Talk about how you escaped religion
Posted on: October 12, 2010 - 11:33am
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Talk about how you escaped religion
I just joined this site a few minutes ago and i hope to meet so many atheists here to talk to (especially on skype, if you have a skype account please add me 'funkymcfunk1')
I want to hear of other stories of atheists who at one point in their lives were theists (whether deeply religious or not).
If you want to hear my story its all in my introduction on the introduction forum.
of course those raised atheist aren't excluded from this topic
Born again Atheist. My biggest fear (after insects) is that the atheist community will always remain small and quiet.
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What does my lead-in mean; well you'd have to be my age [55] to know. When I was 8 it was 1963, on November 22 of that year I was in grade 3 and just before noon while me and the rest of the class were doing paper mache' in Sister Mary kail's class room, in walks a neighbor women to tell us that the first Roman Catholic & apostalic President had been shot. Sister Mary Kail told us to put down the paper mache's and pray for the safe recovery of the president. Not more then 20 minutes later the same neighbor women walks in and says the president is dead. In such deffinate tones that I knew, at age 8 that 'dead was dead' and our prayers were a waste of time. At that point I am agnostic [without knowing the word existed] by age 12 I am atheist. In 1964 I entered public school. My Mom was pissed at the catholic school for some reason.
Actually the reason was; things said to my older sisters [grades 4 & 6] by Nuns about life just before death and what happens during the death cycle and related to the Kennedy assasination. I never got the whole story, but the nuns realy pissed off mom who had the demeaner of a drill sargeant. BUT::: Mom had a medical degree and was an ICU specialist; Mom claimed to be a devout catholic untill her last day; BUT she didn't think a bunch of nuns should be telling small children "a load of crap" about medicine; death; or recovery when "they couldn't get through a simple noveena".
Thank you Mom for sending me to public school [1964] the same year Madelyn Murry O 'Hare had prayer in public schools BAND. I have been a pure and devout atheist ever since.
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
May i ask, have you ever faced personal prejudice or discrimination against your (we'll call it faitheism)?
Born again Atheist. My biggest fear (after insects) is that the atheist community will always remain small and quiet.
Living in Canada there is very little bigotry against atheists. Anyone who tries that with me runs into a large overbearing person with an operetic baratone who quickly looks down his nose at the offending theist.
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
I was raised a Jehovah's Witness, but I always knew the cult was a crock. As far as believing, I do remember believing in some "god" of sort throughout my childhood although those moments would come and go. Funny thing is when I think back to the moments I believed in god, I can only remember times I was afraid of this god. I always thought he was coming to get me for the stupid little things 5-11 year olds do I was told was bad. They had pounded the image of this vengful god in my head, even though I didn't fully believe, whenever I would do something "bad," all this dark bloody imagery popped in my head. Fire balls, children killing spirits, bloody swords, war, vengence, this is what I remember relating to "god." I prayed alote when I was younger, even though I only half believed, I guess just to see if I got any response. Never, nothing, ever!!!
By 14 I didn't believe at all. From 14 on it just made less and less sense to me every day. There was no day I became an athiest, I was always an athiest. It was just the powerful conditioning by my cookoo parents and church that lead me to the conclusion I had to believe, it was vital for my survival in my world, the only world I was allowed in. As soon as I was old and big enough (15) I got the fuck out of that joint and never looked back.
http://cptpineapple.wordpress.com/2010/07/27/one-girls-journy-into-atheism/
Indoctrinated in Catholic school by the sisters of perpetual guilt and fear. Decided I would have nun of it.
Later, I was pussy whipped into being a born again(like a lot of men).
Then just decided to be my own man.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
upbringing. Preacher father, missionary mum, all others in family are believers. Billy graham concerts, christian camps, shitful 3-chord guitar songs around fire, the usual threats of incineration and so on. Despite being born again 777 times I always had a kernel of doubt after a few days because god was invisible. My desperate short term belief was bolstered by fear of hell. I was aware of the struggle early. I refused to take communion at 14 for fear of committing the unforgivable sin after doing the full 6 month confirmation course.
