Question to Godless Heathens: What Made You Become Atheist?

[Tovaslavia]

So, what was it that pushed you over the line into atheism?

I believed in God for 14 years until I got interested in the bible and decided to read a few chapters. That fateful day I saw all the contradictions, and the nonsense, and the corruption the Bible had. So I became an atheist. And all it took was reading the Bible.

[Free Soviets]

I believed in God for 14 years until I got interested in the bible and decided to read a few chapters. That fateful day I saw all the contradictions, and the nonsense, and the corruption the Bible had. So I became an atheist. And all it took was reading the Bible.

so why didn't you start following the religion of the san bushmen? did you at least check to make sure their system also was full of contradiction and corruption before dismissing them out of hand?

[Tubbsalot]

I was raised without religious commentary by my parents, educated in a secular state school, and have gone on to study science at university.

There was never any question about my being anything but irreligious, and by my assessment it's overwhelmingly unlikely for any higher power to exist. Not that I have anything against the religious.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

*gets pop corn*

[Tuthina]

Nah, I just never think I need a religion to live. Besides, my fetishes pretty much means I break the tenets of all religions on Earth.

[The Alma Mater]

Atheism ? Do not be silly. There IS a God. And he IS exactly like the Bible says.

Of course, why anyone would want to worship such a sadistic massmurdering jerk is a question I do not have the answer to. Fear perhaps.

[Trotskylvania]

I was never really very religious at all. No one in my immediate family is, and my siblings and I were all raised very secular. So, it's not like I ever really had much of a faith to question.

But, I did start questioning it in middle school, when I started studying the Holocaust. My school went all out, and did a huge unit for the eighth graders on the Holocaust, including some guest speakers, a travelling exhibit, history and literature about the period, and a play that the drama class I was in put on. And that's when I really started questioning my faith. It wasn't long before I had lost all faith in the idea of a personal deity who was in anyway concerned with the lives of mortals. Because every instance of that period cried out for miracles and divine intervention. And clearly, none came.

I toyed with pantheism for a while after that. But ultimately, I started seeing the whole exercise of searching for something to believe in to be something just totally irrational. That's really when I became an atheist. I realized that I was searching for something I desperately wanted to exist, so that maybe there would be some order to the senselessness. But I realized that wanting something, no matter how earnestly, doesn't make it so.

That was, ultimately, what faith seemed to be. So I left it, and started learning about why others had come to the same conclusions before me.

[Blargoblarg]

I was never very religious to begin with. My family didn't go to church very often (mainly around holidays), so most of the Christian dogma never sunk into my head. For a time I believed in a personal god, but I was pretty apathetic about it, rarely ever praying or doing much about it. I noticed that the few times I did pray, my prayers were never answered.

Meanwhile I learned a lot about science as a kid, and about Greek and Egyptian mythology. What finally made me realize that my belief in a personal god was nonsense was when I read The Salmon of Doubt, a posthumous collection of writings by Douglas Adams, one of my favorite sci-fi authors. I realized (from some things he said about his journey to atheism) that I didn't need to believe in a god, and that there was no evidence for one either. I've been an atheist ever since.

[Costa Fiero]

I am a heathen. Awesome.

I was brought up without religion. My family used to be religious but the Methodist church my grandfather went to ripped him off. Long story short, he used to help with the maintenance of the church and as a result they would come around and look after the family (when my Mum was a child). He did something to his hip and couldn't help them so they didn't help him.

[Erinkita]

I never held any religious beliefs to begin with. Religion was a non-issue for me until some very pushy Christian fundamentalists attempted to forcibly convert me. This was what started thinking about religion and my own beliefs thereof. I was an atheist to begin with, but it was then that I started thinking of myself as one.

[Norstal]

So, what was it that pushed you over the line into atheism?

I believed in God for 14 years until I got interested in the bible and decided to read a few chapters. That fateful day I saw all the contradictions, and the nonsense, and the corruption the Bible had. So I became an atheist. And all it took was reading the Bible.

