I Need Your Stories… and a Contest!

I honestly don’t know at what age I became an atheist but I suspect I never believed in any gods to begin with. There are distinct memories of believing in Santa Claus and the horror at realising the web of lies my parents had spun but no memory of any religious belief. Indeed I never tire of telling people that my mother once decided that maybe I should try Sunday School at the age of perhaps four or five. I made it up to the top of the steps approaching the class, vomited, started screaming and never darkened their doors again!

My lack of belief likely stems from my mother’s relaxed attitude towards religion and my father’s atheism. My mother believes there is a god but she rarely attends church (Chritmas service and weddings/funerals) and she agreed with my father that we should leave religion up to me when I could decide about it for myself, not force anything on me. The Scottish schools of the time tried enough of that but that’s another story.

My father is a computer scientist and former maths teacher and from such a background it’s little wonder he was a non-believer. Actually one of my earliest memories is sitting on his knee watching Open University programmes while he was studying. He instilled a love of science in me from an early age so religion stood little chance. He dabbles in the likes of Taoism and Buddhism now and again but more in the sense that he’s interested by the ideas rather than any religious aspect.

I’m eternally grateful to my parents for their approach to religion. None of my grandparents ever tried to push me towards it, despite all of them being nominally Christian (one grandfather confessed to me that he wasn’t much of a believer as he approached the end). I only hope that if I ever have kids I can do them the same favour.

About the competition – I live in Taiwan right now so not exactly near NYC. Can I enter on behalf of a NY friend? He just got knocked back from a job in South Korea so he’s bummed and could use cheering up! If not then no problem.

Otherwise… Plinko

I realized I was an atheist at the age of 12 or 13. Growing up my family wasn’t very religious. I was baptized Catholic and made my first communion (which at the time I didn’t associate so much with God, but with dressing up and having a party).

I told my mom I was an atheist around the time I realized I was one, and she didn’t seem fazed (later she told me she’s had doubts herself about God).

I only remember knowing one person who was an atheist (openly) growing up. I had a high school French teacher who admitted it to us in the classroom. Someone mentioned jokingly about her not going to heaven and she said she doesn’t believe in heaven, she’s an atheist. She said she’s “too scientifically minded” to believe in God. No one made a big deal about it at all, but looking back I’m surprised she told us. I lived in upstate New York (still do).

I married a Christian, and we have a one year old son. We have agreed to each tell him what we believe and he’ll figure it out on his own. My husband’s parents are VERY religious. Surprisingly, his younger brother is currently dating an atheist too!

(I won’t enter the contest, not going to NYC anytime soon).

I’m not really comfortable with the term ‘atheist’ because of all the negative connotations. I’m an ex-christian, indoctrinated into pentecostal christianity. Apart from being raised in my bubble of christianity, most people where I’m from don’t ram religion down throats (New Zealand & Australia).
Suffering from depression and being told I was possessed by demons was the turning point for me. I also have a scientific brain, and can’t excuse away the contradictions & hypocrisy.
It was a gradual and painful process for me to come to disbelief, as my family, particularly my mother were not very happy about it. I’ve been writing about my experiences and sharing them on the internet. Much of my story is on Hubpages under my profile Baileybear. That’s actually how I announced that I no longer believe formally. My mother was rather upset, but she got over it. But I couldn’t tell her directly, as she would never listen. I’ve been accused of being bitter & twisted for bringing up stuff from the past. I don’t actually feel resentful anymore, but I hate to think that others are going through what I went through. It did mess me up for a long time.
Recently, I’ve started a blog called godconfusion on blogger to explore what I really think about all of this. I’ve learnt that I have Asperger’s Syndrome and so does my son. He’s an atheist from the start, even without my influence.

I don’t live in NYC or US, so I’m not going in the draw for the prize, but thought I’d answer the question anyway.

When I became an atheist, I was about seven. I know precisely nobody else who was atheist, and didn’t even know the term existed. That said becoming atheist was remarkably easy for me. The first time I let my parents know about it was when it was sign-up time for next year’s Religious Education classes. I told them I didn’t want to do it because I didn’t believe it any more. I don’t remember how they reacted.
Plinko.

Woops, scratch my entry, should have read that more thoroughly.

Here’s an email exchange about my little atheist. We live in the south in a smallish town where people assume everyone’s xtian… this event was when she was in kinder.

From: Jeni

To: ‘[teacher]’

Subject: RE: B

[Teacher],

B’s side of the story is that H. sat in the seat B. was saving for C. H was told by the lunch lady to sit down. Then, C asked B why she didn’t save the seat. So, this lead to an argument about the seat. Apparently, C told her at the beginning of the year that she had to believe in god to be her friend. So, I don’t understand why B. thought to say it, but she said to C. during the lunchroom quarrel that she didn’t believe in god, so she couldn’t be her friend anymore. In her mind, it must have been related to them having a fight, making B. remember the bribe about believing in god – she did mention this conversation to me earlier in the year. C. apparently told her then that B. would go to heaven. At some point T. got into the conversation and told B. she was being too loud (which I imagine is true). Then, B. said H. said B. would go to heaven too, so she hit her. She felt ganged up on – it’s not easy being different from most of the others around you. She said H. told on her (rightfully), and afterward, H. told B. that she would go to the devil, and B. kicked her and H. said it again. She did say that she and H. and C. made up at recess.

