My journey to becoming an atheist [I Am An Atheist]

So I was born from an American southern pentecostal family. My dad being a preacher and mom being a gospel singer. Denomination being cogic aka church of god in christ. Bible readings and 30 minute long prayers being my nightly routine for majority of my childhood to teenage years up until my early 20s.Throughout my teenage years I had taken these stories as absolute truth and believed them to have been very literal, but it wasn’t until 2011 that I started to see things a lot differently. Atheism was a very foreign concept to me, until my cousin showed me a video series called Slave Sermons. Funny enough this guy isn’t even an atheist but the fact that we came to very different conclusions about religion is hilarious to me. Through this video series I pretty much learned how christianity was forced on my ancestors, but even then I still refused to not believe in a higher power. I still believed in god but for most part it was becoming harder and harder reconciling with how this religion was forced on my ancestors. By my first year in college I started taking courses on religious studies. And finding out how these abrahamic religions came about still didn’t deter me from my faith. What actually did it was a sudden realization I had years later. I’m 21 at this point already graduated and I honestly can’t even remember what brought this thought up. I’m pretty sure it was a debate about abortions between my roommates, for all I know it could be from years of remembering Sunday school lessons about children getting clapped under god’s command. All I can remember was how it had all clicked as I’m taking a delivery to a customer. At this point I still never considered myself an atheist but I perception of the christian god turned a complete 180. It went from holy creator father of all life and creation to narcissist that plays with people’s lives for his own ego. 2 years later it just stoped making sense how even a being that’s beyond space and time would even do the things that he did. It became completely nonsensical to me. A year later I meet up with one of my relatives and find out this guy straight up joined a racist cult in college. The IUIC(israel united in christ) debating these guys is what I could say was the most enlightening experience I’ve ever had. You can show all the proof in world to these people and they will parrot the exact same talking points and which were ironically the same as most theists. It wasn’t 2 years ago that I truly saw the parallels. I’ll never forget the talk I had with my mom bringing up all the atrocities that are in this so-called holy book. She wasn’t ready for that conversation. Ironically my dad has much better arguments. Even better arguments than most of the theists on this website.Despite the differences in belief I still have great admiration for my parents, I literally could not ask for a better family.

canusernamebemyusername · M

That is similar to me. I also started seeing the sheer mental illness of God over time. None of those very human vices makes sense to an all loving, omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipresent God. One this that really struck me was realign if God is perfect then he would have neither needs nor wants. He would never have created anything but simply would have existed in perfection.
I love learning about religion though. A lot of what has helped is learning where it all came from. Of particular interest is the early diverse Christianities that existed but one became dominant and literally killed off the others.
I'd actually recommend Bart Ehrman's books. He is a former Christian that studied all this as well and came to atheist conclusions as well. But he is still a professor of the New Testament.
My moms side was religious and I admire part of them for it. But the majority gave fallen into the QAnon rabbit hole and mixed that in with their theology now and that just makes me angry.