(Via Ungodly Cynic)
I grew up pretty much secular/agnostic, but essentially went with the flow growing up. Looking back, I remember reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in school (public) and now resent it. I never gave any thought to religion or spirituality until I started doing drugs (namely LSD) in college (Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale). I’ll add that I haven’t traveled down that road in quite a long time.
Religion was always a non-issue up until that point.
I’ve dabbled in mostly new age and pagan stuff; Wicca and Qabala for the most part. With all seriousness I was considering Qabala to be a system I could believe in, down to getting the robes, athame, and accessories. Then, I met my wife and all that dwindled away being replaced by agnosticism.
My in-laws are church-goers and I went to Christmas with them for a few years (Methodist). I didn’t care for it and knew it was a bunch of crap, my wife knew I felt that way, but I just didn’t care about church. It didn’t matter whether I went or not. I was just there.
Later, the in-laws decided they wanted to change their denomination to Episcopal (after some “goings-on” within the Methodist church there). My wife wasn’t happy. She wasn’t angry, she just didn’t like the change. Anyway, there was a little bit of friction regarding this “change”. Needless to say it all kinda ticked me off, I guess because of the whole situation in general, and I said, “To hell with all of it, no more.”
Since. I have only gone to church once, and that was a Christening, which I would not attend today. Note: I had not “come out” to anybody yet, but only in general conversations whereas I never said: “I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in God.”
A couple years down the road my father-in-law is over and we are partaking of some beers (I rather enjoy having a few beers with him and discussing politics and current events). Most of what I remember is just flat out telling him “I’m an atheist. I don’t believe…”, after getting into some debate about a secular issue. His answer was “I feel sorry for you.” My retort: “I feel sorry for you.” And I honestly do. That was the first time I ever came “out” and told somebody. Him and I are still on speaking terms and we still love to engage in political discussions. He’s pretty open-minded about that. Though he’ll never change his stance as a true-blue Blue Dog Democrat.
I might add that the whole religious issue arising within the political spectrum in the run-up to the 2000 presidential election really got me riled up. This prompted me to find out what these particular people stood for. And I found dirty truths that drove me further to disregard such jack-asses and…to tell the truth, this (religion and politics/separation of church and state), above all else drives me ideologically.
NOT whether a god exists or not, I could give a rat’s ass about that debate. I get so incensed reading blogs written by ex-Christians debating with Christians about the existence of god. What the hell is to be proven? Or disproven? One thing remains untouchable: faith. If one wants to believe in some fairy-tale, then so be it. One other thing remains untouchable: Don’t frickin’ shove it down my throat. Because I am free to believe what the hell I damn well please to believe.
Sorry, getting heated. Why am I getting heated? Because Christians (and I am lumping them altogether) do not see the cultural implications. They don’t see that the “foundation” of religion has influenced almost every aspect of society. That their inaction and complacency enables the problems that arise from putting trust into the hands of “faithful” politicians. I don’t know how to put it any other way. When our president starts speaking in code about a “crusade”, that should tell you something unless your brain-dead about history. When our dumb-ass president says “I looked into his eyes and saw a kindred spirit.” (speaking of Putin), the same man who said “I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.” Who does he think he is? The messiah? Seems some people do.
(Via American Scot)
From my earliest memories of childhood I can recall to having had an adverse reaction to going to church.
My father was raised in a Mormon family that was quite devout, my mother’s family on the other hand was a mix of Presbyterianism and Alcoholism.( the latter,my grandfathers religion, later to become mine) So my parents felt it was important to put on a good face for my grandmother( dad’s side) and have all of us participate in the LDS Primary and Sunday school classes that other children my age participated in.
I remember being dragged from the gymnasium of the church (where we would play before primary) more than a few times to these little indoctrination classes. Mainly because I really couldn’t stand to hear about some guy, who looked like my Uncle Leonard (a biker who was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1973) and what he had to say about “The Kingdom of Heaven”, or about his father. I did however find the prospect of a “Holy Ghost” kind of cool! ( I was 6) Then they would begin to drone on about some man by the name of Joseph Smith, and how he was a profit of our heavenly father. Just like Spencer Kimball. (LDS President at the time) And some jazz about golden plates and a bunch of other hullaballoo! Needless to say, this was all too boring for me. But for my baptism at 8, I stopped going to primary and Sunday school until I reached the age of eleven. All reluctantly for two reasons,to attend Boy Scouts and look at cute girls.