I talked to her and asked her what she should do differently. She said not talk to them about it, or turn and talk to someone else. B. told me that you had a class discussion about it and that you didn’t get into religion during the discussion, which I appreciate. I told B. that it is never okay to hurt someone and she lost a privilege for this evening.

I will say that this is not the first time this kind of conversation has happened and I have witnessed it a couple of times with her cousins, whose parents are very religious, and she has told me about her cousins ganging up on her about it at other times. Unfortunately, I don’t imagine that this will be the end of it since religion is everywhere, particularly in this community. It’s not easy to be an atheist here. . .

As always, thanks for updating me.

Jeni

From: [teacher]

To: Jeni

Subject: B

Hi,

I wanted to let you know that there was a problem at lunch today with B and another child in our class. I was not there, but from what I could gather there was some discussion about God being real or not real. It involved some hurt feelings and ended with Bethany hitting and kicking the child. We had a lengthy discussion (and some role playing) about appropriate ways to handle conversations that we find upsetting and also how to deal with our frustrations in an appropriate way. B did apologize sincerely for the hitting and kicking. Not a great way to start the weekend, but I knew that you would want to know about this.

Thanks so much for all of your support!

[Teacher name]

Kindergarten

X Elementary

I don’t live near NY, so just sharing for fun.

Reading all these stories really got me thinking. I don’t think I ever really believed. I was raised Roman Catholic – baptized, first communion, catechism, confirmation, all of that – but I never really bought into any of it. My mind always wandered in church and I never knew what I was supposed to confess or pray for. It never represented anything to me to be there or to pray. It was my time to think.

Around perhaps the age of about 7 or 8, I went to my mom rather confused. I asked her who came first, the “cavemen” or Adam and Eve.(I had no idea exactly what I was asking!) She couldn’t or wouldn’t explain it to me so she sent me to our priest. He of course wouldn’t answer me either. That was the first red flag and it left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Then around the age of 14, when my parents were divorcing, my mom (a devout Catholic) was extremely upset that because of that, she could no longer attend or take part in (certain?) church services. I couldn’t understand why her god would do that to her – punish her for leaving a marriage that was making her miserable. That was the second red flag. And it was a big one.

After that I called myself an agnostic for many years. To be honest I guess as a young woman I didn’t have the guts to call myself an atheist (I’ve since gotten way over that).

I never did have any type of atheist or agnostic mentor. I never mentioned the word atheist as a child – like others, I don’t think I’d even heard of that word. When I grew older and first heard of it, it had such negative connotations that I didn’t dare use it, especially around my mother. I just didn’t talk about it. It wasn’t a big part of my life after all.

The funny thing is, that last incident with my mom and her divorce excommunication had a huge influence on me becoming an atheist – all thanks to my devout, Roman Catholic mother (who, BTW, thinks she failed me).

I knew I was atheist at nine or ten. I knew no others until adulthood.

Basically, I did but didn’t know it. I didn’t officially start calling myself an atheist until I was about 16, but even when I was 4, living in Madison and attending a Christian preschool, I thought that there was something dreadfully peculiar about having to stop before everything and thank something that wasn’t there. Despite the fact that my mom was religious, I never really stopped thinking that it was all very strange.

I never knew that my dad (whom my mom married when I was 5) was an atheist until I was talking to him sometime after I figured out I was one, explaining how we just aren’t accepted in the world, when he finally told me that he was one too. Previously I just assumed he was mildly Catholic because he said grace and knelt in church when we went with his family, but apparently he just didn’t want to upset his parents and never really talks about it. He holds to the view that, since it can be a damaging label, he should just let people assume that he’s Christian.

Not entering the contest because I’m nowhere near New York.

Sometimes I wish that I had been born in a religious family, just so I could have made the journey from faith to reason on my own.

Then I laugh diabolically. Silly me, it was far better to grow up with parents who never brought up the subject of gods, demons or angels.

I have to run out for some Fathers’ Day events so I don’t have time to type out a story, but I became an agnostic around 13, and didn’t identify as atheist until about 16 (even though in practice/belief I was).

Feel free to e-mail me! kellyaa@vcu.edu

Plinko.

Given that I am German, even though I was raised by religious parents (Catholics) the were very understanding to my searching, my brief flirtation with Buddhism, etc. I was lucky in that respect, I guess. It just is not important at all in life in EUrope.

I would like to be able to simply say “I’ve always been an atheist,” but like everything in my life it’s complicated.

My father is an atheist, but while he is very firm in his lack of belief, he’s very quiet about it, enough so that he never actually mentioned it to me until I was in my mid 30’s. (Which is to say, fairly recently.) I had previously always assumed he was some variety of christian but, like his father (who was catholic), just didn’t care to bother to go to church. My mother is a believer, but she’s so mentally ill (that’s not a metaphor, she is actually mentally ill) that she is so wrapped up in her own delusions that she never really gave religion a moment’s attention.

