Then I was laying in bed one night and it hit me: if I removed the context of religion (which I had, realizing that no established religion was currently true), there was no rational reason to go on looking for a God. It doesn’t remove the possibility of supernaturality entirely – and hey, for all I know there may be a deity watching out for me – but since I cannot form a valid hypothesis for such a beastie, it is at best a hopeful philosophy. Ergo, I’m an atheist – though I still like to pretend otherwise sometimes, just for the warm, squishy feeling.

Well, for me it took a period of 1 yr after having doubts but still attending church sporadically over an eighteen yr period for me to say “I don’t believe it anymore!” At first I was angry at the idea that a “god” could stand by and let horrible things happen to me and others especially at such a young age. Then I started researching what others had to say about the subject and the history of the church and so on and on. That eventually led me to have the lack of belief in a god or any gods….but for some strange reason, I like Thor

It has now been three years. Religion is being watered down and jesus is not making wine anymore…

If I woke up one morning and suddenly “felt God,” my first step would be to contact a professional. If after exhausting that route, I still felt God, maybe I would tell family. But that would be after years in the closet.

But, for a while the foundation of literalism and fundamentalism had been cracking with no change in my thinking or speaking. I had been complaining the days up to deconversion about the hypocrisy of a particular xian in our life and the seeming ineffectiveness of god to make his people better. But, my reasons had more to do with the things I’d been reading about the history of religion and the OT. The trigger was relational, but the intellectual side was established already. It was like the breaching of a DamN.

I suppose there is a common thread with this unscientifically small sample population – the ‘deconversion’ was slow, gradual, but quite complete.

Certainly true for me. In fact I claim the all-time slowness record. I reckon from first doubts to being comfortable calling myself an atheist took nearly 30 years, though I’d completely stopped going to church after about 8 years. I suppose the reason is that my church was a very liberal and relaxed church, without the hypocrisy and corruption I read so much of in deconversion accounts on Internet. I found it difficult to be confident that all the nice, respectable, well-meaning churchgoers I knew were really mistaken.

Gong from there to atheism is often the more gradual months-to-years process mentioned in the article. This matches my own experience, as I explained in my post on how I became an atheist.

I would say it took me about 10 years for me to finally say I am an atheist. In those 10 years I went from christian, to deist, to agnostic, to atheist. I can finally say that I am very comfortable with my outlook on life and with my beliefs. The burden of having to believe things that make no sense at all has been lifted and I feel great. I did not do it alone though. A lot of people and resources helped me get to this point. This is why we must continue the dialogue of what it truly means to be an atheist, so that we can reach those that may be on the fence regarding their beliefs.

thanks