Welcome, welcome!

I have to confess, when I first saw your name, I thought it said "Psychonaut", and I got really excited. Now I'm kind of disappointed that I didn't choose it for my own name.

le sigh...

Welcome!  I think you will get along nice with many people here. What kinds of Video Games do you play?  Tell us more about how you got to where you are today(like were you a former christian?) again welcome!

oooh, Rez... I really wanna take that game for a test drive, but I've never been able to find it. Well, accept used from Amazon, but I've had bad experiences buying used from Amazon.

As someone who never believed in God, I'm very interested in the details, long and boring or not.

 Ok, don't say I didn't warn you.

I was born into a very devout Christian family. I, with my family, attended church every Sunday for about the first 18 years of my life. So there was no reason for me to ever be exposed to the fact that everything about my faith that I was raised to believe was wrong. This idea was never taken into consideration. I'd never really met an active atheist that I was aware. The idea that there was no such thing as a God was simply never mentioned. I hadn't even been exposed to the idea.

That's not to say I never had questions about Christianity. It's just that one of the possible answers to some of my question is that it was all a lie was never something I'd thought to consider.

The events leading into the high school years of my life sparked the beginning of the downfall of my faith. They weren't the cause - just the necessary instigator. A very close immediate family member, raised in the same faith as the rest of us did something which changed everything about the value of faith and family (this had eventually led to the destruction of my family's togetherness). What he did is unimportant, and in fact quite personal. Just know that it was devastating. It contradicted a large amount of the values that I was raised upon.

My eyes started to open. I started seeing that this wasn't an isolated case. Other very christian families had similar problems. Skeletons in their closets if you will. Soon enough, the mistakes of my aformentioned family member did more than causing the separation of my family, but rumors started to spread in the church that I was of the same nature. This was, of course, entirely false and it had frankly surprised and dissappointed me to learn that the trust of my brothers and sisters in Christ wasn't as well established as I had thought. They thought that since he was bad, I must have been bad in the exact same way. They knew me better than that, or so I had thought.

The church I was in was drowned in divorce, politics, drama, and rumors. The church, I found, was not as righteous as I thought. By the time I graduated from high school, my parents had been divorced, and I lost my faith in the church. However, my faith in God could not have been stronger. The truth to me was that I was the only one I could count on to be faithful and obediant to God, and I had to rely on him for strength and guidance. I studied the Bible away from the church. I haven't been back since.

I never read the entire Bible. I, like most Christians, claimed I did, and knew everything I needed to know. Like most Christians, that was an outright lie. I recognized this, and decided that by the will of God, I needed to read the Bible from front to back and know it well. So I began.

This never happened. Not because I was lazy or inconvenienced. At first the passages in the Bible were familiar and made sense. But as I got further into it, things started getting very strange. Once I got to the parts of the Bible that I hadn't been taught, I started noticing horrific passages, and contradictions. I forced myself to keep going thinking that there would be a catch. A caveat would appear that would make it all make sense. It never came. I stopped looking.

Before I even started my career, my faith in the Bible had faded. It was wrong in so many ways. I had no doubts that God have given us his holy word, but this wasn't it. It was an abomination of God's message. I went on and my faith in the church and the bible was gone. My faith in God could not be stronger.

Several years went by, I performed well in my career and life was good. I prayed to God a lot to continue increasing my faith in him and to watch over me and guide me. During my stay at a prominent studio, I found an interesting video that caught my attention. It was called "The Root of All Evil". Some crazy scientist seemed bent on the fact that religion was the cause of all evil in the world. At least I thought so then. Now I know better. The host of the show didn't really think religion was the root of all evil, it was just a media entertainment marketing scheme that he was submissive to in his excitement to get his documentary published. This didn't jar me much, but it made me think.