I remember being a small child, pre-school, and believing that there was a thing called “god” and a guy called “Jesus” that existed, or at least, everyone thought they existed so they must, but they never visited so they must not be important so I didn’t concern myself beyond that. I wasn’t really a religious believer, I simply had no information except some words with no definition and believed they must exist and mean something because my grandmother said they did. As I approached school age, I began to realize that the stories people told me about the bible all sounded improbable and illogical and inconsistent, like the fairy tales people read to me, and my “children’s bible” in my bedroom (which I couldn’t read yet) was on the same shelf with all my other fairy tale books, so I simply figured the bible was fairy tales too and that christianity was some sort of elaborate game of “let’s pretend” and that these fairy tales were supposed to provide some sort of moral guidance that I couldn’t quite see in them. (I was a pretty skeptical kid. I never believed in Santa either.)

When I got to school and had interactions with people from outside my household I slowly figured out that christianity was not some sort of “let’s pretend” game everyone played, they actually believed in this nonsense. I was pretty horrified. Fortunately my community was not so church-focused that I couldn’t function without being part of a church, but it was important enough that people did ask what church I went to… so I took the cue from my grandfather and told them I just wasn’t a church going kind of guy, and they though I was just too lazy to get up in the morning on sunday but assumed I was christian.

A family of radical right wing fundamentalists moved in next-door, and they talked me into going to summer vacation bible camp once. This probably had the opposite of the intended effect, because while I enjoyed hanging out with other kids and doing crafts and singing songs, it exposed me more directly to christians expressing their beliefs and I saw that they didn’t have a coherent world view, and I saw that they were hypocrites. It also lead me to actually open up and read parts of the bible and see what a load of garbage it was, and to pay attention to the manner they used it (picking and choosing random short quotes totally out of context) and realize that they were using it to justify doing what they wanted to do rather than using it to provide moral guidance that they would follow. And of course, I observed that there are all sorts of rules in the Old Testament that they completely ignored unless they wanted to use them to condemn someone.

Those fundamentalist neighbors were very significant in the formation of my early view of christianity. They were so very eager to find fault with everyone over everything and so very eager to put themselves on a pedestal and present themselves as holier-than-thou, it was both obvious and sickening. Combined with their significantly less than neighborly behavior and poor moral example, and I quickly made the connections of “christianity says christians are supposed to be nicer than everyone else, these people are christians and they’re simply awful but go about telling themselves (and anyone in earshot) they’re so much nicer than everyone else, therefore christianity must be a load of garbage.” It wasn’t a comprehensive view of christianity based on a lot of data, but I think it was pretty good for a second grader.

I did know the word “atheist” and knew such people existed, but it wasn’t, societally, an option in the place and time I was growing up. I went through a phase of wanting to be jewish, because jews seemed, to my young eyes, to get along better within their own households than my own family did, and because judaism seemed to be a societally acceptable alternative to christianity. But in the end I decided it would be too much trouble to actually go about converting, particularly since I didn’t actually believe in it either, I just sorta wanted to.

Throughout all of this my father made no comment – he later told me he assumed I would figure it out for myself. Well, yeah Dad, I did, but it would’ve been nice to have some parental guidance and support. (My mother remained too wrapped up in her own delusions to care.) This is why when atheist parents talk about not telling their children what to think and allowing them to come to their own conclusions, I want to scream. No! You should damned well tell your children religion is nonsense, for the same reason you should tell them the sky is blue and water is wet – because it’s factual. And if you don’t, you subject them to having to deal with a lot of societal and peer pressure to believe in the BS, and they might just give in and live a life of believing in fairy tales and suffering because of it because they don’t have your guidance and support.

I later became close friends with another fundamentalist christian kid. His church was particularly abusive and used to use fairly obvious brainwashing techniques on his family regularly. The church, which interfered with every aspect of his life, also swung between pressuring him (hard) to convert me, and telling him that he was forbidden to associate with me in any way because I was a “bad influence” or “possessed by satan” or other such nonsense. Out of any given year we were friends, we were usually not speaking for about six months of it, because he was forbidden by the church. (Not by his parents, who liked me, but by the church.) He was a good kid. He really cared about me and was a good friend when he was allowed to be. And his church periodically made him act like a real asshole, and it was really obvious it was them behind it, not his choice. I learned two important things from him: that religion could make otherwise good people act bad, and that otherwise intelligent people could believe in religion because their brains shut off when they went to church and they flatly refused to think about the illogic and sillyness and immorality of their beliefs.

I went through a phase of being VERY ANGRY about religion, feeling that it made everyone around me judgmental and nasty and prevented me from having friends. And as I entered my teens and realized I am gay, I saw very quickly that all the hate and discrimination I would face in my life essentially boiled down to religion-based bigotry. So I had a lot of resentment and went around openly saying I didn’t believe in religion. (Again the socially acceptable wording – if I’d said I am an atheist I’d have been a total pariah, but since I just said I “don’t believe”, I was simply considered weird, and since I was already not fitting in socially I wasn’t made any more of an outcast.) This made things more awkward with my fundamentalist friend of course.

When I was 16 I spent the summer living with my aunt and uncle. It threw me for a loop: unlike pretty much everyone else I knew, they actually got along. They loved each other, they loved their kids, they loved me, and they were good and kind… and they were christian and went to church every sunday. They always invited me to church, and I usually declined on the (truthful) grounds that I preferred to sleep late, but I did go once and they were attending a relatively liberal church with a pastor who presented the bible in a less harsh and unrealistic light. I had to think about that for quite a while.

