I wound up an atheist when I was about 13. I just thought a lot about the possibility of a mystical consciousness behind everything and decided it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I studied different religions - read and took courses. I saw that all these people believed in a different version of God, and so I figured they were all right, or none were right. I went with the 'none'. The differences were all things that had to be taught, the religions all had to be taught. If a person can't see a thing unless someone else shows it to them and then tells them what they're seeing, I don't think of it as real. I think the dogma is a social thing.

If a person has a religion, it's his religion because of the area in which he grew up and people around him taught it to him. Some people aren't happy and look for something else, but they frequently look for something that only differs slightly.

Anyway, others came to the 'all or nothing' point if view and probably went the other way. The main change I've gone through as I've grown older is that I'm more tolerant of the very religions and very vocal. They once used to trigger a reaction in me so I couldn't stand talking to them and I couldn't even sing songs from a believer's point of view. That was me being overly sensitive though, and not anything anyone did to me.