My first day in a Southern Baptist church was 2 weeks after I was born. I was always a bit shaken when I saw how emotional people got at certain times, but I was always bit more calm than anyone else. I stopped going to any services when I left home – I always had something more important to do. I went to my old church for my best friend’s wedding, and all my great uncle (a deacon) said to me was that I needed to cut my long hair. I never went back. When my sister started studying Wicca, I tried to find a religion that was internally self-consistent – the closest I came was Buddhism, which I found as more of a philosophy than a religion. I got bored of staring at walls (meditating) so I forgot the whole thing. I wanted to find a Wiccan get-together, as I have heard they have some wild parties, then I found the Jacksonville Atheist Meetup and went and found I was an atheist and among friends.

my ascent to a humanist perspective has been a very slow and painful journey. raised independent fundamentalist baptist (IFB), i very deeply believed in heaven, hell, jesus, literal creation, virgin birth… if it was in the christian scripture, i soaked it in. i was baptized at 7, led my first convert to christ at 10, and attended bible college at 18.

after bible college, it made sense to me to learn about scriptures from the jewish perspective; so i enrolled in the judaic studies program at UCF.

to avoid deceit, i must confess that a big part of the draw was to learn how to better convert jews. don’t listen to what other evangelicals may tell you, we totally get extra points for the chosen people.

instead of finding a community of people lost and empty in their own self-deceit, everyone seemed totally normal. what’s more, a lot of them were atheists, and no one seemed to have a problem with that.

i had been brought up to believe that “humanists” and “atheists” were under literal demonic influence and part of a vast evil plot by satan to destroy humanity.

imagine my surprise when the exorcisms failed.

so i’ll spare you the details of my lengthy discussions with professors, rabbis, pastors, physicists, and my cosmically important friendship with a reformed jew turned atheist.

intellectually, the evidence was clear. A fundamentalist view of the world stops working the minute you look beyond the few resources approved by your tiny sect.

emotionally, this was all very hard to accept. in order to give myself the freedom to objectively assess the situation, i had to take the chance that this was all some elaborate scheme of satan’s to deceive me.

in the end, it seemed to me that a religion worth believing in should stand up to a little objective scrutiny.

from beginning to end, it took me 5 years to drag myself out of fundamentalism completely… and another 2 years to tell anyone about it.

i was 27 when my mother found out. she cried, fumed, prayed, and kept my atheism as her shameful secret. i led a double life to save face for her.

the election in November changed everything. for the first time in a long time, i cared about something. i liked that feeling and decided it shouldn’t stop.

i refuse to feel like an outcast because i’m no longer religious, and i refuse to be quiet about gay rights, stem cell research, evolution, abortion, or anything else i’m passionate about because it may offend someone else’s beliefs.

it seems to me that there’s some unspoken rule i had agreed to. that because i don’t have a g-d or imaginary elf associated with my beliefs, they’re somehow less important. that’s simply not true.

i do not need a g-d to validate me. i do not need a hell to scare me into being a good person. i handle that all on my own. i’m out, and i’m proud.

I wasn’t actually raised an atheist. Both of my parents technically professed a religion. Dad was Methodist, Mom was southern Baptist. However they never went to church or talked about God or the Bible. Religion was strictly a label and not a very frequently worn one.

I figured out early on that my friends believed in God. At first I didn’t really see it. I went to Sunday school with them sometimes and it was fun but it never occurred to me that anybody actually believed it. When I figured that out I though it was weird and silly. I soon learned to keep that opinion to myself.

I was about fourteen when I finally “came out” I was in a rebellious stage anyway, and I just stopped keeping quiet about it. At first I got a little flack about it. This was particularly funny coming from friends with pentacles on their jackets and Slayer tapes in their stereos. However it didn’t take long before people just accepted it.

