God Made Me an Atheist

A few years ago, I was a devout Christian. I prayed often, went to church most days, sung praises to God, followed God's commands, did everything a good Christian does. There have been times when my faith was weak, but I talked to fellow believers who would bring me back to Christ. For the most part, I considered myself a gnostic theist. I didn't just believe in God. I knew God was real. I thought nothing could separate me from the love of Jesus Christ and God the Father.
Later, I would see just how wrong I was.
Evil Christians didn't sway my beliefs either way. I figured those Christians weren't following the Bible and, therefore, weren't true Christians. I thought there was undeniable evidence for God and thought atheists refused to see the truth. In fact, I thought atheists knew God exists, but denied him because they were too proud to accept there's someone greater than them. I essentially thought atheists were too arrogant to accept God's self evident reality.
How did I leave my religion, though? It had nothing to do with abuse within the church. I wasn't aware of any abuse being covered up by Episcopalian priests or bishops. The abuse within the Catholic church made me believe that particular Denomination wasn't true. I reached the same conclusion with Jehovah's Witnesses, whom I tolerated, but disagreed on just about everything. No, what made me leave my religion was… God.
I don't mean God literally made me an atheist, but, if he exists, he either ignored my prayers or warned me about Christianity and the Bible. Every morning, I would get up early, like I normally do, and pray to God. I would pray that he reveal himself through Scripture and protect me from demons and anyone trying to turn me from him. Then, I started reading the Bible. I didn't believe the stories in the Bible were literally true, because there was too much evidence against them and no evidence for them. There was no literal Adam and Eve, talking snake, global flood, talking donkey or Exodus, or anything of that sort. Instead, I saw these as stories intended to let us know who God is. God's actions in Genesis were a bit confusing, but I didn't think he did anything malicious. Exodus was where the red flags started.
At first, the Pharaoh refused to let the Hebrews go, but when the plagues started he changed his mind. However, when he was willing to let them go God hardened his heart. While the Pharaoh hardened his own heart at first, God hardened it afterwards. This was a massive red flag. So, like any good Christian, I looked for explanations for it and read apologists explaining it. However, none of the explanations satisfied me.
One common explanation was that the Pharaoh was going to harden his heart anyway, except that there are a couple of issues with that. First, there's no evidence he was going to do that, and second, if that was the case, God's actions were unnecessary and unnecessarily painted him as the villain. Another common explanation was that the Pharaoh hardened his own heart. While that may be true at first, it clearly states that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Yet another common explanation was that God hardened the Pharaoh's heart to glorify himself, but that one was especially troublesome, because it made God look like a malignant narcissist.
This portrayal of God is the most biblically accurate, which ultimately made me abandon my faith, but it contrasted with the God I was led to believe: a perfect, just, merciful god.
I couldn't find any satisfying explanation for this, so I continued reading. I saw God endorsing slavery. While apologists argued that it was a different kind of slavery, that was only applicable to Hebrew slaves. For foreign slaves, it was exactly the kind of slavery that black people were subjected to. Slaves were considered property, were beaten, subjected to inhumane conditions and treated as livestock — and God condoned it. A common argument was that God couldn't outright ban it, so he heavily restricted it. However, God is all powerful. There was no reason he couldn't make a commandment against owning other people. He condemned a bunch of other stuff.
I started having a lot of doubts about whether God was truly good or not, but I kept reading. I skipped Leviticus, because I was already familiar with that book, and read Numbers. Numbers was the last book I read as a Christian. This was where I saw just how cruel and merciless God was. God killed people because they were hungry. He killed people for breaking the most petty rules. He killed someone for picking up sticks on a Saturday! Even if he wanted everyone to take a break on Saturdays, there was no reason to kill people who did work.
God was definitely a monster.
Even if the events in the Bible never happened, it should still reflect God's nature. Instead, I saw a malignant narcissist who was petty, unreasonably demanding and threw temper tantrums, when he didn't get his way. I saw a child. There was no way the god portrayed in the Bible was the creator of the Universe. He had too many human flaws. He was definitely man made.
Does that mean God ignored my prayer? Maybe not. Maybe God answered my prayer and showed me just how childish and ungodlike Yahweh was, so I could see that Yahweh wasn't the true God. However, there's no reason to believe any god exists, and if there is a god he wouldn't care if we believe in him or not.
The more likely explanation is that praying just cleared my mind. I saw for myself how flawed Yahweh was, which made me realize that that particular god was made up. The other gods I was aware of shared the same flaws: they were petty, demanding and narcissistic. If there was a god, it's not the god of any religion.
I saw no reason to believe there is a god, and that's how I became an atheist.