My awakening happened when I was in my early teens. I had a paper route, and was contemplating the existence of souls. I realized that all the evidence points toward the brain as the origin of consciousness, and decided there was no rational way I could justify to myself the existence of non-matter non-energy soul stuff that somehow controls all that neural activity. How could things which are not made of measurable amounts of matter and energy affect things that are? Surely that would violate some fundamental laws of physics. Around the same time I realized that if there really is a God, he must not think very highly of me if he doesn't bother to provide any proof of his existence. Surely he would know I was the skeptical type, and I couldn't be expected to believe in something for which there was no proof. If there really was a loving God, he would reveal the true nature of the universe to mankind. To allow all this murderous quabbling over religion would be cruel and heartless when it could easily be prevented by coming out and saying "all right guys, this is how the universe really works". And even then I knew that the Bible was full of such wacky things as witches, demons, ghosts, pregnant virgins, talking animals, worldwide floods for which there is no geological evidence, etc. which could not possibly have existed, and which no rational person could reasonably believe in without extraordinary proof. From that day forward I have been the definer of my own life, knowing that I am not subject to the whims of some tyrannical dictator of the universe. I was no longer confined to the dogmatic assumptions of past generations, and I began my life anew as a free atheist.