As a teen I became involved in the LDS Priesthood almost by accident. All of my friends at the time were forced to attend church on Sunday. So I started to tag along for kicks. It was seventh grade, and since my birthday is in August, most of my friends were half a year older then me. So they all “graduated” from being Deacons, to Teachers before me (to much time to explain, read this) So I was given the post of being the Deacons Quorum President. I’ll never forget how it all came about. I was asked in to see the Bishop of our ward. He sat me down and proceeded to tell me and I quote “We (the brethren) have been praying for guidance in choosing a new Deacons Quorum President, and God has directed us to you.” I just about fell out of my chair! You see, at the time I had been smoking marijuana and drinking regularly for a year! At first I thought, “well maybe this is a sign for me to change.” Then later after accepting the position. I realized it was a “warm body” thing, and the whole thing was a farce! My parents made me stick to this responsibility, half assed I did, but I still continued to get stoned and drink!
By the time I was in high school, I had completely given up on Mormonism. I renounced my membership, and made it abundantly clear to my classmates I was not the least bit interested in going back to their church! Of course this made dating a challenge, as most of the girls in my high school were LDS. More than a few tried to talk me into going to church with them, but I resisted.
Once out of high school, I met more like minded people, and began to broaden my horizons so to speak. I ran with a crowd that was made up of a Lutheran, a Catholic, a Baptist, a Greek Orthodox, and another ex Mormon. We had many discussions about religion and I was exposed to different ideas. Our common thread was that we were all unhappy with religion of our parents. We shunned religion, and looked for god in drugs and booze.
This trend lasted for quite some time. Then in my early twenties, my addictions began to take a toll on my mental health. As I blogged before, I ended up in a psych ward of a Catholic owned hospital, after a futile attempt at my own life. (Thank goodness!) While in the ward I was visited by a social worker who was also a Nun. She was very kind to me, and comforted me a great deal. We discussed my “spiritual” condition and I asked her some questions about her faith, which she readily answered. So upon release I contacted my friend who happened to be going through conversion classes at a Catholic Church nearby where we grew up. He invited me along to see what it was all about. I had always had a fascination with Catholicism, I then remembered going to Midnight Mass with an old girlfriend and how I was awed by the pageantry. So I felt like maybe it would be a great help. After a year and a half of classes, and the dating of a girl from a devout Catholic family, I was baptized and confirmed at Easter Vigil. After the relationship with the girl ended, and the priest whom I respected retired, (He admitted that the Old Testament was all story and not meant to be taken literally) I grew disillusioned with going to mass, and as quickly as it began I was no longer a practicing Catholic.
I then began to question the existence of a heavenly guardian again, but this time I was influenced by the astronomy class I was taking at school. I read of the Big Bang, and of star nurseries, where old materials from stars are reformed to create new ones. I also learned of how all the elements that make up our universe are contained within us. I saw a cycle that made more sense to me, then any mythical creator working with magic and clay to create us and our environment. This was the foundation of my agnosticism.
Again I was forced to make a choice of belief. Again it was over my drinking and drugging. I hit a bottom and ended up going to AA. I was desperate to find help, so when they (the other members) spoke about god and how he/she/it was the answer to not drinking, and the only way to find god was through the 12 steps. I tightly held my nose and drank the medicine. Soon I was sober,and things began to look up for me. I was experiencing acceptance from others like me. And it felt good. How could it not? I wasn’t drunk every night and hung over every morning! All the while I was being told this was all “gods will” for me. So I faked my beliefs, and held fast to the people around me. I didn’t want to rock the boat, so I kept my agnosticism inside.
