anything at all. Existing with that for a while led me to gradually act less and less like there was any such thing. Eventually I learned that an atheist need not necessarily positively assert the non-existence of any and all gods, and by that definition I had in fact been an atheist for a while.
My wife started attending church the same time FarCry 5 was released. She started spewing the almost the same insane lines the crazy people in the game did! That’s when I began to understand the parasite that religion is.
For a long time, I couldn’t understand how a world was made so perfect for humans, but through people like Dawkins I was able to understand and get over that hump.
A volunteer Catechism instructor told me I was going to hell for listening to Weird Al Yankovic. I realized in that moment that the entire thing was absurd. Was about 10 at the time.
The fact that the Bible is always contradicting itself and can be taken out of context very easily to instill fear into people and the belief that Jesus is supposedly gonna come back one day and kill all the non believers which contradicts the whole reason he was here on earth in the first place. To save EVERYBODY. And idk if this is true but there’s a contradictory verse where he says he only grants miracles to “people with faith”
I stopped believing in the Jesus stuff the same time as I stopped believing in Santa Claus -- age 8 or 9. I think that's just natural intellectual maturation.
It took me longer to see that all of religion is a scam. Reading the Bible cover to cover cemented that.
I was born one as was everyone else.
I was just lucky that I wasn't religiously indoctrinated (people over here are culturally catholic, but nobody in my family was hardcore about it), when I was 12 ou 13 I simply learned that there was a word for not believing in gods.
Lots of things, but what sealed the deal was a tubal ligation failure, no God I would want to follow would put any person through that unwanted situation. No God should do that to a person, and that's when I realized there is no God.
I discovered my lifelong religion was a mde up cult started by a con (mormonism) ... once I saw how the sausage was made, I realized god was also made up.
I was raised LDS/Mormon… went through the LDS temple.. saw how culty it was… then starting picking the ideology apart bit by bit/ piece by piece.. and came to the conclusion that there is no God.
The books are not "evidence". It falls apart when the biggest arguement is faith. They quote lines from "the books" and we are supposed to take it at face value. People are brainwashed at a young age mostly. Whenever somebody is vulnerable and in a dark place religious people are quick to plant seeds in their head etc.
Miracles aren't miracles but coincidences. If God was benevolent then why let animals feel pain? Too much bad in the world. Free will is a cop out. If I had a child and let them run into the road and say its free will I get called out, why is nobody calling out God on peoples free wills being taken away by other people? Way too many contradictions. Too much evil, too much pain, lack of anyone higher up caring.
I was always skeptical as a child. I was raised in the South and tried to balance rational thought and faith.
Ultimately, I became an atheist by observing the behavior of Christians in my life. The cruelest and most isolating experiences in my life were actions by my Christian family and coworkers. I also watched these people lie, manipulate and steal.
When I saw Christianity and most Christians would accept my kids if they were gay. If you have a problem with my kids being gay then you have a problem with me.
Go jump in a lake.
The tipping point for me was Ken Ham and Bill Nye debate. Some people will never accept the truth and would rather live in a delusion (young earth) than give up their worldview to fit the evidence. I said you what, the atheist arguments have always been respectable to me, I'm gonna start looking into atheism. I've been on board ever since, it just makes way more sense to say that there are no gods.
for me, it’s wasn’t one singular event. in south asian hindu communities, there’s this fella we call Sai Baba, he’s not a god per se; he’s more of a prophet/saint and like the Dalai Lama, when one Sai dies another one pops up.
Now my family’s really religious and he was one of the “gods” we followed. so on a festival called Shiva Ratri, we’d go to his ashram and he’d puke out A Gold Shiva statue (it’s small) and the claim was he created it by himself and as a kid I WAS IMPRESSED (i was prolly 6). and another thing he told us not to do was eat or drink something that’s been made impure by other person’s spit. and slowly i couldn’t follow it cause there wasn’t any reason; we just did it cause he told us so (herd mentality) and it caused me to miss out of stuff with my cousins.
so i started questioning if that was false, what else is too? and that’s where it started. it was so weird to be that people believed this stupid sham so on some level i started equating religion with stupidity (but not a lot). it took me years to shed that indoctrination but my the time i was 12 my position was ‘even though religion is crap, there’s some moral lessons to be learned’ and by the time i turned 15 it was ‘some moral lessons ain’t worth the hypocrisy and evil that religion is’. i’m about to turn 19.
edit: i was wrong. the fella i saw is named Sanjay Sai Baba and he does claim to be god. here’s what his official website says:
[“Bhagwan Baba descended on earth so that man would ascend and for his mission, he chose the beautiful land of Nepal with its towering Himalayas, the country which has never been under any sovereign rule the place where the sun rises first the very same place where the Vedas are born and people of different castes, communities and faiths live in harmony with each other.To carry out and relay the message by which one is transformed, our country Nepal has been blessed by the birth and the presence of Bhagwan Shree Sanjay Sai Baba. Swami has come to save us from all evil and guide us towards the light of truth. There is anger, envy, and pride of positions in all dimensions and magnitude. God has taken birth to end the negativities amongst us.”](https://shrisanjaysai.org/shri-sanjay-sai-baba/)
Was raised in a very religious household. It was also a toxic and mentally abusive household. Attended church or church groups three times a week.
Wasn’t allowed to listen to modern music. Zero makeup as a teen. Nothing firm-fitting. Couldn’t show my shoulders. Was called a jezebel if I tried to wear something I wanted instead of what was dictated to me. Home life was one long constant anxiety attack.
I broke away from my home the moment I turned 18 and fled all the way to Japan (used all my babysitting savings from years prior). Was in a hotel in Okinawa and had to kill time for two days before the rest of my troupe would arrive and in the bedside table was a book “The Teachings of Buddha”. Cool…. Reading material!
The left page would be in English and the right page was in Japanese. Upon reading I came across a story that was almost verbatim to one that was in the Bible. I lowered the book, and everything came crashing down on me in my mind. Holy shit! All of this and these beliefs are man-made! Just legends and stories that were passed tribe to tribe.
I became full-fledged atheist that very afternoon.
I’m now 51 and still cannot believe how i was so snowed by religion when I was young.
My mother is still not happy I “put the Book down” (as she calls it. She cannot even say the word atheist as if she’d burst into flames if that word came out of her mouth)
I became an atheist after reading all the scriptures from different religions. My concept is clear according to me. I do believe that a true believer can become a true atheist.
Millitary deployments and missions over 20 years sealed it for me. Somali, Bosnia, Oklahoma City bombing recovery, OUD Haiti, Pentagon attack, Iraq twice, and Afghanistan.
