I’ve heard and read many stories from people who have given up religion, this is mine.

Looking back on my life I was lucky to have been raised in a free thinking, relatively religion free household. Both of my parents had been raised in pretty strict catholic families. My dad was an atheist and my mom was only moderately religious. The only time I ever went to church was when I went with my grandparents around Christmas and Easter. I was never particularly religious but I did pray to “god” on occasion. My parents never tried to get me to believe a certain way so any religious beliefs I held were because I chose to. When I was a teenager my maternal grandmother became very ill and developed Alzheimer’s. Now keep in mind that my grandmother was strict Irish catholic and devoted much of her free time to her church. Near the end of her life her Alzheimer’s became so severe that she couldn’t use the toilet on her own nor could she walk or talk. I went with my mom to visit my grandma one day and as I stood there looking at how much my god fearing grandmother had deteriorated I wondered, “If “God” is so loving and caring why is he allowing one of his devout followers to die in such a horrible way?” “Why couldn’t she have retained use of her faculties and just fall asleep one night and never wake up?” Soon after that I began questioning the existence of a higher power and as I got older I dismissed religion altogether. The godless life is truly the good life!

There’s nothing like a little religiousity to get the blood flowing, as many former religionists know. I came from the Xian tradition coupled with an ample seasoning of humanism. (My bet is that my mom is as close as one can come to being a free thinker as possible but still be vaguely literalist in the cross bit.) BUT DON’T BE CONFUSED: I am a proud agnostic-atheist because agnosticism is only logical and atheism is the general default that follows most readily from that.

I once thought Jesus would have nothing to do with me, based on my popularity. I once thought he was really interested in my letting go of a little pent up tension -one way or the next, to people’s help and not their hurt. I once thought God should alternately be spelled in lower case and upper case letters and Jesse should be substituted for Jesus every here and there -so we could see the meanings of the passages beyond language. I once thought I might one day see a limb regrown. And now … enough is enough.

If people want to be foolish, they should do it while living their own lives -not a prescribed version -but this, only if they’re intelligent enough. And yes, that’s inflammatory. And yes, that’s okay. And no, you can’t count on a government to do it for you. And yes, we should all stop them from trying.

The facts are these, in short: Grew up all my life in a Christian home with over zealous father; comes from some real psychological absurdity he couldn’t have helped -and maybe, no one else could: chemical &/ trauma-induced imbalance in grandmother. My mother grew up with a father that turned alcoholic, abusively, and womanizingly so, too, and she was left to raise her three brothers in this same home most of her younger years -she somehow sustained some wonderful humanism through it all. My grandfather, on my dad’s side, certainly had his problems, but he was always a skeptic, and educator, even if a believer underneath it all -my dad went more fundamentalist on his own or with some help from the older women in his life -his mom and his grandmother who lived with them. (They, his mom & his grandmom, were also into spiritualism.)

I swooned under the influence of paranormal research, meditative apathy, prayers to a transcendent I-never-could tell-quite-what and three counts of full blown depression (the last two for which I took meds): after several Psychology courses, two Dale Carnegie books, Penn & Teller -especially, Season 3 (which I got from my grandparents -dad’s side- three christmases ago), Michael Shermer in his debate on God/Atheism (militant agnosticism!), and Guy P. Harrison’s (Prometheus publishes it) 50 reasons people give for believing in a god, and Bernard M. Patten’s book Truth, Knowledge, Or Just Plain Bull: How To Tell The Difference -these sources really helped, as did a little reflection and appreciation of the glibly persuasive account of god given by Douglas Adams on evolution/god -it’s maybe 5 minutes long, yet better than several books on the subject.

Somehow, I clawed my way to skepticism, secular humanism, and philosophical pursuits. It didn’t hurt that a personality test placed me in a group of real heady thinkers when I was 20. The Tao Te Ching, read largely in a philosophical context several times over a dozen years, really helped me break free of much of the indoctrination before I learned logic, took a couple introductory literature courses, and began to read the Skeptical Inquirer (their FB stuff is quite good, too).

I guess, I made my own extended therapy through literature, philosophy, logic, life’s disappointments and wonderments, and yes, even the Four Horsemen -though I want to see what is better put and more vigorous and erudite than anything they have to say about atheism.

Screw communism and screw capitalism -and no, I’m not so sure about any -ism, -ian, -ish, or substitute for thinking -or feeling, for that matter. But let them play their part if they accept that they don’t want to stand between those who embrace life and those who won’t get in it’s way, either.

Power to the people.

I’m 31 and still have some libido religion couldn’t snatch away from me. Praise whatever you call-it! -I’m celebrating it/me.