I then moved from SLC to Chicago when I took my current job, and I really had a hard time getting involved in AA here. So eventually I stopped going to meetings. Well as you might guess, I relapsed and struggled in and out of AA for the next six years. All the while finding it harder and harder to believe in a god. And the more I struggled with my belief, the more I struggled with staying sober. Finally in 2003 I gave up the drinking and went back to AA. But this time I decided to do it on my own terms. I decided from day one that I wasn’t going to pray to any “higher power” or work the steps in the manner that most think they should be done. (belief in god) I soon found out that there were others that felt the same way as I, and some openly talk about their atheism. I still attend AA, but not to hear about god and the steps, but to be reminded of why I don’t drink anymore. The support of others who know what it is like to suffer in addiction is a very powerful thing, a “higher power” if you will. Having said all of this, I can honestly say that I am more at peace with myself, then I’ve ever been.
So I guess this is where I will own up to that Red A on the right hand side of this blog.
I am an atheist! I don’t believe in a god, nor can I prove there isn’t one. I’ll leave that up to you!
If you have the same struggles as I have had, don’t despair! You can be an atheist and stay sober, and do it with a smile!
(Via Imago)
Mine’s a straightforward story. I was brought up by reasonable but traditional, older parents – both parish christians of what I now realise was the ‘best type’. They both took their beliefs for granted, and were diligent in their participation in the life of the church. They were really good, and caring. But apart from one memory of praying at bedtime with my father, I know I was completely bored by the religious view of the world, and the rules we were supposed to live by.
Although my elder brother was more taken by the whole thing, I remember only pretending to be asleep when it was time to go to church, disliking Sunday school, feeling offended when I was supposed to say ‘we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table’. I only liked singing the hymns.
I declined to be confirmed when I was about 14. The sticking point was transubstantiation. Drinking blood seemed an odd thing to do, and also impossible for that blood to actually be wine, or vice versa. The minister came to talk to me but somehow I held firm. Really I think I did not want to experience the boredom of confirmation classes, and I was probably shy of the other young people.
There was a group of christian girls at school and I did (honestly!) try to ask god into my heart, probably just to have some friends. But I couldn’t say it worked. I stopped going to church, and my parents let me.
When he went away to university, my brother joined a fundamentalist evangelical church, and my parents started to worry that he was being exploited by the minister, who lived off student donations, a very nice life thank you. My brother’s view of me (I was the voice of the devil) became insufferable at this time. Another nail in the coffin of my belief.
When I got married, we did it in church, but I always wished I had been able to say ‘no’ to this. The prospect of what our parents would say was just a bit too scary. Likewise we did not say no to being godparents to my nephew, which I regret, even if it was a bit of a formality. Fortunately the minister did not ask us to stand up and say anything publicly! Our children are not baptized.
The two final wriggles of my religious life were to take my daughter to church (once) and to engage in a debate in the local newspaper with an evangelical minister who was saying that children ought to be taught the ten commandments, and then they would be better behaved. As my daughter was being bullied by an obnoxious christian girl at the time, I felt obliged to claim that our godless three were at least as aware of their social responsibilities as any so-called christian child. And then, the first Gulf War, during which a local church proclaimed prayers for ‘our boys’ only. The end.
Although the Church of England is a moderate place, and does as much good as may be, it is nevertheless, in my view, founded on a lie – that there is a supernatural being who watches over us. We can be good people or not, but it is nothing to do with our beliefs. I still have christian friends, but I have remained at a great distance from my brother. After studying biology, psychology and philosophy, I think I understand some of the reasons why humans have been attracted to religion, but I am relieved I no longer have to pretend that I am. I think it is a manipulative, limiting and ultimately repellent practice, and to raise children in any religion is an offense against their freely developing minds.
I wish I did not hate religion so much, and I do not know quite why I do. I would prefer to simply ignore it. But is is such a force in the world that I now feel obliged to stand up for my non- belief. I am glad to be able to do this here.