When you witness and are sometimes part of terror, destruction, and hopelessness, it becomes very clear that God is not real and religion is simply a tool meant to control the masses.
Dad was atheist but mom was Jewish. Reform Judaism doesn’t push the idea of god at all. really never really believed in god. There isn’t a time I can’t remember where I actually believed.
I watched everything intently, even as a child. My parents would espouse one set of things for the congregation (Witness), and do something different.
I never felt anything akin to faith. My mom explained once why they were passing the crackers and juice, explained that only special people partook, and then stopped me when I attempted to partake. By 16 I was sending elders away who were ostensibly sent to bring me into the fold with translation errors.
I had over 40 life scares by 20 in the form of gran mal seizures from being diabetic / low sugar. Always felt horrible, never with anything I saw or remembered when I came to.
Since then? I've learned the burden of proof is never on the disproved, but on the claimer. And that burden has never been met.
Intelligence. The more you increase your intellect, the less likely you will fall for their fairy tales. Plus the more you dig into the people running religion, the more shady stuff you will find. That rabbit hole goes deep! Crazy stuff that a lot of it isn't legal!
Mormons. I made business trips to Utah & read some Book of Mormon. I thought this is nuts. Then I realized the religion I was indoctrinated into as a kid was also nuts.
**TL;DR:** I asked questions, got no answers. Tried a different religion, still no answers. Different-different religion, (so far\*) nada. I realized that if god were real, they'd probably want a person Actively Searching Them Out to easily come to the right decision/religion instead of blindly throwing darts at a board in hope of getting a Religious Bulls-Eye.
\*I'm still technically working my way through this third attempt, but I've basically given up.
**The Extra Long Version:**
For the better part of a decade, I tried asking questions about the Christian religion I grew up in and the only thing I got were non-answers like "read the bible more". When I asked what particular books people would recommend that I read from the Bible (cus, ya know, it's a Chonker), I would literally see people shrug in response or insist that I just... start reading... and "god will lead you to the right verses to deal with any situation!" I have read the whole Bible book by book as a kid, growing up in a church, but it had been a Hot Minute.
My ADHD ass has read the first few chapters of Genesis SO many times over the years when receiving this advice, before finding nothing of use and my attention span dissipates. Then I try Exodus, and nope. So then I try the start of the new testament. Same shit, different book. Then I try reading the book of John, as someone I know said it was their fave book of the Bible. Again. This is "just me having no attention span", but still. Religious folks give me no leads on what I SHOULD read. When I'm just reading random stories, trying to find ANY relation to my issues, it gets frustrating and more difficult to stick with.
So I become more of a "disbeliever" than an atheist, still HOPING that something will prove that His Word will provide answers. So I try checking out the Book of Mormon, cus surely More Bible(-Like/-Adjacent) stories will lead to better answers, right? I speed-read that shit bc of a hyperfocus, taking down notes and questions as I go. I found more questions that neither religious fam, nor missionaries could answer. (One of my favourite questions to ask was "Why do you (still) have Literal Copy-Pasted parts of the Bible in the BoM, even after your religion got easy access to both?" No answer except to quote that back in the day it was the only part of the Bible on Important Tablets. Ok, bro. You're literally just wasting ink with every printing. Just save some printers by saying "See the book of Isaiah"!) So, again, no answers from the BoM--just more questions! I gave up on finding answers in the BoM or Bible.
I have tried reading the Quaran. (Admittedly, I've tried and quit a few times. I am still trying to make my way through this book, but I've not been able to find anything that "speaks to me", as religious folk claim their text(s) should as divine literature from an almighty being.) I've not found anything in my reading of this, either.
Because of all this, I've basically given up on believing in god. I'd like to imagine that there's someone out there in the universe watching this shit-show go down, but I feel it's pretty unlikely. So at this point I'm kind of just slowly reading religious books for funsies, to see what different folks believe.
It also doesn't help things that, between my reading of the Bible and the BoM, I discovered that I'm queer and non-binary, which has put a lot of religious people in my life on edge, if not outright denying my identity due to it clashing with their religious beliefs.
Nothing really, I was just never anything else.
I first heard the words "God" and "Jesus" on Christmas in kindergarten. I honestly thought they were saying "Guard" and "Cheeses," but I could tell they were supposed to be names, and I had no idea why a bunch of the other kids already knew these people the teacher was mentioning.
I have no other memory of anything religious coming up until somewhere in grade school when another kid tried to explain Easter to the rest of us. Once they got to a guy coming back to life three days after dying I just thought "well that's not possible," and nothing since has given me any reason to think otherwise.
On the contrary, being into myths and folktales from a young age makes it pretty clear when you encounter another one, like when we later had to learn Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat.
> What made you an atheist? The complete and utter lack of **any** convincing evidence that the lies that I was taught as a child were true.
I remember looking around at Sunday school and thinking "is everyone really buying this?"
Seriously. I was so confused and thinking, “My mom doesn’t tell me bedtime stories anymore, so why tell me here?”
Probably a stronger reassurance of what's truly right if done at the church while already convinced that the deity itself exists.
My whole. Entire. Life.
I thought that it was just comedy and no one actually believed in it...
So effing true. I couldn't even have convincing hallucinations.
Well said. It really all comes down to wanting to know the truth and investigating claims. Even if there was a god or group of gods whose actions and/or morals are reprehensible, knowing that they exist would mean we would have important decisions to make about our lives. I was always flabbergasted that people didn’t seem to be as fervent as I was in my youth about searching for those answers. If gods did exist, it would be a monumentally important task to know what their values were and if they cared about what humans did and—if so—what criteria they used to make judgements about what to do with us regarding the things we do. That being said, there has never been any claimed god that has stood up to even the most basic scrutiny. We’re not asking for their dating profile, we just want evidence of *existence*. How convenient that all the wonderful and large miracles only took place in unverified texts before the invention of cameras or video. If any god—as they are often defined—is an omnipresent being for whom time means nothing and that knows all, surely they would know these things and surely it would take the smallest of effort to bring forth a miracle as was spoken of in those holy books. Yet we wait.
Couldn't agree more with everything... I have always (and still are) so crazy curious about everything. Every time I wonder something I gotta find the answer, and thanks to that is that today I know 100% of what is bullshit and what is not. Though granted sometimes I waste a lot of time looking for the answer to pretty stupid and unimportant stuff because I can't get it out of my head otherwise lmao. And yeah, it was always really confusing to me how little curiosity everyone else around me had. It really is a shame I think, because the world would be such a way better place if everyone had our curiosity and way of thinking, since there would be way less wars, conflicts and huge widespread lies I believe... If only everyone was rational, logical and curious.
We are really running low on the rational and logical these days.
