Were you religiously affiliated before becoming atheist?

Nope. Wasnt even baptized, my dad is a self proclaimed agnostic and my mom just doesnt give a shit about religion. Thank goodness

As far back as I can remember, religion was always a part of my life because of my mother, and she regularly played musical-religion, jumping from one religion to the next. It made it easier for me to eventually get a grip on reality in part by seeing her experimenting with different religions. So while I was taken to many churches of many religions, I'd say by the time I was 12 years old, I was already doubting, questioning, and heading down the path of atheism.

My family was (is, for the most part) Christians, though last I heard my dad is thinking of converting to Judaism. I went to church every Sunday, and Awana (kids bible program thing) every Wednesday, I earned a free trip to bible camp through my church multiple years running, cuz I wanted to go that badly... All that to say, I tried, okay? I really tried. I WANTED to believe in God, and Jesus, and all of it. I just ... Didn't.

I never felt the euphoria that other people claimed to feel, I never felt anything but fear, cuz everyone said God and heaven and hell were real, and I did NOT want to end up in hell, but I didn't feel shit. I was convinced for a long time that the lack of feeling was because I wasn't really "saved", that's I'd messed it up some how, or lost it. And I really did not want to go to hell, so that was pretty upsetting.

But ultimately I never really believed deep down. I thought the flood story was dumb, I thought praying was dumb(I still tried it, trying to feel the damned feelings), I did not have a "relationship with Jesus". I was confused on a lot of points, especially where the love of Jesus conflicted with my republican families political opinions.

When I was in my early teens my grandpa died, and at the funeral some relative or other assured me I'd see him again in heaven, and I remember thinking, "Now that's a weird thing to actually believe." ...That thought came out of no where. I was still trying to believe at the time, and I think that was the beginning of the end. It was a slow end, with a couple more tries at various churches, but I really just used church for socializing from then on. Socializing and hedging my Pascal's Wager, you know, cuz I really (and I can't stress this enough) did not want to go to hell. I wanted to at least be able to tell god I tried. Just in case.

So yeah, god, and random internet people, I tried. But there wasn't much faith to lose.

Yes, no? I was raised Chaotic, I mean Catholic. But I never bought any of it. Dragonlance had a more realistic origin story than Christianity. I spent a few years as agnostic but eventually became an atheist because no supernatural explanation of life made any sense at all.

Mom and stepdad are both christians and made me come to church every sunday and even go to "bible school". I always was sceptical of the practices and stories but did believe in God. But to me it always was a creepy thought that some dude was always watching what I was doing and judging me. It turned me into an extremely self conscious person.

Over time I kept thinking about it and it became less and less logical.

• "Why this God and not whatever other religions believe?"
• "If this is the correct God, how should people in India know and why is God such an asshole about it?" (my mom said "oh they know but they refuse to believe, so it's their fault". Bullshit)
• "Why are the stories in the bible so inconsistent and everyone interprets it differently?"
• "If God can do anything he could actually talk to us not make a mystery about it all"

So at some point it clicked for me and I completely lost believe in basically anything supernatural (including ghosts).

I do believe the church community is a good thing for some people and if it doesn't scam people out of money I'm the last person to try and convince these people otherwise.

No I was never religious. I went to a Catholic school where the teachers would read all kinds of books to us. We read things like Clifford the Big Red Dog and even as a kid I knew that this giant red dog didn't actually exist. It was just a story. The Bible was literally just another book to me. For whatever reason I never saw it any different than any of the other books we read, other than it was a super old one and had big words and a lack of pictures. And it was kind of boring.

As I got older and started going to church, I thought everyone just really really liked this book. Like it was such a good book they would all get together and read it and talk about it because they liked the story so much.

Then I finally clued in that, no, these people think all of this is true. It's like they read Clifford and thought that an actual dog the size of a house existed. It was all true, every word. That's also around the time I realized adults aren't all super smart like I thought they were.

Not since I was old enough to make my own choices. I can vividly remember hiding behind my house when I was a kid, I don't know how old I was, trying to avoid going to church. As far as I can remember, I never believed. In fact, for the longest time, I thought people were just "playing along" so to speak, because that's what I would do whenever I was dragged to church. I was older than I would like to admit when I realized that people really do literally believe in all the dumb shit in the bible.

Never religious, parents weren't religious but grandparents on both sides were, went to church a few times with them (and friends families) but never made sense to me

Raised mostly Baptist. As a kid I decided the thing to do was to learn as much about the Bible as possible. As a teen I realized I wasn’t comfortable with the praise and worship part of church. The other bits were boring and didn’t feel like there was much to learn. Then I decided what I should do is just read the Bible cover to cover.

I made it to that story where some men of the lord were hiding from villagers in some dudes house. The villagers wanted the guys and to keep them happy the owner of the house sent out his daughters to entertain the group of men.

It took a while to cope with the massive shift in my reality. Eventually I decided I’d rather burn in hell for all time than worship an entity that requires actions like that from me.