What turned you into an anti-theist?

I started out as an Agnostic, but eventually came to realize that believing in a divine power was utter crap. This turned be Atheist. I eventually became more and more against religion, realizing how hypocritical it is.

My family has always been atheist so i have kind of grown up with it.

I became an Anti-Theist when at the age of ten or eleven. I simply thought about the whole "God" thing and simply couldn't conceive a reason why a good being of unlimited power would let everything be so unfair. That was the day I wrote the immortal lines "Religion is a trick used to trap idiots." in an RE lesson. It was the first time I was proved right too because neither the teacher (a priest) or the other kids understood exactly what I meant.

Never liked religion much.

Started to resent it when I came to Canada, because a whole shitload of people (mostly Christians) tried to convert me.

Then I read the Bible, Qur'an, and texts of other religions---and that was the final straw.

God made me an anti-theist when he gave me the power to reason his non-existence.

I was force fed Catholicism from birth, was raised this way for about 16 years. Never really liked it but it was all I knew, until I reached high school. When I started my Junior year I was introduced to a few new friends one of which was an avid Atheist. He introduced these different ideas and theories I had never before been subject to. I still had the slight remains of a Catholic mentality having been raised that way for so long, not to mention my mom would've ended my life had she known I was going away from the church. So, for quite some time I claimed Agnosticism. After I joined the Navy and moved there were many people who approached me with attempts at converting me to whatever church they claimed, as much as I enjoy religious debates (and I really enjoy them) it started getting a little aggravating. So after having been agnostic for a little while I decided I was most certainly an Atheist. Shortly after getting to Iraq, I looked back at my stance in most of those debates I spoke of earlier, and it was basically me informing the debatee of the harms of religion on society. Not to mention the astronomical inaccuracies clearly stated throughout their only defense: the bible. How much of it needs to be disproven for them to be convinced? Besides it's not being real, religion: breeds ignorance, fabricates just one more reason for man to hate each other and it impedes human progression.
That's when I realized how much I disliked religion entirely and became an Anti-Theist.
I prefer to claim 'Militant Anti-Theist'. But seeing as how I'm not part of the army trying to forcefully dismantle organized religion as we know it (yet) I'll call myself an Anti-Theist.
Unless of course some of you fine chaps feel like forming this aforementioned army, in which case I'd be honored to be a part of it.

" God or religion is a way for others to measure their pain "- John Lennon. Its a place of solace and comfort , nothing else as John Lennon explains to himself and others,... i think pure meditation can produce the same results. I believe that those who do follow religion are weak and delusional. Most would probably intuitively/emotionally respond to a higher being without using their mental faculties to reason the apparent contradictions in the nature of the many religions around the world. My whole family is very religious more so my mother more than anyone else. I believe that those who do follow religion or god(S) are narrow-minded folks, who have in them a faith that is blind and not objective. Those who are deeply religious do not value the immense reasoning powers of the human rationale to look at two sides of the coin instead of just one.

I was force fed ' Hinduism' as child, and from a very young age i thought to myself with a certain doubtfulness about the 'millions' of gods that they propose to exist at a certain time i.e ' the golden era'. I then was sent to a seventh day adventist Christian school and they force fed me their bullshit ! that deluded me immensely and i feel for their trap

Years later i realized how stupid i was ! Anyway bottom line is that i am atheist after dabbling a little while in agnosticism. The many reasons are, religion is the cause of countless wars to convert those of another religion to theirs- Evangelist commonly do this in the sake of preaching god's word as if to say it is their duty to do so. It breeds hate among Jews and Muslims. Countless catholic priests have been condemned for being pedophiles, and thus have the tendency and nerve in their movement to forgive those that do commit those immoral actions. Many religions affiliate themselves with governments to spread their own religions into the sovereignty of another country, something that does COST LIVES !. Some even are preposterous to follow the rules of religion so much that they contend that if a woman is raped by her husband, it would be better to NOT to press charges as it is better to forgive and stay married because it becomes a ' sin ' if she divorces.. i.e it supposedly breaks one of the commandments in the bible. The Hindu religion also speaks of and condones the caste system, which is horrendous in its display of segregation. Instead of unifying the people it separates them according to a person historical analysis. It lifts barriers for people who despite, being from a different caste system are limited to being totally free and emancipated.