I can’t really say that I’ve been an atheist my entire life, but I don’t think I was ever a genuine believer. My parents both come from a southern baptist background, but we never went to church regularly when I was growing up. I’m pretty sure that all of my parents’ siblings and their families regularly attend church now, and one of my uncles is even a music minister in a baptist church in Texas. We would sometimes go to church on Easter and there was a period where we attended a weekly bible study led by some family friends. I think we finally stopped attending because of some silly theological dispute between my parents and the study leaders about what was required to “be saved.” This was a big deal to them, of course, but it all seems ridiculous to me now. I will always be grateful to my parents that they didn’t shove religion down my throat as a child, though grace was always said before dinner and my brother and I were taught to say our prayers before bed when we were very young.
I officially became an atheist over the summer after my freshman year of college. I think that the moment of truth came while reading Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” for a summer literature class. The hero of the novel, Howard Roark, was a very appealing character for me, and when he stated at one point that he didn’t believe in a god, that seemed to fit with his integrity and honest view of the world. I don’t think I had really been exposed to atheism that much growing up, and certainly not in a positive light. I do remember reading Camus’s “The Stranger” in high school and responding sympathetically to the main character’s atheism, though I didn’t consider myself an atheist at the time. One of my high school classmates was courageously outspoken about his non-belief, which earned him much condemnation from certain classmates. I also remember being sympathetic towards his views, but I wasn’t courageous enough at the time to defend him in class debates, in which he was hopelessly outnumbered.
After my Fountainhead experience I read more of Rand’s works, as well as books like “Atheism: The Case Against God” by George H. Smith. One night in July 1998 I stopped saying my prayers before bedtime, which had always been more formulaic than heartfelt, and I now officially considered myself an atheist. I was still living at home, so I kept my atheism to myself, not knowing how my parents might react if they found out. My parents are wonderful, loving people, but I was still unsure of how they might react. I remember being very nervous around Easter of 1999, feeling that I would come out as an atheist and refuse to go to church if my parents decided that we were going. I didn’t think I could stomach the church experience at this point in my life, but luckily we didn’t go to church that Easter, or ever again while I was living at home.
I finally came out to my parents on September 4, 2001, a few weeks before I was scheduled to leave for a one-year exchange program in Germany after I graduated from college. I was about to move away from home for the first time, and my dad wanted to make sure I was a christian. The two of us were driving to town in his truck and he mentioned one of my best friends who I’ve known since 4th grade, whose family is from Puerto Rico. He asked if this friend was catholic, which made me sort of uncomfortable, since I never really discussed religion with my friends. I had several friends who attended church regularly, and I would occasionally go with them when I was younger, but I thought of them as individuals, not members of a particular religious group. I told my dad that I assumed this friend of mine was catholic, but that I wasn’t sure. He then asked what I believed, and I told him that I was an atheist. I could tell that this made him uncomfortable, and he kept interrogating me about my views (but not in an overbearing or intimidating manner) over the next week. My mother naturally found out, though she seemed to take the news a little better than he did. My brother considers himself a Christian (though a very liberal one), and I’m sure that the idea of the four of us not being united in heaven was quite painful to them. My explanation that, even if there was an afterlife, I wouldn’t want to believe in a god that rewarded blind faith over good deeds, didn’t seem to reassure them very much.
The terrorist attacks of September 11 occurred a week later and helped to make that month one of the most traumatic of my entire life. I finally made it to Germany near the end of September, though my dad bought a couple of books for me to read while I was over there, a bible and a few books by Lee Strobel. At one point, Strobel was trying to answer the question of what would happen in the afterlife to people like Gandhi, who were not Christian but did great deeds. When he answered that god would surely make “exceptions” for people like that and let them into heaven, I shut the book and refused to read another word. So much for the argument that blind faith alone would grant one admittance to heaven. It never ceases to amaze me how the religious will make exceptions to rules or selectively interpret evidence to reinforce and justify their beliefs.
I have a good relationship with my family (we just don’t discuss religion) and the tension that followed my coming out certainly seems to have eased. My parents probably think that I’m not “really” an atheist (how could such a good person be an atheist?) or that I’ll have a change of heart. My wife was raised catholic but considers herself an agnostic, and our wedding ceremony was officiated by one of her best friends, who happens to be gay and was ordained online! Our outdoor ceremony had no mention of any god (except for one vague mention of a “universal spirit” or something like that) and none of my religious relatives made any mention of that fact. I don’t know how many of my relatives know about my atheism, though it’s definitely not something I mention around them.
