Was there any "straw that broke the camel's back" moment in your self-reflection and studies that pushed you significantly more toward your atheism? Maybe an assignment, something you read or watched, a specific line of reasoning you explored, something that someone said, etc.? I'm rather interested in those sorts of things. I know it's always a combination of many factors but it would be interesting to hear if you had any with particular significance. Please feel free to share any of your story that might accompany your response too.
And of course you have our very warm welcome to the forums! Oh, and there are similar threads (both past and present) in the Non-Christian Religions subsection of the Outreach section of the forums if you've interest in their contents.
Well there wasn't any strictly one thing that change my mind. It just flowed together, and it was a very slow transition. I used to be a catholic, which was almost exactly a year ago, since the first week of January. Well for 18 years I never questioned my religious beliefs with my scientific beliefs. I went to school, learned about science and history, and I went home and I read the bible and went to saturday 'church school'. So after I left home and went to college, I took various classes like anthropology and rhetoric writing and argument, which I had to read and learn about differing opinions, and evaluate and make an argument of the case. So I first applied it to my political beliefs. With all the presidential debates and news, I became almost addicted at politics, really exciting. So after reading a bit of political philosophy like plato and others, I slowly shifted my political mentality from a conservative to a constitutionalist/libertarian ideaology, jefforsonian. So then after much reading I became a moderate, took ideas from each side, like progressive taxing, and ACLU ideas, and more oversight of goverment by the people and so on.
After, a day before I started my second semester of college, I was bored and I went to my usual channels which are discovery/science/history channels. So there was this film on early human civilization, like farming, politics, and so on. Then at one segment, there was how religion started. That got me thinking. I asked, what if religion is just a human made idea? So then I started reading more on religions and did as I did before with politics, look at both sides and see which one make more logical sense. Then I asked, could god be human made too? an idea? So after a few weeks, I became an agnostic. I believed that god may or may not be real, we don't know really. Atheists don't have any evidence sayng there is no god, as well as all the theists with their god(s). So I was like its either there is a god or isn't. So it equally as wrong to say there is or there isn't. Then I remembered that there could be one, two, three, or more gods, or gods with diffrent ideas, so which religion is right, or which interpertation of god is right? So then the odds were realistically not 50/50, more like 1 in an infinity. So I became an agnostic-atheist, or atheist for short. There is a possibility there is a god, very small, but unlikely. So therefore I don't believe, I am an atheist. Atheism:
lack of belief of the existence of a god(s). Agnosticism: Lack of knowledge of the existance of a god(s)
and finally I am a skeptic, one who questions, and seeker of the more probable and logical truth.
So what really made me an atheist? Math.