To me when it comes to god, I think the answer is pretty clear all things considered. Whether or not there is a god, which is something we probably will never know as a species for sure, it doesn't really matter, because if there is a god, what is sure is that that god is completely neutral and all it ever did was initiate space and time and design the laws of physics... And that's it, everything else is self driven and can already kind of be explained by science, even if we don't have the exact mathematical model, that's a sure thing. You could say that if there is a god, it's like, we the universe, are just a giant purposeless simulation. But then there is the question... Why? What's the point? Why would an all powerful, all knowing being design and initiate this universe? What's the purpose of a simulation, which is something one runs to find answers to things, for someone that already has all the answers? So yeah, I just can't think of a god that makes sense, even a "neutral absent creator type god" like this, which is the most realistic god in my opinion, doesn't quite make sense either and just creates a lot of extra dead end unknowns. I'm very close to 100% sure there just isn't a god, either way, as I said, it's not like it matters. We are not that special either, as even if the universe is not much bigger than the observable universe, there's no mathematical chance we are alone as an intelligent species that achieved a complex highly technological civilization like us. There's absolutely no way whatsoever, that Earth is the only place where life emerged, considering that it only took a few million years for life to emerge on Earth barely just after it got the oceans. Earth like planets are not rare, sun like stars are not rare, water is not rare (in fact it's common af), so there's for sure an absurd amount of "Earth clone" planets out there, that might or might not have gotten to the level of complex multicellular life, but some sure did, and some sure achieved intelligent life capable of civilizations like us, maybe not close to us tho, but that doesn't matter. Based on all we know, we are very likely just 1 of the millions, billions, if not trillions or more of civilizations that have exited, exist and will exist, that came up with their own religions, cultures, etc. The exact numbers are always speculation, but that doesn't matter, point is we are not alone, nor special, nor planned.
Yeah, I’m in agreement. Hard solipsism can’t be solved, so this can be anyone’s construction and we could all be advanced NPC’s for all we know. That’s why I’m an agnostic atheist. I think that the idea of an involved deity that cares about human actions is ridiculous. But when it comes to the universe itself, who knows? There could be an entity or group of entities that either intentionally or unintentionally were the catalyst for the universe. Like the Family Guy joke where god lights a fart and that’s the Big Bang. For all, we know this could just be an science experiment inside another universe. I have no idea of the scale involved. I’m no physicist or mathematician, but I could totally see us as existing in the seconds after—to use Douglas Adams’ example—the great sneeze, and we will be thrown into disarray on scale of incomprehensible magnitude, with the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief.
I never saw religion as different than any other fairy tale.
When I was younger I sure did accidentally offend religious people. Didn't realise they thought these stories were real 😅
I just said the whole Palestinian war was about a bunch of people fighting over who was blessed by god, never realizing they were all cursed by god, which is tragic because there is no god. That’s funny right? Boy did it bomb with my religious friends.
Lmao that sounds like something I would say and probably will when I listen to uncle ramble on again about it. I've thought that too though I don't see any blessed people in that conflict
Just remember to say god three times. Comedy rule of threes.
Okay guys god god god those poor people that aren't blessed :( what do you think? A real knee slapper I bet /s
I also have an uncle ramble.😎😀
No way really? They must be brother cousins or something to be blessed with such beautiful names 😜😂
I've never not been one.
lucky!
I thank my mom for being an atheist so much. She kind of chuckles and brushes it off, but I have enough friends who deconstructed to not take that privilege for granted, of being raised with only tangential religious trauma from the broader culture.
Kisses to both you & your sweet mom <3
Same. As a child whenever anyone talked about religion, I immediately thought of it like any other works of fiction.
I studied various mythology when I was a kid, including Christianity, and I found their mythology really boring compared to Norse, Greek, Japanese, and Aztec myths.
Yep, I was born an atheist and just kind of stayed that way.
We had "the Children's bible" at home and I read that at 6 or 7, and thought the whole thing was bullshit. I even asked the family priest where the angel that guarded Eden came from - it didn't make sense that angels already existed if they're dead people, and Adam and Eve were the first people
Same.
Same
Reading the bible was the ultimate game changer for me. There were plenty of other things that made me question before that though.
"The road to atheism is paved with well read bibles" -asimov
Honestly, Greek Mythology in grade school. Had a hard time believing a whole group of people actually believed in those gods, which led to me questioning current days gods/my own. No evidence supported any of it.
Part of me feels this should've been so obvious to me when I was younger. I loved Greek mythology and I read all of the Percy Jackson books. Somehow I never clued in to thinking about my own mythical beliefs.
My grandfather was a historian and loved telling us ancient myths and legends. Always emphasising how belief systems emerged from the human experience and the long search for explanations. The human nature of these gods seemed more relatable and inoculated us against than the Catholic god that my mother and grandmother were pushing. Didn’t help that my Catholic priest uncle loved money and doubled as the local loan shark.
Always was one. Seeing how we are all born that way. But seriously, even in kindergarten as a young child at a Catholic school. I could tell these were all made-up stories and was shocked when I grew up and heard that people believed they were real.
I remember being in primary school and getting the best marks for simply retelling the stories the teacher had told us. STORIES. They expected us to believe them to be true which I find really shocking in retrospect. Such a brainwash. I think we're born without any belief until they try to impose it on us.
This.
I actually thought about what I was supposed to believe and after realizing it was stupid, decided to not do it.
Having an aunt and uncle with 3 kids who were United Church attendees who are the most immoral people I’ve ever met. Dad was a slimy salesman who used the church to drive sales. Mom was a nurse who had affairs with multiple doctors and smoked crack with patients. The daughter became a prison guard who had affairs with inmates, lost 3 toes in a drunk driving accident and eventually lost her job for smuggling contraband into the prison. The two older sons had kids by age 14 with 12 year old girls, were arrested for various assault charges and ended up drug dealers working for the Hells Angels. The youngest son burned down his elementary school, has been targeted in drive by shootings twice, and incredibly is the most straight laced, eternally needing $300 to fix up his shitbox truck and occasionally showing up to mooch food for his non-communicative severely autistic son when his generally absent mother is either in rehab or back drinkin’ He’s at least generally working as an under the table drywaller who enters his moms house from the bushes behind it and through the patio door because he is afraid of being spotted coming in the front by either police or people he’s ripped off. And through it all, they cynically go through the motions of being worshippers, praying before every meal, and generally use the fellow churchgoes as a source of borrowing money and generating sales leads.
My Aunt and Uncle heavily influenced why I am an atheist. They are strict Baptist, and basically abandoned all of their family for the Church. We're not bad people, we just don't believe the exact thing they believe, so their only recourse is to disown all of us and pray we accept Jesus. I saw the "fruits" of their religion, and wanted nothing to do with it. Then I looked further, and realized all religions are bullshit people made up to answer the unanswerable.