I see no evidence for a supernatural being and live my life as if there is none. Though we live in a chaotic world in which there are reasons to be cynical about the future of humanity, I find hope and meaning in things like family, music and the other arts, cooking, wine, coffee, books, etc. One of the biggest disadvantages of being an atheist is that you don’t have the automatic social network that a church provides. My wife is working right now while I try to finish grad school, and she doesn’t have much in common with many of her coworkers, many of whom are very religious and vocal about that. There are only a few of my school colleagues who I am reasonably close to and it is certainly easier to feel isolated as an atheist here in the Bible Belt than as a believer. I am encouraged by the recent crop of books by prominent atheists like Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, and I hope that we will see a gradual shift in the U.S. towards greater secularism and acceptance of non-believers in politics and culture.
Dear Dr. Dawkins,
I have no idea if you yourself will read this, but I wanted to share my story with you anyway because you are such an important figure in my life. I can never thank you enough for the ways that your work has set me free and enhanced my life. This isn’t so much a story of how your work has converted me to atheism as it is a story of how your work has made me confident and secure in my atheism.
I was born into a strange family. On the surface we were Mormons, but our lives moved with a deeper current of Evangelical Christianity. When I was six years old, my parents divorced – the greatest scandal my family has ever seen – and my mother moved my sister and me out of rural Idaho and into the more open-minded “blue state” of Washington. I shudder to think how I would have turned out if I’d stayed solely under the influence of my patriarchal, bible-thumping Idaho family. My mother still felt that it was important for our development to know our father and his side of the family, and to spend time with them. We spent every summer in Idaho. I am certain that if I’d had the skills and the courage to tell my mother what my father and his side of the family were doing to us, or even if I had the understanding to recognize how wrong it was, that I never would have been subjected to such abuse again. But I believed that was I was being told was right and good – such is the power of religious indoctrination.
Nurturing mental illness seemed to be the hobby of my father’s side of the family. My father himself was incorrectly diagnosed and treated as a paranoid schizophrenic (much later in his life, he received the correct diagnosis of severe bipolar disorder). Part of his delusion was a belief that he was the true prophet of God – or perhaps that he was Jesus himself, come again – it was never entirely clear. He was a charismatic man, and he convinced his family that it was true. Of course, they were already primed and ready to believe anything that came to light by means of “revelation” – if Dad said that Jesus had revealed his divine prophecy to him, then damn it, it had to be so. My father could even point to passages in the Bible that seemed to support him specifically as the prophet that would herald in the End Times and Jesus’ return to Earth. The passages seemed convincing to me, but I was only a little girl – what logical processes could I really apply to such a story?
Every summer, I was surrounded by Evangelical beliefs and was immersed in this strange culture of listening with reverence to any “prophecy” that my father made. The pastime of my family was looking for signs of the Second Coming and discussing the Trepidation to follow. I had not yet been baptized, but I was too scared to ask that it be done for fear that I would reveal myself as a sinner, in need of cleansing, and that the Holy Family would cast me out.
Every single moment of my young life became a constant, fearful watch for signs of Christ’s imminent return. Every lunar eclipse was the moon turning to blood; every hint of war or negotiations to avoid war was the Last Battle; Schoemaker-Levy 9 smashing into Jupiter, an event that should have thrilled me, was the “stars falling from the sky,” an event that instead filled me with dread of what was surely to come. I fancied seeing Jesus’ face in benign cloud formations and was sure that it meant He would show up to smite me tomorrow. I must have played and had friends, but I literally have no recollection of anything occupying my time other than worrying about my destruction at the hands of an angry Christ. I was constantly afraid, and constantly depressed. I remember having no solace from my fears of the Second Coming, and every moment I was around my father’s side of the family, my fears were compounded. My childhood was a complete wasteland of family-imposed terror and religious lunacy. I was too afraid to do anything that normal children do. How could I find it fun or safe to ride a roller coaster or a horse when God, who loved me and wanted the best for me, was so much more dangerous and unpredictable? I did nothing; I went nowhere; I made no friends. My life was devoted entirely to listening to anything my insane father spouted and trying to find some way to fit it into current events.