Well, over the last couple of weeks I’ve been making a serious effort to ‘come out’ as an atheist. Granted, my status on myspace and whatnot has said ‘atheist’ for ‘religion’ for years now (prior to that I was agnostic, so there was absolutely no response to that change.)  But back to the present (or at least recent past) when I told my mother (A Universalist Unitarian) she was unsurprised and mentioned that many of the people at her congregation (I hesitate to call it a ‘church’, because of the negative connotation that bears) were also atheist. Again, no drama, no negativity. When I mentioned it to my father, (a retired Navy Captain) I did so by saying “I think my own atheism stems from my childhood appreciation of nature, all the outings, and the David Attenborough documentaries that I loved so much.” His response was “I like the documentaries too. I wouldn’t say I loved them, but I definitely enjoyed them.” I should perhaps, mention that my father, although a successful navy officer of 30 years, was known to be somewhat of a loose cannon, even going so far as to tell the captain of his ship (when he was XO) that the ship was ‘godless’, and when I asked him whether he was indeed Atheist, (because of his intense dislike of Christianity) he said no, he’s more of an Agnostic. Either way, he has the same dim view of organized religion as do I, and he seemed quite cheerful for the rest of that conversation (which I take to mean that he approves.) The only negative responses I’ve gotten (aside from some random fundamentalist on Tagged who got pissed when I responded to her ‘Jesus saves’ tags with a quote by Thomas Jefferson on how Christianity was the most perverted system.) were from my GF and her daughter. My GF (a Wiccan) was just annoyed because I’ve been very noisy about the whole affair, and she does, after all believe in a supreme being, the afterlife and magic, and I embrace the concept of ultimate mortality and reject the supernatural, and was kinda going on about that. The daughter was just annoyed because I’ve been noisy and I’m dating her mom. Which brings me to the ultimate reason that I’ve gotten very little in the way of response: I don’t have christian friends. (except maybe my sister) Most of my friends are Wiccan, and really don’t care that I don’t share their faith, as long as I don’t try to preach lack of faith to them. Of the rest of my friends and family, well, my best friend is Buddhist, and again, doesn’t really care, my youngest sister is agnostic, and the older of my sisters, (still younger than me) while nominally still christian, (she became so while dating a fundamentalist christian in high school) hasn’t been to church in years, and with the lack of a support structure (and in the light of her own substantial intelligence, and the sceptical view of the rest of us), her faith has withered. She never, however, was dogmatic (My father would’ve responded pretty harshly to that) and was in a much better position to understand what an atheist or agnostic REALLY is.

Anyways, that’s my story.  I guess I kinda drifted away from it. Anyways, now I’m gonna go order some shirts and hats and wear them around town (including to the local walmart) and see what happens. It’ll be an adventure, ’cause I live in Pahrump, NV (a particularly odious little hick-town).

I grew up in suburban Detroit in a moderately religious household. We attended church most Sundays. I went to Catholic school from K-9. In all this time, I cannot remember ever believing a shred of dogma. I can remember being very young, in mass, looking around at the stained glass, the crucifix, the candles, and thinking this cannot be right. Of course I didn’t recognize myself as an atheist at that time. In fact, I don’t think that I really believed that others REALLY believed. I think I thought it was a bit of a grown-up joke, just a bunch of rituals and practices that mainly served to bring people together for friendship, gossip and community. The biblical passages and stories couldn’t possibly be truly believed by adults. It was only later in life that I truly understood the powerful hold that religion has over the vast majority of people. This revelation did not give me joy.

My name is Mark and I am an atheist.

I was born and raised in the rural area of Missouri just around 30-40 miles west of St. Louis, back in the 1960s when Martin Luther King Jr. was conducting peace marches all over the South. I remember mumbling the words of the Pledge of Allegiance during class in elementary school, but most of it never meant much to me except the phrase “under God”. I was around eleven years old then. I kept that particular phrase in mind and mulled over it for several years. The rest of the pledge seemed appropriate, but “under God” made no sense to me at all. It just “didn’t sit right” with my views of what the United States was all about. I became a fan of American history at an early age and the U.S. Constitution was of interest to me, so I scoured the law of our nation, but I could not find the word, “God” or “Jesus” or “Bible” mentioned.

During my preteen and teenage years I was required to attend Sunday School, Sunday morning worship, Sunday evening worship and Wednesday night prayer meeting at a local Assemblies of God (Pentecostal) Church. It wasn’t all bad. I had friends there like most kids would, but I never could fully participate in the rituals of prayer, baptism or speaking in tongues. I truly thought there was something wrong with me because of my involuntary lack of understanding and faith. I tried to be like everyone that attended and attempted to be a part of those rituals, but it made no sense to me, making me feel extremely pretentious and illegitimate. A sense of self-betrayal haunted me.

During my childhood, I learned much about the Bible and like many other books I had read, I found “the good, the bad and the ugly” within its cover. “The good” was in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. It’s a good moral story, but the same type of moral content can be found in other writings as well. “The bad” was in the way God often punished or murdered his so-called “creations”. How can God do this if he loved us? “The ugly” was the unbelievable happenings of virgin births, Jonah living inside the stomach of a great fish and other outright lies. To me, lying to sway someone is very immoral. “The bad” and “the ugly” outweighed “the good”.