As a consequence I went through a brief phase of wanting to believe in christianity, even going to far as trying to convince myself that I actually believed in it and telling a few family members that I did, but after a while I had to admit to myself that this was just a phase I was going through and that I never successfully believed any of this garbage. This is another time I wish my father had been more of an example of atheism, perhaps if I’d had more early support of my disbelief I wouldn’t have had to go through this awkward phase.

Life was kind of busy for some years after that and it’s only in the last year or two that I’ve taken the time to start paying attention to what could be called the “atheist community”. I have come to see my gay rights political issues and my atheist political issues as really being one set of political issues: stopping religion from trying to control my life and my nation. I have started being more open about my disbelief, and thus learned that my father and one of my aunts (who I was convinced was catholic) are also atheists. I still haven’t told the aunt and uncle I used to live with that I’m an atheist, but their kids know. (And at least one is an atheist.) I still nominally celebrate easter and christmas, but only as excuses to give gifts and be with people I care about. My father doesn’t celebrate holidays any more, apparently he only ever did so for my amusement.

I’m not entering for the tickets, it’s a lovely offer but I have limited time when I visit NYC and other shows I more want to see.

I became an atheist at 10, when “they” put “under ‘god’™” in the pledge. I wondered why a god would need the whores of congress to get into the pledge. (I was a precocious, arrogant little bastage, and I have remained so since.)

No family member or friend, but as an arrogant bastage, I didn’t need any.

I can’t remember a single adult who was an atheist role model for me. I was raised in a household without religion, for all intents and purposes, but with lots of books about diverse topics. My atheism naturally emerged from reading about other cultures, ancient mythology, and also from my observations of the small-town Xtians I was surrounded by. A small town in the bible belt of California, with a church on every street corner. I attended ‘Busy Bees’ with my friends in elementary school, an after-school group at a church where we mostly did crafts. I just remember thinking that all these deeply religious people seemed pretty insular and judgmental. Also, they were boring as f*ck. Didn’t seem to be interested in much else beyond Jesus and small-town life. I escaped as soon as possible.

I didn’t identify as an atheist until I was maybe 17, when it became glaringly apparent that religion was just so much harmful woo. This reaction to religion also grew in large part from my friendships with gay and lesbian people, and seeing the pain they experienced from being closeted and ostracized.

I’m sure I had at least one or two teachers or coaches who were freethinkers, but didn’t dare come out in that suffocating environment. It would have made things less lonely for me; I always felt like an outsider because of my intelligence, my curiosity, bookwormy-ness, and my all-around non-traditional way of being in the world.

I am 4th generation atheist. Although my parents exposed me to religion I just never really believed.

Plinko.

I remember distinctly questiong God when I was 7. I was at church (Pentecostal) when I had accidentally run into another kid. Immediately some adult nearby grabbed my arm and told me I was going to Hell for that. Thats’s crazy, I though. Just for that? I had already begun to doubt by then though. I remember that the Sunday school storied didn’t mesh with facts I learned in school. When did God create dinosaurs? That was a big one for me.

So I quit going to church. My parents didn’t force it. They didn’t go to church either but instead made us go with my fundamentalist grandparents. My parents were what I termed wanna be Christians. I’ve never seen my mom in church but she’s quick to throw God at you when she feels its neccessary.

When I quit church, I never even considered I was an atheist. I had been raised with the idea that atheists were devil worshippers (ironic, I know). Surely that wasn’t me. I wanted to believe. I spent a lot of free time in my youth trying to reconcile God and science. I thought there was something wrong with my that I couldn’t have faith while everyone I knew was happy in their faith. Its very disconcerting when you’re so young. I remember crying at night and praying because I was terrified of going to Hell. I remember asking Jesus into my heart. I truly tried to believe. By the time I was around 11-12, I gave up. I still held on that there was probably a God, but I hoped and prayed that whatever God there might be would accept me into heaven for just being a good person.

In high school, I finally met one person who want an out-of-the-closet atheist, but he was way over the top. Complete Gothic lifestyle and always talked about anarchy. I again remembered thinking, I’m definitely not nan atheist. I’m nothing like this crazy guy.

It wasn’t until 3 years ago that I finally accepted I was atheist. My husband had left my daughter and I and when I called my grandma to let her know what happened, she blamed me for being an unsatisfactory wife. That I should’ve tried harder to please my husband. It was my duty by God to make him happy. Right then and there I said “that’s it”. I was done with religion and God. And I’ve been happier ever since!

Feel free to contact me. Jdc0712@gmail.com

I was 11 when I realized that the whole concept of an invisible bearded man in the sky didn’t make sense. I was given a book on Greek mythology by my more liberal grandparents, and I made the parallels between those stories and the ones told in church. I wasn’t raised particularly religious – my family was Methodist – and my grandparents never pushed the issue nor were they regular attendants of Sunday service.

