When did you become atheist?

Question

I'm not sure when it comes to myself. There were several occations that seem to have been a shorter or longer step in that direction.
One thing I want to describe now is about my confirmation in the teens. I live i a country that was once considered lutheran. That's a kind of protestantism reaching for catholicism as I've understood it.

I was a very shy an cautious boy for the most part. But I teased one of my two best friends at the time because he was going to go in the front and exposing the big cross on a stick. I didn't mean for our teaching preast to hear it, but he did.
What he had to say about my transgression was that the other guys mission was one of honor.
He did not say anything more. No explanations.
I think I lost just a little bit of the trust in the authority in christendom. I was very disappointed at the moment I guess. Was this all he could provide as a defence for his religion?

This was only a minor, but yet a step in the direction for me to become an atheist.

Answer 1

I believe I always was agnostic. My parents are agnostic (leaning more toward being christians), and they didn't take me to church a lot when I was little. When they did, I hated it. Even when I was young, I felt like it was just a fairytale.


I think the moment I truely went from agnostic to atheist was in my seventh grade English class. We were discussing Greek Mythology, and the teacher said something to the effect of "You see, when the Greeks didn't know how something was made, they just made a god up for it. They had a fire god, a wind god, et cetera. I know it sounds kind of stupid, but thats what they believed."

I just realized at that moment that it was the same crap that we believe. We don't know how this universe was created, and where we go when we die, so we have made a god to explain that to us. From that point on, I have never questioned my atheism.

Answer 2

Well, I came to it as a matter of course, without meaning to. I've always been a spiritualist. I am now a Neo-Pagan Taoist and also a strong atheist.

What happened to me was, it was after I'd graduated college. I was helping someone do a thesis on the rhetoric used when people describe near-death experiences. We studied accounts from people in Western culture as well as Eastern. What we noticed was that although their descriptions were entirely different, seen in a symbolic sense, what they were experiencing meant something very similar.

I concluded, then, that deities and other spiritual constructs are really metaphors - a language for something for which there is no language, symbols for something our minds can't comprehend. They don't exist really, they are just our way of trying to define the indefinable.

This made so much sense to me I haven't ever been able to think of deities in the same way again. Voila, an atheist is born.

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.
--Tao Te Ching

Answer 3

I considered myself as an atheist after my mother died. I didn't see how a God could do such a thing. I guess I began to believe a little again after my first child was born. I really believe we each have way down inside of us a yearning for something bigger and better than we are. I guess you might say I have become religious in my own way. But my religious feelings are more of a world religion. I think we need to stop talking about out difference and talk about how we are alike. I can't believe but what there is something better than this world with all of its violence and hatred.

Answer 4

A few years ago, but it only got a lot stronger in the past year. Actually, I never really thought much about any God(s) or religion at all till a few months ago when I started running into information about how illogically the existence of God would be.

It's strange, I thought almost nothing of the subject, suddenly, it came to me pretty strongly. I guess that's what happens when you're doing almost nothing with your life for such a long time.

Answer 5

When? 53 years ago
Why? Because it was all so stupid
It did take three years before I could rationalise it and cross that line between being an agnostic and a true atheist.
Never regretted the day or the moment. An enormous feeling of freedom rushed into my brain and everything became clear.
I can heartily recommend it.

Answer 6

I never really believed that any gods exist - it was talked about at home but treated as a bit of a joke. I never really believed in Santa Claus either. They're just things you know are fictional as you grow up. So, I've always been an atheist.

Answer 7

Well I guess when I really had to start thinking about religion, probably around the time I learned Santa wasn't real then I started thinking what else could be lies and it snowballed from there.

Answer 8

Some of us have never been sick (theists).
Others -like you- were once theists but recovered, after discovering inconsistencies/faults in their religion.
I belong to the 1st group. But I'm happy for you.

Answer 9

About 30 years ago. I was about 10 when I figured it out.

Answer 10

When I was 9. I was kicked out of my Catholic church for asking to many questions. What a save!