No one really seemed to care. It has only been in the last few years that my atheism has been an issue with anyone. Lately people have started to ask questions, sometimes positively other times less so. Recently I have become a “Militant Anti-Theist” I blog about atheism, argue with Christians, belong to atheist groups. For the first time in my life I am seeing it as a part of my identity as well as just a lack of belief. I can’t say if it is good or bad, but I know I am not ashamed of being Godless I embrace it.

Atheism is very much a part of who I am. I join with other atheists in many venues. I used to follow what the Baptist church told me to follow—no questions asked. In my late teens, my closest friend taught me how to question. He and I didn’t agree on many things philosophically, but we did question each other and others.

I believe it’s important to help others in many ways. I currently volunteer in about a dozen projects, either daily, weekly, monthly, or annually. There is no god who will help the ones asking for help. We must be the ones. If a homeless child needs help with education because he misses a lot of school, it’s my responsibility to make sure he gets that help. If a senior needs to get out from in front of the TV, I’m responsible for taking her out for a walk. If a stretch of a street needs a regular litter pick-up, I am the one to do it. God won’t do those things.

While I don’t throw my atheism in anyone’s face, when the subject comes up, I’m very proud to announce my belief.

One thing I do throw in people’s face is skepticism. I am quick to point out the dangers in following “psychics,” astrologers, and other such charlatans. Some say there’s no harm in getting a tarot card reading or some such. Au contraire. These people prey on the emotions and the pocketbook of the vulnerable. They must be stopped!

There is little that I can do. But I can do something. It is important that I do what I can. If you do what you can, together, we’ll make a difference.

My parents were, and still are, fervent Baptists, and so I was raised in the Church from birth. I was something of a sceptic as a child (my mother still recounts how, aged 3, I announced that I no longer believed in Father Christmas because, “there are too many children for him to visit in one night”. Admittedly, this doubt was quickly quashed by the realisation that no Santa meant no presents…) but I was nonetheless so heavily indoctrinated that I happily accepted as truth the stories, with their accompanying pretty pictures, in my Children’s Illustrated Bible. After all, Mummy and Daddy said it was true, and so did the pastor at our church, and so did my teachers, and my friends, so what was to question?

My friends and I were regularly dispatched to various Scripture Union holiday camps – the basic premise should be familiar to anyone who has watched “Jesus Camp” – and it was at one of these that I became “born again”. Aged about 10, I sat down one evening with one of the youth leaders and announced that I was giving my life to Christ. I have to confess, I don’t remember much about the conversation – there were a number of pamphlets to be read, and a prayer I had to recite, although I don’t recall the specifics – but I do remember the youth leader asking me how I felt at the end of the process. My reply was, “I feel sort of… lighter.”

But I didn’t. In fact, I felt nothing, save for a vague sense of silliness. Suddenly it seemed a bit ridiculous to be sitting in that room, surrounded by Christian literature, looking into the beaming face of the youth leader as I asked a long-dead Palestinian to make me a better person. Nonetheless, I pushed this mild feeling of discomfort aside, and, beatific smile firmly in place, went to rejoin my friends, all of whom had been through a similar process in the preceding years. Their support, I rationalised, would help me through this moment of doubt. It did. I was baptized the following year, and spent the next half-decade or so raising my hands in church services, speaking in tongues and generally getting over-emotional in the cause of religion. I proselytised to my long-suffering atheist/agnostic schoolfriends, on one occasion giving a memorably incoherent rendition of Behe’s “irreducible complexity” argument to my evolution-subscribing friend on the bus home. It should have suggested something to me that I, a member of the debating society and widely-regarded as one of the smartest kids in a highly selective school, should have had my argument so thoroughly demolished by a boy who had got into said school on a hockey scholarship. But I was a believer…

The vague sense of silliness had stuck with me though. I always felt a bit self-conscious praying aloud, or speaking in tongues (it didn’t feel particularly divine, and I never seemed to be able to speak in French or German, or even Latin, which would at least have had some practical applications – just “bagahabfalamalabollifilliblahashmaz etc”. If that’s the language of Heaven, it’s no wonder God has a hard time making himself understood…). Things came to a head when a visiting pastor to our church (can’t recall his name – he was from Singapore, I think) held a real humdinger of a fire-and-brimstone service. Lots of people were “slain in the spirit” (ie. got over-emotional and fainted), but the high point was when one member of the congregation, whose name I shall keep anonymous to preserve his dignity, went up to the front of the church and announced that, owing to the demonically-inspired TV programmes he had watched as a child, he was possessed by the spirit of He-Man.