Despite all this, I spent a long time getting free. My 20s and 30s were spent worrying over it - my desire to live forever in paradise and fear of conscious incineration warring with a strong sense of the injustice of the religious message of intolerance and hatred merely tarted up with fake words like love, forgiveness and mercy.
I have to give a lot of credit to my long term subscriptions to New Scientist and Cosmos Magazine for de-saving me. Not so much from the point of view of evolutionary proofs but in terms of fostering a respect and understanding for the scientific method. I'm a feeling person, so a love for falsifiable proof took a long time to sink in.
I believe unbelief in religion, while challenging and lonely at times, is the most righteous, honest and dignified way a human being can live. Some people like spirituality and find it warms them but I like the hovering question mark. The journey into the unknown. The search for what actually is. My christian family are convinced it's all about my living a life of self-service and I have given up trying to explain myself to them.
Despite all this, the fundy fear mongering has never been completely crushed and my response to it and to violent elements of my puritanical christian upbringing tends towards irrational anger. I'd like to kill god. There is no god. You have to have made the journey from one side of belief to the other to understand this dual citizenship.
Needless to say, finding RRS and the like minds that share it has been a real help to me. Thanks, folks.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Yeah - but not really in the wider community. Am not in the U.S. and being a bitter atheist in Oz is thought a little on the strange side.
Nevertheless, the various churches here are still at war with the education department trying to force them to abandon humanistic ethics classes.
Morality, they argue, is the province of the church. Meanwhile kids whose parents opt them out of divinity class spend the period doing emu parades (picking up litter).
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
My family is not religious. "I believe in god, but not in religion" is the usual line.
I have attempted to be religious three times in my life. It never lasted long.
When I was about 5-6, mom took us to a Methodist church within walking distance from my grandmother's house. Mom went with us for almost a year, dropped out herself, and I continued on for a few more months by myself. I was a member of the children's choir and I loved it. I have always enjoyed music and when young, never had stage fright - rather, I was a little show off. But I didn't really believe, had no pressure or support to go to church at home, so I soon quit.
When I was 12-13, my very best friend was a preacher's kid. Her dad was the Foursquare Gospel preacher. It was a tiny congregation. Which finally led to her dad asking for a larger church in California. They were literally eating plain boiled rice and nothing else 3 meals a day. I know, because I spent the night once. I asked mom for a larger donation after that, but of course, my family couldn't contribute enough to support them. I had gone to every service and outing and class. Only because my friend expected me to. When she left, the new preacher and his wife were retired. And when they told me playing Solitaire in my own home would allow the devil to leap out of the cards and get me - I quit going. They were obviously crazy.
When I was 26-28 I was married to a Marine and went to base chapel. I went because I was bored, my best friend was bored, and we thought church might give us someone to talk to other than the kids and each other. She really got into it. I liked singing in the choir. I managed to talk the Lutheran pastor into baptizing me and the kids. I was trying so hard to be a part of it all. And then my husband was transferred. And the new chapel at the new duty station was not at all comfortable for me. I don't know why, but I quit going.
And then I had to beat myself up for awhile, being an agnostic, thinking I was fickle and my faith was weak. Well, yeah, it never was strong. I always thought evolution was the truth, even in Jr. High. I never thought the bible was the literal Word of God. I could sometimes get all into the music, and manage to feel something - but it never lasted and I could never convince myself it was anything other than self-hypnosis of a sort. And finally, I said - who am I kidding? It was nonsense all along and I was just lonely.
The very last straw was one evening while my youngest was struggling with homework. He was about six and crying he was so tired. He had come straight home from school, started working, it was past 9pm and he still had pages of math to do. He is learning disabled. School was always hard for him. And I asked myself - just what is the purpose of this? Okay, so god never gives you any trials you can not bear, but it is pretty obvious my son can not bear this. He knows he is different, he wants so very much to be like everyone else. And he never can be. He is and always will be different from everyone else. Why put this burden on a child? And I was an atheist.