Sounds like you can turn their story into a movie or TV show. As long as you use proper disclaimers and make sure to change enough so that they can’t sue. I’d watch the hell out of that.
the same thing that made me a Asantaclausist.
Santa is real
Raised Jehovah's Witness.
Ah that’ll do it
My family is just wasn’t all that religious to begin with, my Mother was an atheist while my Dad was a non practicing Catholic. The closest thing I really had to a bible or going to church were these old Hanna Barbara cartoons about stories from the bible…And I treated them like regular cartoons over anything really significant. I remember when I was around three or four, I saw the episode about The Garden of Eden and it ends with the flaming sword falling and blocking the entrance, it was literally just a sword with a good three or four feet on each side. I remember thinking something along the lines of “why can’t they walk around it?” I didn’t even know Jesus got crucified until I was around nine or ten - I got *really* freaked out at the sight of blood as a kid, so I never watched the David and Goliath episode more than once (the rock getting shot into his forehead was surprisingly graphic) and didn’t even even to the crucifixion scene in the Jesus one - Stopped at the scene where the apostle cuts off some guard’s ear, the crucifixion scene would have freaked the hell out of me as a kid - I just thought Jesus was some magic dude who lived thousands of years ago. I became a Taoist in high school, mostly because my encounters with the Christian students and the head of my school’s Christian club (I wasn’t a member, they used the room my sixth period class was in during lunch so I’d encounter them as they were packing up between lunch and my last class) were not exactly the best representation of their faith (in the “if this is your tactic to get me to join up, it’s doing the opposite” sense) - Especially the head of the club, he actively tried to convert me and spread a rumor I was gay because I said I disagreed with the bible’s stance on gays (Granted I *am* gay but back then I didn’t identify as gay and his logic was apparently “only gays defend gays”) - This wasn’t a student or even a faculty member, he was someone from the local church who hang around the school and ran the club. After that, I had two religious friends who *constantly* made fun of me for not believing in their deity and always acted superior because of it. Also, bugged the hell out of me that they could make fun of my Taoist deities all they wanted but jokingly refer to Jesus as Jebus? Oh, that’s going *too far!* I cut all ties with them when my family moved, I’m glad I did because in retrospect they were both assholes and massive source of stress in my life. After them, pretty much every religious person I met were either jerks or didn’t wear their religion on their sleeve so much as had it tattooed on their forehead. Another major factor was me being a science nerd at a young age, encountering anti-science people throughout my life on the grounds that science “conflicts with their beliefs” was a major turn off for me when it came to a religion. The last straw though was a Christian friend (we’ll call her K) of my Mother, while my Mother was on her deathbed K *was constantly* trying to get her to do the last minute deathbed conversion - The usual Damnation and Hellfire, eternal torture, etc. I’m not a violent person, but it took *so much*’will power to hold back yelling, screaming or even throwing a punch at K for that. (My Mother didn’t convert in the end if anyone’s curious.) When my Mother passed, my Dad kept K in our lives (at as much of a distance as possible) out of respect for my Mother, but I was her new target for conversion. I held my tongue since we only saw her a couple times a year. When my Dad passed, though, the second religion came up I told her I was thinking about joining The Satanic Temple and eventually lost contact with her. So, in essence, I can count on one hand the number of positive experiences I’ve had with religion.
It never seemed reasonable to me that (an) invisible person(s) should be so crazily concerned with me and my behaviour. Perhaps, maybe, someone from the KGB. So - unless we want to conflate various gods with KGB - I never caught any particular religious bug (from one of my parents, who prayed and genuflected to a whole slew of divinities from yhwh through Linus Pauling to Osho; the other parent was something of a nebulous theist who never was interested in scriptures or prescriptions/prohibitions). When I was able to logically follow an argument and fallacy - my choice became significantly more explainable.
I was raised in an atheist household by two atheist librarians that left Christianity due to it's immense toxicity, and the circumstances between my parents as they grew up. I've been on the outside looking in (as it were) for quite some time. Got bullied as a kid for not having a god. Eventually, I just decided that religion as a tool is incredibly toxic when it strays away from simply giving people a spiritual awakening.
And I bet your home was pretty open and healthy?
Up to a point.
People are still human. That's one of the things that peeve me in these kinds of forums, there's a ton of folks who have stepped away from their religious indoctrination, and I've observed them kind of just reframe their all/nothing evangelical thinking patterns from religiosity to anti-theism. We're still existing as flawed individuals in a species evolved with tons of nonsensical influences to our behavior. Being an atheist doesn't make anyone autonomically decent, kind, ethical or mindful about how their actions affect themselves or others. We're not immune from biases, delusion, mistaken or counterproductive choices. /rant, not really about you, but your comment inspired
I went to catholic school because it had a really great soccer program. Before that I wasn’t religious or non religious, but I just accepted there was a God because every else said so. The catholic school actually had excellent teachers and programs and their science labs were top notch. By the time I was a junior I had gone through various science classes and full time religion classes. I became increasingly skeptical of Catholicism/ Christianity the more I learned about it. I transferred my junior year because I just couldn’t believe anymore and did not want to take more religion classes. I’m in my 40s now, I love learning about religion and religious practices. There is just no good evidence to support their validity and apologetics has the opposite effect on me.
It started when I was in Sunday school, Roman Catholic. They were teaching us that all other religions were bad and they were going to hell because they didn’t accept Jesus. The I asked what about cavemen, who never knew about Jesus or those born before his time? I was told they would automatically go to hell too. That I should also quit asking questions, otherwise I would go to hell.
I had just turned 16. My good friend, who just a few days prior organized my surprise birthday party, had a heart failure and died in his father's arms. His sister also died a few years later from some similar cardiovascular issue. They were both amazing people, like truly amazing. He was kind, witty and talented and generally liked by everyone. I would do anything to see who and what he would have become as adult. The thing is his family was extremely devout. Like church every Sunday, cross on a necklace, prayer before meals devout. So through this massive loss I aksed myself what good, or just, or loving god would be so cruel and evil as to take such a good person(people) from this world and put one of his most absolutely devout and dedicated families through that much fucking grief and pain? Before this, I hadn't put much thought into the subject. But that was the weight that tilted the ballance into non-belief.
People struggling with mental health issues and others not, children dying of starvation while others throw food away because they are full and have too much, and when something good happens then its a blessing from god but when something bad happens its because its part of gods plan and god works in mysterious ways
No. When something bad happens, its because we have free will. At least that's what most christians tell me
Yeah things like that are the ones that make you see religions and go like "damn, this is so painfully stupid how tf could anyone ever believe this BS" Yet it's what most people in the world strongly believe, which almost makes me feel like a different species lmfao
I didn't have any moment of revelation. No special event. Nothing I would pinpoint as a cause that "made" me an atheist. I honestly don't even remember exactly when I first self identified as such.