That’s right, He-Man. Not Beelzebub, or Azazael, or Mephisto. He-Man, the Most Powerful Man In The Universe. Unfazed entirely by the fact that He-Man is A FICTIONAL CHARACTER*, the visiting pastor proceeded to “cast out” this evil spirit; a process of much shouting and wailing, culminating in the possessed man raising a hand and shouting, “By the power of Grayskull!”

Weirdest. Thing. Ever.

After that, I found it impossible to take church seriously anymore. I started to be the lone voice of dissent in the Youth Group – having actually read the Bible in its entirety, I was in a much better position than any of the other members (or the leaders!) to qualify my arguments. I took particular issue with St Paul, who, to my teenage mind, had perverted the original teachings of Jesus and created a Church entirely out of step with its original premises, and had great fun debating with the rest of the group. In retrospect, I think they had rather less fun than me. Finally, I stopped going to church altogether, and by the time I went to University you would have been hard pressed to recognise a modicum of Christianity in my personality.

The departure of Christianity from my life had left a large, God-shaped hole in my psyche, however, and I was ready and willing to fill it. For a while, hard-left political ideology served as temporary Polyfilla of the soul, but eventually I had to admit that the other Socialist Workers scared the crap out of me. Through my newfound practice of t’ai chi ch’uan, though, I discovered Taoism. Now here was a religion I could get behind! No actual god as such, just a vague, undefined and nebulous “force of nature”. No dogma save “follow the Tao”. No priests and catechisms, no evangelising, no afterlife to aspire to or live in fear of. I have of course, since learned that Taoism has all of these things, but even now, I retain a soft spot for the most basic “Tao of Pooh” form that I originally encountered.

The problem with the sort of New-Age spirituality that I gleaned from Taoism, though, is that it comes with a lot of baggage. As a t’ai chi practitioner (and later instructor) I was encouraged to believe in the “chi” energy that Taoists say infuses the universe. This led on to Reiki (I’m a fully qualified Reiki Master, y’know – meaning that I paid a few hundred quid to hold my hands above some equally deluded hopeful for half an afternoon), crystal healing, kinesiology, dowsing, naturopathy, and a whole slew of others. (To be fair, my personal jury is still out on a couple of these: acupuncture, for instance, seems to work even if only as a placebo, and t’ai chi is still one of the best martial arts and forms of physical exercise that I’ve encountered). The irony was that I nonetheless looked down my nose at practitioners of those esoteric arts to which I hadn’t subscribed. Homeopathy came in for serious criticism (it’s WATER, FFS!), as did iridology, astrology and palmistry, and don’t even get me started on yogic flying… but I failed to realise the hypocrisy of my position for quite a while. When enlightenment came, it came slowly – but my trusty inner cynic won through in the end. I think the final straw was quite recent; an online debate with a very old and dear friend (whose personal journey had paralleled mine, but resulted in quite a different outlook – he’s a very devoted churchgoer) on the reason for our diametrically opposed views prompted me to re-read The God Delusion et al. I sat down, took a look at my thinking, and changed my religion on my Facebook profile to “Atheist” – you don’t get a more sincere declaration of nonbelief than that!

*re-reading this, I see now how that wouldn’t have been a problem.

I was raised Christian. My parents started out as good Baptists, ‘heard’ from God to move from England to Australia, became Pentecostals, ‘heard’ again to move from Australia to Canada and left the organized church. I pretty much bought into all of it.

