(Via Amanda Tetz)
My story is a fairly boring one, and it mostly starts with my Mom’s story…
Basically, I was born to a 19-year-old mother who was a part of the Catholic church her whole life. She was devout, loved church and she had jumped through all the hoops, so to speak. (First Communion, etc.) But when she had me out of wedlock, she was immediately shunned from the church and her mother – my Grandmother – still holds unspoken judgments. My mom was confused and saddened that the church she had grown up in, the church she had treasured and loved, and even her own mother would throw her away because of something so victimless. She couldn’t find any logic in it. It was this push away from the Catholic church that paved the way for my free-thinking!
While raising me, my parents completely left out religion. I wasn’t exposed to any of my mother’s religious upbringing, nor was I exposed to my father’s stark Atheism – Although, I think it found its way through! 
I went to church with my Grandma a few times when I was little, but that was mostly for the guaranteed breakfast afterwards. Growing up in California, it was easy to avoid religion in school, with my friends, anywhere. I feel very lucky for that.
When I moved to Colorado at the beginning of high school, I started going to a non-denominational Christian youth group. This was mostly just for the friends I had that went there. And while the loitering and hanging out with my friends was always a blast, the service was always totally uncomfortable. I remember feeling so worked up by all the live music and speaking in tongues that I totally see how the religious could buy into it… But instead, it just drove me away.
The rest, as they say, is history. Coming out as an Atheist to my parents was easy in that I didn’t really have to do it… They’ve always sort of known and my Dad is a stark Atheist, as I said before. I have a few close members of my extended family who are free-thinkers and the rest of my family… Well, we don’t talk about religion much. 
(Via Sean Manzano)
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!
(Via Jim H.)
I had the good fortune to be raised by nominally Catholic parents who “believe in belief,” as Daniel Dennett puts it. I can only imagine that they took their faith more seriously in the past. When it came to religion, they once explained that they hadn’t had me baptized as an infant so that I could first attend Sunday school and fully appreciate the meaning of the ceremony.
Then they ‘forgot’ to send me to Sunday school.
By the time I was old enough to question the concept of God (as clumsily explained by my parents), we were only attending church on Easters and Christmases. They had no convincing answers for my questions.
By age four, I was conducting prayer experiments: I placed rocks on my window sill (where God could see them better, naturally) and prayed for Him to change their shapes overnight. Those rocks were always the same shape the next morning.
I attended public school and continued to fling the occasional bartering prayer skyward before tests. ‘If I get a good grade on this test, God, I’ll be really good next week!’ My test results only confirmed that my grades were more strongly affected by preparation than divine intervention.
I made no secret of my atheism in high school. Frankly, I was a bit of an asshole about religion when it came up in conversation. It was at school that I was pointed toward George Smith’s The Case Against God by a friendly classmate. My parents still didn’t know anything about my lack of belief.
I remember getting The Case Against God at a local bookstore. I felt mildly embarrassed at the time. It felt as if I was trying to buy porn. The grandmotherly cashier looked visibly pained when she saw the title of the book she was selling to a young teen. She anxiously struck up a forced conversion about some fiction title (Clan of the Cave Bear, I think) and I think we were both blushing nervously by the time I took my purchase and left the store.
As it turned out, the book wasn’t that impressive. Too much focus on Ayn Rand and the pesky assertion that universal negatives can be logically proven. But the book helped me in one regard: It gave me the chance to come out to the parents. I left the book sitting in plain sight when I finished it. (I never made an attempt to hide books from my parents) Later, my mother whispered to me in a half conspiratorial, half disapproving tone that she had ‘found that book.’ The first thought through my teenaged brain was, ‘Oh crap! My porn?’ Luckily, I didn’t voice that question. She went on to ask about ‘that atheism book’ and sought assurance that I ‘still believed.’ And there it was, the perfect opportunity to tell her my thoughts on religion. All thanks to one unimpressive atheist tract. I saw the opening and I took it.
Naturally, my parents assumed that my atheism was a ‘phase’ for several years. They were vaguely disapproving, but never ramped up the church attendance for my sake. These days we don’t often talk about religion, but they are now reluctantly accepting of my position. Along with one of my cousins, I forgo prayers at family holiday get-togethers. I’ve never had any questions about this practice from the extended family, but I would not hesitate to explain if asked.
