I never thought I was an atheist until maybe 2 years ago. I just went with the flow at church and played along. I even pretended to be "saved". But what really hammered it home was the death of one of my high school classmates last summer by a drunk driver just 3 weeks after graduation. I had seen him the night he died, we were at Walmart at 9 pm and we had a little chat. We talked about plans for college and all of that. We part ways and the next morning I slept in until 10:30 am. Around that time, while I'm preparing breakfast my brother walks in and asks if I heard the news. When I ask he tells me that that classmate died that night at 10:30 pm. I just fucking started bawling. For some reason I felt as if it was my fault, that maybe if I had talked to him longer or for a shorter time that would have changed how his night went and would have avoided the whole tragedy. It took me maybe a month to get over that feeling. I went to his funeral and it was one of those celebrating life instead of mourning the death type things. It was nice. I think he would have appreciated it. But the priest there said something along the lines of God having a plan, and that lead to me thinking, what kind of god would do that sort of thing. Killing someone who never harmed a fucking fly and who was in the prime of their fucking life with a ton of potential. That just ate at me. I didn't know the guy all that well. I had had classes with him since middle school, and his mom was one of my favorite teachers at my high school. But he was always super friendly, laid back, chill dude who had his life cut short. No god would be justified in that. Sorry for the wall of text.