Since this was middle school, and everyone else is figuring themselves out at the time as well, it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to do when I came out as an atheist. In my small town Kansan school, my graduating class numbered a little over a 100 students. Everyone knew of everyone else, and cliques were formed by what level of classes you were taking: I was with the small pool of advanced students, so those were my “friends”. I would say half didn’t care about my new identity, a quarter were openly antagonistic about it, and a quarter were supportive of it, despite not sharing the notion. Of my peers that were outside of my clique, a greater fraction were openly antagonistic it. I knew of no other atheists in my age group, nor did I have any support from an adult beyond the general support they offer any minority student.

Coming out as an atheist, I was teased unmercifully. I was called “Monkey Girl” (since I obviously believed we came from monkeys) and told I was going to hell regularly. People who never cared who I was before suddenly went out of their way to provoke me. The details of one memory are a blur, but I recall sitting on a Ferris Wheel with a boy while on a class trip to an amusement park. We were flirting as well as preteens are capable of when somebody shouted up to him, telling him to tell me that “Jesus loves you.” He asked me why they would have him say that, and I just sighed, disheartened that the effort to make a new friend was now wasted. I suppose it inevitably was, since I have no memory of friendship with the boy. Once, toward the end of eight grade year, I recall sitting in class, talking with my peers, and somehow the subject turned to the existence of god. I made my assertion, and the boy sitting in front of me made his louder. I kept my voice level as I replied, but each time this boy opened his mouth, he grew louder and louder, to the point where he was screaming, “GOD IS REAL!” A teacher from the neighboring room ended up coming over, scolding us for volume and discussing a topic that has no business being in school.

However, I was a fiercely independent child, mostly because I realized at a young age that the way my life was turning out, it would behoove me to take charge and direct it as much as I could. I dealt with situations my own way, and I would figure out the consequences. For the most part, I ignored the teasing. I enjoyed the education aspect of school enough that I submersed myself in my studies. When I went to high school, I befriended older students, but still never found another atheist that I could talk with. There was talk of other kids, but they were in other cliques and more into genres of culture that had no interest to me (namely drugs). We had no issues with each other and realized that we didn’t share the same goals, so we just let each other be, supporting each other from a distance as necessary. My first high school boyfriend didn’t find religion interesting in the slightest, but considered sorting out other aspects of his identity more pressing, so I let the topic of the existence of a supernatural deity slide with him. My best friend before him was an ardent follower of the Baptist church, so religion was not a topic we discussed in order to preserve our friendship.

It wouldn’t be until I met my future husband at 17 that I met another atheist in my area. I tell people now that one of the reasons we formed our relationship was because he was the only other atheist I knew in Kansas.

It’s strange – many people posting mention the Internet as support for their atheism, but I have no memory of ever using it as an atheism resource until college.

I don’t recall ever believing in religion. The event I use as a marker of when you could say I was a conscious atheist was in 3rd grade, when I stopped saying the “under god” part of the pledge of allegiance. (I cut out other parts subsequently, until I stopped saying it entirely by 9th grade, but apparently I found the “under god” bit the worst of it.)

I’m sure I knew atheists at the time, but wasn’t aware of it. My dad was an atheist, but I wasn’t actually sure of this until I was in high school. (He did attend Quaker meeting with my mom – in fact, he was the assistant clerk of the meeting for a while. But Quakers, especially on the West Coast, are a pretty tolerant bunch. It’s technically a branch of Christianity, but they don’t really care about the number of gods you believe in, whether it’s 0, 1, or many.)

I became an atheist at eleven, after finally reading the bible for myself. While my mom was christian, my dad was atheist.. although maybe apathetic is a better word. Whenever I tried to talk to him about it, he’d just get angry and stop rambling on about how there is no god and how awful the world is. He didn’t make it any easier.

I became an atheist at the age of seven. Strangely, I was among the last of my grade to stop believing in Santa Claus, but, when I did, I realized that all the same arguments (lack of evidence, unexplained abilities and motives, existence of simpler theories) applied to God.

I didn’t know any other atheists my age, but my father told me that his friend (I’ll call him Mr. B) was an atheist. Naturally, I was excited to speak to him (typical seven-year-old) and confirm that I wasn’t crazy.

When we next saw him, my father told Mr. B about my recent interest in atheism, and Mr. B replied, “Oh, I’m not an atheist anymore. I decided that I want to be able to see my dogs again when I die.”

In retrospect, he was almost certainly joking. Yet, to my seven-year-old self, it was an incredible disappointment–why would what you *want* influence what *is*? I spent a lot of time thinking about that question, and I formed arguments I would use time and time again in later years.

And that’s it. Mr. B, whether he meant to or not, gave such an extreme example of an appeal to consequences that I was forced to recognize and understand the flaws of the argument. In other words, rather than telling me I was right, he let me realize it on my own.

