What made you leave your religion and become agnostic or atheist?

Logic and rational thought.

I struggled with being grouped with people who constantly used the same core beliefs that we shared to promote bigotry and misogyny. It's like they didn't actually understand the assignment.

In 99 when I had to wake my 9 years old son at 2am to tell him his mother was dead. Then having someone telling me ours is not to question gods plan. F*** you. Haunts me to this day. This started the process and later on we had two sisters killed in a car wreck that were part of the youth group. First person that came up on the wreck was their father. That convinced me there obviously was no god.

The lack of freedom. Constantly being told "don't do this" takes its toll on you. The only rules that restrict me now are the law.

I was always this way. I'm from Denmark where no one gives a flying f*** about religions. We're only christian on paper but it's rare to meet someone actually believing in that stuff. Churches are used for things like weddings and funerals because it's tradition, not because someone actually believes in a god.

Raised Mormon. Dated a gay man for 5 years. We split and I left. Been so much happier since

Never had a religion to leave.

Was only ever loosely Christian and my family were not very devout but the people in our community who were devout and leading it all were absolute assholes who refused to adapt to the modern world at all. We practically laughed our way out the church is was so pathetic

My exhusband

Five years ago, I found it easier to believe in spiritual warfare than come to terms with the fact that there is so much unjustified cruelty in the world. I began to realize with that mindset, anyone else can be the demon. Anyone can be perceived as a negative energy or a dark force from someone else's perspective, so long as they tick the right boxes of what constitutes a "bad person". I realized the beliefs I had were simply a symptom of not being able to explain why bad things happen, not accepting the sometimes utter randomness of the suffering we experience and enact on each other. The sort of logic I was using results in an endless projection of qualities we reject and neglects the reality of genuine trauma we all experience from just being alive in this system. I simply no longer need a boogeyman.

I didn’t believe the fairy tales.

I always felt like I was grasping onto straws trying to defend a belief in a god in my own head. It was easier to just let go of the belief that never felt natural to me anyway.

I was about 10 years old. Things weren't making sense. Discovered "the thinking athiest" found him insightful. Then Dawkins. Then the others. Learned a lot about myself and my love for science. Chose fact over faith.

everyone's born atheist. religion is taught. i've never believed in fairytales.

Mostly hypocrisy

Pastor was abusing young girls for what was likely many years. When he was finally caught, people said thinks like "Christians are forgiven, not perfect". WTH? EDIT: spelling

Had weirdly stitched together religious education as a child and then married into a family of liars, thieves & felons who all attended parochial school. Know lots of ‘Christians’ who are anti-LGBTQ and as the parent of a queer child, I had enough. Absolutely zero desire to return to religion.

Ok this sort of a long one, but I really wanted to include every detail I could in order to express *exactly* how I feel about this. I still believe there is some sort of God, and I still very much value my upbringing as a Christan, but there's times when parts of it feel ridiculous. I've had my share of struggles with my faith as well as a condition that makes it difficult for me to sit through church, but the straw that broke the camels back was one particular Sunday mass. For context, my family and I had just attended my aunt's wedding earlier that year. She was marrying a great man she had been together with for quite a while after divorcing her previous abusive husband. They had already had a child together, who they raised along with my aunt's other son from her previous marriage. They're two of the coolest and most awesome little cousins I have. The wedding was a great time, and the ceremony itself was absolutely beautiful. The atmosphere was genuinely filled to the brim with love, hope, togetherness, healing, etc. It just felt so special, and it made me reflect on a lot. So fast forward to this random Sunday at church. It's time for the first bible reading, from the old testament, as is customary for a catholic mass. And lo and behold, the reading they chose for that day was alllll about how "sinful" it is to divorce and remarry. It was stated as adultery, which is a huge deal since it breaks one of the ten commandments and everything. When I tell you my heart just froze. All I could think of was that amazing day with my amazing aunt, my amazing family, and her amazing new husband. And they just spat on it. It felt like they had just called my aunt a harlot and a s*** in front of a whole congregation. It felt like they had just condemned my sweet little cousin as nothing more than a product of some nasty affair. It felt like they were lamenting the fact that my aunt didn't spend the rest of her life endangering herself and her first child by staying with her first husband. I stormed out of church crying. My mom tried to talk to me about it later, and she was all "Oh, well that was different!" No. There were no terms in that reading about what was "different" or didn't count. They reduced my family to sinful adulterers, and that was it. I thought for a while that the older, more outdated parts of the Bible were finally being forgotten and reconsidered. After all, even if it truly is the word of God, it was still written and passed along by humans with prejudices and such. But no. My church consciously and willingly chose that excerpt to read aloud to everyone. And although I was angry and offended, the whole thing also just felt like total bullshit. That wedding WAS special. My aunt's relationship with her new spouse IS pure. I could just feel it. My gut and soul were telling me that that entire excerpt was nothing more than a huge, selfish lie. So then, what else is? There are some wonderful lessons and teachings in the Bible, so I'd never ever curse it as something deceitful. but if parts of it are so obviously false, than what else is? I just couldn't bring myself to properly trust it again after that day. TLDR: Bible excerpt was read aloud during mass about how remarriage is adultery after my aunt had just made the best decision of her and her kids' lives to remarry

Everything 

questioning everything