From Being in a Cult to Becoming an Atheist

I've done a lot of self-reflection on my life and it seems to me that the more I poke at this dam in my head, the more memories and realizations keep flooding out. In order to preserve my sanity, I do this in small doses. I've been taking time to think and self-reflect a little at a time. This gives me the opportunity to process it, instead of being overwhelmed. Currently, I might have bit off a little more than I can chew. I've come to the realization that my beliefs have been absolutely wrong. I've also come to realize I was brought up in a cult.
Since I was young, my father pushed religion down my throat. We would read the Bible every Sunday since I was in kindergarten. We followed this station called Family Radio. It was run by a man named Harold Camping, who would gain notoriety soon. So, we would listen to his radio show constantly, whether in the house or in car rides. My dad even put a radio in my room and left the family radio playing overnight. This was pretty ingrained in my head.
We would go house to house giving Bibles and Family Radio pamphlets. My dad would tell me to preach to my classmates, and I did just that. I was known as the "Bible boy" in my class. I went to a Christian school, but I was much more radical than anyone. I openly debated my teachers from elementary school, even to freshman year of college. The culmination of this cult was when they predicted the world would end May 21st, 2011. I wholeheartedly believed as a kid that the world was ending in 7th grade. I even went full "John the Baptist" and told my classmates to repent or they would be in danger of hellfire. I stopped caring about my tests in school and bombed them on purpose, because I thought life was over. Clearly that date came and nothing happened. I was told that, instead of the physical rapture happening, that day was instead a "spiritual rapture" and God knew I was a chosen one, because I was so dedicated. Life went on and we stopped following that cult and hopped right into the next one.
I have three siblings, but they left the faith very early (or never cared). I was the exception. I kept this fantasy going for so long. So much that I would even defend my point with Science. The other cult I was caught up in was run by a man named Kent Hovind. We knew about him and followed him before, when we still followed Family Radio, but now he was our only "source of truth" left. Kent Hovind was also a preacher, except he preached about Science and the Bible. He famously debates atheists and evolutionists, and I probably knew every single one of his talking points. I would use these in high school and in the beginning of college, to debate my teachers on the topics of Evolution and the age of Earth. Kent Hovind believes in a young Earth and that God created the world in six days. I used hundreds of his talking points that I had memorized from his DVDs to win debates against my classmates and teachers. I think that is what the saddest part was. I would win these debates and, in doing so, reaffirmed my beliefs in knowing that I was "right". As an actual biochemist and scientist now, I know all of these talking points to be false claims and rhetoric used to misrepresent what Evolution actually is (believe me, I researched all Kent Hovind's claims).
I think the first part of my change occurred during junior year of college. I read a lot of scientific literature this year and came to understand that, through research and the efforts of scientists around the globe, everything we know is backed up by evidence and data based research. This was my first "chip in the armor" of my faith in a creator. I always had many questions about my faith. I've always been curious and observant, but it seemed that whenever I had questions about the Bible my dad would have a clever answer that some preacher came up with, and then I'd just leave it at that.
Later on in college, several classes really threw me for a loop. I’ve always had certain beliefs and understanding of things regarding Science and Evolution. One of these things that Kent Hovind preached to me as a kid was that there weren't any transitional fossils for humans suggesting a common ancestor. But, one day in a seminar class, my teacher assigned us a paper to read on some transition fossil. I originally thought the assignment was a joke, and we were supposed to pick apart this paper and describe how this was not a good paper and was poorly done. Instead, in class we talked it over like it was a normal paper and discussed the findings. Furthermore, the paper described how this was 1 of 57 other transition fossils found! This shook me to my core beliefs. On one hand, I believed in God and creation, and on the other I believed in scientific research, data and papers. I experienced heavy cognitive dissonance and rationalized it by acknowledging that Evolution could have been a way that God created Earth. I hated this thought, but it was the only thing I had to hold on to my faith.
The last and final break in my armor came a few weeks ago. I was self-reflecting once more and have come to one of two conclusions: either God doesn't exist or God does exist and I don't want to worship him because he is not a just god. Just typing those words makes my soul shake at how blasphemous I sound. Over the past few weeks, I've done so much research and so much of what I know is wrong. So much that there might not even have been a Jesus Christ who lived in History. We only have an account of 3 men named Jesus at that time, only one of which was executed (not crucified) by the Romans. Furthermore, I started to examine all the contradictions I had sitting in the back of my mind, such as: Why did God create Satan, if he knew what was to come? Why did God kill man with the flood, if he knew how evil they would become? Why did God have to go through this long genealogy to get to Jesus to pay for our sins? Why does God allow women to be mistreated and calls them to be servants to their husbands? Why does God acknowledge slavery and give the okay to it? Why does God, in multiple places, state after a war to not only kill all the men and take no prisoners, but to even kill all the women and children? I can go on and on with these, but you get the point. When I hinted at some of these questions to my dad, he gave me bogus explanations. For the example of women and children needing to be killed, he said: "God gave life and God can take it away when he pleases". But to me that is horrible and unjust. After all these questions my dad interjected and told me: "Don't get too smart for your own good, you should have faith as that of a child". I think that was really the final straw for me. As a man who has spent his entire life in search of the truth and understanding, for me to be told not to think too much about it and to be gullible/ignorant to these claims was an insult to my very nature.
A couple of weeks ago I was up late and couldn't sleep, because I was battling these thoughts in my brain. Then I just finally let go. I told myself that I don't believe in God. So, that brings me to where I am today. I still haven't come to terms with it. Sometimes, I feel at peace and, sometimes, I feel scared. I still have a lot of questions. If this life is all there is, then what is the point? Who decides what is right and wrong, since this entire time I was deriving it from the Bible. Did I really spend 20 years of my life debating people, fighting against teachers, lying to so many, to get them "saved”? I wish I could go back to these people and apologize for misleading them. I think this is the biggest single cognitive dissonance I have ever experienced and might ever experience. It will take me a while to understand and answer some of my questions. So many Christians have it wrong, when it comes to atheists. Christians who lose their faith don't secretly hate God, like most say, but, instead, they try so hard with every fiber of their being to hold on to their faith, as I tried. But I can't ignore the facts and all the evidence stacked up against me. It's going to take a while to accept this, but inside of my mind, at the very core, where my beliefs resided, God is very much dead.