As a child, I never really believed in god. However, I wouldn’t say that I was an atheist. Rather, I’d say that I was an agnostic in the most true sense. Not only did I lack a belief in god, but I didn’t care about religion at all. It didn’t matter one iota what religious beliefs I or the people in my life held. My mother was, and still is, an agnostic, and she does not think critically about religion very often. I believe she became an agnostic because her sisters became skeptics in their early teens, and she followed suit.
My father was a christian, and so is that side of the family. However, my parents divorced when I was two, and I was never exposed to church or extreme indoctrination. He died from his alchoholism at the age of 39 when I was just 7 years old, and I do not remember much about him.
From the ages of two to eleven I lived only with my mother, and was raised in a secular manner. We rarely discussed religion, except maybe on an occasion in the fifth grade in which a large group of my classmates taunted and bullied me for not believing in god, and threatened me that if I did not convert to Christianity, I would go to hell.
It was during this occasion that it really occurred to me that religion really did matter. I began to think critically about the subject, and for a while desperately wanted to find god, even if only to stop being taunted, and to stop being a minority. In the end, though, I realized that there was no credible reason to believe in any religion.
I began to research Atheism, Christianity, and a number of other beliefs online, and I gradually gained a broader view of these idealogies. In the course of my research, I slowly became an atheist, and to this day I still cannot pinpoint any exact moment it happened.
At the age of eleven, my soon-to-be stepfather moved in with my mother and I. I did not and still do not hold much respect for that man. He was a Christian, and one of the most closed-minded people I have ever met. He knew that my mother and I were not Christians, and often made jokes right to our faces of how “stupid” we were not to believe in god. I developed an intense dislike for the man, and I would almost say that I hated him for his egotism and obnoxiousness.
As I got older, I began to notice more and more freethinking people, though they were difficult to find. I was openly atheist, and in middle school quite literally everyone, even people I didn’t know, knew that I was a heathen atheist nonbeliever. Needless to say I uncovered some pretty strange stories about myself, including but not limited to the worship of satan.
During my freshman year in high school, however, during a round of questioning, I found that of the five or so people that sat at my lunch table, only one of them was actually a Christian. That was a first for me. The others ranged from agnostics to questioners of the church, but still none identified as followers of a faith.
In retrospect, I think that, though I was raised secularly, I ultimately made the individual decision to be an atheist.

I came out of the atheist closet when I was in about 7th or 8th grade. What made it particularly memorable was that I grew up in a very small town and was enrolled in Catholic school at the time.

My family are kind of non-specific Protestants (I remember going to church only a handful of times as a kid) but the Catholic elementary school was the only private school within an hour’s drive of my house. My parents didn’t like the way the town’s lower grades were run, so I ended up in a very small parochial school where, aside from being the only atheist, I was also one of only a handful of non-Catholics in the entire school.

The experience actually wasn’t as horrific as it seems like it should be. Since I was literally the only non-Catholic in my grade, I was already something of an outsider. Most of the students were more Catholic out of tradition than real belief – at that age it was just what their parents had raised them with, but few had exceptionally strong beliefs. To this day one of my best friends is still the person I knew from middle school that probably had the deepest beliefs. We made an agreement at about age 13 that we still adhere to – we respect each other and our friendship enough to not try to convert or preach to the other. Religion is, basically, a non- issue in our friendship. She actually ended up in an evangelical high school were she was the odd one for being Catholic (I went to the public high school were the vast majority of my friends weren’t religious in the least). Her high school friends were some of the hardest people I’ve had to deal with – they were so sheltered by their somewhat closed-off fundamentalist town and school that the idea of atheism was completely foreign to them. They got to know me because my friend actually brought me up in a religion class as proof that you can be a good person even without a belief in god. Today, those of them I got to know in high school no longer acknowledge my existence, while my friend is ostracized for living with her fiance before they’re officially married.

My family is still tough sometimes. Oddly enough, as time has gone on most members of my family have become more openly and fervently religious. They know that my beliefs don’t align with theirs, at least on some level, but it’s something we just don’t really talk about. They still pray at holiday meals, but since we traditionally close our eyes during prayer they seem to not notice that I’m just staring straight ahead. I still celebrate Christmas as a tradition but avoid putting the nativity scene on the mantle. And, even if my mother’s belief in god seems to have increased, no one really cares for my grandmother’s born again preaching so I’m still totally free to roll my eyes and complain when she gets started. The last time I was in church with my mother (to pacify the grandmother) she agreed that the whole thing was so absurd that we had a quiet sword fight with our candles.

So, overall, I guess I’ve found a pretty good balance between my lack of belief and everyone around me, even if I didn’t really have anyone to turn to or look up to when I was figuring out my beliefs.

I don’t remember the exact age I realized I was an atheist, probably when I was a freshman in high school. I told my best friend but she was the only person I told for a good 4 or 5 years. I’m from a small town (pop. approx. 2,000) in MN where you were either Catholic or Lutheran. Part of my deconversion process was in part thanks to the catholics refusing to have anything to do with the lutherans. I remember the lutheran pastor was young and would try to get the two youth groups together to go on field trips etc. but the old catholic father would NOT allow his flock to associate with them.

I didn’t grow up going to church. My parents are believers but my dad worked all week and Sunday was his lazy day. My mom grew up in a “good” catholic household of 15 children with abusive parents. Needless to say, she was a bit disillusioned with churches. I always felt different that I didn’t go to church, especially since all my friends did. In late middle school or junior high I started going to the catholic church (I was baptized catholic). I actually listened to the sermons and realized I was one of the only ones who did. The words just didn’t feel right or true to me and thus began my journey.