I have seen some theists on the forum say this is a lazy reason to be atheist. That somehow the evils in this world are part of a plan we do not understand and we should have faith and believe in spite of the tears of six year old boys who didn't ask to be different from their peers. And I don't care - their god/s/dess is a shit. And I would rather be nothing when I die than to be in heaven with their asshole of a god. So, I guess I am a like AE - an atheist who is angry with a god who doesn't exist.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Well, I did not get really into religion as a kid. For some reason, my father broke with the church when I was seven. So I only ever went to the nursery at the church while the big people did whatever it was.
Then, when I was seventeen, my parents got divorced and my mother somehow decided that we were Anglican. Yah, a seventeen year old kid does not simply get assigned into a religion that easily. At least, they are not the scary fundie type.
After I moved out on my own, I just went to whatever church was handy for a couple of years. Somehow I ended up as a scary fundie guy for several weeks. That lasted right up until the pastor realized that I was living with my girlfriend. He felt that it was his responsibility to warn us not to commit sinful acts outside of marriage. So at that point, I stopped going there.
From there, I just kind of drifted and dabbled in the occult for a few years. Finally, I just ended up not bothering about any of that. I guess that at that point, I could have been called an atheist if I had known.
Then, about ten years ago, I was on a homebrewed computer forum and someone asked one of the fairly standard debate questions about how atheists can live with themselves. At first, I did not bother posting in that thread but eventually, some of the posters who were active started knocking on basic science topics and claiming that science can't possibly have any validity. However you should not do that around me because it will be game on from there. Several hundred posts later, I ended up having to take responsibility for the thread as the guy who had been shepherding it along got promoted to mod and no longer had the time to take that one on.
=
Well at least you've lost the fundie part.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
As a child, I grew up with religion in my life, in school, at home, and I attended a Sunday school, and went to church every week. I was exposed to Christianity only though, and don't recall even knowing that other views existed until much later.
At around the age of 11 I stopped attending church, but still had religion in my life, from school, and I don't mean educational, I mean collective worship. When I went to high school it was pretty much a distant memory to me.
However when I was 13/14 I went through some things that most people do at that age, depression, relationship bumps and grinds etc. About that time I turned often to God, and prayed every night that things would get better. In my darkest hours I would turn to god for help.
Around that time I wrote a lot of poetry, and even had some of it published, but reading it now, I can see huge amount of religion in it. Either asking for mercy, forgiveness and often questioning , not god but the rest of humanity.
Such questions as: why do these things happen, how can you let them, why wont you help us and stop people dying innocently. And in more darker poems, I even pose the question: why won't you let me die. I will post an extract from one below.
“As the candles reflect off the stone wall
I pray, I plea for my own death
A pool of my own blood beside me,
Dripping away, my own blood flows
Tears land upon it and it hurts
The holy water splashes onto the floor
The wood creaks as I fall apart before you.”
Oh lord why hast thou forsaken me?
It is clear that my faith in God was partly comforting me, but I was also blindly following. Until much later I had never read the bible in full, never mind, questioned any of the things I was taught.
After a lot of time thinking like this I decided to instead to convert to being Jewish, but this proved only comforting, and felt a little different for a few weeks. After the effect wore off I was coming to a realisation and questioning everything I believed.
About midway through college at the age of 16, I finally came to my senses after much self education that, God, Jesus and the rest of religion was made up, fairy tales that do more bad than good for the world. I will not deny there is comfort in religion. I spent much of my childhood believing that no matter what anyone said, only God could judge me. I believed that after evil people died they would be punished in hell. My fall from faith is written out in a song I wrote entitled 'My Absent God'. You can hear my realisation in the words.
My absent god
where are you in times of need
my absent god
if your so real why wont you help me
my absent god
this world Is so so cold
my absent god
show yourself to the world.
I then went on to actually studying sciences behind my new standings and joined a few atheist societies and got involved a lot. I often got accused of being offensive, delusive, or wrong for my views when I wrote my second song directly linked to my fall from theism, It is called Atheist Ballad (No God To Judge Me).
I spent my whole life thinking god will judge me
I spent far too long thinking god will judge me
But now I know, I did this on my own so
Now I sing this atheist ballad to show.
"Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?”
