Becoming an atheist at 18

Hello, and welcome to my first of many blogs which will describe my becoming an atheist and explain my reasons for no longer believing in christianity after almost 5 years of faith. This first blog is a brief overview of how my religious timeline has spanned, from becoming a christian to becoming an atheist.

I was brought up in a non-religious family. Not being particularly anti-religious, I spent my childhood, not exactly open minded, but just with no opinion of religion. I kind of believed in god, because I had been taught about him at school and at home, and never taught that he WASN'T true. At the age of 13, my best friend invited me to his church's youth club. It just so happened that his father was the pastor of a pentecostal church, and was starting up a youth club to try and attract a younger population. Attracted by the initial offer of DVD and pizza, me and a few others went along to my friends house one night and did just that. At the end of the evening, my friend's dad the pastor taught us the basics of christianity, and jesus, and asked us to close our eyes and pray with him. "Repeat these words after me, in your head". He continued to say a prayer in which he offered jesus our hearts and asked him to save us so that we could go to heaven. When discussing this with others afterwards, I found that I was the only one that had repeated the prayer. Suddenly, I was a christian, and spent the next 4 years going to church every sunday, reading the bible every other night, and praying as often as I could. I was baptised in the name of jesus, and tried to preach the word to my friends when the opportunities arose.

However, around the time of my 18th birthday I began to have doubts. Why, for example, did I love this god so much, if he was to punish all of my family because they didn't believe? Why did he create us to be imperfect and then accuse us of being wretches? If he created everything, he created suffering, sin and everything that he hates. He must have paved the way for people to eternally suffer in hell. These thoughts circled in my mind for months and months, until finally, around march 2012 time, I decided I was no longer a christian.

So there it is, a timeline of my spiritual life. Read my upcoming blogs to find out the detailed arguments of why I don't believe any more.

Thanks for reading