(Via Jim H.)

I had the good fortune to be raised by nominally Catholic parents who “believe in belief,” as Daniel Dennett puts it. I can only imagine that they took their faith more seriously in the past. When it came to religion, they once explained that they hadn’t had me baptized as an infant so that I could first attend Sunday school and fully appreciate the meaning of the ceremony.

Then they ‘forgot’ to send me to Sunday school.

By the time I was old enough to question the concept of God (as clumsily explained by my parents), we were only attending church on Easters and Christmases. They had no convincing answers for my questions.

By age four, I was conducting prayer experiments: I placed rocks on my window sill (where God could see them better, naturally) and prayed for Him to change their shapes overnight. Those rocks were always the same shape the next morning.

I attended public school and continued to fling the occasional bartering prayer skyward before tests. ‘If I get a good grade on this test, God, I’ll be really good next week!’ My test results only confirmed that my grades were more strongly affected by preparation than divine intervention.

I made no secret of my atheism in high school. Frankly, I was a bit of an asshole about religion when it came up in conversation. It was at school that I was pointed toward George Smith’s The Case Against God by a friendly classmate. My parents still didn’t know anything about my lack of belief.

I remember getting The Case Against God at a local bookstore. I felt mildly embarrassed at the time. It felt as if I was trying to buy porn. The grandmotherly cashier looked visibly pained when she saw the title of the book she was selling to a young teen. She anxiously struck up a forced conversion about some fiction title (Clan of the Cave Bear, I think) and I think we were both blushing nervously by the time I took my purchase and left the store.

As it turned out, the book wasn’t that impressive. Too much focus on Ayn Rand and the pesky assertion that universal negatives can be logically proven. But the book helped me in one regard: It gave me the chance to come out to the parents. I left the book sitting in plain sight when I finished it. (I never made an attempt to hide books from my parents) Later, my mother whispered to me in a half conspiratorial, half disapproving tone that she had ‘found that book.’ The first thought through my teenaged brain was, ‘Oh crap! My porn?’ Luckily, I didn’t voice that question. She went on to ask about ‘that atheism book’ and sought assurance that I ‘still believed.’ And there it was, the perfect opportunity to tell her my thoughts on religion. All thanks to one unimpressive atheist tract. I saw the opening and I took it.

Naturally, my parents assumed that my atheism was a ‘phase’ for several years. They were vaguely disapproving, but never ramped up the church attendance for my sake. These days we don’t often talk about religion, but they are now reluctantly accepting of my position. Along with one of my cousins, I forgo prayers at family holiday get-togethers. I’ve never had any questions about this practice from the extended family, but I would not hesitate to explain if asked.

Compared to many, I’ve had a smooth coming out – especially considering the reputation of the Midwestern locale. I was always able to laugh off the knee-jerk proselytizing of uber-religious students in my school (there were few), I never had to deal with violence from peers or censure from parents, and the school had several like-minded students I could talk to. Even today as a vegetarian atheist living in Indiana, I am surrounded by many religiously-skeptical peers in my academic workplace.

I only wish others could make the transition as easily and organically as I did. Reading other coming out accounts makes clear the potential for backlash in these situations. It was not until after the fact that I realized how fortunate I was.