Friedrich Nietzsche
http://www.myspace.com/rrsuk
http://www.myspace.com/inxlovexwithxdeath
http://www.myspace.com/angelofviolationband
http://www.myspace.com/atheistacademyuk
There are a lot of people who turn to religion for comfort. I was fine with that for the longest time but then it seems people take it to far. I used to think whatever gets you through the day. Growing up my parents were lutheran but didn't go to church but did send us for a while. growing up through my teen years I just said I was christian but never went to church. I think this was the thing that got me going as I got older. The only reason I said I was christian was how I was brought up. That got me thinking, if I were born in a muslim country would I be muslim? More then likely yes.
However when i ask other christians that, they fight it and say no i would still be christian, or they say yes yet don't see how that is a contradiction to their claim to being a christian now? I think these inconsistencies started me to do a lot more research into religions and practices and I eventually came away with all are fantasies of some sort.
Something always wasn't right with me even as a kid when told those fantastic stories, but I didn't question them much because everyone around me bought them. My mother when I was a teen stopped forcing me to go to church.
It wasn't exactly one thing that bugged me, but the one big starting point was when I was on a construction site as a laborer, a carpenter(irony) asked me "What if Jesus was just a man). That was the moment that got me to really really question because I saw someone else questioning. Before that I was afraid. I still kept quiet though.
But I wasn't out of the woods yet. I still had that deep seeded indoctrination that I was playing with fire. And quietly I went from Christian to agnostic, while still going through the motions of calling myself a Christian. I wanted to believe "just in case", but for years the lingering doubts loomed larger and larger.
I really became unafraid of questioning in college because there were so many open people, and on top of that I met another atheist, but again, that questioning stayed on campus and I wasn't on line with other atheists. The internet was young at that point. I mostly used it for e-mail and my favorite band and research. That was when I started calling myself an atheist.
I joined a Unitarian Church and met several atheists after College at that church. But the big event that caused me to be active was reading an article posted by an atheist nurse from Chicago. I wish I could find that woman and thank her. The AP wire distributed her opinion nation wide after 9/11. It was about her feeling left out of the mourning process while the mass media made 9/11 out to be Christian suffering and not human suffering.
Even then, when I got online to find other atheists, I still had that deep seeded indoctrination that if I talked to other atheists, maybe I would be joining up with lawless baby killers. After reading a few posts at Atheist Network, those fears quickly went away.
Then Infidel Guy who did his show at Atheist Network, started his own website, and I joined that one. Brian Sapient, who owns this website, I met there. He went on to create this website, and do his own radio show.
That openness started for me in 01. And in the past 9 years I have learned so much and because of those atheists before me, I am not afraid of debating anyone or being open about my atheism.
Because of Jake and Reggie and Brian Sapient, allowing all of us to post here, I have learned so much, from them and from all the other posters on all those websites. I know the fallacy of Pascal's Wager. I know the "teapot" argument. I know Occham's Razor. I have read Dawkins and Hitchens and Harris. I don't know where I would be if those prior hadn't spoken out themselves.
Thats my road. Now, enough with the Hallmark moment, I have a kitten to BBQ.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
'Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.' A. Einstein
i agree! thankfully my parents weren't very religious when i was growing up. my mother had my sister and me baptised as catholic just because she wanted us to go to catholic school. busing had just started at that time and she was afraid for us. so, i went to catholic school for a few years, until my parents couldn't afford it anymore. i have to say i got a much better education there than in public school. but we all had to go to mass every friday and i usually had to make something up for confession. hell i was so young it was ridiculous for me. i just said "i was mean to my sister" or "i yelled at my mother". anyway, throughout all those years i saw people praying but i just wasn't into it.
later, when i grew up, all i saw was spiteful hypocrites trying to shove that bullshit down my throat. to me religion was always ridiculous. it doesn't make sense to me. people actually live by some book written by a bunch of superstitious fools. the bible has so many parts that they ripped off from various pagan cults. it's not even original!
