Atheists who left the church because of Genesis: did you get your view from reading it, or did someone feed you a YEC interpretation?

Both.

I knew the literal interpretation was bunk, but I also took a Bible course that basically told me, "if you can believe the earth was created in six literal days, you can believe that God is capable of any miracle".

I doubt it would havd changed my mind. The only reason I believed is because people who I knew and trusted told me it was true, that at the time I needed it to be true to be comforted, and that I faced ostracism should I leave the faith.

Once I overcame those obstacles and realized that 'god' isn't anything more than random chance for miracles and common emotions and thoughts that can have any source... and that his lack of presence speaks to either being powerless, indifferent, or non-existent. I stopped believing.

I feel I am a far better person for it. I can concentrate on caring for and loving people on earth vs imaginary gods. I felt free that there was no god judging me for being imperfect, and no such thing as sin.

"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand." - Mark Twain

“The best cure for Christianity is to actually read the Bible” - Mark Twain

A person can know with certainty there is a God by practicing true devotion to the Virgin Mary.

In the early years and well into the Medieval Ages, the bible was taken literally. It was not written with the intent of mental gymnastics, biblical maneuvering and loose canon interpretations. It was meant for the average reader to read it and understand what it was saying. It wasn't supposed to require a bunch of popes, a bunch of bishops, a Roman Emperor, and a whole lotta councils and revisions that included the jettison of numerous books and chapters from the original collection. And we know this from commentary and discussion by early bishops like Tertulian, Hippo, Augustus, and Ireneus as well as Jewish rabbis often arguing about the process of the creation of Earth, Adam and Eve down to the hours and minutes - not thousands and thousands of years.

But as knowledge and science grew, an increasing amount of the bible became metaphor.

In the far future, if people still believe in it, most of the bible will be reduced to metaphor, parable, allegory, allusion and expression.

I was raised a Methodist.

I am an atheist now because of the utter failure of ALL religions to produce a solitary shred of evidence for ANY god.

Genesis had little to do with it.

(But fiction like that can be really funny...)

Basic intelligence did it for me.

YECs are the lowest of the low

my interpretations r good

I've always had a (way) better than average reading comprehension and it has always been clear to me that the creation story and other early parts of the Bible were not written as myth and clearly Jesus and others in the Bible referred to the creation, Adam and Eve as real rather than myth, Adam is also includes in the genealogies recorded by the Bible.

While I understand that some creationists are OEC, I fail to see how they can get that from the word usage and descriptions from the Bible, it always seems like they saying, "I haven't really read the story, I didn't listen to it, but I completely believe it and have to come up with some way to reconcile it to the actual facts that were not available to the people that wrote it."

Nah, I laughed at young earth creationists when I was a Christian. Their literalist interpretation seemed almost as loopy then as it does to me now as a non-believer.