I wound up on an ‘End time farm’, involved in the ‘Move of god’. The end times were here and god was going to make us his chosen people.

So what happened to make me an Atheist?

As a young married couple my wife and I found ourselves rebelling against the authority of the eldership at the communal farm. We left but still attended meetings of the Move cult. As we lost interest in this we started attending more mainline churches. We more or less lost interest in those too.

I suppose I was a backslidden christian for the next 20 years or so. I didn’t hate god but quit praying. I more or less just didn’t care.

And then … Our younger son came out to us. He is gay. He told us how he went to church as a kid and prayed to god that he could be normal and not be attracted to other boys. (God didn’t help much there.) Anyway, one of the things he told us was: Either god created him as he is, god screwed up and he turned out gay or ‘I am what I am’ and there is no god. My original understanding was the first option but it started me thinking. He is what he is and there is no god.

Wow! It has been a journey since then and has taken a few years to really start to get my feelings together. I am using reasoning and reading as much as I can. I don’t believe. Prove me wrong and I will listen. Just don’t quote the bible.

I was an “active” member of our fading Southern Baptist Church back in the 1970′s. It pleased my mom to no end that I attended Sunday service (twice) and Wednesday night service. As I said the church was fading, very few young people and about 200 old people (mostly women). I kept my nose clean, mumbled along with others, played piano for some of the Sunday school classes, and just tried to fit in (and stand out, as I am an outgoing person). I was interested in cults (still am)and never ever heard of someone not being a believer in God in some way or form.

As I got older I started to question why I did not seem to feel the same euphoria and blessings that others did. I prayed all the time asking Jesus to show me a sign that he was listening to me. I pretended to hear God talk to me, and even got Baptized (never had it done all these long years). I was SURE that after the Baptism I would “feel” something, but nothing ever happened. I had no thoughts of skepticism, or Atheism or actually anything but wanting to experience what everyone else was experiencing.

It came to a head when our pastor asked everyone to wear these little buttons that said, “I’ve Found It!” (I think they were green). I did not want to wear it because I had not “found it” I was still looking for it (check behind the couch I can hear you yelling). I found all kinds of excuses for not wearing it, my pastor kept asking me why I kept forgetting it or losing it, finally after he had given me several I just knew something was wrong with me. The program finally faded and they stopped wearing them, but it had already forced me to face the reality that I was having trouble believing.

I wish I could remember where I heard about Atheism, I must have been about 17, but it was profound. The idea that people did not believe! Wow! I could not discuss this with my mother (My dad was an nonpracticing Catholic, and we never talked about religion). We did not have that kind of relationship. I wish now I had gone to my Dad, he used to read the Bible and my mom told me much later that she feared he was a non-believer. One of my mom’s greatest fears when my dad was alive was that he was going to hell, as a teenager I had serious problems with this, and did not like this option for my dad who seemed to be a “moral” person.

Anyway, somehow I got a hold of the word Atheist, I do remember looking it up in the Encyclopedia (we didn’t have the Internet back then folks) I went to the library and found Madeline Murry’s book “Why I am an Atheist”. That was jaw-dropping in my world. I checked that book out several times (always sneaking it between other books I was checking out so the library staff didn’t notice). Thankfully my sister had moved out by this time so I had a room to myself, imagine me sneaking this book into my room, hiding it in my closet. Then sneaking peeks at in while still in the closet, I was afraid my mom would find it if I left it in my bed. I have no doubt that it would have been horrible for me if found, I can’t imagine my mom finding porn or having to chose between the two as the most horrible. I guess I could have said that the Atheist book was for a school project, but if she didn’t believe me I would have been in big trouble (I don’t even want to think about it).