Because it was the theists who keeps calling me a godless heathen and ad hominems tend to make me rage rather than convince me.

[Meridiani Planum]

So, what was it that pushed you over the line into atheism?

Critical thinking skills and years of reflection on relevant philosophical and scientific issues.

Oh, and reading the Bible. For its power to deconvert, it is one of the best atheist books of all time. Richard Dawkins has nothing on the Bible.

[Radiatia]

I was raised in a non-religious household, became a Christian of my own volition and practiced it until the end of last year.

The losing of faith took a long time, at first it was when I realised I can't trust the Bible, then I realised I can't trust the church... eventually I was forced to ask myself what made me believe in god in the first place.

After about a year of questioning, and months of actual grief (because losing "god" was like losing a friend - it's something that a lot of people don't talk about), I came to the conclusion that God was fictional, and imaginary and now consider myself to be an atheist.

[Transhuman Proteus]

So, what was it that pushed you over the line into atheism?

I believed in God for 14 years until I got interested in the bible and decided to read a few chapters. That fateful day I saw all the contradictions, and the nonsense, and the corruption the Bible had. So I became an atheist. And all it took was reading the Bible.

My father was an Atheist, my mother a very, very progressive Catholic boarding on Atheism as well. They never pushed me towards system of belief or non-belief and always advocated strongly I needed to follow my own path on this subject (though they were always happy to answer any questions).

I did. I was and am a naturally curious sort, I love learning, exploring and all that. I encountered religion in my extended family (protestants on my fathers side and Catholics on my mothers, mostly a lot less progressive then my mother), plenty in school and my own studies. I don't think I ever could have been considered "religious" or a theist.

So starting from a pretty neutral position (though undoubtedly with some passive influence from parents I admired) everything I came to encounter and learn sent me further down the Atheistic path. Science is my passion, though I enjoy philosophy and history and I enjoy learning about religions (love Hindu). I simply found no reason/evidence any deity existed and no reason/evidence the world or existence in general needed such things to exist. Unanswered questions are there, of course, but I have no reason to believe we simply aren't at a stage of development to answer them all - absolutely nothing suggests to me "God did is" is the likely answer to anything. In the absence of something, anything to make me think such beings exist I am simply unable force my mind through the mental gymnastics needed to have faith in the existence of something I have never believed in.

So yes. Never a Thiest but a gradual process to realizing and stating out loud I am a Explicit/Positive Atheist.

[New Rogernomics]

The following helped:
1) I find the bible (and other religious texts) a boring tome.
2) My level of belief in god was to the extent of the god of the bible existing.
3) I viewed god like a Genie, and prayers were wishes. I never got a wish granted.
4) When I read Richard Dawkins book 'The God Delusion' I discovered what I pretty much believed the whole time, that god and religion were a waste of my time.

[ArtaPassatha]

one day i realized god was a load of crap and after that i became a avowed atheist

[Hetland 2]

Umm... It just never appealed to me.
Then I watched Religulous. Kinda went downhill from there.

[Meowfoundland]

I realised that I just didn't believe, and it also didn't really make sense to me.

[Risottia]

So, what was it that pushed you over the line into atheism?

Nothing. I was born that way and just stayed it.
I guess this makes me a Real Conservative (tm).

[Olthar]

There was really no one "event" that triggered it. It was a gradual thing, and I just realized one day that I hadn't actually believed in God for the past couple years or so.

[Arumdaum]

I've always doubted the idea of God even as a kid. My dad was all proud of me (he was an atheist but he never told me until a long time after I became an atheist) when at the age of seven I asked him how people actually knew whether God existed or not, and how people knew the events in the Bible were actually true. I always regarded the Bible as more of a storybook which I used to love reading (well the "My First Bible" type of things anyway), and when maps would appear I would just think, "Oh, this is how the world of the Bible must look like" (actually a map of the Middle East, this was around the ages of 6-9). I always accepted God and Jesus as real though, despite my doubts. My thoughts were basically, "they're probably real since I've grown up with this and since literally everyone I know believes in God".