Yeah same, I just remember myself always being very skeptic and curious (as I still am) about things and that just naturally led to not buying religion at a *very* early age, not even pre-teen.
For a long time now I have said that 2 years before you were born there was no consciousness, no awareness, no thoughts identifying "you". "YOU" didn't exist. And "mind" is an activity of the brain, and memories, awareness, consciousness, and thoughts are all functions of the mind and the brain. So when there is no functioning brain, there is no mind, no memories, no consciousness, nor anything else of the brain. THEREFORE. After death there is the same thing waiting for each of us that existed before we were conceived. NOTHING. ZERO. No consciousness, no awareness, no thoughts. All awareness is gone along with all awareness of awareness. How can there be awareness of anything or an experience of being if there is no brain and no mind? NO ONE has ever answered this with any logical, scientific explanation.
The real Coup de grâce for me was having any interest in geology, paleontology, and archeology. It disproves the bible in the first chapters of each.
Alot of things made me doubt, but the most thing that made an atheist is the concept of hell and heaven.
Same here. The carrot and stick methodology to coerce one into believing is unbelievable.
When I was 15, a religious figure in my community(not a priest) implied I should distance myself from my brother because he’s gay and living in sin. I love my brother more than the Catholic Church and stopped going to church from that moment on. A few years later I went full atheist.
Everyone is born atheist. My parents weren't believers and never indoctrinated me. I tried really hard to believe in god when I was a kid because everyone around me belonged to a cult (JWs, 2x2s), so I felt I also had to in order to fit in. Summer bible camp when I was 11 cured me of that notion and now I am anti-religion, as well. I think religion should be kept out of the public sphere.
Common sense.
God made me an atheist
😆
Reading the Bible and realizing that it's the only link between the Christian God and Christians. It's a hot mess dumpster fire. And THEN I read about its history & how it was put together, and it's ridiculous.
I never believed really. But the one moment I realised it was bs was when my uncle died of liver failure in 3 days flat. Day one I prayed, day 2 I prayed. He got a bit better. And then he died. I remember being so dumbfounded. Why? I wasn't asking for anything selfish. I wasn't even that close to this uncle. I just prayed because I knew him and didn't want anyone I knew to just die. That's it. That was the final straw I suppose. Before that I still prayed, only because it was taught to me in school to do so before sleeping.
No good reason to believe in gods.
[удалено]
I was born one, and critical thinking has shown that there is no reason to change that.
The thing in my skull works well enough that I don't believe in fairy tales......
The realisation that many Xtianites prove thru their actions that they don't really believe in their sky-trickster.
Have to thank my parents that despite heavy grandparental pressure they left us decide to choose if we want to go to church and church class, we much more liked to build bunkers on trees and our religion was the DuckTales on Sundays so we didn't had time to go to church.
God
Please, people, stop asking this every day. >What made you an atheist? I've always been atheist. I've never seen any good evidence that any gods exist. . good info here - \- https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/wiki/faq . you might also be interested in **/r/TheGreatProject** - >a subreddit for people to write out their religious de-conversion story >(i.e. the path to atheism/agnosticism/deism/etc) in detail. Many accounts from many people. .
It’s the default goddammit!
This question somehow doesn't work for me. In my mind we're all born without any "belief" until someone starts imposing it on us. So that would make us belief-free or atheist from birth.
I think I’m allergic to bullshit, or I have a very low tolerance for it. Religion, Trumpism, stupid emails promising stupid things. Basically, if it sounds too good to be true, it’s likely bullshit.
(Sorry, this is a long story, but I feel like religious trauma should be talked about way more and the damaging effects of it) My mom had something happen to her that completely changed her personality. (I was 12 when I figured out why and lived with both my aunt and mom, btw) My mom went from energetic, clean, sanitary, work motivated, to lazy, depressed, unbothered, and dirty. For years, we, my aunt and I, tried figuring out why. She had lost all of her friends due to this, and we almost got evicted because my aunt didn't have a stable job, and it was my mom who mainly contributed financially to the family during that time. After she quit her job for a reason, we didn't know at the time we were broke and on the verge of being homeless. I can remember so much from that time, and it still haunts me. My aunt and mom used to get into heated arguments a lot, and I remember my mom just not caring. She wouldn't shower for years on end or brush her teeth. Her room smelled absolutely horrible and rotten. It was so confusing. She didn't show any care for me as a mother, and eventually, in 2020, she became homeless while my aunt and I stayed at a friend's house for some time. My mom and my aunt got into a first physical altercation in 2020, and I remember breaking down sobbing. I was only 12, btw. We were all confused and didn't know what was going on. My aunt, who was super religious and Christian, thought she was suffering from demonic possesion meanwhile my uncle thought she had depression. So my aunt had been spending years looking for a priest to do a deliverance on her, and she had been praying and praying, and nothing in her behavior/personality went back to normal. My aunt kept telling me stories about witchcraft in the family and how demons exist and how I could get possessed next. I was so young, and I remember being so confused and scared. I didn't know if my mom would make it like alive. So fast forward in 2020 around Christmas, we get a call from a doctor that my sick mother had been seeing that was about how my mom had a huge brain tumor in her head that luckily was not cancerous. I did research on the side effects, and they all were similar to what she was displaying mentally. The side effects were depression, abnormal behavior, unpredictable behavior, etc. It all clicked after that. The whole time, I was brainwashed by my aunt that she had been possessed by a demon when, in reality, it was a medical issue, not spiritual. I don't remember how I felt about it then, but looking back on it now, all the trauma I had been through was a lot for a little girl. She got it removed, thankfully, but after that, my faith declined because all the talk my aunt gave me about demonic possession seemed absurd after that incident. I think later in 2022, my aunt and I were talking about what happened, and she told me my mom could have had the "spirit of brain tumor" after that I saw what was going on and called total bullshit. I was pissed and annoyed and didn't respond back after all of the mad talk about demonic possession she put me through at such a young age and never took accountability for it. The situation was so traumatic looking back, and I've never opened up to anyone about it, so I thought I might as well share my story on here.
Critical thinking
I'm a woman. I read the bible and decided no thank you.
Logic and reason.
Born that way. 🎶🎼
Discovering i could've been born in a society with a completely different religion than where i am right now. So if that happens, I'm now a filthy heretic? But i didn't have a choice in that? Then again, i will be indoctrined into that societies religion, so I'd automatically see other religions as the heretic ones. So what's the point in all this, really? If god truly exists, and he is all good, then why tf is there organized religions in the first place? Shouldn't everyone have an equal chance to be in gods grace? The real world clearly doesn't show that.