Somehow I grew up and managed to get a hold of other writings, and selected the term “Agnostic” to reflect my beliefs. I didn’t want to make waves, and this sounded so much better, also most people didn’t know what it meant. I started trying out my new beliefs on select people, and did okay. Much later I came out as an Atheist. My mom found out somehow, I was a mother and living with my then husband at the time, independent of her. I talked to her about some of the problems with the Bible, and she got upset for attacking her and her religion (its never okay to do that, but always okay to attack Atheists in their mind). In fairness to her, she had never had her beliefs challenged (I suppose) everyone was always a Christian or a non-Christian never a non-believer.

As a new mom I toyed with the idea of making my kids more “moral” and sending them to Church. My non-religious husband who never took a stand on anything said that he had turned out okay, so why make our children attend church. Very good decision. My sons are now 20 and 17, very much atheists. I read whatever I want now, and my kids and I discuss all kinds of topics.

I became friends with my mom about 6 years ago, we spent quite a lot of time together, never best friends, just her closest friend. We never discuss religion, but avoid that topic. One year at a fair she went up to a booth for Women’s Right to Choice and told them, “good job” and bought a button from them. I was so proud I had no idea how she felt about that issue.

The last 3 years my mom’s health is fading, I moved her into my home, and took over her care. Her quality of life improved a lot (socially) and she was the queen of our household. Today, she is 85 and dying at a rest home. She had been in and out of the hospital and rest home, we always hoped she would come back to us, but the doctor said to prepare ourselves. Her body is just giving up, she was so active and alive. But I am not sad, I know I did the right thing in giving her these last few years.

My siblings may experience guilt after she dies (for not spending enough quality time with her) but I don’t. I made YouTube videos of her, and put her in our family Christmas photos, we even had a neighborhood Christmas party at my home last year so she could socialize with everyone. If my kids do the same for me when the time comes I will be very happy. My best friend, (a Creationist Christian) has told me on two occasions that she thinks I’m one of the moralist people she knows. She even told all her church friends that she can’t understand how I can be an Atheist. “Too bad”, she says that “I’m still going to hell”. Fine with me, at least I can hang out with my dad.

Now I find myself planning her religious funeral, am in the process of talking to Pastors, and writing her obit. Her church friends (probably don’t know) that I’m a foaming at the mouth Atheist, I will not disrespect them and her by making my feelings known. But I bet I will get some interesting comments on my Christian attributes once they pay their respects in a few weeks.

I have not read any of the other “coming-out” stories yet. Wanted to get mine in before being influenced by other stories. Looking forward to reading them today

I was raised religious. My mother was Baptist, and my father was Seventh Day Adventist. When I was young, we moved a few times, so we were always sampling different churches in the area to find the right fit. I went to Calvary Chapel, Episcopalian, Evangelical Free, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Latter Day Saint, and Catholic church services. When we finally settled down, we decided on a small Baptist Church in our rural town.

As a young girl, I was very familiar with Bible stories, I prayed often, and went to church regularly. I accepted everything that my family and the church told me because I trusted that they knew best. I remember being so concerned with not sinning that I would pray for forgiveness if I let a mean word slip or if I was disobedient to my mother.

When I was 15 I went to a Baptist summer camp. It was a great experience. I was surrounded by other young people who loved the Lord, there was great music, and lots of fun. During an emotional sermon I stood up and “accepted Jesus into my heart”. I cried, and everyone cheered for me. I felt completely filled up and good.

When I got home from the camp, those feelings soon faded as I realized I could not maintain that kind of elation in my daily life. I began to discuss baptism with my pastor, but everything seemed hollow and meaningless. When I was baptized at 16, I felt nothing and knew something was not right. I stopped taking communion and started doubting the things taught in my Sunday school class. I remember sneaking onto the computer one afternoon when nobody was home, and googling “atheism”. To me it seemed like a dirty, evil word and I was frightened of being caught. But I just wanted to know, did they have any valid points? But my guilt over this urge was overwhelming and I didn’t look any further.

