(Via Tom)
I don’t know exactly how to start this story off. I guess i should start off by saying I was home schooled as a child. I only went to a (Christian) private preschool and kindergarten (if that even counts) so of course I was taught nothing but creationism and a biblical world view from an early age.
I remember once wondering why people believed in evolution so i asked my Mom if we could perhaps study it. She gave me a dirty look and told me i would have to learn about it on my own.
My only social life consisted of church/youth group up until about the age of about 14ish. It was around that time that i started to get in touch with some friends That used to attend a Home School group with me at a young age. (I will call them Bill and Ted) Me Bill and Ted started to get heavily involved with hardcore and punk music. As i grew up with these friends, they always held their faith strongly as did I. We still went to church and youth group but i started to get more of a social life outside of that by going to shows and making friends there and such. I can’t say exactly when it was that I started questioning what I so blindly believed. I must of been about 16 when I started listening to a punk band by the name of Bad Religion and saw a movie by the name of Zeitgeist. Both those things motivated me to do more research on atheism. After reading many books that tried to prove Christianity and many books about atheism i came to the conclusion that i was an agnostic. No doubt.
I never straight up told Bill or Ted but had brought the subject up quite a bit and dropped many hints until after awhile they finally caught on to the fact that I didn’t believe in God 100%. For awhile it was not that big of a deal, We had debates but we still coexisted very well. Slowly but surely that all changed. We started hanging out with alot of people and in a country where about 90% believe in God or a higher power they just so happened to as well. As did most everyone i knew. I remember one time when i was at a church with about 5 of my friends we were all outside eating some food and one of my friends (Who shall remain nameless) Said to me…”Hey man can i be straight with you for a second?” Me: “Sure.” Him: “Alright…can you get your head out of your ass and just believe already? We all know HES real” I was just quite hoping he would shut up but then Ted decided to add on to that comment by saying “Yeah I’m sick of this atheist/agnostic bull shit” (yes they cuss.) I still just stayed quite and they all laughed and put in their own harsh comments. Due to the fact that i wasn’t saying anything Bill decided to mimic what he thought i would say in a very sarcastic voice. “Whhy are you guys making fun of me?? I can believe what i want.” I know that all might sound kinda over exaggerated but i promise you it was all word for word.
As time went on i finally realized i was an Atheist for sure. I remember the night i told Ted i was an atheist he just said “well that’s depressing” I agreed to an extent due to the fact that all my close friends and family believe in God. I sometimes feel like the only one of my kind. I’m no more than a casual acquaintance with very few non-believers. Bill and Ted both slowly started taking me less seriously as a person. When ever my opinion would come up on any subject they would just make fun of it or belittle it. They always call me politically correct as an insult because i take a strong stance against Sexism, Homophobia, And racism. I don’t use the terms “Nigger”, “Fag” or “hot babe” and they make fun of me for that all the time. Another close friend of ours always goes out of his way to use those words just to try to get a reaction out of me. But i just don’t care anymore. I am now 17 (18 in 2 months) and its at the point where i can’t even bring up any issue that i find to be important because they just won’t listen.
You may be thinking to yourself…”Why doesn’t this kid just get new friends?”
Well its just not that simple. I have known these people for years and have built up a tight friendship with them. Even though i have told you about the bad we have had some pretty damn good times together. Forming a bond like that with other people takes time and is not as easy as it sounds. Although if i met the right people I would honestly leave them in a heart beat.
My family is a somewhat different story. I have 4 siblings and my youngest and oldest brothers are the only ones that know I’m a non-believer. When i told my older brother he didn’t care and said he has been an Agnostic for awhile now. I wasn’t that shocked but then he said (jokingly) if i told anyone he would kill me. He pretty much pretends to be a Christan. I guess its just not a big of a deal to most people as it is to me. I think my parents kind of know but probably deny it to themselves. They have seen The God Delusion laying around my room, I don’t go to church, they probably hear the negative comments i make about religion, but honestly i could give two craps if my rents found out or not. I hate them. They are awful people who don’t even deserve the right to be called “parents”. I’m not gonna go into to detail why they are such failures because that’s not what this story is about.
Even after reading this no one will fully understand my situation because I have left many things out and no one else has my outlook on life nor can they see things from my perspective. I have many other crazy stories that I just don’t wish to share. Typing this all out and reading other stories has been very therapeutic for me though.
I have been to The Creation Museum, I have read The Bible more than once, I have given my life to Christ multiple times, I don’t believe in the god of the bible! Nor any gods for that matter.
THE END.
(Via Mark)
My name is Mark and I am an atheist.
I was born and raised in the rural area of Missouri just around 30-40 miles west of St. Louis, back in the 1960s when Martin Luther King Jr. was conducting peace marches all over the South. I remember mumbling the words of the Pledge of Allegiance during class in elementary school, but most of it never meant much to me except the phrase “under God”. I was around eleven years old then. I kept that particular phrase in mind and mulled over it for several years. The rest of the pledge seemed appropriate, but “under God” made no sense to me at all. It just “didn’t sit right” with my views of what the United States was all about. I became a fan of American history at an early age and the U.S. Constitution was of interest to me, so I scoured the law of our nation, but I could not find the word, “God” or “Jesus” or “Bible” mentioned.
During my preteen and teenage years I was required to attend Sunday School, Sunday morning worship, Sunday evening worship and Wednesday night prayer meeting at a local Assemblies of God (Pentecostal) Church. It wasn’t all bad. I had friends there like most kids would, but I never could fully participate in the rituals of prayer, baptism or speaking in tongues. I truly thought there was something wrong with me because of my involuntary lack of understanding and faith. I tried to be like everyone that attended and attempted to be a part of those rituals, but it made no sense to me, making me feel extremely pretentious and illegitimate. A sense of self-betrayal haunted me.
During my childhood, I learned much about the Bible and like many other books I had read, I found “the good, the bad and the ugly” within its cover. “The good” was in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. It’s a good moral story, but the same type of moral content can be found in other writings as well. “The bad” was in the way God often punished or murdered his so-called “creations”. How can God do this if he loved us? “The ugly” was the unbelievable happenings of virgin births, Jonah living inside the stomach of a great fish and other outright lies. To me, lying to sway someone is very immoral. “The bad” and “the ugly” outweighed “the good”.
It wasn’t just the Bible that I found to be fictitious, but also the idea of “God”. At around the age of sixteen, I realized that I did not believe in God or any god for that matter. I felt that the existence of the Abrahamic God is no more valid than the gods of Roman, Greek and Norse mythology.
Yes, I suppose sixteen years old may be rather young for someone to assume they do not believe in deities and such, but that is what I knew at the time. I knew I was an atheist as much as I knew I did not believe in Santa Claus. That was thirty-four years ago and I am still an atheist.
(Via Tony Kiegel)
I came out godless on television yesterday on 11/01/09. I started a group with other freethinkers in Evansville, Indiana and was interviewed about it. We started in May of this year and have grown to over 260 members. It was refreshing to tell this evangelical town that we exist and stand to be recognized.
(Via Tina Burton)
As I look back now on my past as a young person, I didn’t know anything.
I thought there was a god, but only because it was expected, and fear of someone always watching me.
A few years back my son and I started discussing religion and I came to the conclusion that I really was an atheist. Talk about fear, now that was scary. To deny a god or gods that most people revere is surely a coming out process.
Now, I couldn’t care less who knows.