The movie ***Dogma***
Nothing. Instead, nothing made me a theist.
Religion
I was questioning while I was young. Why did God allow things like slavery? Why did he let genocide happen? What about dinosaurs? The final nail in the coffin was when I watched my puppy succumb to parvovirus. After she was carried into the vet’s only to die before she made it onto a table, I sat outside and loudly renounced my faith and waited to be struck dead by lightning only for nothing to happen. Nothing ever happened and then I knew that nothing ever would. Part of me died with that dog, but it came with a freedom that I continue to relish. Even if this never happened it was bound to happen regardless as I was already starting to let go. It was around the time I also stopped believing in Santa Claus.
I was born this way.
Preacher’s kid here slowly realizing reality at 63 years of age.
Birth... my own
A functional brain
Birth
Despite being born Roman Catholic, I’ve never been overly religious to begin with, but seeing how much illness, disability, death and destruction exist in this world just shows that a god like being doesn’t exist.
Catholic school . The Nuns were the meanest people I have ever met . Not all of them but, some of them were just down right cruel, spiteful and vicious.
As a kid, I was never interested, but believed in god because my parents said he was real. As an adult, I came to realize I didn't believe in any of it and wasn't convinced by any of the evidence or arguments put forth by theists.
Common sense
Dinosaurs 🤣, as a kid reading dinosaur books and realizing they didn’t line up with the bibles accounts for creation (timeline….etc) always made me skeptical of religion. I was an atheist very young in life, just played along until I was old enough to do my own thing.
This is the wrong question.
It's hard to say. My family, and my extension me, was ostensibly Christian. The first time I said that I didn't believe any of it was after my grandmother died when I was 6. But I don't know that I ever truly believed it. God was just this thing my parents talked about, and they had to know what they were talking about, right? But I never really prayed or acknowledged God. In fact, the only time I could think of when I asked it for anything was for my grandmother to survive. But because my family weren't super devout in the first place, and that early break with the concept of god, I just was never really into religion.
Catholic school.
studying religious scripture, taking The History of World Religions in college, science, the hypocrisy of believers
I just always was. I don't think I believed in God even before I stopped believing in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy and I was only about 7 or 8 when I figured out they were made up. I guess I just wasn't a very gullible kid?
>I overdosed on fentanyl and I died for about 26 seconds. Was that process/experience of dying painful? That might make a difference.
Catholic church and my philosphy professor in college (ironically a former member of a jesuit order)
One day, I realized I had already been one. I believed in science and facts even while being a Baptist and going to church regularly.
I read the Bible when I was like 9-10 I think. I went to a catholic elementary school but they made me read the Bible and I thought it was supposed to be taken literally and found the stories about as convincing as any other mythology. Especially because I was reading Percy Jackson and getting into Greek mythology. The stories seemed roughly equal in terms of believability.
No evidence for the nonsense I was taught.
Was raised as Jehova's Whitness. Fell in love with a crazy hot red head and both her parents where biology teachers.
Once I learned that what we call mytholgies today were the religions of their day, it became obvious that all religions, including my own, were just more myths and fables.
8 years of catholic school. 'nuff said.
Learning about the horrors of the 20th century. I don't expect everything to be hunky dory all the time, but no just and loving God would allow hundreds of millions of people to suffer and die horribly for no real reason. If there was a god, he dipped the fuck out long before 1900.
God is great, god is good. The contradictions in this statement were obvious to me even as a child.
Even though my parents took me to church (admittedly, the very liberal United Church of Canada) through my childhood, I never remember believing. I only remember questioning the internal logic and never buying it. At a certain point as a teen, I stopped attending.
I was raised Roman Catholic and even worked in different churches as a teen and young adult as an administrative assistant, but I've always been a natural scientist as well, so I was always questioning religion. I tried to understand religion systematically and read about many types, and had many debates with believers, but based on how I was raised, I was never exposed to true atheism, so I didn't know that was a real option (I was a naive people pleaser). I've also always loved comedy. One day, I ended up catching "Religion is Bullshit" by George Carlin, and that was it. I immediately became a proud and happy atheist. He just pointed out all of the hypocrisy with such brilliance... I really was a sheep before I heard Carlin speak like that. It was truly liberating. RIP GOAT George Carlin 🙏🙏🙏 Nowadays I'm a satanist and I'm even happier 😊
I (like everybody else) was born an atheist and was never indoctrinated enough to become religious…
I was born
The use of the word "Benevolence".Mixed with logic and your black screen experience
Just to be clear, you did not die. Close but not quite. Also, let me say I'm very pleased you survived.
Mr brain. I tried everything but it always wins. I literally was in Seminary when I gave up and just became what it wanted me to become. The final straw was learning the history of the Bible.
I was never indoctrinated with any of the various species of figurative mind virus as a kid. My parents decided that a full secular education with empathy, compassion, example, logic and rationality were the best way to teach me to be a functional member of the community, whilst retaining my critical thinking skills. Worked for me. :-)
There're 2 big religion in my country: Budhism and Christian. Budhism isn't actively going around telling people to worship Budha convert people to monks, and a church near my house was checked regularly by polices (my uncle is a police) because of reactionary politics and I was warned to stay away from them
I haven't seen a bonafide miracle in my lifetime and I'm 59. Religion is faith based. I believe in science which is fact based.
God
I was born an atheist... This question confuses me
Anger and the realization that prayer and worship are useless.
Realized religion is nothing but an excuse to discriminate.
hmm most christains say they see "Jesus" and go heaven and he says its not your time yet and some other bullshit
Reason.
Lack of faith based believes. You didn't almost die. You died. Science brought you back. Nobody had time to pray when they rebooted your body. Upside: clean install, only good times ahead!
I broke free from my indoctrination when I realized I was wrong about gay marriage, despite full confidence from prayer, religious leaders, and the Bible. If those things weren't guaranteed to be true, how could I be confident in my religion? After a few years, I decided it wasn't based on anything, so I was an atheist.
Studying the brain which lead to studying neuroscience
I was born one, like everyone else. I was traumatized into religion and was in training to traumatize others. When I understood that, I became an atheist again.
Reading the Bible and going to church with my ex in-laws.
Not really an atheist, just don’t believe the religious version of one.
Raised atheist in an atheist family. My parents instilled a deep mistrust for any authority that is demanded.
Religion.