At 18 I went away to college and during my freshman year I took a course on the religions of the world, anthropology, and geology. Learning about the many different religions in the world made me wonder, how could all of the others be wrong when they were all so convinced of their beliefs? In anthropology and geology class I discovered that the real world contradicted many of the stories in the Bible that I had been taught to interpret literally. The world was millions of years old, and humans had only been alive for a fraction of that time! At first, I began to accept the fact that perhaps the Bible was not to be taken literally, but that God was still important and my faith was not at odds with science.

But the more I learned about science and the world, the more I realized that my religion was just plain wrong; my Bible was filled with cruel and ignorant stories and it could not explain how the world began, and my fellow believers were sometimes intolerant and hypocritical in the name of God.

This is when I realized that I was an atheist. Since that point, I have never regretted this discovery. The only time I have felt a loss, is when I instinctually begin to pray at moments when things aren’t going my way. I have to stop and laugh when I realize I am talking to myself.

I have been an “out of the closet”, publicly avowed atheist for many years. But I didn’t start that way. Being Southern I was raised, as most people are down here, as an evangelical Christian – my particular flavor was Southern Baptist. I even attended a Christian school for 2.5 years (middle of 5th grade through 7th grade). One of the important tenets of Southern Baptists, and Christians in general, is the concept of a “testimonial” – an explanation of your faith and how you came to be a Christian. You are encouraged to share your testimonial as a part of “witnessing” to others in order to tell them about Jesus and (hopefully) “save” them.

I began to think about this, and realized that everyone – all of us – have a “testimonial”. We all have a story of how we have come to believe the way we do. Some of us are still on the journey, and our testimonial isn’t complete yet; while others amongst us are strong in our beliefs and convictions and, with the exception of some minor revisions along the way, our testimonials are pretty much complete.

Now I don’t know about you, but I love to hear the testimonials of others – how, and more importantly why, people believe the way they do. I find these stories fascinating, and I have also found that often our stories are more alike than dissimilar, and the most fascinating part is how we can have common stories that wind up in such different places.

This blog has been a place of open, civil discourse even about the most controversial of topics – and this is something I have come to love. I thought it would be an interesting topic to provide a place for others to share their testimonials – their stories of the journeys to their current state of belief – without the fear of persecution. I would love to read your stories, and I think others would be interested as well. The only rules are that the discourse must remain civil, and while I encourage the asking of questions I will shut down any personal attacks immediately (I don’t think it will happen, but I want to state that up front just in case). So, let me begin, and then you can share.

As I stated earlier I was raised as a Christian, a Southern Baptist. My mom is actually pretty accepting of other beliefs, but I was more influenced early on by the family of my step mom. She’s the one that paid for me and my step sisters (at the time) to attend Forrest Hills Christian Academy. At that time I really “got into” being a part of this school and church. I manned a “prayer line” at times, I attended mission trips, I went to visitation, prayer service, and Sunday services. I was a model young Southern Baptist.

But during this time I began to have a nagging questioning voice in the back of my head. The more I got into my activities the more I began to question why we did what we did. I kept suppressing this inner doubt, and talked to ministers about it, but I still had doubts.

In 8th grade I began a search on my own for my own answers. I spent hours in the library (remember, this was in the 1970s, the internet really wasn’t available as a tool back then) researching the history of Christianity, and reading the beliefs and histories of other religions. The more I read, the more enlightened I became. Then when I was 15 I decided to give religion and faith one more chance. My friends and I would go each weekend to a different church/temple/synagogue to explore the rituals and services of others, experience first-hand the people in the church, and try to discover, first-hand, which place – if any – felt “right”.

I continued my reading and studying, and my discussions with my friends, and around 16 I finally realized the truth – I am an atheist. I was still enthralled with the histories of religions, but I realized that I was more interested in those histories – the “why” people came to their beliefs – than I was in the religion itself as a path to enlightenment. The moment I finally admitted to myself that I was an atheist I felt that this was the “right” answer for me – I felt I was being honest with myself, and that this was who I was.

