Has anyone else been an atheist as long as they remember?



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Oh I assure you that there are biological mechanisms in place that enforce our supposed need for some form of religion-esque belief. I believe it is a collection of mechanisms that have to do with the way we reason (look at the world) and the way we act in groups. I am firmly convinced that religion is an accidental creation of cultural memes and above mentioned biological mechanisms.
I have a theory. I reckon about 10% of people just do not have the necessary wiring for believing in gods, in the past they kept quiet because they knew which side their bread was buttered, several were popes. Another 10% is hardwired to believe in gods, they will never be dissuaded that their daddy in the sky is real. The remaining 80% will just go along with whatever is the dominant paradigm. They believe what everyone else believes. That is why it is so important for atheists to be visible, to help this group realise that there is a viable alternative to belief. To alter the dominant paradigm from belief to disbelief. It can happen quite quickly once it starts.
I have been an Agnostic all of my life. I never went to church / temple / mosque, never saw any holy book, God or gods were never talked about. I was never taught about non-belief either.

The only thing that I an remember is my mother telling me about the abuses of the Catholic Schools. She never said anything about being religious or not.

I know my mother was raised Catholic, but am unsure where she is now. If I had to guess, it would be deism.

My father is an Atheist. He never said anything to me about it until I was in my late 20's.
My parents were never very religious people. My dad is an ex-catholic ( baptist these days), and my mother was a born again baptist. She got religious towards the end of her life I would say right around when I was 11-12. She would later die when I was 17. And before you start crying don't, she was abusive. Be that as it may, I when I was a child always found myself reading those children bible stories and such and I had a hard time imagaing GOD. I remember I once asked my mother how come the bible doesn't mention the dinosaurs and where did Cain's wife come from? To which I never got an answer that made remotely any sense at all. All of those questions built up in me everytime she would make me got to church with her, and for a while I tried to believe. I really really did. But it was like I was forcing my foot into a shoe that was too small for me. I couldn't do it. Sometimes I'd pray get what I wanted, most times nothing. I had figured out prayer was 50/50 and couldn't really hurt. After all start off no worse than when you started. But then I got to thinking about that. Why pray if its only a 50 50 chance? If it's in GOD's plan and you're gonna get what you want anyway it was long since decided, and if you don't and it's GOD's will...what the point of bothering with it in the first place? From this time I was 12 till about 2-3 years ago I was an agnostic. I didn't read my first "atheist" books till around 2-3 years ago. I just knew I had tons of questions, tons of contradictions, and ideas about why something seemed very wrong to me. The first book I ever read that opened up and I realized what I was had to do with Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason". This book would lead me to many more books about atheism, the arguments against, and I found them to be more credible and make much more sense to me than the stuff found in the bible and other holy books. While there maybe something spiritual out there I think it has largely to do with our sense of conciousness...nothing mystical or supernatural at all. I'm still working on spritiuality from this angle. But do I believe there is a "GOD"? No. And that's simply being an atheist. I guess for the longest I was an atheist/agonostic I just lacked the knowledge on what I was to be called. The books just simply helped me find a terminology.
I think most people start out as agnostics/ not wanting to be so bold as to declare they are certain no god can exist, but many evolve into atheism when they realize what it actually means. I'm atheist, But I will allow a very miniscule chance god could exist.. But there is no way anyone could ever convince me he is anything remotely close to the deity that modern religions try to turn him into. I could see a deist god as being the only possible option, however I still think the chances of that are so small it's hardly worth considering.
Right on. I am philosophically opposed to religion on grounds of it just being plain bad for you. The deistic god is the only somewhat respectful believers stance and, really, what kind of a god is that? Not a very useful one.
I was lucky to be raised without religion, and I have always been an atheist. Both of my parents were raised religiously (mom went to a catholic elementary school), but they had issues with the church and religion. My grandparents were horrified that I wasn't being brought up religiously, so they sent a lot of children's bible stories and coloring books. I remember hating the story where Abraham was told to sacrifice his son. Needless to say, the stories didn't convert me; they just gave me more reasons to not believe.
I was raised with religion, but something seemed "off" about it.... why does one grandpa go to the Catholic church while the other went to the 'legion' (Mason temple) and his wife and rest of that side go to the LDS chapel? Which sky god is right?

I always asked questions. LDS people say to pray and you'll find the truth. Maybe I didn't pray hard enough, but then again I had barely graduated kindergarden.
Haha. You know the church folks adored me as a really young child. They were amused by my questions and attitudes no doubt thinking that I would make a fine missionary or preacher some day. All of that changed around the time I turned 12 and started asking specific questions regarding things that just didn't make sense in the bible that I had read multiple times. This was also the time I challenged the baptist preacher on his belief that the world is six-thousand years old.
Heh. When I was (12?), I actually won a monetary award ($25) for getting the best quiz/test scores overall in Hebrew school (note that the content regarded biblical hebrew vocab, but nevertheless). I scored just higher than the religious kid whose mom volunteers as a teacher. (Teehee.) A few more years, and I was outta there---my parents finally didn't care enough anymore. The rabbi always recognized me as a good student, but knew that I had been a nonbeliever (or at least a skeptic) since ever. Still, he actually had a meeting with me to try to drag me back, and gave me the options of either staying in class or personal e-mail correspondence with him. I chose the empty set, and haven't been involved in Judaism since then.
I tried to believe in God. First, the standard Xtian god but that didn't make any sense. So I tried to just have my own personal god that really didn't affiliate with any religion, but the older i got and the more i looked around the less i could believe that a loving god would do this kind of work. George Carlin said it best: this is the kind of work you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. So i came to realize it just is, and the belief in the supernatural was an insult to the human intellect.
We, during my childhod up to age 18, lived in rural communities and attended Church & Sunday School. My parents did not hammer this stuff in, and if we complained about the occasional adult church member being obnoxious and thumping on us, she would not only agree with us, but expalin that it was the person who was out of line, not us children.

So church, for our family, and most of the families of these particular congregations was much more about community and celebration than religion, singing together, and those church basement suppers are wonderful fun.

Far into my adult life, I understood it was this connection to people that my parents were cultivating, not religion. I am not certain to this day if they actually believed in a god, they did believe in loving each other and their children and their neighbors, all of them.

Bible stories were read to us along with other children's stories. I know this was at least partly to make us familiar with the literature that shapes the thoughts of many in our nation.


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