PhysicsGirl:

Pogue Mahone:

And let me guess, you realized you dodn't believe God exists one Friday evening when you weren't in the mood for fish?

For me it was Noah's ark. It was obvious to me at the age of 8 that the whole flood thing didn't happen. Noah didn't cram all those animals into that little box for 100+ days. Then I realized that most of the Bible wasn't exactly true. So if it wasn't true about some things, why should it be true about anything? Around this time a family of Buddhists moved next door. The son was around my age, so we spent time playing video games and the like. He was very sure that his religion was right, just like my friends at CCD. I realized that they couldn't all be right, and all the stories were pretty silly. So I stopped believing.

PhysicsGirl, I'm not at all saying you can't be an atheist (I think I'm closest to being described as agnostic theist myself), but please keep in mind that people often seem to forget that the Bible should not be interpreted so literally. I consider it a work of literature, which can be analyzed and discussed, and stories like Noah's Arc are actually symbolic of something else. Of course it's completely unlikely that the story happened as told, but for example, one could say that Noah and his family and animals were representative of a new resurgence of pure life after decades of devastating flooding. Of course I don't expect children to see that, but I would hope adults are capable of reading it "outside of the box" so to speak.