I had been losing faith for a long time, but I came out of the atheist closet shortly after my son was born, three years ago.
I was born into an Irish Catholic family, then my parents split and my mom married into a fundamental Pentecostal family. I went Fundie wholeheartedly. Taught Sunday School, had no life outside the church… Finally met a good churchgoing man and got married. We were treated so badly by my family (my cousin, the pastor’s daughter, had a crush on my now-hubby, and never forgave me for landing him after he rejected her) I stopped going to church.
Since I was so devoted to my deity, I spent the time “between churches” to read the Bible on my own and do my own studies. I talked with people of other denominations, and the fact that the one true religion could have so many different flavors, all of which disagreed with each other, kind of made me balk.
Then I started thinking about other religions entirely. If Biblegod couldn’t keep his followers straight, maybe he wasn’t the right god, but perhaps there was another one?
Around the time my son was born, I was seriously considering a more eclectic pagan thing – god is all around us, nature is god, blah blah blah.
But, a difference that makes no difference is no difference, as I was told by a very wise person. If god doesn’t do anything that science can’t explain, god may as well not be there. If god is there, he/she/it/they are more than welcome to prove themselves to me.