The many big and famous churches/temples in the world spend millions of dollars for the house of god so it may look pretty to the petty bourgeoisie, yet remain helpless to assist the poverty stricken people outside their temples and churches who die from starvation and such. To me this can never be advocated as religion, further more the people who do attend a temple in India practice their own faith for themselves and their family, yet blindly ignore the overt pauperism that can be seen outside it, makes me want to puke in disgust, as their ignominious behavior doesn't warrant them to carry their own decorum and dignified status in society... the priests who chant daily sacred sayings to a lifeless idol ignore the poverty stricken people outside temples in India as they finish up with their daily routines ... if such a religion carries forth ' justice' in the name of the people i cannot ever accept any blind and absurd faith in a god or a religion !

Its superstitious, irrational, narrow-minded, it breeds hate on the earth, segregation, and advocates fascist thoughts and tendency's.. . ( the Hindu nationalist party only wants hindus in INDIA and nothing else).. a complete disgrace, forever an atheist i will be !!!

Catholic education. nuff said.

I was raised christian and wanted to be the good christian to please my parents but I always had questions. I usually rationalized them or stopped thinking about them. As I became older I began to embrace a more liberal philosophy on life and began to question my parents conservative faith. I still held on to the idea of Jesus I just changed him to fit my ideas of what the world should be like. In my mind Jesus was an anarchist he had little time for the government and he wanted people to sell everything and give it to the poor. That sustained me for a little while. One day I was watching Derren Brown (a well known u.k. mentalist/magician/skeptic) . He told a pastor of a church that he could convert people into believing in god by simply touching them. He of course did so by using psychological tricks. The people began to cry and feel the "spirit of god" . I saw myself in these people and I saw my experiences in church. I was confused and terrified . I eventually landed on youtube where I saw videos talking about hypnosis and the suggestive state that churches put you into with music and speech. I realized my faith was the result of emotion and that every time I had a logical question I censored my thoughts. I told myself I would live just one day as if there were no god and nothing happened. There was no hellfire, I did not die, my family was not hurt,and I didn't become a murderer. I was told those things would happen if I left my faith. I began to realize that sort of behaviour and fear mongering was similar to that of a cult and indeed it was a cult. I read the bible and began to see it for what it was. The god of the bible approved of mass murder,sexism,racism,homophobia,and slavery. Those were the very things I thought I should be fighting against as a christian. I've not tried to educate myself about science and philosophy to try and better understand how the world works. That is something I wouldn't have done as a christian.

I was raised without any form of religion. My parents really let me make up my own mind.
It took a lot of bible-thumpers, religious pamphlets, evangelicals, religious private schools, and a whole lot of crosses before i started thinking for myself about what it all meant. I could rant forever about it, but long, LONG, story short i consider myself a militant anti-theist.

I think I really started questioning it when I was like 15. I was raised religious and I'd just never really thought about what it meant if a god really existed beyond the fact that it meant I wouldn't have to suffer through actually dying and losing those I love.

I think around the time I was questioning my religion, I read Heart of Darkness, which turned me in the direction of nihilism and existentialism instead of Jesus. I realized that religion was just an easy way to give meaning to one's life and a nice way to get a profit from the well-meaning masses. Eventually, I went from being kinda agnostic to the wonderful anti-theist I am today.

I became an Atheist at the age of 10, before that I was sort of a Christian-Agnostic. Only became an Anti-Theist recently, I just think that most types of religion are holding mankind back from progress and development.

I never believed in god or followed any religion. I never saw a reason to. It just doesn't seem logical. A lot of people who do believe in god sound crazy.

