Was anyone else extremely young when you realised religion was nonsense?
I was raised extremely Irish Catholic, and sent to a very small Catholic school from age 5. When I was 7, one of my cousins went through an awful battle with cancer. She was older (18 when diagnosed) but I was pretty close to her. She could have gone professional with show jumping if she hadn't gotten sick, and I was starting to compete in local horse riding competitions, so I really looked up to her.
She died about a year later, and it was then that it just kind of dawned on me that the religion I was being taught was all a load of rubbish. My aunt--dead cousin's mother--was (and still is) the most devout Catholic I've ever known. She's had an absolutely shit life from the get go, too much to type. Basically: mentally ill woman in rural Ireland in the 50s/60s and it goes just as badly as you think it can.
I thought I was a freak for not believing in God. All the adults around me were pretty insistent that their religion was true, and none of my peers questioned it. It was a few years before I encountered someone who was also an atheist.
Anyone else have a similar experience when you were really young, that made you totally reject Catholicism?