catholisism actually became legal because Constantine used it for political power. religion is ALWAYS about power. it's used to manipulate people. i remember my grandmother sending some evangalist money for some scraps of cloth that were supposedly "blessed". i begged her not to send her money to him but she wanted so badly to believe.....it broke my heart and really pissed me off that some fraud was using my grandmother.
now my mother's older and i would say she believes in a god but she doesn't go to church or talk about it much. she's really just afraid of dying so i do not debate it with her. if it brings her comfort and doesn't hurt her then it's okay. my dad, on the other hand, is one of the sheep that follows the baptist church. i've told both of my parents MANY times that i'm an atheist and my dad ignores it, thinking i'm just being contrary or something. ha. my mom doesn't like me to say it out loud and desperately wants to believe that i really pray to a god. i still state my unbelief out loud as often as i can. i think my mom just wants to believe that when we die we'll still be together. it makes me sad sometimes.
i've gone through some terrible times because i'm openly an atheist. countless times people have taken that as a sign that i need to be converted. they just won't listen to reason. i've been shunned and laughed at and harassed. that pushed me to the point where i am absolutely sure of myself and my unbelief.
and you know if there was a god, (still do not believe it) it would be so foreign to humans that it would be completely alien to us. it would not be some guy in the clouds listening to all our bullshit problems. it would be something totally beyond our comprehension.
"Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand."
Bertrand Russell
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/profile.php?id=1572636949
Well, I'm very glad I've found different people from all over the world that had similar experiences.
On my part, I had been catholic till one year ago, when I followed the agnosticism and then I realized I was atheist. My parents decided to rise me as a catholic because here in my country is the most popular religion and beside of that, both of them were catholic. I was educated at marists schools during 12 years, with religious teachings and all that. Furthermore, I used to go to the church since I was a 4 years old kid and I grew up there, following all the traditions and ideologies of this organization. But, even I was inside the catholics, I had some interesting questions to the system. For example, when I was seven years old I remember I found a contradiction between the ten commandments, specificly the seventh that said DON'T KILL with the episode of David killing Goliat. But as I was inside the structure, my parents and the priest explained me that questioning god was a sin. I never understood that.
On the other hand, even the school was catholic the religious there taught me to think and make questions to god and to the catholic church. And when I was around 20 years old, I made a lot of questions because people at church was evil and they loved to make gossip about each other just for create a bad environment. They fought just for have important places inside the church groups. Actually the last time I was at the church it was because I was directing the choir and as it was a group of old hags, I hated the idea to continue fighting against the old ladies because I thought: it is this to be christian?
This coincided with the moment I assisted to the national university, which was full of different ways of thinking and also with a lot of marxism and philosophy. I realized the church, the high school, were too little universes if I wanted to take them as bases to explain the reality. Furthermore, the sciences and the jobs that you can get in the real world do not allow you to think about a god because it does not fit in any way. I got a real crisis because I used to be a strong believer, with the stupid idea to talk about the gospel to all the creatures. When I realized every religion was asking their followers to do the same thing, I thought: the truth does not exist.
Then I decided to left to go to mass because I felt I was agnostic. Anyway, as the rest of my family is still being catholic and they continue going to the church groups and fellowships, I was away from all that to think much better about my next step. They respected my decision, even they continued praying for me thinking I will return to my ancient life style. But, ignoring all this, my agnosticism persisted because I still tried to explain some familiar economic troubles from the religious perspective. Certain night watching to the sky thinking about all this economic crisis a thought came to my mind:
And what if god does not exist?
From that point, I started to make a research looking for answers and I found this website in which I watched the video with the explanation agnostic or atheist? What am I? That really helped to me. However, I have not told to anyone in my family my new ideology, not even to my best friends. Here in Latinamerica being an atheist it is considered as you are a devil lover. It is a kind of secret to me yet, but I like to feel supported through the net with all the atheists that share their experiences. I feel I am not alone in this.
Debate is the best way to share the knowledge
I was born and raised in an extremely devout Catholic home. I considered myself deeply religious throughout much of my early life. My first true issues with religion came about, when I honestly started to really read what was in the Bible and what the Catholic Church really taught. I had many things that troubled me in that regard, and whenever I voiced those concerns to anyone, I was always met with answers like "WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE TO QUESTION THE WORD OF GOD ?," or the simple one "God is a mystery,".