To keep it short:
I spent most of a my life as a hardcore,unapologetic christian conservative nutjob, then I graduated and began to try to look at things in a different way. The inconsistency of christian arguments for the existence of god, the actions of christians in history and of those who I know personally, the complete lack of scientific evidence, and science as a whole were really all that was needed to make my do a complete 180. My old backwards beliefs are now buried in a graveyard of stupidity.

Despite no longer being an Anarchist, Bakunin's works on religion and god were of great influence during my crossover into Atheism/Anti-Theism. If god does exist then it is our revolutionary task, as his slaves, to abolish him.

My mom is Hindu and my dad is roman catholic, they're not practicing of course and it turns out they both completely reject religion and favor science but I did not know this until I rejected religion, so i asked questions about how do the gods of hinduism co-exist with the gods in christianity? I just had a theory that they all lived together in heaven until I read a children's version of Noah's Ark and thought it was fictional so when people told me that was supposed to be true I called bullshit. Plus, that summer when I saw my cousins who became deeply religious christians that year tried shoving their views down my throat (and note that these were my cousins on my mom's side) drove me to strong hatred toward religion. I was 7 years old when this all happened.

When i was about 13 i just stopped beliving in god however i really didn't oppose religion until i was about 19 and realized all the horrorble shit in the bible. The verse the really did it for me was in Leviticus were it says that if a woman is raped in a city and she does not yell loud enough for for any body to hear , then it should be assumed she is enjoying it and she should be taken out and stoned to death.

My Roman catholic parents sent me to Roman catholic school for 12 years and I was verbally and physically abused by nuns and grumpy lay catholic teachers. I was forced to engage in the sacraments of baptism, confession, and Eucharist. Around 8th grade when the time came for all of us to get confirmation into the church, and after discovering the anti-establishment writings of George Orwell and doing some basic thinking and research on the subject, I rejected religion in favor of science. I came out as anti religion and refused to be confirmed. My parents battled with me and tried to get me to come back and make me go to church, but I have remained steadfast and that has caused me to do more and more research on the history of religion and to read more about atheism, becoming ever more confident in my beliefs. Eventually my parents gave up. I bounced around the ideas of atheism, agnosticism, and deism until I finally became firmly atheistic and, more recently, anti-theist in general (becoming a Marxist also helped with this).

In order for me to become a Adult, I had to give up my imaginary friends, which included god.

I was never a believer. My mother is atheist and consequently I never had to go to church. With no religious influences my mind was always open to scientific theories and evidence.

I turned into an atheist when I realized the reason, why the politicians, capitalists and bourgeois have this attitude to other people and the planet.

I have always been an Atheist, but turned anti-theist when I found out my girlfriend's clitoris was mutilated due to tradition and religion.

When I was 7 years old, I realized one day (after research at the local public library) that Xianity had no place for dinosaurs. So I therefore had no place for religion... Simple. I made this fateful decision on a Sunday on the corner of the street near my house: where I had to decide to turn one way to go to the local Lutheran church a mere 1/2 block away (my family is not religious; but historically it was 'national catholic') -- or keep going straight, to play in the schoolyard a few blocks further.

I have never regretted this decision. My strong belief in a wonderful and mysterious Universe devoid of 'gods' has only become deeper over time.

As a side note: I had to actually ask my parents what the name was for what I'd decided to be. They looked up 'atheist' for me in the dictionary and were suitably bemused...

How ridiculous SOME religious people can be.This is the reason I am an atheist.They critise you based on religion and if you are against religions they swear you and get pathetic by saying bullshit about God.In addition, religions destroy people and it is a reason why many wars happen.And to be realistic where do I know God exists?There has been no scientific proof that God exists and if we exists why doesn't he make the world peaceful?

I never was really theist of me. I can remember just once when I was 6 that I believed in Christ for one day at Easter, because they a children program told me so (next day I just thought of it as silly). Being anti-theist is what brought me up to being political, and for since I was 12 I debated over the Internet, mostly. I stopped being militant though, after I became class-aware and thereafter a Communist. This because we in Norway don't have the same problem as the ones in the U.S, and scientific research isn't affected by any religious organizations or groups trying to get a hold of their wrong-teachings.