How did U became atheists/deists/pantheists?

A college friend said "surf the Net" when it became more friendly for public access. I learned a lot about different spiritual paths and I've been surfing ever since.

I was raised Roman Catholic.  I broke away from Catholicism when I was 18, outraged at the scandals and the archaeic dogma.  I became a non-denominational Christian.  However, when I spent some more time in the real world and saw the horrors that occur, especially since I became an Emergency Medical Technician, I realized that no loving God would allow these things to happen.  I did some studying, desperate to hold on to my faith.  But the more studying I did, the more I realized what a crock Christianity was.  I soon became an agnostic.  During this time, I began to feel a deep interconnection with nature for some reason.  However, being unaware of a proper term for this, I remained agnostic and eventually called myself atheist.  I don't even remember how it happened, or when I first heard of pantheism.  However, I became curious and looked into it.  The more I read about pantheism, the more I realized this was what I was.  That is how I became a pantheist, and I haven't looked back.

"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings." - Albert Einstein

I was raised to be a Southern Baptist in northern Alabama (where I still live).  I truly thought as a child that I felt the presence of Jesus in my heart.  At the age of 14 I lost faith, simply because I outgrew the notion.  Nothing in particular happened to cause it.  I just couldn't deny any longer all the hypocrisy I saw active in the Christian faith or all the logical reasons I saw for disbelief.  I then initially considered myself an agnostic (though I didn't actually know the term) until around age 15 or so when I began thinking of myself as an atheist, which is how I see myself today.  So there it is.  It isn't dramatic or compelling really.  I was just too smart in an intuitive, philosophical way as well as in a scientific way to maintain what any rational person feels to be the heavy burden of faith and extensive effort of remaining a coward.  

It's not a moment of inspirtion or a process-either you believe or you do not. It does not matter how some one else came to that conclusion. You have to come to your own, in your own way, if you actually need that conclusion.

I did not mean to imply you couldn't ask. Of course you can be curious.

I was agnostic ALL my life, then I read Michael Denton's brilliant books and became convinced that there was design and purpose in nature. As a result of this I explored Christianity and after a year or so realised that it was immoral and made little sense. Still completely convinced of 'fine tuning', design in nature, natural laws and that Jesus was just a man (a DEIST) who's message of love (God's natural law also) was added to with Pagan myth...I became what is referred to as a Christian Deist. My conversion was along the lines of say. Anthony Flew.

P.S I don't subscribe to this 'Jesus never existed' idea, your 'New Testament one' may not have done but the one of 'Q' document did I believe - as most scholars do.

Having been raised in a strong Christian environment, I could not conceive of any other worldview having any validity for most of my life. I "got saved," loved Jesus, studied the Bible, listened to religious music, got involved in teaching Sunday School, felt a "calling" to be in music ministry, and was even approached by a pastor who wanted me to consider going into the pastoral ministry.

However, the more I studied the Bible, the more I realized that there were things that just weren't jiving. It actually took a long time for me to begin to see these problems, because I was sooooo indoctrinated, but finally at age 29 it started to sink in. I began noticing some clear contradictions between the Gospels (especially Matthew and Luke), as well as some of the so-called "prophetic fulfillments" being arranged by taking Old Testament texts completely out of context. The more I studied, the worse it all started looking.

As a side note, some things in my life hadn't quite worked out the way I had felt "called" toward, which I had been writing off as "just not God's timing." After beginning to see the serious flaws in the Bible (and thus the whole Christian worldview), though, I realized that I had been duped by the "calling" and could see that I had been wasting my life on it. I could have been pursuing a rewarding career, but instead I was held back because of religious dogma that had me convinced that God had a special plan for me.

At 35, I am now an agnostic. In some ways I haven't changed much. I still don't drink or smoke or hang out with a rough-n-tumble crowd. On the other hand, though, I have gained some extra vocabulary, I listen to some bands that I would never have considered in the past, and I no longer have a pejudice against gays. Oh yeah, and I hate religion. Maybe I wouldn't hate it so much if I hadn't been personally burned by it, but as it is, I just can't stand religion.

I do sometimes find myself wondering whether I should lean more toward atheism or deism. Personally, I don't see enough evidence to sway me to or from a belief in some sort of deity. I do firmly disbelieve in ghosts and stuff like that, and as such I guess I do find belief in the supernatural to likely be superstition, but yet I really don't know whether or not there could be a supernatural force out there, so I just consider myself an agnostic.

http://atheism.about.com/od/argumentsagainstgod/a/EvilSuffering.htm?p=1

Highly recommend this website.  I've printed and bindered most of his work.  Here is the earliest formulation of the Argument from Evil from the Greek philosopher Epicurus, writing in the early 3rd century BCE:

Either God wants to abolish evil and cannot,

or he can but does not want to,

or he cannot and does not want to,

or lastly he can and wants to.

If he wants to remove evil, and cannot,

he is not omnipotent;

If he can, but does not want to,

he is not benevolent;

If he neither can nor want to,

he is neither omnipotent nor benevolent;

But if God can abolish evil and wants to,

how does evil exist?

NKHart