Strangely, this knack I developed of finding correlations between “prophecy” and current events was the only thing that provided me some comfort. It gave my life an air of predictability and security. If I could see what this all meant, then surely I could avoid the worst of the disasters to come. The closer I grew to my father and the more I paid attention to his prophecies, the safer I felt. After all, what better place to be when Christ came back to smite the world than next to His divine prophet?
Unfortunately, my worldview was shaken yet again when one of my uncles decided that he wanted a stake of the attention my father was getting from the family. My uncle was better than a mere prophet – he decided that he was actually Jesus Christ himself. And he, too, had all the revelation and scripture to prove it. My family became even more unstable and weird. Soon somebody had decided that they both couldn’t be Jesus – clearly one was really Jesus, and the other was the Antichrist.
Well. Now who to choose? Suddenly it was no longer safe to be my father’s little handmaid – what if I’d chosen wrongly, and he was the Antichrist? I lost my taste for interpreting world events and descended deeper into depression and fear.
Around the time I was 15, my mother caught onto the way my depression seemed to wax with my trips to Idaho and decided that I needed to stay in Seattle during the summers and spend time with my happy, normal, teenage friends. I didn’t go back to Idaho again until my grandfather’s funeral a couple of years later. Two years’ distance from the craziness gave me marvelous perspective. Suddenly, my entire family looked pathetic. It made me sad on their behalf, that they’d led themselves so far into insanity. My fear of the Second Coming became less pervasive, but it still persisted in the back of my mind whenever there was a threat of violence in Israel or whenever a lunar eclipse occurred.
Throughout my teenage years, I felt that I needed some kind of spiritual polestar in my life and I began learning about varying religions, trying to find where I fit. I liked the idea of a loving, kind God rather than the wrathful bogeyman I’d been raised with. I soon discovered that the Mormon church didn’t teach the kind of wacky End-Times prediction games that my family had ascribed to it, and that it was in fact a kind, caring, supportive community that believed in a “user-friendly” Jesus. I had myself baptized at the age of 19 and felt happy and secure with faith for the first time in my life.
Alas for my faith, it was not to last. I decided around the same time I was baptized that I wanted to be a biologist and work to conserve habitats and animal populations. I had very little money and, being white, qualified for disturbingly little aid from the state even though I was living ridiculously below the poverty line. I saved my money for several months and then enrolled in a single biology class to begin my education, planning to continue working and applying for aid until I could afford a full quarter of classes at a time.
My biology class utterly changed my life when we began learning about evolution.
I knew “the basics” of evolution – animals change over time in response to changes in their environment, and over time new species arise. I understood that we evolved from apes, but I believed that God guided evolution according to His plan. But learning about it on a college level completely opened my mind to the awesome power of biology and genetics. I was hooked and when my money ran out I continued to eat up every book I could find on the subject, including The Selfish Gene.
It was about this time that I began to realize that God’s hand wasn’t necessary in guiding evolution at all. It guided itself most ably. But surely God was necessary to have started the universe. This led me to a couple of years’ worth of self-education in cosmology, astronomy, and chemistry. It wasn’t long before I’d formed a clear picture of the universe existing quite well on its own without God, thank you very much.
But I still held that kernel of fear of God. What if it was all true anyway? Couldn’t God be testing me with this knowledge of the universe? Couldn’t he be setting me up for damnation, backing me into this corner of atheism so that he could ride out of the heavens on a white horse and spear me some day soon? Maybe after the next lunar eclipse? The “god box” in my brain was in an all-out war with my reason, and it was most uncomfortable. I began to have panic attacks and was even hospitalized with one especially severe one. I was put on anti-anxiety medication, which did calm me down enough to learn how to beat the god box into silence and let my peaceful reason control my thoughts…most of the time.
