I think the earliest memory I can think of of becoming or being an Atheist was when I was thinking about Baptism and wondering what could possibly be the point of doing so. I remember asking one of my Parents as a genuine question: “Why do people get baptised?” Because I knew I hadn’t been.
After some uming and ahing the answer was something like “Well it makes that person a Christian”. My immediate thoughts were then “Well what does that actually do?” And the answer “Well it doesn’t actually do anything”
So from that point on I could not quite understand the point of it.
I don’t think I was actually an Atheist at the time. I probably questioned the existence of God but I was too young to be quite out of the whole peer-influenced state of mind.
I think I was around 10.
Without letting this Thread get too serious, what is your earliest memory of an Atheistic thought or being confused about something religious?
Obivously this thread is aimed at Atheists!
I believed very passionately in the Christian god till I was in 7th grade. Then one day, I happened to read the book of First Samuel and realized that the Old Testament god is basically a super-villain.
Second grade. I mentioned to my dad that the bible said that animals were created the day before man. The science books said dinosaurs lived millions of years before man. One must be wrong. His answer was “Never say the bible is wrong.”
First grade. Shortly after I reasoned out that Santa couldn’t be real, I concluded that the Sunday school stuff about floods and bread from heaven and 900 year old men was equally suspect.
I don’t think I have any early memories of atheism. My parents are atheists, and so are most of their friends (I think one of my mom’s friends when I was a kid was Buddhist), so not being religious is normal to me.
My mom was raised very Roman Catholic, and can recite prayers at the drop of a hat, still. I remember being fascinated by her stories of nuns as teachers (they always had really funny male names). It was as though she was an emigre from a foreign country that I had never visited. I was interested in her stories of church and why she had stopped going, but it never seemed like a big deal.
I have vague memories from when my parents’ half-heartedly made me attend Sunday school when I was about 4.
They weren’t particularly religious themselves, but I was christened as a baby to appease grandparents, and was sent to Sunday school to give me the option of religion, I guess.
Nothing they tried to teach at that place made much sense. It mostly seemed patently absurd. That’s when I pretty much stopped listening to any religious ideas. And I haven’t gone back since.*
*Apart from a small lapse when I was about 10, when I joined Scripture Union for 5 minutes, but I think that was more about trying to make friends. Honest.
Sitting in ninth grade world history class and talking about the legend of Robin Hood. I remember thinking along the lines of, “well, he was probably a decent shot with the bow and arrow, but the story got a little embellished with each telling. Hmmm… wonder if that explains the whole Jesus-story-thing.”
I had been quite religious up to that point, in no small part due to the thought “well, how can the stories be wrong?”
I think I was in around eighth grade when I shooting my mouth off about stuff we don’t understand being just as explicable by random shifts in the Dow Jones Industrial Average as by the intervention of an invisible man up in the sky.
Now, of course, we have The Noodly Goodness of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to explain such things.
I think I was an atheist for quite a while before this, and I got Bar Mitzvahed (and won prizes for best Sunday School attendance) years after this, but my first specific and dramatic memory is explaining to my classmates on some 4th or 5th grade trip bus trip the impossibility of God’s existence, and someone challenged me to dare God to strike me dead, smartass.
I promptly invoked the holy name, and prayed out loud that He kill me immediately for blasphemy and to show the rest of my classmates how powerful He was compared to me.
Everybody moved away from me, anticipating some instant bolt of lightning.
In a sense, all of us are still waiting. I was very pleased with myself that afternoon (and a little relieved I made it through the day).
After singing the “Cherry Tree Carol” during a car trip, I asked Dad why Joseph “Flew in anger . . .”
My poor father tried to explain adultery, sex, reproduction, and the Immaculate Conception to a clueless 8 year old while navigating a mountian pass in a howling blizzard.
I came away with the very strong impression that Jesus was the son of an amoeba.
I was raised Episcopal. When I was about 9 or 10, I was confused by the whole issue with Cain’s wife and where she came from. Nobody could or would tell me, so I started trying to find out for myself. After about a year or so, I realized that religion was a lie from start to finish.
I am almost an atheist. I grew up in a family that just wasn’t very interested in religion, so my earliest exposure to the whole issue was hearing my Dad singing “It Ain’t Necessarily So” from Porgy and Bess. I don’t think I ever even asked myself what I personally believed until I was in my teenage philosophical phase.
10 years old, in the back of the church van, on the way to bible camp. Someone mentioned Metallica and Megadeth (both of whom I loved), and I said “they are Satan-worshippers!” (exactly what I’d be programmed to say.) The oldest kid in the van - who was about 13 or 14 - explained that Metallica were not satanists, they were atheists, and then gave a very basic description of not believing in god or the devil. Toward the end of the conversation an adult overheard us and explained that atheism was exactly the same as satanism, and we all earnestly agreed, but somewhere in the back of my mind I liked the idea. I don’t think I had ever heard of someone not believing in god or the devil until then.
What’s really funny about this in hindsight is that I did all this church stuff with friends - my parents were atheists and I didn’t know it until my late teens.
My parents were Christian, moreso than anyone I knew outside my mother’s side family. Church-goings, Sunday school, religious children’s books etc. I remember feeling awkward and anxious at church from a very early age. I didn’t relate to the stuff, at all. It seemed grownups would basically go mad, start singing terrible (lyrics- and sounds-wise) hymns and chant unintelligeble stuff in a weird voice, speaking to someone who is invisible and almighty. It felt just surreal. Still does.
Like Priceguy, I pretended as hard as I could when I was a child, figuring there was some problem with me (I was raised in a very Christian family, church several times a week and no real contact with any other worldview). While I had lots of the sort of questions that made the Sunday School teachers upset, it did not occur to me for some time that there was even such a thing as an atheist. Came as a great relief once I realized that was what I had been all along. Not only did God not hate me, he didn’t even exist! Did great things for my self-esteem.
I distinctly remember being about 12 and walking down the street thinking to myself, “I don’t think God exists . . . . I sure hope He can’t hear me thinking this!”
There was no defining moment. We went to Church because that’s what you do, but none of it made any sense to me.
We stopped doing the Churchy thing soon after my Granddad died, because my Mum was in a bit of a miserable doubtful mood on the whole God idea because of that.
Soon after that, when I was around 10 or 11, something sunk in. I began to realise that the whole idea of a God was completely against all logic. The evidence of His existence was not there, not even a little. There is more likelihood of aliens visiting, or a Loch Ness Monster (and neither of those stood up to my young scrutiny either), than a superbeing who created and oversaw everything (and making a complete pig’s ear of it, by the way).
When a couple of my best friends started to get evangelical about their faith, I began to quantify my beliefs a little clearer, and I saw that they were believing in things because they were told to, and not because they were genuinely thinking about things logically. It disappointed me, and ultimately they weren’t my best friends anymore. Though I still hung out with them sometimes.
I remember reading a book–I think it was aimed at children/YA adults. And there were some characters who formed a club of atheists, and talked about finding beauty in nature and so forth, and, I guess, rejecting god. It’s all very hazy, so I guess that’s when I first learned the word. And I suppose around that time I didn’t really feel like I believed in anything, and my family never talked about it…so it felt like a good default.
I’m not convinced it’s how it started, but at Sunday school, I had a big issue with the idea that Judas was guilty of anything. What he did was obviously necessary, and even Jesus told him to do what he had to. He ending up in hell seemed wrong and very unjust to me. The priest trying to explain that the real cause of his damnation was his suicide sounded like back-pedalling and as a result, the whole story seemed suspect and fishy.
To this day, I’ve kept a very positive perception of Judas, as a man unjustly vilified for having done his duty.