atheists: When did you first realize that God does not exist?

Answer 1

Age 16. Junior year of highschool. Art class with Ms. D.

Answer 2

I don't think "realize" is the right concept here. Belief in a god is a question of faith. Faith is exempt from having to stand up to logic. I am an atheist in the sense that I do not believe that an almighty being would be hampered by human attributes such as love, anger, vengance, wrath, forgiveness, etc. Mankind invented their gods and gave them human failings, so it's obvious to me that if there is an omnipotent creator, we haven't the faintest idea of what it is like, and it really doesn't matter anyway.

Answer 3

I think I always intuitively understood that the idea of a supreme creator just does not make sense. But I was always on the fence for the first 16 years of my life because I thought that Christianity was necessary for true morality and that the Bible was reconcilable with science. That all changed when I read the Bible in its entirety. It gradually dawned on me that it was so stupid and poorly written that it could not compete with the best of literature and science books, let alone contain evidence of divinity.

Once I started my college schooling in biology and also did other serious reading on philosophy and anthropology I realized that religion is just garbage. I have not looked back since then.

Answer 4

My parents never went to church and later my mother told me how when she was 9 or so a local group of christians knocked on her door and asked if her mother was home and she said "no" (because she was'nt) ,and then they asked if she had ever been baptised and she said "no" (because she had'nt). They then felt it important that she be baptised there and then. So they invited themselves in and baptised her and left. Thats why she never went .Me, I feel like i'm only at the moment an atheist. There are SO MANY religions out there I just want to more or less do some research about them.I probably will be pretty old if I decide to follow one at all.

Answer 5

I never believed a god existed in the first place. After all, no one is born believing in such things. I had the advantage of having never been programmed as a child, which enabled me to make my own rational decisions about what to believe and not to believe when I was old enough to do so.

Answer 6

I went through some pretty harsh indoctrination when I was young, but I finally got rid of it all when I realized that a soul would have no means of interacting with the brain. Essentially, neuroscience freed me from god belief.

Answer 7

When I found beer.
Seriously, when I first joined the military I was still an uptight christian denying myself all kinds of lifes joys. Then I decided to have a beer and realized the fruit in the garden of eden god didn't want us tasting was life itself. Then I began questioning everything and trying to find logic in what I held dear for so long. I soon realized that it was all a bunch of crap used to hold us in bondage to an idea so that those in power could sway our opinion so easily. Just look at all the sheep following george bush without question because he claims to be a christian.

Answer 8

I actually never truly believed even though as a child I attended Catholic school until age 13. I was in my mid-late teens when I became really inquisitive and began finding the answers to the questions I had.

Answer 9

For me it was during a time in which situations at church forced me to examine my faith. For the first time in my life I opened the compartment of my mind where faith resided to the rest of my brain. I forced faith to stand up to the same tests of logic and evidence I hold the rest of my life up to and it fell like a house of cards in a gale. Reading the Bible again with my scientific, rational eyes turned on it made a better case against itself than I ever could.

Answer 10

I didn't say he didn't exist, I said I've seen no proof, hence I don't believe in one, especially not a big daddy one who is so obvious a male-ego projection with a bit of psychosis thrown in. But a 'god'? I never said one didn't exist. Unlikely though...