Asklemmy

I never believed, I was told I had to be christian or I would go to hell.

I read the Bible. I watched the way believers treated others, and learned how they saw the world. I realized how poorly adjusted I was for interacting with anyone besides other believers. I left the church and learned how to become a better person. It was a tremendous amount of humbling work, and frankly, I'd rather have learned it earlier.

Learning about the world, in school and by reading humongous amounts of books when I was a kid and preteen. I eventually realised that "nah, I don't believe that." and that was that.

That's the sanitised version lol. A number of those books were by Erich von Däniken, unfortunately, and that simply "overwrote" Christianity in my young and impressionable science-fiction loving mind. Luckily I continued learning and not TOO long after I realised that was bullshit too and in the process I also actually realised why religion doesn't make sense to me.

tl;dr: HP Lovecraft made me atheist

At about the age of 8 I could tell that Catholicism was evil. So that was it for me. Lots of specific things but just evil overall.

As a kid religion seemed like make believe, still I followed it and thought of myself as Catholics into early adult hood. Eventually I just started referring to myself as an atheist.

I went to a Church school.

Many experiences over many years. My own curiosity and love of learning really helped save me. But for me it was all made to finally click together by psilocybin.

The hypocrisy and manipulation made it impossible to worship with them next to me.

I graduated from oral Roberts University and was full in. But the leaders of the small church were more interested in holding power rather than helping people. Fox News had an article with a headline stating blue eyed people were smarter than brown eyed. Being Latino, I was annoyed at the article and started to question why I even thought that the right wing evangelical establishment cared about me. I was just used for the financial support and votes.

In college we had to take a certain number of bible classes. Senior year took one on the history of the old testament or something like that. Course compared the texts to older texts from nearby regions and it's all basically plagiarized. This was somehow supposed to bring us closer to god, but for me it did the obvious and was the straw that broke that particular camel's back.

The church's overall support for trump and anti-vax/anti-mask positions were a strong counter to the doctrine of sanctification, especially as support tended to increase among older populations. Sanctification is central enough to Christianity to be one of the pillars that either proves or disproves it.

They weren't very kind to my family.

Adulthood makes you realise that there is no such thing as justice. Our lives are lived dancing in the palms of the Monetarists looking to make a quick buck. There is no karma and life is suffering as slaves to the elite.

If god exists, there should be no slavery, rape and wars.

Bad shit happened. When I asked why, the answers were lame. When I accused god of being an asshole, the defenses were the very definition of not even being wrong.

I just gave it up 1 day. No life changing event, no bad experience, just a shift in perspective happened, and I basically realised that I did not really need a god. I still practice some things which were part of my religious activities (donating, or serving others), but that is more of general good citizen thing rather than being religious

I consider myself someone who is always in search of truth.

When I realized evangelical Christianity has some hardcore lies and hypocrisy, I left it.

I did eventually find my way back to a more traditional version of Christianity that is interested in truth and love.

I had waited a long time to have any kind of personal experience of God, and finally gave up. Like they said, the holy spirit was supposed to work in you, I prayed for it and looked for it for a long time. Since it didn't appear, no reason to excuse the problematic passages or shitty people.

Took me until my 20s to reconcile my atheism. Maturity, i guess.

I read the whole bible as an adult.

But the discipline that took, probably shows that I was starting to think more deeply about things

They tried too hard to make me join, but instead I got annoyed

I dunno, it just made no sense. If people find out you're an atheist, they don't argue with facts, they argue with morals.

I'm sorry you need to believe in something with zero evidence to be a good person/find beauty in the world/be at peace with yourself/whatever, but I can just do those things anyway. I don't need to convince myself of certain facts for it.

Haven’t. Curious on the experience of others.