ANSWERS: 11
  • I could never get it through my thinking process to believe in the supernatural. I believe in spirituality, ghosts, ESP as elements of nature because I have, as some or many people have experienced such effects. But I consider God to be supernatural and imaginary because I cannot identify any evidence of a uniquely 'God' experience or event. Extreme religious right-wing 'nuttiness' helped me to make a decision to identify with the concept of atheism as well as the challenge to search for realistic answers that do not require a need for ancient supernatural beliefs. About 1 1/2 years ago so I was age 62.
  • I was born atheist, and raised atheist by atheist parents.
  • I was raised as a christian, but over a number of years I began to realize that it was mostly illogical and clearly false. I was about 14 or 15 when I finally decided, but the process did take a few years.
  • It took me about nine years to go from Christian to atheist, and even with all that time put into it I still consider the fact that I am not a Christian today to be pretty much a fluke. When I was a Christian, I was a very strong believer. Of course, I was just a kid at the time, but I assume most Christians today were raised that way, like I was. What pushed me away from Christianity was a problem I had with some fundamentalist Methodists who ran the Christian school I went to. My parents had to take me out of the school, but even that wasn't enough to make me stop believing. I had a similar problem in Catholic school and that, coupled with my own arrogance, turned me into sort of an anti-theist. I still believed in the same God, but I hated him and I used to taunt him aloud like he could hear me. It was last year that I finally became an atheist, and I attribute that mostly to the fact that I started using the internet a lot more around that time. So, it started when I was nine and it ended when I was eighteen. I'm still revising my thinking too. In the last year, I went from being a raging atheist on amphetamines to a much more calm version. Really, at this point, I'm only an atheist by default. I'll give you points since you made me write such a huge answer.
  • After a year of living recklessly at 18 (oh, the horror!), I thought that what I needed was a good ol' dose o' God. So I remained silent most of the day as I read my little Gideon's Bible. Me and God were like this [crossed index and middle finger symbol, whatever you call that]. But certain verses really threw me off, like cutting off your offending hand or poking out your eye to enter heaven in the ideal way, which I've never heard anyone do. Or hating one's family for Jesus, which I also never saw anyone do. Or why Jesus said that there were people in his audience that wouldn't taste death before he returned. Or all that gnashing of teeth. And so on. So I chocked it up to God being all-powerful, so he's the boss, so forget all these silly questions about fancy-schmancy morality and sense. But it all still bothered me, so I went further and rationalized all of it in snaky arguments and logic. I felt good. Then I happened to be in a bookstore, and a book cover caught my eye: "Bertrand Russell on God and Religion." A couple hundred pages later, I was an atheist. And everything made a little more sense.
  • I'm not sure when I became an atheist; it was the sort of thing I discovered. It happened when I was in my late 20s. Having just divorced, I had a lot of time on my hands. I read, and read, and read some more. At some point I realized that a theist god made no sense, and I started using the word "atheist" to describe myself.
  • i was not raised particulrly christian, we basically just went to church for the main holiday services or special occasions. at 9 years old my dad converted to judaism so, of course, the rest of the family did as well. i really liked the friday night and saturday morning services, going to hebrew school and the conversion classes we had to do. for the next four or five years i was content. after a while i just seemed to lose my feelings for the religion, so i quit attending synogogue. from 14 or 15 to about 20 i was fine. i then joined the air force and started partying with the guys. things just spiraled out of control so i turned to jesus/christianity for answers. looking back, i don't think i gave it a fair shot, so i started drinking again within a year. that's when i really got in trouble so i figured i better get out of the military before i did something that would be on my permanent record. i bounced around from job to job for a few more years when a series of coincedences (at the time i thought it was god calling me) turned me back to jesus. this time i went all out. church every week, bible studies several times a week, full emersion baptism, hung out at the local christian coffee house, i even joined church friends for neighborhood door to door proselytizing. the problem was, no matter how much i prayed, no matter how much i put in to my beliefs, i was still empty. eventually, after a couple more years of reading about religions, philosophy, self help books, books on spirituality, et cetera, i became what i call a "militant atheist". i hated god and everything supernatural or spiritual. the weird part, i then became really in to all the new age mumbo jumbo. i continued reading, studying and soul searching when, just a year or so ago i happened upon a website about pantheism. now this made sense. that's where i remain today. it makes sense that "god" is not some sentient being that involves itself in our daily affairs. there is nothing that wont eventually be explained by science. there is no supernatural. i found my home :)
  • Both. It was a long process that began slowly and accelerated to realize I didn't believe in Yahweh (the Christian deity I'd been raised to worship). I was 31 years old when I realized I was an Atheist. That realization was quite sudden.
  • I may be an atheist, I'm not exactly sure of the definition but my true feeling is that I just don't care one way or the other. Having been raised in a very religious family for 18 years, I had an overdose of religion enough to cause withdrawal trauma... ;~)
  • I never really believed in any of it. I pretended to go along with it when I was small. I also never believed in Pere Noel (Father Christmas) either.
  • As i reached my teens, I began to qualify my belief in the Bible. Obviously Creation and Noah's Ark were just stories. And of course, a lot of the Old Testament was oral history and somewhat garbled. And then quite a lot of the new testament seemed to be one person or another's view and needed interpreting. By the time I got to about sixteen, I realises that this process had extended to cover the whole Bible, and that I actually didn't believe any of it. So it was a sudden discovery of a slow process that had been going for about four years.

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