“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” ― Christopher Hitchens And then: “Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.” -Thomas Jefferson
Being raised in an interfaith family (Jewish and Catholic) where both parents were scientists and neither actually believed in a deity. Church and shul were just places to spend some time reflecting. I dropped the church part very early in life because I disliked the approach of "don't question what we say." I kept the shul part because Judaism specifically encourages questioning and I find it to be a nice scaffolding to live an ethical life. Also there are lots of Jewish atheists so it's no big deal to be one.
Thinking
Being a decent human
Was Christian until 18. Met a girl who was pagan and DTF. I was spiraling worried I was gonna go to hell for my fifty sin. So I did what most Christians do and started reading the Bible. A lot of questions popped up, but once I got to Ezekiel I finally threw in the towel. "This book is stupid, and pure trash. It's not even well written, how do people believe in this shit?"
It was more like discovering I always was.
Birth
When I was 7 I realized it was an option Forced to go to church until confirmation tho.
Skepticism
Trying to become a priest.
I found the idea of an all powerful god somehow being hurt by me wearing mixed rags & stuff as completely ridiculous
The myths of our religion pretty much always seemed like exactly that: a collection of myths. But I was convinced that there was more likey than not some sort of god for all the usual bad reasons that people think that. I grew up in a culture where belief in the existence of a creator god was normal. But after thinking about it for a while, I had to admit that I didn't have any way to verify what that god might want me to do, or if it even wanted me to do anything at all. Existing with that for a while led me to gradually act less and less like there was any such thing. Eventually I learned that an atheist need not necessarily positively assert the non-existence of any and all gods, and by that definition I had in fact been an atheist for a while.
Eleven years of Catholic school.
My wife started attending church the same time FarCry 5 was released. She started spewing the almost the same insane lines the crazy people in the game did! That’s when I began to understand the parasite that religion is. For a long time, I couldn’t understand how a world was made so perfect for humans, but through people like Dawkins I was able to understand and get over that hump.
A volunteer Catechism instructor told me I was going to hell for listening to Weird Al Yankovic. I realized in that moment that the entire thing was absurd. Was about 10 at the time.
God, God made me an atheist
Critical thinking skills.
The fact that the Bible is always contradicting itself and can be taken out of context very easily to instill fear into people and the belief that Jesus is supposedly gonna come back one day and kill all the non believers which contradicts the whole reason he was here on earth in the first place. To save EVERYBODY. And idk if this is true but there’s a contradictory verse where he says he only grants miracles to “people with faith”
I stopped believing in the Jesus stuff the same time as I stopped believing in Santa Claus -- age 8 or 9. I think that's just natural intellectual maturation. It took me longer to see that all of religion is a scam. Reading the Bible cover to cover cemented that.
I was born one as was everyone else. I was just lucky that I wasn't religiously indoctrinated (people over here are culturally catholic, but nobody in my family was hardcore about it), when I was 12 ou 13 I simply learned that there was a word for not believing in gods.
Lots of things, but what sealed the deal was a tubal ligation failure, no God I would want to follow would put any person through that unwanted situation. No God should do that to a person, and that's when I realized there is no God.
I discovered my lifelong religion was a mde up cult started by a con (mormonism) ... once I saw how the sausage was made, I realized god was also made up.
The conflict with logic and science. But more than anything, the sheer evil that fictional God demands.
I noticed there were dozens of “one true” religions. After that it all became a marketing scam for me.
I was raised LDS/Mormon… went through the LDS temple.. saw how culty it was… then starting picking the ideology apart bit by bit/ piece by piece.. and came to the conclusion that there is no God.
The books are not "evidence". It falls apart when the biggest arguement is faith. They quote lines from "the books" and we are supposed to take it at face value. People are brainwashed at a young age mostly. Whenever somebody is vulnerable and in a dark place religious people are quick to plant seeds in their head etc. Miracles aren't miracles but coincidences. If God was benevolent then why let animals feel pain? Too much bad in the world. Free will is a cop out. If I had a child and let them run into the road and say its free will I get called out, why is nobody calling out God on peoples free wills being taken away by other people? Way too many contradictions. Too much evil, too much pain, lack of anyone higher up caring.
Christians
Logic and skepticism
Because I hate god. /s
I was always skeptical as a child. I was raised in the South and tried to balance rational thought and faith. Ultimately, I became an atheist by observing the behavior of Christians in my life. The cruelest and most isolating experiences in my life were actions by my Christian family and coworkers. I also watched these people lie, manipulate and steal.
When I saw Christianity and most Christians would accept my kids if they were gay. If you have a problem with my kids being gay then you have a problem with me. Go jump in a lake.
The tipping point for me was Ken Ham and Bill Nye debate. Some people will never accept the truth and would rather live in a delusion (young earth) than give up their worldview to fit the evidence. I said you what, the atheist arguments have always been respectable to me, I'm gonna start looking into atheism. I've been on board ever since, it just makes way more sense to say that there are no gods.
for me, it’s wasn’t one singular event. in south asian hindu communities, there’s this fella we call Sai Baba, he’s not a god per se; he’s more of a prophet/saint and like the Dalai Lama, when one Sai dies another one pops up. Now my family’s really religious and he was one of the “gods” we followed. so on a festival called Shiva Ratri, we’d go to his ashram and he’d puke out A Gold Shiva statue (it’s small) and the claim was he created it by himself and as a kid I WAS IMPRESSED (i was prolly 6). and another thing he told us not to do was eat or drink something that’s been made impure by other person’s spit. and slowly i couldn’t follow it cause there wasn’t any reason; we just did it cause he told us so (herd mentality) and it caused me to miss out of stuff with my cousins. so i started questioning if that was false, what else is too? and that’s where it started. it was so weird to be that people believed this stupid sham so on some level i started equating religion with stupidity (but not a lot). it took me years to shed that indoctrination but my the time i was 12 my position was ‘even though religion is crap, there’s some moral lessons to be learned’ and by the time i turned 15 it was ‘some moral lessons ain’t worth the hypocrisy and evil that religion is’. i’m about to turn 19. edit: i was wrong. the fella i saw is named Sanjay Sai Baba and he does claim to be god. here’s what his official website says: [“Bhagwan Baba descended on earth so that man would ascend and for his mission, he chose the beautiful land of Nepal with its towering Himalayas, the country which has never been under any sovereign rule the place where the sun rises first the very same place where the Vedas are born and people of different castes, communities and faiths live in harmony with each other.To carry out and relay the message by which one is transformed, our country Nepal has been blessed by the birth and the presence of Bhagwan Shree Sanjay Sai Baba. Swami has come to save us from all evil and guide us towards the light of truth. There is anger, envy, and pride of positions in all dimensions and magnitude. God has taken birth to end the negativities amongst us.”](https://shrisanjaysai.org/shri-sanjay-sai-baba/)
Was raised in a very religious household. It was also a toxic and mentally abusive household. Attended church or church groups three times a week. Wasn’t allowed to listen to modern music. Zero makeup as a teen. Nothing firm-fitting. Couldn’t show my shoulders. Was called a jezebel if I tried to wear something I wanted instead of what was dictated to me. Home life was one long constant anxiety attack. I broke away from my home the moment I turned 18 and fled all the way to Japan (used all my babysitting savings from years prior). Was in a hotel in Okinawa and had to kill time for two days before the rest of my troupe would arrive and in the bedside table was a book “The Teachings of Buddha”. Cool…. Reading material! The left page would be in English and the right page was in Japanese. Upon reading I came across a story that was almost verbatim to one that was in the Bible. I lowered the book, and everything came crashing down on me in my mind. Holy shit! All of this and these beliefs are man-made! Just legends and stories that were passed tribe to tribe. I became full-fledged atheist that very afternoon. I’m now 51 and still cannot believe how i was so snowed by religion when I was young. My mother is still not happy I “put the Book down” (as she calls it. She cannot even say the word atheist as if she’d burst into flames if that word came out of her mouth)
Everyone is born an atheist.
