I'm Richard Dawkins I've been an atheist since i was a child i was a religious believer as a child but St. Paul said 'when i was a child I spake as a child, I thought as child, I understood as a child but when I became a man I put away childish things for me it had two stages; the age of about nine my mother pointed out to me that there are lots of different religions and I realized then that the one I was brought up in wasn't the only one there was no special reason to believe in that one so that shook my confidence but then i was confirmed and sort of briefly took it seriously again and then at the age of about fifteen or sixteen i discovered darwinian evolution and realized that the one remaining argument for believing in the god which was the argument from design the beauty of