Without going into a whole lot of experiences about my life, I rejected Christianity and Catholicism around the time I was about 19 or 20. I spent a good deal of time after that, studying various New Age paths and flirted with Buddhism for a few years. But the same issues that drove me away from the Catholic Church and the same nonsense that seems to be at the core belief of every religious path that I have pursued ,lead me to toss all of it aside.
For several years after that, I would identify myself as an Atheist, but never thought deeply about what it means to me to be an Atheist. I just simply had come to the conclusion that all spirituality and religions were totally false. But that was as far as I ever got, when it came to identifying myself as an Atheist.
I had always loved to read fiction, and happened to pick up an old collection of short stories by Harlan Ellison, where I noticed in one of the introductions to his stories, that he identified as an Atheist. He even elaborated a little bit about what Atheism meant to him. It made alot of sense and it got me curious about something that I had never considered. What do Atheists really believe ? What is the Atheist position on the meaning of life ? Where would an Atheist define moral codes and other things ?
Of course, I know now that all Atheists have as many viewpoints about those questions as the day is long. But, at the time, those questions got me so interested that I started reading up on it. I started searching down Atheist websites and picking up books by Dawkins, Hitchens, Stenger, and many others. It lead me on a type of soul searching of my own. Much of what the Atheist writers that I found were stating, were opinions that I had held for many years, but had not had the ability to express those opinions as eloquently.
I happened on this site by accident, when I was looking for a quote, to use a a rebuttal to someone that I was debating in another forum. Have only recently registered here, but have found a whole wellspring of information here, in just this short time. I am enjoying it.
To answer your other question about religious intolerance, Yes. I live in the Bible Belt, in Southwestern Tennessee, and the level of hatred towards unbelievers here is pretty high. I am pretty open about my Atheism here, I have had to debate and argue with quite a number of people about it. It doesn't bother me if people want to have a discussion, but the religious people that I encounter, that wish to threaten all sorts of bodily harm and such are people that I have no patience with.
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
To be brief, I was raised to believe in biblical inerrancy as one of the proofs of scriptural validity / God's authorship, etc. In the words of Methodist founder John Wesley " Nay, if there be any mistakes in the Bible, there may as well be a thousand. If there be one falsehood in that book, it did not come from the God of truth."
After having been a fundamentalist, bible believing Christian for almost 25 years I discovered ( unintentionally ) that the Bible is riddled with errors, scientific, historical, narrative, etc.
I was lied to, my religion was a scam. Exit one faith.
Age 10. I realized that the crap coming out of theist's mouths required more imagination and more doublethink than the Occaim's razor of "no god whatsoever"
This, despite not knowing the words "doublethink" or "Occaim's Razor"
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
I was born into a very devout southern baptist family. Church on sunday, sunday night, and wednesday night was mandatory. Went though most of my childhood "believing" that this was all the truth.
I don't remember what grade I was in but we were talking about the universe and the age of the earth and dinosaurs. I had remembered that according to the bible, there was no mention of dinosaurs and that the earth and universe were only about 6000 years old. I thought about it and the more evidence that was put in front of me, I slowly came to the conclusion that what I was being taught in school had to have been right. But that went against my religious belief. So I tried to make the two work together. I said well a day/year to god isn't the same as what we experience. The more I went through it though, the harder it was for me to believe that the bible was right.
Then, we got to the point of talking about columbus discovering the new world and the natives that were here. Again I thought back to my teachings in church that those that were not saved by the grace of god were doomed to spend eternity in hell. I thought that doesn't make sense. Why would a loving god doom people to hell that never had an opportunity to know him? It just didn't seem fair.
That's where I started to question my faith on a more serious level.
I went on for a few more years, questioning more and more as time went on. I started to distance myself more and more from the notion that religion was right. I still went to church but mostly because I had friends who I only saw there. There came a point when I was sixteen, a power struggle erupted in my church. Half the congregation didn't agree with the other half on some issue and one half wanted to get rid of the pastor. It was bitter; arguments and damn near fist fighting in church over what was going on. Yet another point that made me question. I thought this is the house of the lord and these people are going nuts in church. Why would god allow this to happen?