At some point, I had a hard blow to my career when I was let go from a downsizing company. I became depressed and irrational. I decided I could drop everything and make a theological persuit of my faith. I had plans to travel from church to church, investigating christianity and religion. I never missed a moment to continue to pray to God, and ask him to continue strengthening my faith in him. My preparations were being made but this would never happen.

During this time I found out about a scientist named Aubrey de Grey, a theoretical molecular biogerontologist. His ideas about the possibility of extended human aging indefinately were very intriguing to me. Even as a devout Christian, I'd never particularly liked the idea of heaven. A place of eternal joy? Well the only way a society could live in perfect joy and harmony is if that society was perfect. In order to make a society perfect, you'd have to take away free will. I'd always thought that there is no point in being alive if there is no free will. It's just as bad as death. I'd rather live physical, self aware, and sad than spiritual, enslaved, and joyful. Especially for eternity. I mean seriously, isn't joy relative? If you live in joy for the rest of eternity then it wouldn't be joyful. It would be mundane. The promise of being in heaven for eternity as a robot gave me absolutely no consolation over my fear of death. I was dreafully afraid of dying. So if Aubrey de Grey said it might be possible to overcome this barrier, I would be on board. But, I never missed a moment to continue to pray to God, and ask him to continue strengthening my faith in him.

I bought several books. One on the history of world religion. I wanted to know why the Bible was so blatantly wrong. Where it all began. If there was a truth, I wanted to know what it was. More than just wanted, I had been tasked by God to find the truth and spread the truth that I had found. But before I could start, I needed to pay off my debts. I continued to search for a job in my career. This would lead me to the other side of the continental US, away from my family and friends. I was not prepared, and it was a very difficult move. I never missed a moment to continue to pray to God, and ask him to continue strengthening my faith in him. But something wierd was happening. My understanding of the natural world and reality started becoming clearer just by simple research. My faith in God was waivering despite my prayers.

Before my job started, I went for a full month and a half with very little money and only a suitcase full of belongings. I didn't know anyone, I was away from my friends and my family. I was essentially alone. I'm generally used to at least having a computer at my side at all times so this wasn't such a good thing for my psychological stability. Or maybe, it was a very good thing. I had nothing to do but read. I read books related to religion, biology, chemistry, and general science. More than for just religious purposes. I wanted to see if Aubrey de Grey was right. Game design isn't exactly the most noble of careers. Molecular biologists however, contribute something great to society. I wanted to learn more, and more importantly, it fascinated me. However, I never missed a moment to continue to pray to God, and ask him to continue strengthening my faith in him.

Something incredible happened during this time. I learned. It wasn't like in school where I obtained and retained knowledge to pass a test. More than just learning, I fully understood. All the questions I had about the Bible, my faith, and God was starting to be answered one by one. The universe started making sense. Doubts started going away. Life, existence, religion all was being molded by free thought, rationalism, logic and reality.

And then one night it hit me. Of all the answers to all my questions, the one thing I never took into consideration answered all of them very precisely. The most important question I had was "If God is infinitly powerful; if God answers my prayers; if God wants nothing more than for me to have faith in him and trust him; then why, when I constantly prayed for more faith would he respond negatively?" The answer was "That there is no God." Not only is it an answer that works, it's the only answer that could work.

That answer became universally consistent to every problem that I was having in my religion and my faith. Why the Bible was the way it was. Why the history of religion is what it is. How it all came to be. There was no more conjecture or excuses needed to explain the "mystery" of God's work. It was obvious. The only thing that kept me from thinking about it before was blind faith. Dogma. Closed mindedness.

It was quick. Overnight I declared my atheism to myself. Ironic though. My favorite Biblical scripture was "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." It was right. I'd never felt more free. And I saw that it was very very good.

It didn't end there. But that's another story.

Fascinating and well written. It was interesting when you started to realize that there were other explanations for the world, and that they really worked, that the god explanation just started to become superfluous bit by bit. I'm encouraged by your description of how real learning can be an eye opening and wonderous experience.