I was born atheist (as we all are) and raised with nothing. I mean absolutely nothing. There were no obligatory sunday church going-to, no sunday school, no 'grace', no prayers, for me. Of course, growing up in america, you get a little religious 'education' automatically. I didn't even realize what "god" was, until about third grade. God was just a word, like Jesus, Holy Crap, Damn, ect, that was used to express bad stuff (usually). So, all the religious reference were equated with the normal swear/cuss words to me.

In about third or fourth grade some kids started talking about sunday school. I sat there, like, "Hey, i heard about that before, hmmm, wonder what that is." Then I found out. The whole idea of 'god' was like 'Santa Claus' (which I already knew to be my parents, my mom admitted to getting my little cow toy when I was 3). So I just forgot about the whole 'god' thing, those kids would find out when their parents told them it was fake.

OH WAS I WRONG!

Thats the bad thing about being raised nothing, you don't expect people to be so, umm, irrational. Well, in fifth grade I was asked what church I went to. "I don't go to church," I said. "Oh (suprised), do you believe in God?" "Um, no," I replied. "Really? Why not? You'll go to Hell if you don't!" Thats the point where I kind of slithered off because i didn't know WHY I didn't believe in their god, I just didn't. That is of course, where I started my search of "WHY's, HOW's, and WHAT's".

High School comes along. Religion seems to be more important to high schoolers, because the topic comes up WAY more often. By that time, my search had gone at a fairly leasurely pace. Fundy-Xtians asking a billion questions and demanding answers made me step up the pace! I went to our local library, not much of the 'occult' (you know, that which is not christian) there, and picked up the 'Satanic Bible' by Anton leVey. I was immediately taken, and brought it to school, taking it with me during class. WHEW! Don't EVER do that unless you want to be scrutinized by students and teachers. Then, a met two pagans. They were my best friends for a quite a while. I tried to be pagan. I really tried, it made more sense than xtianity, and was earth- friendly (i was going through the 'what about the planet' phase). It never worked. I couldn't 'talk' with the goddess, I couldn't even do rituals without feeling like i was lying to myself. Thats when I realized I'd been an atheist all along.

At about age 16.

I knew of only two other atheists who called themselves such, a few other pagans, and some 'I don't know - agnostics'. During that time (at age 16) we got a computer, and the internet! WOOHOO! I met alot of other atheists in message boards. I was able to find research material! It was 'Paradise'!

This continued.

Basically, thats the end of my 'story of atheism'. I have learned much more, gone through "angry at all the insanity" phases (eg. hate crimes/wars/genocide/ect.) have kept my cool (most of the time), and had fun.

The rest of the details of my life are much more disturbing or happy or interesting, but not relevant to the topic of atheism.