I began to doubt at a very young age. I was a typical child, raised in a catholic home, taught that the easter bunny, Santa clause, and the tooth fairy were real. I had successfully debunked most of the mythological stuff that I was taught by 9 years old. Santa clause couldn't fit in the chimney, reindeer cant fly, and he seemed to be in every mall at the same time. So I concluded that there was no evidence that Santa existed, and that it was most likely story my parents had made up.

I lived in a tri-level home growing up. It was 3 different levels, where the stairs where opposite of one another. And when you were heading upstairs, to the kitchen on the top level, there was a painting off the side, with a long fall all the way to the bottom floor. On the easter following my Santa debunking Christmas, there was an egg hidden on top of that painting, and my dad said “Wow, that must be some tall easter bunny to get that egg up there.” He reached for it, leaning over the stairs, trying to really pitch the idea that it was too high up for him. But I could easily see that even I could reach across from the stairs going to the kitchen and put that egg there. It was at that moment, that I knew, my parents were the easter bunny too!

There was something different about this God character though, the adults actually believed in this one. There is a documentary about Richard Feynman, in this video, he talks about the slippery slope of doubt, and as I think back, I was on that slope at a very young age. I fairly quickly went from a skeptic, to an agnostic, to an atheist.

I attended church most Sundays with my mom and sister. My dad didn't join us, he was a protestant that never seemed to talk about religion. I went to Sunday school as often as I went to church, for several years. I also went to confession quite regularly. I never really liked either of the gatherings, I thought they were boring, and tedious. I would always ask my mom to let me stay home, but she never did give in. When she went, I went, no questions asked.

When I was 10 or so, I remember quite specifically looking at the people bowing their heads praying in church. I wondered if they were talking to god. I prayed along with them, but it never seemed to accomplish anything. Prayers had no responses, and didn't seem any different than talking to myself in my inner-monologue. I had began to doubt if there was actually some divine being listening to all of these prayers.

The preacher would always read parables from the bible, and I would sit and listen, but what I was really doing sitting there so quietly was questioning them. Noah's ark was a big one for me. How could Noah build a boat that big, and round up all the animals in the world in one lifetime? Did the lions go willingly, or did they try to eat noah? My skepticism in church didn't stop with Noah, it moved on to moses taking his people across the red sea, and Jesus turning a river into blood. I often wondered if people were skeptical about it like I was.

I would ask lots of these questions to my mother. The question I will always remember asking my mother is “if the ancient Greeks had their gods, and their gods don't exist, how is our god different?” Her response was “they needed these gods to explain things.” I didn't take my questioning any further, it didn't occur to me at the time, but that is the same reason she has her god. Eventually my skepticism led to agnosticism. I just couldn't accept that the bible was anything more than a story. And I didn't know why anyone would believe it.

In Sunday school we learned all about the bible, why we pray, why things in the world are the way they are. I was always carrying this doubtful nature of mine with me. I asked questions like, why did Jesus have to die for us? and why does god kill us if he loves us? My Sunday school class had just finished giving us students the knowledge required to receive the sacrament of communion. I was the oldest to receive the sacrament in that Sunday school class. And I was soon to give a speech about it. I had never stood up in front of the whole church before, and I was quite nervous about it. Of that speech I remember only two things. My sister sitting in the audience, trying to get me to mess up in front of everyone, and the thoughts running though my head as I was reading. At this point, after sitting in church for 2 years, thinking critically about every parable that was read to me, I was in the process of slipping from agnosticism to atheism. I really didn't believe a word of the speech I gave. And I remember thinking about stopping in the middle of my speech and confessing to not believing the bible.

It wasn't until we watched a video in my Sunday school class that really pushed agnosticism into atheism. The video was about choosing to accept the mark of the beast, and it laid out the decision quite well, take the mark, or suffer and die. I remember in the video they were taking a father who refused the mark from his family to kill him, and before they took him he keeled in front of his kids and told him that they should also give their life for Jesus. The teacher talked about it afterwards and told us that this was a decision that we would have to make in our lifetime. It really didn't make any sense. Why would god want us to choose to die? Why would he let innocent people die? Why would god allow this to happen to someone he loves? Why doesn't he just kill the evil people instead?

Within a couple weeks, if not the next week from that Sunday school class, I finally admitted to myself that I was an atheist. I didn't know what an atheist was at the time, but I did not believe in god. So 15 minutes before church on that Sunday morning, I really did not want to go to church, especially now that I know its all bogus. So I decided to tell my mom that I didn't believe in god anymore. It went quite well, she just sat in her room and cried for 10 minutes, before she took my sister and went to church. I didn't have to go, and I was so incredibly relived. I was an out-of the closet atheist, by the time I was 12 years old.

My atheism is not a result of science, I didn't even know what evolution was when I declared myself an atheist. Its also not because life was so terrible, and no god could be so cruel as to punish me so. My atheism is the result of philosophy. Logic, reason, and doubt, are the only tools I needed to arrive at the conclusion that the bible was false. Soon after, I found that the very concept of god was utterly ridiculous.