My mother is Catholic and my father is Lutheran. When they got married, the priest made my parents promise to raise their children as Catholics. I was born, got baptized, and went to church most Sundays. I went to public school, but still learned about this religion at a monthly Sunday school. I didn't like going to church, but I prayed and believed Bible stories. In middle school I met several evangelical kids and compared their strong faith to my own. I concluded that people who didn't wear their religion on their sleeve weren't religious enough, and overnight I became a lot more zealous. I didn't complain about going to church anymore and took it a lot more seriously. I got confirmed in 8th grade (13 y.o.) and my faith was strong. In high school, my circle of friends became less and less religious. In a way, I was the last hold out. We were not antagonistic about this, we all just challenged our faiths together. Overtime and in no order, I grew apart from religion on several ways. I didn't like the way people use religion to identify themselves. I was an individual before I was a Christian. I didn't like the superstitions of religion. People would attribute anything good to their prayers but anything bad to the fact that they didn't pray enough. I realized I believed in God out of fear of hell. I didn't believe in creationism or intelligent design. I didn't even like the ideals of Jesus. I saw the Bible as an affront on human ambition. Charity is fine, but giving away your worldly possessions and doing nothing great with your life? To me this seemed like a scheme devised to keep medieval peasants in check. These conclusions were all gradual and I cannot attribute one to one event. In my junior year of high school (16/17) I started considering myself a Deist. I still believed in God, but saw no point to worshipping him. I still went to church to make my mother happy. In my senior year of high school (17/18), I considered myself an atheist. I still went to church with my mom to make her happy. Once I graduated, about a month before going to college, I went to Sunday mass with my mom again. Something the priest said stroked me the wrong way and I was scoffing and rolling my eyes the rest of the mass. My mom asked what was the matter with me in the car and I told her I dont believe in God. She cried and cried but I wasn't going to lie to make her feel better. Lying is wrong and I dont need religion to tell me that. Eventually she got over it and we're on good terms. My dad is a lot more moderate and never kicked me out. In college, I studied engineering. Taking science classes a lot my freshman year, I began to think how a higher power is not proven, but not disproven either, and moved towards agnosticism.