What changed your mind?

[Tank]

What changed your mind and caused you to take up an atheistic world view? Tell us you de-conversion story.

[Xjeepguy]

Common sense and clear thinking. After seeing the hate and intolerance spread by almost every major religion, I began to question the people who spread this nonsense, which led me to question the nonsense itself. Comparing biblical stories to historical fact and evidence made the case quite clear. Seeing the truth for what it is made me come to the conclusion that atheism is the way to go.

[Sweetdeath]

Actually reading as stories from the bible.  Water in to wine?  The great flood?  Adam and Eve? It's all absolute nonsense!


Not to mention, I also noticed all the hatred and intolerance being preached.

No proof or evidence of this so called god. People suffering, being raped, murdered, sold into slavery..   Famine, disease...

Where is this god?

In the end, it is all common sense. Science and logic triumph over all!

[DeterminedJuliet]

I was "on the fence" for a long while, but in my last year of university I took a Holocaust History course. After reading some particularly brutal primary accounts, I had my first real crystallizing "there is no way there is a God" moment. Everything since then just sort of fell into place.

[Asmodean]

My mind did not require changing, but what got me to classify myself as against religion was the systematic stupifying of followers, denial of facts, denial of self, near-boundless arrogance posing as denial of self, intolerance, bigotry and a whole mess of things just like that.

[Medusa]

I never believed in the first place. I was a heathen child in a family of Catholics. I guess once my father died when I was 11, I felt it was ok to step out of the Catholic religion and just do my own thing. No one was really paying attention to me by that time. So I just snuck out and became a Satanist at 15. 

[MariaEvri]

nothing really. Just growing up with documentaries and learning about the world

[Tank]

I never had to change my mind, I have never believed in god. Reading The God Delusion did polarise my views on theism and why it is not acceptable to allow theists to run things based on their institutionalised superstitions.

[Sweetdeath]

I still haven't read all of God dellusion. *shot* I keep getting side tracked by my fantasy novels. XD evil magicians must be slayn.

[xSilverPhinx]

I also never had a mind change. Since I can remember and since my first bible classes I always saw the bible as a collection of fairy tales and had a more difficult time believing that the grown adult giving the class actually believed in the stories she was teaching. I was around 8 or 9, don't really remember precisely.

Religion never really stuck with me.

[Melmoth]

When I was a child I 'didn't know' (or care) whether God existed. I wasn't conscious of or interested in the debate until it became apparent to me in early adolescence that Christians were, and sometimes wouldn't let it go. So I thought I should have a think and ready myself for that kind of encounter. I talking to a lot of Christians, asking them questions without arguing with them (though often they couldn't tell the difference) and in doing so it dawned on me that God's existence, even if there was some ground-breaking argument for it out there that I had not yet encountered, was something that people could generally believe for no good reason at all.

Weirdly, the most common argument I've encountered (from intelligent people, not counting the rest) is a purely existential one. They'll avoid a direct discussion of whether God exists, seeing the question as shallow and vulgar, and focus instead on the possible consequences of belief on a person's well-being and sense of right and wrong. This is existentialism in a nutshell. "The mind is its own place," objective truth doesn't matter, it's only the thought that counts. Now I don't mind a bit of existentialism, except that this, an argument that implicitly rejects objective truth, is the basis for their belief that biblical morality is objectively true. It's totally weird to me.

So listening to Christians turned me from agnostic to atheist.

Edit.

[Whitney]

I started out by researching to make my faith stronger...it had the opposite effect.

[Will]

I was born into a Christian home, my dad is a Lutheran pastor and my mom is now Catholic. I was faithful and spread the good word and all that jazz, until Freshman biology AP. The topic of evolution came up, I argued Genesis, and my teacher absolutely decimated my arguments. I realized that I was being very skeptical of science and not skeptical of religion at all, remedied that, and my faith was replaced by skepticism. I am now unconvinced of the existence of all supernatural phenomena, including the Judeo-Christian God.

[MinnesotaMike]

I took a break from subscribing to religion and began to study theology... then found thunderf00t's YouTube channel. Roughly 40 videos later, I was 100% atheist.

[Ihateyoumike]

Some guy offered me ten bucks and a coupon for a free 44oz. Slurpee at 7-11 if I'd renounce my faith and deny the holy spirit and be an atheist from that point on.

Totally worth it. Just glad he wasn't a scientologist.

God I love slurpees.