Share your history of belief/disbelief

Hey everyone -This is my first post on this forum, and I think this thread is a good way to introduce myself.I'm 19 years old and I guess I would be what is considered a "weak" atheist. I see no evidence that a god exists, so I have no reason to believe that one exists. The concept of faith makes no sense to me.I haven't always been this way, however. In fact, it's only been within the past five years that my transformation from strict theist to atheist has occurred. And believe it or not, this message board actually helped push this transition along.I was raised in a strict Roman Catholic family. How strict? They currently attend a pre-Vatican II style Mass, which is said entirely in Latin. They pray the rosary every night. I was home-schooled so the public school system wouldn't corrupt my mind and make me actually think for myself. My parents wanted me only to know what they taught me, and open-mindedness was greatly discouraged. If anything or anyone so much as questioned their faith, they would run the other way.Unfortunately, I had the same line of thinking. Except there was one difference between me and them: they hid from anything that threatened their faith, whereas I did not. I considered this religion to be truth, and any ideas that contradicted it had to be wrong. I sought out to disprove these ideas, and evolution was one of them.The idea that people “evolved from monkeys” seemed ridiculous to me (I later learned we share a common ancestor). I thought these pesky scientists would come up with any crazy idea to disprove God. But this one had to be the craziest. So I went online to research this theory and try to find holes in it with which I could prove once and for all what a giant hoax this theory was.For a while, I thought I was successful. Citing sources such as “Answers in Genesis”, I had a million different ways to tell people how evolution was wrong: the obvious holes in the fossil record, the second law of thermodynamics, you know the drill. You guys have heard these things countless times.I eventually stumbled upon this message board. I figured that I hit the jackpot and I could talk to other people who shared the same religious ideas as me. Boy, was I ever wrong.What I found was an intelligent group of people that wasn’t on my side. They made point after point and shot down any creationist argument in an instant. A decent percentage of Christians on this forum would post things like this:

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hi I beleive there is a god becuz I read the bible and cmon we dont evolve from monkeys how come you stil see monkeys then???

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After about three years of reading up on evolution and seeing comments like this, my viewpoint eventually changed. I went from questioning my religion to calling it nothing more than a fairy tale. And I’d like to thank the members of this forum for helping to get rid of my delusion. I appreciate it. I just joined this forum because I feel I should start participating instead of just reading what other people have to say. I’m also interested to hear other people’s stories, so please keep posting them.