Some of my friends became more, shall we say, “aggressive” in their atheism – the lashed out at other faiths, specifically Christianity, and I felt that wasn’t right either. I told them that just because we don’t believe doesn’t mean that others shouldn’t believe – and that everyone had to find their own answers to what makes sense for them, and what makes them feel complete. I must admit though that I did feel some animosity towards some specific churches – there was one called Chapel Hill Harvester that was very aggressive in their recruitment of teens at my school, and they (I believe) brainwashed the teens into blindly following them in lockstep. They convinced a couple of my friends into burning their rock-n-roll records and Dungeons & Dragons books (one of my friends finally realized this was silly, and is now an atheist as well), and I felt that this place was a harmful place that taught hatred and not thinking for yourself over an exploration of faith. Incidentally the leaders of this church have been brought up on charges for various things over the years (Bishop Earl Paulk and his brother, to name a couple).

So, I spent my late teen and early adulthood as an atheist. I continued to read up on religious history, mainly Christianity, but I didn’t attend any services or anything like that. Years later after I was married and had kids my wife and I realized that we needed to find someplace for us to attend. Why? Because we’re still in the Deep South, and down here the second question you’re asked is “what church do you attend?” after “What’s your name?” Those who answer “I don’t attend church” are often subjected to witnessing, aggressive questioning, etc. During our search for a church we could attend without feeling like hypocrites we found Unitarian Universalism. UU is a place where we can be whom we are, without feeling like hypocrites. UU is a place where our kids can learn about other religions objectively, and can have a sense of community as well.

So now I am a Unitarian Universalist, and an atheist. I even taught Sunday school as an open atheist, because that’s acceptable as a UU. I am comfortable with who I am, and I feel that we are teaching our kids to respect other religions, to explore and learn on their own, and to find answers for themselves – and that their answers may be different than mine, and that’s ok too. My kids have a healthy respect for other religions, and they understand what most of the other religions believe – so when they are exposed to it in school or with friends, it isn’t “new” to them.

I also defend my Christian friends, quite aggressively, against others who attack them. Why? Because as a UU and a human being I believe that we all have the inherent right to explore our own path, find out own answers, and be able to believe as is right for us without fear of being attacked. And to this day the only time I have a problem with anyone is when they try to force their beliefs upon me and my family – and luckily the Christians I know agree with me that this is NOT the right way to do things.

And before you ask, yes I associate with many Christians (almost impossible not to in the US, ya know?) – and they all know I am an atheist. What I find is that all of the Christians I count as close friends have one thing in common – they hold a deep respect for the beliefs of others, and they all “live their faith” – they are all living testimonials to their faith, and their lives are good examples of what their beliefs are – they live their beliefs. Devin “Spanky” Olson is an example of this that you may know. Also one of my closest friends that I hang with locally is a devout Christian who listens only to Christian radio, is very involved in his church, and who really does live his faith. We have great discussions, and we have learned a lot from each other – and I believe he has a newfound respect for me as an atheist because I have shown him that you can be a “good”, “just”, and “moral” person without having a belief in a deity. I believe we are each better people because of our personal friendship, and the friendship of our families.

Unlike most of the stories I’ve read through here, I actually enjoyed going to church. I was brought up since I was a baby in church. God existed.

I went up to the alter to get saved during vacation Bible school at about the age of 9-10. I was baptized in an Assembly of God church at about 11-12. The 3-4 years I spent in this church represents my most “holy roller” period.

The Assembly of God church is one of the pentecostal “singing in tongues/dancing around/getting slain in the spirit kinds of churches. I can look back and see that my “evidences” for belief came from the psychological effects of the emotionalism in the services. We had a full band with electric guitars and drums, singers and sweaty crying preachers, we didn’t bother with singing out of old fuddy duddy hymnals, we sang short “praise songs” with endlessly repeating choruses. In short: We were mesmerized by the rhythms and emotional appeals and that created at minimum, a meditative effect of euphoria, to at worst- virtual hysteria. To a bunch of good, god-fearing folks, these emotional effects were evidence of God’s spirit being around us.