It wasn’t just the Bible that I found to be fictitious, but also the idea of “God”. At around the age of sixteen, I realized that I did not believe in God or any god for that matter. I felt that the existence of the Abrahamic God is no more valid than the gods of Roman, Greek and Norse mythology.

Yes, I suppose sixteen years old may be rather young for someone to assume they do not believe in deities and such, but that is what I knew at the time. I knew I was an atheist as much as I knew I did not believe in Santa Claus. That was thirty-four years ago and I am still an atheist.

As I look back now on my past as a young person, I didn’t know anything.
I thought there was a god, but only because it was expected, and fear of someone always watching me.
A few years back my son and I started discussing religion and I came to the conclusion that I really was an atheist. Talk about fear, now that was scary. To deny a god or gods that most people revere is surely a coming out process.
Now, I couldn’t care less who knows.

I’m certain I was the only child in my rural, Midwestern community who was raised by an agnostic mother and a vitriolic Atheist father. To further complicate my story, and my life in Bargersville, IN (which, 25 years ago wasn’t the bustling metropolis it is today!), I decided in the first grade that I was ethically opposed to eating meat. My Atheism coming out story is really a result of my Vegetarianism coming out story.

An all-day class field trip in the second grade was scheduled to have lunch at McDonald’s. Most of the class was very excited about this prospect, but as I no longer ate at McDonald’s, I asked the teacher if other arrangements could be made for my meal. The teacher informed me that I was too young to have formed such an opinion, and told me I could eat with the rest of the class. Later, another student scolded me for not eating meat, because “God put cows on the Earth for us to eat.” Naively, I responded that I didn’t believe in any gods. Her eyes grew to the size of silver dollars, and she didn’t talk to me much after that, but other students often asked me why I was a Satanist. I didn’t really know what that meant, but I knew, even at age 7 or 8, that I was being ostracized for my (lack of) beliefs.

To this day, I very seldom speak of either my Vegetarianism or my Atheism (I still live in Indiana, afterall). I don’t really feel the need to ‘come out’ Atheist – it’s hardly a secret, and I don’t think of it as being any great rebellion – but I like to share my story with like-minded people.

I wasn’t actually raised an atheist. Both of my parents technically professed a religion. Dad was Methodist, Mom was southern Baptist. However they never went to church or talked about God or the Bible. Religion was strictly a label and not a very frequently worn one.

I figured out early on that my friends believed in God. At first I didn’t really see it. I went to Sunday school with them sometimes and it was fun but it never occurred to me that anybody actually believed it. When I figured that out I though it was weird and silly. I soon learned to keep that opinion to myself.

I was about fourteen when I finally “came out” I was in a rebellious stage anyway, and I just stopped keeping quiet about it. At first I got a little flack about it. This was particularly funny coming from friends with pentacles on their jackets and Slayer tapes in their stereos. However it didn’t take long before people just accepted it.

No one really seemed to care. It has only been in the last few years that my atheism has been an issue with anyone. Lately people have started to ask questions, sometimes positively other times less so. Recently I have become a “Militant Anti-Theist” I blog about atheism, argue with Christians, belong to atheist groups. For the first time in my life I am seeing it as a part of my identity as well as just a lack of belief. I can’t say if it is good or bad, but I know I am not ashamed of being Godless I embrace it.

i have been an atheist since i was maybe twelve. before that, my incredibly christian relatives insisted upon forcing me into religion. most of my life until the age of twelve, though, i was an agnostic trying to figure out why i was supposed to believe in god. after coming godless, i had several other religious attempts with different variations to see if they were any different than christianity. they were, but not quite enough for my taste. now, i am a proud atheist and refusing to change. faith just never worked for me.

When I was a baby I saw my father for the first time and at that time I knew I would Die young and suffering. My grandfather died young suffering. I saw an image of him while I was in my crib looking into the sunlight!

I have always been smart and a quick learner. An example of that is when I was 3 I wrote to Fox the t.v. station and requested that the little house on the prairie would be stopped from being aired. I did this because my older half sister watched it religiously and I hated it.

I don’t believe in God or much of anything spiritual except that art and love are a positive force. I have a few diseases that are genetic and I suffer greatly! The spiritual claim ignorance toward me when I exclaim my pain.

I have been suffering since I was four. I called a church at the age of 20 and asked the catholic priest if it were possible that the Devil were after me. He said that the holy bible holds the answers but the fact is that it is a schizophrenic literature hands down.

I think the devil is a woman who can become men and women and may have created the versions of spirituality. I feel she is not greater than anyone as a matter of fact she might be despised and destroyed by each thing ever. So she is what I consider the religious to believe in.

I am 29 years old and will die within 10 years. I would rather not have witnessed this life nor lived it but I see no reason to give up just because I am surrounded by sin and things that will never ever be worth while.

The new album by Drowning Pool is like I wrote it, word for word it is how I feel. Listen to it if you have read this and don’t understand. I am godless and love being independent and free!