I tried to find books on atheism but our small library didn’t carry anything. This was before computers and the internet were widely in use, about 1988 or so. I went to a small college in SD and came out to some friends. One, whom I ended up becoming very close with, said she had to pray about whether she could be friends with me. She decided that I was a “lost sheep” and she felt obligated to be my friend to help me learn more about Jesus. She tried but obviously it didn’t work. We just left religion out of our friendship. After that I was very selective about who I came out to. It wasn’t until just a few years ago that I would openly tell people, if it came up, that I was atheist. Now I proudly sport Freethinker and scarlet A bumperstickers! I don’t consider myself a militant atheist but I do belong to a group and my children know my non-beliefs. I don’t necessarily flaunt my atheism but I don’t hide it like I used to.

Feel free to contact me if you’d like.

I just thought I’d pop in and say that I grew up going to high school with Hemant and never knew he was an atheist. I assume he never knew I was either.

I grew up with a children’s Bible and bedtime prayers as part of the pre-sleeping routine but I thought it was like the rest of my books – made up and just for fun. It wasn’t until I attended my first Sunday School class at the age of 4 that I realized people thought it was real and that I wanted no part of that. So I’ve been a non-believer for as long as I can remember.

I used the word Agnostic to describe myself until I was in jr. high when I proudly proclaimed my Atheism. I grew up (and still live in) northern MN so I didn’t meet my first fellow Atheist until I got to college so yeah, isolating existence for sure…especially since it was paired with all the usual “debates” and threats of burning in hell for eternity from both friends and family.

Way after the fact, but feel free to contact me if you want any follow-up on my story – k.sagui@gmail.com

When I was about 13 years old I started to question whether or not I believed in God. I was raised Catholic, sorta, and although I rarely went to church I did attend CCD every Wednesday. In fact both my older brother and I were so enthusiastic at first that we would be asked to stop answering questions in order to allow the other kids to get a word in. I can’t say that I realy believed in what I was taught, I thought prayer was a waste of time and that transubstantiation was bs but I went along with what I was it, and was even an alter girl(for about 3 weeks) because I didn’t realize that their was a different way to think. In the 9th grade when I was supposed to be Confirmed the program shifted focus. I think it was an attempt to make the content more interesting to the adolescents who had been reading the same material for 10 years.
It had the opposite effect on me. when the Priest came in on one of the sessions and asked if any of us had ever doubted the existence of God I was one of two or three people in a group of about 40 to raise my hand. It felt awful. Then he told us that we should try to believe “just in case.” It sounded like he wasn’t even sure himself but that he was trying to scare us into belief with the threat of eternal hellfire.
The next day someone in my class told me that his girlfriend, someone in my CCD class told him that I was an atheist. I was mortified. I felt guilty and I denied it. But that night I started thinking. It took me two years to get over that Catholic guilt and admit, to my brother, that I didn’t think that I believed in God. I was never so relieved as when he admitted that he was an “agnostic atheist,” but we have never had a serious conversation about our beliefs. My parents, thankfully are only Catholic in the vaguest sense of the word and did not offer any resistance to our beliefs. I have even managed to get at least one if not both of my sisters to consider whether she believed in God or not. I am grateful for my family’s understanding because they have offered me support but I cannot say the same about my peers.
I live in a small town in South Carolina so as you can imagine there is a small population of non-believers. I only had one friend who went to my High School that I know doesn’t practice any religion although I did have friends who were Jewish, Wicca, and Muslim(they were also extreme minorities.)
I think that if I knew more skeptics My transition to Agnosticism less rocky. Unfortunately it wasn’t until I had came out that I knew of anyone else who shared my disbelief. I was frequently questioned by my peers, and even asked by one why I worshiped Satan(I am proud to say that I calmly explained to her that Atheists and Agnostics did not generally believe that Satan existed and therefore did not worship him and she seemed to accept that.) but I think that I have come out a better person because of that questioning. At least I know all my arguments.

My parents hated attending church; as workaholics, the only day they always had off was Sunday, so they preferred to sleep in. My mother was raised as some kind of generic Protestant, and my father was raised Catholic; his parents are still very active in the church. I had to attend Sunday school in 3rd grade in order to qualify for First Communion, but that was the only year my attendance was regular. The family went to Catholic services with my grandparents on Christmas and Easter.

Sometime around the end of 5th grade, my grandparents gave me a book of ‘Heroes of the Bible.’ The stories were all very interesting, and each hero or heroine was illustrated with a lush, 70s-style oil painting. I loved the book dearly, and I went through a phase in 6th grade where I started to read the Bible. I got through Leviticus before quitting.

Around the same time, we were studying the Romans in 6th grade history. One day, our teacher came in and started denigrating Christianity, talking about how no one could know if Jesus really existed, and making fun of people who got up early on Sundays. A lot of students were upset or offended, myself included. Finally, the teacher said that he’d made us all feel just like the Christians in Roman times felt, and that it was important to understand how much persecution Christians had faced. He went on to the lesson, about martyrs and lions and whatever. I had really respected this teacher, who was super strict, but always made a point to praise students who scored well on tests (the day after the first test, we all came in and sat down, and he asked me to stand. I was petrified. He said, “Something has happened that you can never forget. You got a 100% on this test. No one can ever take that away from you. Be proud of yourself.” Of course, I’d been expecting to be excoriated for something, and I was so happy not to be, and so actually proud of myself, that I went on to get 100% on as many tests as I could, and I literally wept when I didn’t manage. Even as an adult, there have been times when I was crying and upset, and the memory of my 100% on a 6th grade test came back to me).