Around this time, I read an essay on the internet written by a young Airman. It was a to-the-point debriefing for the religious, telling them what atheism was and was not, explaining why one becomes an atheist, and what an atheist’s world view is like. I was so enchanted by this simple logic and clear thinking. I’d never seen atheism described so eloquently and simply before. I thought, “I would like to be an atheist. But what if God wouldn’t approve?” I began writing to the young man and we soon developed a strong friendship. He helped me slowly shed religion in favor of rationality. Our friendship intensified and soon we were visiting each other during his military leaves. When he was finally released from service, incredibly getting out at the height of the Iraq war, he told me that he had no home to return to. I invited him to come live with me. He accepted, and soon we were planning our wedding, which, I am pleased to say, was completely non-religious.
However, I didn’t fully let go of the idea that God MIGHT be lurking out there somewhere, waiting to get me, until my father died in 2003. The fact that trumpets from Heaven didn’t herald his ascension into the sky as a divine prophet had a little something to do with it. He simply died alone in his apartment, in his sleep with the television on, as any regular human being might die. That simple death cut the last thread of belief in God for reasons I may never fully understand.
On a recent vacation, though, I realized that my religious indoctrination still had some hold over my mind. My husband and I were both a little bit drunk in our hotel room, and a news story came on about some stupid political event or other. I think the alcohol allowed the god box to spring back to life. It just triggered something primal in me – I began to panic and cry in total terror. My husband tried to comfort me and tried to understand what I was so upset over. I couldn’t even identify it myself. What was it about this news story that made me fall completely apart? After much careful thought, I decided that I’d been trying to use it to predict the Second Coming again, and that had in turn brought up the old terrors of my childhood. How stupid, to worry about something I didn’t even believe in – and I truly did not believe in the existence of God any longer – not one little bit.
This episode made me realize how deeply my brain had been wounded at such a young age. I could still have psychological relapses into a fear that was so strong that I would cry over a fictional character’s wrath. I was so angry that I could barely enjoy the rest of our vacation – and when we got home, I headed to the local book store and perused the atheism section (which is sadly tiny, by the way). I found The God Delusion and read the whole thing during a two-day power outage with a flash light. I went through many batteries during those two days.
In The God Delusion, I found the answers to my questions about why and how my brain could continue to have this deep-seated, primal reaction to something that I knew to be false. I was so relieved to know that I wasn’t crazy that I cried all over again, but this time it was a wonderful release of all the pent-up fear and tension. After reading the book, particularly the parts about your discussion with Jill Mytton, I felt NORMAL for the first time in my life. And I felt secure for the first time in my life, too. I understood that God was a fantasy, and I understood why and how my brain continued to fear that fantasy. Once I had that knowledge in my hands, I was able to master my fear and completely tamp it out.
I feel so free and happy now, and I feel like I have you to thank for it. Thank you so very much, from the bottom of my heart – your work is amazing, inspiring, and enlightening, and it has saved my sanity. I feel that I owe you so much. I will be grateful to you for the rest of my life.