Everything that entered my senses was processed through the Christianity filter. If something didn’t fit the system, then the old catch-all phrase “God works in mysterious ways” was applied and the offending bit was shuffled away to the back of my mind.

The only doubts I can remember during my youth were basically:

1. Why are there other religions?
2. Why do good people that are not Christian have to go to hell?
3. How does one know beyond a doubt that they got saved the “right way”?
4. Is there any way to loose salvation?

Now I also had a problem in that God simply never answered any of my prayers. I might have “felt better” or “had a feeling” or something like that but I never ever received an undeniable reply from a source beyond me. I do not include this in my doubts above because I thought this was my fault until I lost belief completely.

As for the contradictions in the Bible and theology- I could not see them. I literally had no idea that there were problems in the Bible. I was a “Cherry Picker” when it came to reading the Bible, I liked the New Testament in general for the happy lovey dovey parts and disliked the Old Testament because of the “begats” and wars and general harshness.

So fast forward a bit, after I left the AoG church, the strength of the emotional hold it had on me slowly faded. I moved to another state to live with my Mom. My Mom formulated her religious ideas through various ideologies and ideas she passed through or studied in the 1960′s, and finally decided on her “own view” rather than attending or associating with any certain religion or church. This was a big difference for me as I had grown up in a completely Christian environment up till this time. I had access to her books on various religions and philosophy and this was literally the first time in my life when I had an opportunity to learn these things.

We went to church a handful of times but it was like experimenting, we went to Primitive Baptist churches mostly (the exact opposite of a pentecostal church including no musical instruments, old fashioned pews and shape-note singing).

Although most atheists will look at leaving one church or religion and jumping into another as pointless and silly, It had a good effect on me: I became more and more open to different ideas and philosophies and became less and less a fundamentalist to the point where my religion was worn down to practically nothing except for a vague belief in Christianity and God.

At this point I left religion and church completely and started playing in rock bands and trying drugs,etc. I “knew” I was a “back-slider” but I just didn’t want to think about it anymore. I looked back at the old days and remembered all the great times in church back at my AoG church, but I also remembered how I came off that high during the week and I would end up miserably praying over and over and over (almost constantly at times) for God’s help. I also remembered how depressed I would get on a regular basis and it always seemed to have something to do with religion or belief- So I simply turned that part of my life off for the next 10-15 years.

To wrap this up, about 2 years ago I was fooling around on the internet, looking for interesting things to read to pass some time, when by chance it popped into my head to search for the phrase “preacher turned atheist”.

One of the first results that came back was the Freedom From Religion site, in particular the story of Dan Barker. I started a little guiltily reading some of the excerpts from his book on the site and there was a feeling of excitement that started building in me:
This guy not only asked the same questions I always had, but actually searched for the answers and found them. I had put religion on hold because my mind could not take it anymore, but it took the rise of the internet and the ability to study anything I wanted to know before I could actually give my mind some hard evidence and facts to smash all the wishy washy contradictory and confusing beliefs that had been unchallenged defaults since childhood.

Over a period of about 2-3 months I studied religions, philosophy, I went on Christian/atheist discussion forums and learned. My mind was like a vacuum , I could not get enough. So here it is two years later and I look back and realize that my problem with depressive episodes disappeared with religion. This is something “God” could never fix. Apparently “God” may have been the problem all along…

So here I am a non-believer, I’ve been pretty open with my Mom and a few close friends but pretty much anyone else has no idea of my “defection” I still go to church a few Sundays a month! (am I insane?) no, I just happen to like some of the people, I play in the church band, the pot-luck dinners. I will eventually stop going, but baby steps aye?