Okay, when did you stop believing in Hanukkah Harry :D?
I remember being very young and thinking that Santa would look in my bedroom window to see that I was asleep. Later on I just didn’t believe in him anymore, but don’t remember exactly when or why I stopped believing. It wasn’t a traumatic shock; rather I found that I had arrived at a point of not believing.
As for god and religion generally, I’m still working that one out. I don’t believe in god as described in the Bible, or that Jesus died for my sins; OTOH I think Jesus probably was a historical person who had a profound influence on world history. I’m mostly agnostic, but feel a sense of disappointment mixed with forboding that there probably is no afterlife.
I stopped believing in Santa Claus very early, probably before I was five.
As far as when I stopped believing in God, that’s a little more diffuse.
I was raised in a family and culture that conveyed to me from an early age that the only people who didn’t believe in God were basically drunks and criminals. I was asked frequently, “Do you believe in God?”. to which I learned to answer “Yes” without giving much thought to the alternative. Sort of like how a kid learns to answer 'doctor or ‘lawyer’ when asked what he wants to be when he grows up.
When I was 12, I started attending confirmation classes in my parents’ church (Wesley Methodist). The pastor was a very nice guy: quite devout, but pretty free thinking, and I got to thinking about things that I’d previously considered off-limits.
Around this time, I stumbled onto the works of Bertrand Russell. While I certainly didn’t understand everything he wrote, it was a revelation: here was a guy who didn’t believe in God, but wasn’t in jail or lying in the gutter drunk. (Heck, he’d even gone to college!)
I gradually concluded that I didn’t really believe in God either, although I continued to claim I did to please my parents. I was around 16 when I felt comfortable telling people how I really felt.
As far as Santa goes, I had a mom with a temper and she got really frustrated with us kids one Christmas and told us there was no Santa. I think I was around 5. I know I was the first kid in my class to know the truth and it made for a bummer of a Christmas.
Regarding God, I think I just took it for granted until I was about 15. I was gay, and at that time I wasn’t saying “I’m gay.” I just knew there was something seriously wrong with me & I was headed for hell. I also learned about the miraculous power of a Novena about this time. As it was explained to me, you do all these laps around the rosary, and if you truly, sincerely believe in what you’re asking for, then you’d be granted that wish. So I did it, stuck to it with all my heart from start to finish, desperately begging God & the Virgin Mary to make me not gay.
Well, it didn’t work. It was kinda a gradual thing, but I came to the realization that either there is no God, or whatever type of God he is, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about me individually. I mean, what kind of God would make me someone whom everyone hates? So I kinda settled into the notion that if there is a God, he’s probably not the God as portrayed by any religion on earth. Those are made up stories, just like Santa. For five-year-olds, to make them behave.
Santa - the Christmas before my fifth birthday (I’m born in March so i guess that made me 4 and three quarters).
God - hard to tell. Had lots of doubts from about 12 or 13 onwards. As soon as I started studying philosophy at university all traces of belief were eradicated. Education is a wonderful thing.
Um, I think I believed in Santa until I was 10, and even then, I didn’t really want to let the belief go.
I was raised a Mormon and my entire family are still Mormons. I became an agnostic around 17 or 18 and decided I was an atheist around 19, I guess. It wasn’t an easy process by a long-shot (there might even be some long-time members who remember when I was a completely devout Mormon), but there ya go.
Probably about 10 or 11 and in a Methodist Sunday School of all places!
We were going through the Plagues of Egypt and we came to the one where God hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that he wouldn’t let the Israelites go and then killed all of the first born in Egypt because Pharaoh wouldn’t let the Israelites go.
I decided then and there that the God that was being spoken of in that Sunday school wasn’t one with which I wanted to have anything to do. I later came to the conclusion that such a god didn’t exist having been shaped by Israelite legends about their history and used as a justification of the acts in it. Nothing since has done anything to change my opinion.
I’m a life-long skeptic. I think my first recognisable thought was “Yeah? Prove it!” So, although I started to self-identify as an atheist at about age 15, I had doubts way before that.
Similarly with Santa Claus – I don’t remember ever really believing in him, although I played along for the fun of it. I have fairly clear memories of my childhood after age 6, so, if I ever believed in him at all, I stopped when i was 5 or younger.
“I doubt it” is my default position.
Don’t exactly recall about Santa-- probably third grade or something. It wasn’t a shock, just a slow realization… “I don’t think elves can make Transformers.”
I remember the precise moment I stopped believing in God, however. I was at a camp over the summer at the age of 13 (a Christian-ish camp, at least it was then, though it’s become more secular in the last …many… years) and I was walking through the woods. I remember looking at the roots of trees, the color of leaves, the way dirt looked, basically, the way the woods looked, and I thought to myself, “I see how this fits together. I see how these plants work. There doesn’t need to be any magic to hold it all together.” It was a wonderful realization, I thought. Not at all the “there is no God” sad realizations that many people have. My belief in God was mostly guilt and shame anyway; I was well rid of those feelings.
I was probably around seven when I stopped believing in Santa and all other holiday personalities. It was Easter, and my parents were in a little joky tiff about the last Cadbury egg in their basket. My dad asked my mom why she hadn’t thought to buy an even number for them.
My face then: :eek:
As for God: I was technically brought up Christian (Presbyterian, to be specific), but I’m not sure I ever really felt what I’m comfortable calling faith. As soon as I had the mental capacity and the inclination to think about God as potentially not existing, religion didn’t sit right with me. There was no specific breaking point, but by seventh grade (12 years old), I felt comfortable in my atheism.