(Via Dust)
Okay, this, under most circumstances for me, would be a very hard thing to clarify. However, I am on the edge of drunk, on Bacardi 151, so I’m more at liberty to slew out my opinions of the moment, on my journey from general religion to general atheism (for the most part) or where I stand now. I’ll start out with my childhood. My dad was a Jesus freak, for the most part, or as far as I can remember. I remember him having us watch the sermons on TV when we woke up late at his apartment when I was visiting him. He was also, and I assume the overlapped, deep into drugs. Which was apparent in his death by heroine overdose. But I remember once, long ago, when I was probably five or six, my father and my older brother discussing revelations in the bible, and the end of the world as we know it, and how horrified I was, in my own quiet world (I’ve always been shy) sitting on the couch listening them talk about “doomsday”. I also associate this with, at this time, my first contemplation of oblivion, or imagining what it would be like to not exist at all, or to have never been born ,and the weird empty pulling that is associated with such a consideration. Then, another event involving my father, when we were at a pool in a hotel with a Chinese restaurant, probably 4 years later. There was a big golden Buddha outside the restaurant. I rubbed the Buddha’s stomach, I believe, and right after, my father told me an old superstition, that if you rub the Buddha’s stomach it’s bad luck, but if you rub his head, it’s good luck. (it could have been the other way around, I haven’t heard of this superstition since, and I don’t remember exactly what I rubbed) but either way I rubbed his head or stomach and thought that was bad luck. I thought of this while swimming, and until bedtime. I remember at bedtime I would pray, and this was my only connection with a god that I for the most part, disconnected with our Lutheran faith and the boringness of church. I would pray to pure light and not even a humanly figure (which later became the basis for my “religion” while I had one, but after Christianity.) Yet, this particular night, I prayed to this essence of pure forgiveness, goodness, etc. A pure philosophical ideal: that I could be not be punished for rubbing the Buddha in the wrong way. I was praying to a christian god, to forgive me for enacting a superstition upon a Buddhist “god”. I find this ironic and hilarious in retrospect. Anyway. While drifting through the Lutheran church. Which, to me, is the democrat to republican, in Lutheran to catholic, and I later chose a third and more informed option on both right-left choices. (maybe logic) Yet, the entire time I felt something was off. The church did give me insight. Often in my later years, into things about philosophy and poetic concepts, yet never did I fully take them seriously, as they did themselves. I got confirmed, told them my idea of god (without selling out my beliefs) and was still confirmed into the church. (which is a process of carrying candles for the pastor and taking bible classes) I did all this at the will of my mother. Yet, when they asked me what seemed to be the final question about god, I told them as I actually did believe at that time, that god was a standard of good, and Jesus was a representation of that. The only place I stretched my beliefs with this question was in telling them that I thought Jesus was a representation of that whole good, when in fact, I was already considering the fact that he was just a smart prophet of the time, if he existed at all, and that there were many others since him more enlightened that A Christ or a Buddha. Since confirmation, I never went to church. it was a funny thing. I basically stopped right after that. I only go when my grandma comes to visit. Yet, since then, I have once been what is called a Deist. Which is a general philosophical notion that there is a higher power, expressed through nature, and that it’s not a personal god, or necessarily represented in any specific person. Yet, it is evident to me that some people are “smarter” or just generally more with their own act than others, and that these people are becoming more and more, and that awareness is spreading, not in a religious way, but in the way that possibly Jesus, as a character was, and that people will awake to freedom, and discard establishment and government. This is just a hope of mine. After Deism, I became intensely intrigued by Buddhism, Zen Buddhism in general, (not the folklore over the man Gautama Siddhartha the Buddha, but general Zen Buddhism, for peace of the mind) Anyway, this realization came almost side by side with psychedelic drugs and my journey into trying to discover the beyond, or what we can glimpse of that beyond us, while alive. This gave me a more democratic god view, which I haven’t totally discarded today. I considered the works of Huxley and Allen Watts, as what if everything is truly god, and that we all suffer the same way. Which still much intrigues me today, as do all religions, if thought about in combination or studied, but as they apply to politics and real life, they become dangerous, so I guess at this point, when I realized the combination of stupid religions and dangerous politics, have realized that we cannot afford group religions, because it becomes, like race, a way to separate people, and that all we can assume is that everything is god and that we must leave the balance to the nature of things, that which can never be understood or explained, so I remain agnostic, but with a strong inkling that the afterlife does not exist, which makes me feel more atheist, yet I’ve heard that even some Buddhist religions are considered atheistic, and I still sway toward eastern religion, it seems more fascinating, maybe because it is further from me. I even consider Christianity in a general sense, I do not like to take down the bible itself, however outdated, like other atheists. because, it all is metaphor, for what really is and can never be spoken, and from what really is and is here in front of us. It is all archetypes and myths of the great One man, the self, in search of whatever he must find in his pointless life, for the game of it. I think, if life is meaningless, you can have more fun with it. Society’s problem is making it serious, you do not NEED to achieve anything in life, but simply to live in peace. I leave you intoxicated, hoping to forget this section of my overall accumulated belief, but that it is genuine, and that I do believe it all amounts to nothing, but that is the beauty. A poet, a philosopher, an artist, yet not doing this for a god other than which I know is a metaphor for the ironic struggle, that is I.