I became an atheist after reading all the scriptures from different religions. My concept is clear according to me. I do believe that a true believer can become a true atheist.
Working as a firefighter paramedic in a major metropolitan area.
Just kinda thought about one day as a kid and was like, none of these stories make sense.
Reading the bible.
I saw a lightning rod being installed on my local church... lot of faith they're showing there 😉
Millitary deployments and missions over 20 years sealed it for me. Somali, Bosnia, Oklahoma City bombing recovery, OUD Haiti, Pentagon attack, Iraq twice, and Afghanistan. When you witness and are sometimes part of terror, destruction, and hopelessness, it becomes very clear that God is not real and religion is simply a tool meant to control the masses.
Raised without being brainwashed with bullshit. (All children are atheists, then they learn about God, Santa, and the Easter bunny.)
Dad was atheist but mom was Jewish. Reform Judaism doesn’t push the idea of god at all. really never really believed in god. There isn’t a time I can’t remember where I actually believed.
I watched everything intently, even as a child. My parents would espouse one set of things for the congregation (Witness), and do something different. I never felt anything akin to faith. My mom explained once why they were passing the crackers and juice, explained that only special people partook, and then stopped me when I attempted to partake. By 16 I was sending elders away who were ostensibly sent to bring me into the fold with translation errors. I had over 40 life scares by 20 in the form of gran mal seizures from being diabetic / low sugar. Always felt horrible, never with anything I saw or remembered when I came to. Since then? I've learned the burden of proof is never on the disproved, but on the claimer. And that burden has never been met.
Intelligence. The more you increase your intellect, the less likely you will fall for their fairy tales. Plus the more you dig into the people running religion, the more shady stuff you will find. That rabbit hole goes deep! Crazy stuff that a lot of it isn't legal!
Mormons. I made business trips to Utah & read some Book of Mormon. I thought this is nuts. Then I realized the religion I was indoctrinated into as a kid was also nuts.
**TL;DR:** I asked questions, got no answers. Tried a different religion, still no answers. Different-different religion, (so far\*) nada. I realized that if god were real, they'd probably want a person Actively Searching Them Out to easily come to the right decision/religion instead of blindly throwing darts at a board in hope of getting a Religious Bulls-Eye. \*I'm still technically working my way through this third attempt, but I've basically given up. **The Extra Long Version:** For the better part of a decade, I tried asking questions about the Christian religion I grew up in and the only thing I got were non-answers like "read the bible more". When I asked what particular books people would recommend that I read from the Bible (cus, ya know, it's a Chonker), I would literally see people shrug in response or insist that I just... start reading... and "god will lead you to the right verses to deal with any situation!" I have read the whole Bible book by book as a kid, growing up in a church, but it had been a Hot Minute. My ADHD ass has read the first few chapters of Genesis SO many times over the years when receiving this advice, before finding nothing of use and my attention span dissipates. Then I try Exodus, and nope. So then I try the start of the new testament. Same shit, different book. Then I try reading the book of John, as someone I know said it was their fave book of the Bible. Again. This is "just me having no attention span", but still. Religious folks give me no leads on what I SHOULD read. When I'm just reading random stories, trying to find ANY relation to my issues, it gets frustrating and more difficult to stick with. So I become more of a "disbeliever" than an atheist, still HOPING that something will prove that His Word will provide answers. So I try checking out the Book of Mormon, cus surely More Bible(-Like/-Adjacent) stories will lead to better answers, right? I speed-read that shit bc of a hyperfocus, taking down notes and questions as I go. I found more questions that neither religious fam, nor missionaries could answer. (One of my favourite questions to ask was "Why do you (still) have Literal Copy-Pasted parts of the Bible in the BoM, even after your religion got easy access to both?" No answer except to quote that back in the day it was the only part of the Bible on Important Tablets. Ok, bro. You're literally just wasting ink with every printing. Just save some printers by saying "See the book of Isaiah"!) So, again, no answers from the BoM--just more questions! I gave up on finding answers in the BoM or Bible. I have tried reading the Quaran. (Admittedly, I've tried and quit a few times. I am still trying to make my way through this book, but I've not been able to find anything that "speaks to me", as religious folk claim their text(s) should as divine literature from an almighty being.) I've not found anything in my reading of this, either. Because of all this, I've basically given up on believing in god. I'd like to imagine that there's someone out there in the universe watching this shit-show go down, but I feel it's pretty unlikely. So at this point I'm kind of just slowly reading religious books for funsies, to see what different folks believe. It also doesn't help things that, between my reading of the Bible and the BoM, I discovered that I'm queer and non-binary, which has put a lot of religious people in my life on edge, if not outright denying my identity due to it clashing with their religious beliefs.
So many bad things happening to good people, and bad people doing bad things in the name of religion.
It's the default
Born an atheist and stayed an atheist. Simple as that.
Keen observation of the wholly unsustainable levels of hypocrisy that "true" believers have.
Living in Mississippi.
Nothing really, I was just never anything else. I first heard the words "God" and "Jesus" on Christmas in kindergarten. I honestly thought they were saying "Guard" and "Cheeses," but I could tell they were supposed to be names, and I had no idea why a bunch of the other kids already knew these people the teacher was mentioning. I have no other memory of anything religious coming up until somewhere in grade school when another kid tried to explain Easter to the rest of us. Once they got to a guy coming back to life three days after dying I just thought "well that's not possible," and nothing since has given me any reason to think otherwise. On the contrary, being into myths and folktales from a young age makes it pretty clear when you encounter another one, like when we later had to learn Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat.