The Moment You Realized?

[PrometheusRumiHuxley]

'apatheists'.

Never heard this before. I really like it.

I can't say I had an 'aha' moment, but I certainly had a 'well that's bloody done then' moment.

Grew up liberally christian, mostly fearing death and hell, having grandeur issues. Had a non-believing friend who was very supportive and helpful to me. Many little things adding up, like trying to read the bible and seeing how ridiculous the thing is

One day, considering how moral I had been and how proud of myself for many things I was, and what was truly good, I sparked up the cajones to write out a sort of goodbye prayer, which was something along the lines of this, with a little more verbal violence at the dear leader. Still have the paper: "Dear God, if you are truly a force of Good and Truth, I will serve you. If you are not Good, send me to your hell. I prefer to serve Goodness by suffering eternity in your hell, than to serve anything less than Goodness and Truth."

Bertrand Russell made a statement about one of his essays, something like "It requires more of a platonic view than I now hold." This seems about right.

Interestingly, I sometimes think the hell story is a good thing, as it certainly requires a lot convincing oneself that they are truly good in order to reach a high enough moral development to be ready to take on the lord for being evil. Of course if being good requires stoning homo's and remaining a virgin, clearly any possible utility has been negated, to say the least. So certainly the bible's hell story doesn't cut it.

[Cmasterpuck]

No 'aha' moment.  Much more of a "you're not answering my questions and instead are persecuting me for searching for answers instead of just blindly following things that don't make sense" moment.

[darkcyd]

I wish I could remember. I doubt I confronted anybody about it. I like my privacy but being from West Virginia. My brothers and I were all cut from something different though. Being raised in a Baptist church with 99% christian rate, all of my 3 brothers and I independently became atheists(meaning I was the first but never shared with anybody I was atheist until much later and we all realized we were). We are all very cynical and critical about church.

[Will]

Long story short, my freshman bio teacher and I debated evolution, me from a Christian perspective and her from a reality perspective, and she completely owned me. I realized I wasn't being skeptical of religion the way I was being skeptical of evolution, and that started me on the path to enlightenment. It took some time, but I think the moment it was all over is when I said "this is bullshit" in my internal monologue. After that, it was over.

[Shy]

I didn't have a deeply devote backround. I have searched through many religions but nothing made heads or tails. Even had the Mormons in my home answering my questions to try to find some faith, but there was none. Then Facebook came about, and I think that is what turned me for sure. Everyone's postings, for example something to the effect of people who barely make it out of events unscathed should thank God, not luck. I wanted to ask them "what about the people who were killed in such events? God not on their side?" Anyways, Facebook led me to be an atheist. Sure it was there already though.

[Jabbles]

No real "aha" moment either.
I was raised Catholic, but it was never too hardcore. I also attended Catholic school. It is a little different here though. In Ontario you pretty much have three choices(aside from French or English) regular public, Catholic(government supported) or private. So while it was Catholic it was pretty much just like a regular public school with some prayer and a Jesus class thrown in once a week or so, no nuns running around or anything.
Anyway I kind of just believed just because I was told the stories and that it was the truth, I had no reason to doubt. Most stories and passages we learned were the positive ones, i don't remember any "you are going to hell if you do so and so" moments. I hated going to church though way too boring, thankfully our family attendance was sporadic and as I got older we barely ever went.
I was confirmed, but I really didn't want to be. Basically to get into the Catholic club you are baptised as a child, your confirmation is supposed to be you as a young adult confirming that yes you want to be part of the club. The thing is at 12/13 I did not feel comfortable saying no. Even though my parents weren't very practising they are believers.
At this point I think it was more a case of being Agnostic, I knew I wanted nothing to do with church but I was still unsure of the whole God thing.
By my late teens I really didn't think about it anymore, I had more or less come to the realization that there is no God, or at least no reason to believe there is one. I made some new friends (brothers) who were raised Atheist, this helped to solidify my position as an Atheist.
Sorry if this wa a little long.

[Shy]

It is interesting to read others stories, no matter how long. 

I have felt so out of place most my life, it's so good to be understood for once.

[SushiMouse]

My parents never forced any religion on me. When I was younger, I went to church, but that was only because my grandma tried to force it on me. I never understood what the preachers were saying, or how the stories came together. To me, it sounded like fairy tales. When I was in the first grade I told my grandma I didn't like church and I wanted to stop going. When I was about nine, my dad and I were coming home from the library. He had a book about atheism. I asked what an atheist was. Before then, I had never known that it was an option. I did some research into when I was 11 and decided it sounded right, and it made more sense than anything else.

[j.woodard24]

One evening I stumbled upon a Laurence Krauss lecture about the nature of the universe. I was immediately impressed by how much more intelligent and reasonable he and the man who had introduced him - Richard Dawkins - seemed than the people I had grown up with. I had been leaning towards secularism for about a year, but that got me seriously thinking about it. I sent the video to a friend of mine who was in a similar situation. The next day we suddenly and simultaneously agreed that we were atheists.
That was a very good day.

[Sandra Craft]

What about you guys? I know that many of you were raised in a religious household. Did any of you have an "aha" moment as well or was it more of a gradual wandering off?

I'd have to go with a gradual wandering off (lovely bit of imagery, by the way).  I spent most of my childhood and teens surrounded by a variety of conservative religious groups and just accepted that one believed in god.  My problem was that none of these religious groups or their myths really sat right with me, but I assumed I just hadn't found the right religion yet.  So I did a good bit of searching for many years -- Western religions, Eastern relgions, Pagan religions -- and things just kept on not sitting right.  I was in my 20s before it finally occurred to me that the reason no religion was taking was that I didn't actually believe in god.  It seems so obvious now, but it took awhile for that to dawn on me.

[Jay]

I realized that I was an atheist in my early teens when God never answered any of my prayers.