FTR, my brother and sister didn’t last long after that Easter (though my brother was only two then), and while he took a bit longer than I did, my brother is also an atheist. I think he decided this somewhere around 13 years of age, but he’s pretty close-mouthed and my mom doesn’t appreciate such talk, so it might have been longer.
I suppose I was brought up to believe in the existence of a god, but religion was more of a non-issue than a way of life.
I had my doubts earlier, but I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. I started to come downstairs and saw mom and dad assembling my new bike. The next morning the card was signed ‘From Santa’ and I figured it out.
I had doubts about god starting in third grade when my parents sent me to a private catholic school and I just couldn’t wrap my mind around how the nuns lived in such poverty and the priests lived in relative luxury. What kind of god would want that? By high school I was agnostic but really, I was atheist and just didn’t want to be rude.
Finally, when I was in college, my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and it came to me that there was no point. This wasn’t some damned Hallmark Hall of Fame special, where god ties up death with a pretty red bow. Nobody was being punished, learning anything, benefitting in any way because of this. There was no plan and there was no god. My dad was dying for no reason other than a cancer in his pancreas and he was going away and I’d never see him again. I realised that we’re on our own.
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Well, I am God, and I still believe in me.
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I’m Santa, too, and was happy to find that out when I was five. OVER JOYED. It totally makes my whole holiday season RAWWK.
Santa croaked early in my life, but I don’t remember at what age. I do remember keeping the myth alive for my younger siblings.
I was never really sold on God. My father was an atheist anthropologist who specialized in, amongst other things, obscure Japanese religions post-WW II. So I was exposed to some rather bizarre belief systems at a young age.
My mother was a rather backslid Episcopalean, and she did have me going to Sunday School sporadically. It was at age nine that I thought it through and decided that there was no God.
So, I essentially grew up atheist, and, as a result, don’t have quite the hard-on for churches that many atheists from more religious backgrounds seem to have.
There’s no santa?! :eek:
I’d have to say I definately stopped believing in santa around the age of 9 or 10, although it was more of a gradual process. It had already occured to me that the existance of santa was pretty impossible, but I never really questioned it because in the end, who was delivering the presents was not the important part.
Not being raised with any particular religion, I never really believed in God. I struggled with the idea for awhile when I was younger, but I think the conclusion I’ve finally reached the conclusion that thinking about god too much makes my head hurt.
Thirteen.
I don’t know, five? My family isn’t Christian, so that wasn’t gonna stick around. 
My two-years-older brother clued me in that Santa-believing kids got more presents, so we milked it as long as we could.
When I was about ten, it seemed to me that there wasn’t much difference between the old Norse and Greek myths and our own Christian myths. Much later, maybe 35, I changed my mind. God and I have an understanding now. I don’t go to church, but I pray sometimes, and maybe he hears. Mostly, I pray for strangers, like when the Lifeline helicopter flies over my house.
- How old were you when you stopped believing in God(s)?
- Ironically, it was because I finally started studying the bible.
- How old were you when you stopped believing in Santa Clause?
About 8.
I recieved my religion innoculation at a very early age. The first books I ever read on my own were Andrew Lang’s Fairy series. Before I was introduced to the Bible I had practically memorized The Red Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, The Green Fairy Book and all the rest. When I was finally introduced to Christianity, for the life of me I couldn’t tell the difference between that fairy tale and the others I already knew about. As far as Santa Claus is concerned, pretty much the same thing. Flying reindeer were about as real as seven league boots as far as I was concerned.
I remember believing in Santa Claus until I was 8 and my dad broke the news to me. This might not be accurate, though, because I was always the type of child to cause as few disturbances as possible and not to outwardly resist what I was told. Even my diaries from that age don’t reflect my true thoughts, but the veneer I wanted to show others. So it’s possible that I didn’t really believe in Santa for some time leading up to that, though I know I did at one point.
However, I can’t remember a time I held any real belief in God. My parents, somewhat religious Episcopalians, dragged me to church every week and I never liked church at any age, nor was I able to derive any spiritual satisfaction from prayer. What I was taught just didn’t sit right with me. However, I continued to hold the contradictory belief that the God I didn’t believe in would eventually cast me into hell for my faithlessness until I was 12, when I had a sudden epiphany that if God didn’t exist, he couldn’t punish me.
Between the ages of 12 and 18, I made quite a few attempts of varying degrees of sincerity to start believing in God, probably due to familial and societal pressures more than anything else. I’ve since come to peace with my atheism, though.
"1) How old were you when you stopped believing in God(s)?"
About 18.
I was raised by conservative Lutheran parents and was strong believer. In high school I became a young-earth creationist who believed the earth was about 6000-8000 years old (though “Answers in Genesis” say that it is about 6000 years or less now). I read books attacking creationism and found good counter-attacks in the creationist books and magazines I had. Anyway, when I was about 17 I decided that I wanted to know the truth, even if it is bad (i.e. we evolved). At university I talked to people quite a bit on the internet about creationism/evolution and made a site called “dirt or slime”. An author called Ed Babinski found me and told me about the Green River Formation and how it couldn’t have formed in a short amount of time. I also read lots of other evolutionary stuff. I was on the fence for a few weeks or months then I believed in an old earth, and due to creationist teachings like “death before Adam ruins the gospel message”, etc, I abandoned the Bible and became an atheist/agnostic and became suicidal since I was comforted a lot by having an invisible friend and the belief in paradise… then after reading lots of self-help books (especially one about how to be happy all the time) I became manic, was put into a hospital (for my radical ideas and behaviour) and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, etc…
"2) How old were you when you stopped believing in Santa Claus?"
I can’t remember. I don’t remember believing in Santa… maybe it was due to watching kids shows and movies were Santa is complaining that people don’t believe in him.