Me never having felt comfortable at the churches I went to probably also helped (I'm not sure about this). I hated going to church. Everyone was always super religious, sang songs (I was a really shy person), and always talking about religion, so I always felt awkward at whatever church I went to.

I underwent a period of being obsessed with Christianity (mainly Catholicism) during my obsession with France during late 5th and early 6th grade. I became a very devout Christian, and was very embarrassed when my dad would bring up the times I'd doubt God. As my obsession lessened, I also discovered communism (I didn't actually know what communism was until a few years later). I just suddenly became an atheist for some reason (I don't really remember exactly how I became one), and started reading books like the God Delusion in 6th grade.

In 7th grade, I was very interested in Buddhism, and was basically sort of Buddhist, but I never really believed in any of it (I didn't really know much about it either). By the end of 7th grade I labeled myself as an agnostic-atheist, and it's been that way ever since.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, the transition was probably gradual.

Looking at NR's post, I also looked at God sort of like a Genie. My prayers were basically wishes like "I wish I'll find the Pokemon Ruby version my mom hid from me". But my wishes never came true, and I knew on the inside that they'd never come true.

[The Batorys]

So, what was it that pushed you over the line into atheism?

I believed in God for 14 years until I got interested in the bible and decided to read a few chapters. That fateful day I saw all the contradictions, and the nonsense, and the corruption the Bible had. So I became an atheist. And all it took was reading the Bible.

I'm not a "godless" heathen. I'm a heathen with many gods.

[Sanctus Sicilis]

Atheists often attack Christians for just believing because that's what their parents believe.

But, it seems that 75-80% of the responses here are just the same thing. You're not religious because you weren't raised that way. I doubted about whether God existed. And I prayed about it, and God answered my prayers. That was in the 5th grade. In the 6th grade I committed my life to serving God and making him the number 1 priority of my life. And not to judge my life based on worldly definitions of success.

Also, I'm not surprised about the responses saying the Bible made you an atheist. Look at all the thousands of interpretations of the Bible out there nowadays... most come from Christians reading it themselves and interpreting it their own ways. Both the atheists and Christians which misread it come from a Biblical illiterate culture. We don't know how to read the Bible, and we don't know what it means.

I myself don't have to worry about it, because my Church wrote the Bible. And the Catholic Church knows what it means. It has the oldest interpretation of the Bible. So, if you want to understand what the Bible actually says, I'd talk to some Catholics, or some Orthodox (though they're pretty rare in the U.S.) Because, if you think the Bible contradicts itself then you don't understand it. There was an old covenant and a new covenant... and around 1,600 years of Judeo Christian history before the Bible as we know it today was finally compiled [1,300 B.C to 325A.D.]

And, if this is TLDR for some people... what I'm saying is this: PRAY. I questioned God. And I sincerely prayed about it, and He answered those prayers. So... it would seem that the absense of talking about prayer in these posts shows that there's been an absense of prayer in your lives. Well... you can't follow God if you don't ever talk to him. PRAY.

Also... if you don't understand a book, wouldn't it make sense to talk to the person that wrote it? Well, if you don't understand the Bible... talk to a Catholic priest, we wrote it

[Olthar]

We don't know how to read the Bible, ...

Sure we do. It's very easy.
Step 1: Open the cover.
Step 2: Look for the parts with words in them. (Pro tip: All the parts have words.)
Step 3: Read those words.
Step 4: ???
Step 5: KNOWLEDGE!

[The Batorys]

I think he's talking about context.

Whether one considers the bible merely a work of literature or a sacred text, the simple fact is that no written work exists in isolation, and understanding the historical context in which a document originated is useful to understanding the document.