Here is my Carnival of the Godless submission:

I was born an atheist, and I’ll day an atheist. But you see, 23 days after I was born, I entered the ethereal realms of Catholicism. Born on the 4th, baptised on the 27th. So I spent 14 years of my life as a Catholic.

My mother was a catholic from Northern Ireland (yes, they *do* exist). My father grew up somewhat Catholic but became “born-again” sometime in his life.

So basically I grew up as Catholic as one can. Went to catholic school, church every sunday. I never really questioned God or JC.

That is, until one October (or maybe it was early November) night last year. I randomly googled ‘boy scouts evil’. I wound up at http://stupidevilbastard.com/, wherein the author talked about the boy scouts discriminating against atheists. Then it hit me: people who called themselves Christians, like I did myself, were total assholes.

After that I got into thinking. Previously, I had always thought of atheists as a bunch of silly grumpy stuck-up idiots. Now, I saw that they could be good people. I became a “sensible Christian”; that is, a christian who sides with atheists in regards to social issues
(Separation of Church and State, abortion*, etc).

I kept seeing more examples of Christians being assholes. Kids being expelled for being gay, 10 Commandments in Government, “Intelligent Design”. My faith was fading fast. Around January 25th, 2005, I finally said to myself “adults shouldn’t believe in fairy tales”. I was an atheist. Just like that. And you know what? I’ve never looked back.

*Yes, I know there are some pro-choice atheists.