Compared to many, I’ve had a smooth coming out – especially considering the reputation of the Midwestern locale. I was always able to laugh off the knee-jerk proselytizing of uber-religious students in my school (there were few), I never had to deal with violence from peers or censure from parents, and the school had several like-minded students I could talk to. Even today as a vegetarian atheist living in Indiana, I am surrounded by many religiously-skeptical peers in my academic workplace.
I only wish others could make the transition as easily and organically as I did. Reading other coming out accounts makes clear the potential for backlash in these situations. It was not until after the fact that I realized how fortunate I was.
(Via Justin Bonaparte)
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.
(Via Stephen F. Uhl, Ph.D.)
On Mothers Day, 1967, my eight siblings and I circled the huge table at Mom’s place. No one there knew my hypocrisy when I, the family priest, blessed that heavy table as requested. No one yet knew my secret.
Mom had given me a very early priestly vocation. My oldest brother would run the family farm, and I would be the family priest. Period.
Twelve years of seminary and almost nine years of priesthood went swimmingly–until one fateful morning in meditation I saw how St. Thomas Aquinas’ “causality proof” failed. He concluded: ‘Since an infinite regression of secondary causes is impossible, there must be an uncaused First Cause, God.’
Seeing how gratuitous his assumption was, my faith began to waver.
My agnosticism then grew during two challenging years. Debating if I should leave the priesthood, I feared I might be kidding myself when admitting I was agnostic; childhood imprintings die very hard! However, my totally desperate but conditional prayer when facing an unavoidable high-speed head-on collision convinced me I didn’t really believe. While recuperating from that October accident, I headed for a responsible June exit.
I had fully intended to break the news at our Mothers Day gathering, but I just could not bring myself to shatter that day’s joy. Next day, in the privacy of Mom’s kitchen, I forced myself to tell her. What a shock! But she painfully accepted what she could not change. Later that week when I was leaving, she was carrying bed clothes from her storage to my car; laughing through her tears, she said “I thought I was finished setting my kids up in housekeeping.”
That same week I told my siblings. Their reactions ranged from completely sympathetic understanding to shocked disbelief. My youngest brother asked, “How can you be a good, moral man if you don’t believe in God or the Church?” My answer was, and is, simple: ‘I follow my highest power, my reason, my conscience; this leads to the Golden Rule and keeps me true to my self and those around me.’
During two years teaching public school mathematics, I married a fellow teacher. Now I could afford to get the doctorate in psychology.
My psychology practice thrived; I enjoyed helping clients shuck guilt based on outdated beliefs and childhood superstitions. I enjoyed teaching the practical morality of a modified Golden Rule that the way to be happy is to help make others so without destroying oneself. Living this Golden Rule made me a better psychologist, contributed to a great marriage of almost 40 years, and produced outstanding neighbor relationships.
Discovery of cancer scared me; I promptly started an intimate family letter. Learning my cancer was not aggressive, I expanded that letter into the book, Out of God’s Closet: This Priest Psychologist Chooses Friendly Atheism. The book shares my exciting journey and shows readers how this natural life becomes a reasoned, responsible thrill outside of God’s musty closet.
(Via Jason)
I don’t remember the exact moment I became an atheist (I think it was more of a slow draining away, but I remember why.
I was raised Catholic, spend a couple of years as an agnostic, and then became a born-again christian my second or third year of high school. I was desperately wanting to belong to something, and they found me first. *laughs*
Mostly as a result of attending this particular christian missionary alliance church, the idea of a christian god just stopped making sense to me. My mind could no longer accept the idea of an all-powerful god who allowed the type of suffering I saw in the world; around this time, I think I saw a story of a five-year-old boy who was raped and murdered, as that is the specific example I quoted the most relating to my new found non-acceptance.
I spent a short while believing in the idea of a “watchmaker god”, then – finally – logic took over and I just decided not to spend time thinking about something that was a non-topic, as it could never be proved or disproved. I had recently started working at a Children’s Science Center, and fell in love with the idea of science and the natural world. I realized real science was so much more amazing than anything any human could dream up.
On a side note, for some reason I held on to other supernatural beliefs for a wee bit after becoming an atheist; after working at the science center for a while, all of the fell away as well. I am now a full-fledged, proud skeptic.