Your Stories Of Atheism: Religion’s Death Throes

This is an ongoing series featuring your stories of how you came to identify as an atheist. If you want to send me your story, you can submit it here. To read past stories, click here.

Our first story is short but very interesting, from Josh:

My family was not very religious, and we didn’t attend a church that often until I was in High School. By then, I had already been through multiple math and science classes, and had learned some logic. In high school, were more science and math classes. Also, I started wondering if I was gay at age 11. (I’m out now!) Even though I was attending a Sunday school during my high school years, I had come to understand that I really didn’t believe in God, thanks too the math and science classes I had been in. During my freshman year of High School, Matthew Shephard was found dead and the Westboro Baptist Church became infamous. That’s what really cemented for me that I couldn’t ever be Christian. I couldn’t believe that any Christian would be happy that another human was dead. I guess for me, there were a number of factors that lead me to Atheism.

Congrats on coming out, Josh! There is no greater thing to be than yourself.

The Atheist Troll sent me this even shorter one:

Is ‘because one day I realized there’s no God’ a valid story? Cause that’s pretty much all that happened.

That is absolutely a valid story. Thanks for sharing!

Here’s one with sentiments similar to my own, as I am known to say often that religious fundies and lunatics are just religion’s death rattle as we prepare to leave it behind all together. This is from Paulo:

Have always been atheist. Always. Even as a 5-year-old in school I just didn’t get the prayers that were trotted out in assembly. Do these teachers believe this? Who are they talking to? Blah, blah, blah was all I heard. It had absolutely no relevance to me, even as an 5-year-old. I guess i was Lucky to grow up in an environment where religion played a very small part in everyday life. It was limited to assembly at school. That was it. My parents were non-practising protestants who never talked about God or religion and I wasn’t aware of any of our neighbours who were particularly religious. And the street where we lived was a fantastic place to grow up. No religion necessary. To be honest the issue of religion has only become more prominent in my life recently thanks solely to social media. It’s been quite a revelation to me, being exposed to what can only be described as quite disturbing levels of ‘faith’ and superstition, especially from the States. There are some real nutcases out there! But at the same time its quite clear, in the UK at least, that religion is on its last legs and the disproportionate prominence of the religious nutcases on Twitter is nothing more than religion’s death throes. I reckon even the Pope is a closet atheist.

And finally, from Zack, we have:

I’m an atheist because I realized most the beliefs I held were simply because my parents held them,and that’s not a good enough reason to believe something, then realized I had no other reason to believe,so I abandoned my faith at 16. Since then I’ve felt so liberated.

Thank you for reading this week. Be sure to leave these guys some comments. If you want to send me your story, you can submit it here. To read past stories, click here.

#submission