After that day, though, I had a hard time. I read more Bible stuff and bribed my mom to take me to church. But I couldn’t reconcile the idea of a loving God with the idea that people died, or felt sad, or suffered. Eventually, I stopped with the Bible and decided I was an atheist. I don’t even remember where I heard the term. When I told my mom, she assured me that I was just “questioning” and would eventually believe. My dad shrugged.

My parents decided to send me to Catholic high school rather than the local public school. In 8th grade, hearing this news, I was heartbroken. I had already changed middle schools once, and I didn’t want to lose the few friends I had. The religious issue wasn’t as important to me at the time. A friend and I talked; her parents were sending her to Catholic school as well, and we both had to go take the entrance exam. She declared that she intended to fail it on purpose. I considered doing the same, but in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to do poorly on an academic task. So I went to Catholic school.

However, Catholic school was a blessing in disguise. Religion class was graded on reading and memorizing the textbook, not on actual beliefs, and as an asshole who didn’t need to talk about the textbook to understand it, I spent a lot of time steering the conversation in class toward the issues that Catholicism didn’t really address, like why people die and why injustice exists. My freshman year teacher “spoke to” my mother about how I was being “mean” and “superior” toward the other students, but he was the only teacher who bothered to call home. One very nice teacher tried to convert me when I attended a sleep-away volunteer camp, and we had some lovely conversations about how I felt that it was possible to not believe in god but still want to help the community. At a “leadership” camp that I had to attend to participate in Student Government, I tried to hide my atheism (the camp was run by adults not from my school), but flubbed the Lord’s Prayer when I was supposed to be leading it, so that was great. I also complained that I didn’t get my mail when we “camped” in the hall, because the campgrounds were flooded (their reasoning was that I wouldn’t have gotten it if we were really camping, and my reasoning was that we weren’t really camping). The negative report about me from that camp kept me from out of the National Honor Society, and my outburst of swearing in the hallway (something along the lines of, those fuckers, they let in X, Y, and Z, who all smoke pot, P, Q, and F who blatantly cheat, and T, R and S who don’t take any AP classes at all, but they don’t take me?) kept me out during the second round.

But I said it was a blessing in disguise, and this is why: the overt Catholicism of the school brought out the atheists because we had one clear enemy. I slowly gained friends as the years passed, all of whom admitted that they couldn’t believe in God, either, though only a few were as outspoken as I was. We probably never would have thought as much about religion as we did in a secular school, but the environment brought out our atheism. Unfortunately, I never had Mr. K, but he was a wise old man, as well as a religion teacher. He explained to one of my friends that, in his opinion, “There is no greater creator of atheists than Catholic education.” He felt this way for two reasons: one, that any student of a Catholic high school would see any injustice against him or herself as a symptom of the church, and turn against it for that reason, and two, that the schools actually taught Catholic doctrine, which didn’t hold up very well under the bright light of rationality. I don’t know if Mr. K was an atheist himself; probably he couldn’t admit to it and keep his job. He was a model for some of my friends, but I only knew him tangentially. I am glad for my atheist and agnostic high school friends, though I don’t think I would have started believing if I hadn’t had them around.

So, the tl;dr version: I didn’t have atheist friends in middle school, that I knew of, but in high school several of us banded together and were ‘out’ about our irreligious beliefs.

Sorry this was so long and only partly to the point!

Oh, also! I am a teacher now (and prefer not to reveal my real name for this reason), and though I do not start conversations about belief, I’ve occasionally had students ask me, and I’m honest in my answer. Several have been surprisingly positive in their responses, giving many of the same reasons for their own atheism that I give for mine. One of my favorite students said, “Well, if the Bible says don’t get tattoos, that’s pretty dumb, but then again, so are the people with cross tattoos!” She herself has several tattoos, of course.

I was ten years old when I became an atheist. I spent the next nine years attending church, singing in every possible choir. I perfected the ability to avoid talking about religion whenever one of my Christian friends wanted to talk about God. My much older brother brought home Why I am not a Christian, which my other brother and I read and discussed. The problem is that this is a small, small town (where I still live). So no, there really wasn’t anyone to talk to. My other brother eventually became an atheist, but I learned not to talk about religion with anyone.

A little late but I’m new to this site. I saw this post and had to share to my story too. I grew up with an abusive, insane, and alcoholic mother who would do really terrible things often which would prompt me to pray regularly for God to stop her. I realized by the time I was 13 or so that my prayers were never answered and started questioning. Made the mistake of telling my mother about my doubts and she labeled me an atheist (and threatened to disown me) which horrified me since I am from the south and this was akin to devil worship. I stopped with my inquiries for awhile and tried to wholeheartedly believe but by the time I was 21 all the nagging questions and suspicions came back. Religion just didn’t make sense. After much research, reading the bible (I found the stories to be completely nonsensical), and a love for science I realized that I am in fact an atheist, a rational person, and embraced it. There was no one around to help me make the transition. To this day (I am 31 now), I still live in the south and do not know any atheists personally except for my husband and his brother. Lots of internet atheist friends but it is very lonely to have our beliefs in the tiny town where we live.