I was born into a Catholic family (of course). I am the youngest of 4 siblings. I always loved science and the cosmos. All throughout my life I was a catholic, being brainwashed at a young age I was taught to believe whatever they told me. I never saw the other side of the equation because of the heavy evil connotation the title "atheist" got in Catholicism. When I hit puberty like any other boy I started to masturbate a lot. I felt terrible about it because of the church's ruling but I pretended like I just wasn't doing it.

  That set the thought train into motion. Why is it bad? Wait- why is being gay wrong? I started thinking about a lot of things I hadn't before, but I still remained Catholic, albeit with a lot of humanist opinions (ex. All humans are equal no matter religion, race, or gender, children shouldn't be born into a religion or nonreligion, they should choose what they want later, sexuality is OK, etc)

  Then I started hearing more from atheists, and the more I listened, the more clear it became to me: religion is a sham. It is merely upbringing and geographic location.

  Today, I'm the only one in my family who's an atheist. Not parents, siblings, cousins, uncles. Nobody. The only one who even knows is my non-Catholic (albeit christian) sister, who they ostracize often for not being a Catholic. I couldn't begin to imagine what a hellhole my life would be if I were a bad liar.