I remember my senior year in high school in sociology class, we were discussing some issue on abortion and sickness and suffering and what it does to the human populace or something. I don't remember the exact issue, but god was being brought into the discussion. This was going to be a big turning point in my life. I asked that if god didn't want things like this to happen then why did he let it happen? Immediately a girl across the room a girl jumped up, pointed at me and yelled "you're fucking wrong! That isn't right! God doesn't immediately control our actions and its blasphemy to question him like that!" I replied if god loved children like the bible says then he shouldn't let it happen, it isn't right. She picked up a book and proceeded to throw it at me but was stopped by the teacher. That point was almost liberating in its own right. I had made my first public stand on the issue of faith and love preached in the bible.
I went from then until today, slowly seeing more and more evidence that told me what I was brought up to believe was wrong. I had gone through a couple of points in my childhood where I wanted to be saved by the grace of god. I would make the move but didn't feel the same feelings that everyone else claimed they felt when receiving this gift. I looked back to these points and wondered why I didn't feel the same then. Then one day it hit me. The bible that was being used to teach us these things was written by man, "inspired" by god. I thought about it and came up with this scenario: I could go and write some book, claim that it was inspired by god, get my friends to believe the same thing and order them to go out and convert the people they knew and to get those people to convert the people they knew and those people to convert the people they knew so on and so on and after 2000 years, if left to grow and those that disagreed were destroyed and nothing stood against it, I would have the controlling religion. To me at that point, the bible became a fairy tale, a big elaborate fantasy story that, through violence and control and staying power, had become the most dominating belief in the world. I told myself that I simply couldn't believe a fairy tale to be true. There are too many contradictions, too many mistakes for it to be truth. At that point, suddenly everything science had taught me, all the evidence that has been shown to me, made absolute perfect sense and everything I had been taught in church just seemed to be absolute jibberish. It didn't hold water anymore.
Now I went through a few years calling myself agnostic but recently came to the realization that I was scared to say there was no god because of the fear that I was taught in church throughout my childhood. This has been the MOST liberating feeling I have ever experienced. More, I believe, than what christians feel when they give their life to god. It feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I see more clearly. Everything makes more sense. I am atheist...
www.facebook.com/sbowman1983
Born and raised in Middle Georgia, right around the 6th hole on the Bible Belt. Raised to be Baptist Christian my whole life and I never questioned it because it was what everyone believed. I was forced to go to church every Sunday until I turned 16 and got my own car. I was still expected to go but when I realized I had the freedom to sleep in, you better believe I did. Eventually, I just stopped going altogether. I started partying and doing other secular stuff on weekends, things that were totally frowned upon by fellow church members. Then I graduated high school and just labeled myself a Christian but never did any of the Christian stuff. When I turned 19, I got serious about church again and started going frequently and reading my Bible religiously (pun intended). I was going through some tough times and I prayed like I'd never prayed before, read my Bible like crazy, and tried to "grow closer to God"; however, none of this stuff worked and the Bible actually made me doubt that a God that's so self-contradictory exists. Finally, I worked out a plan for my life, quit going to church again, and just enjoyed my life. It was when I was 20 that I started doubting God's existence entirely, and did a little research and found out I was an agnostic. I went by that label for a while, and couldn't decide if I would ever find the answers I was looking for. I talked to all of my friends, but they all admitted they'd never really cared to put any thought into it. Well, needless to say, thank [insert imaginary fairy tale creature here] for the internet. I found so many answers that pushed me toward complete denial of God, and I finally felt at peace and it was like a great weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. I couldn't believe I'd let everyone lie to me for all these years when logic and reason clearly point to science being our answer to life and not some deity in the sky. I'm 21 now, and I can't get enough knowledge of science and logic that renders God useless. I also dabble in studies of other religions too. It's fun. Baby-eating atheist all day, yeah!
"Nocturnal majesty, Sworn to black we'll always be."