Author’s Note: As this is intended to be a therapeutic piece for myself, and an inspirational piece to other atheists, I concede that the piece is long winded. You have been forewarned.

I was born into a Catholic family in Champaign, Illinois, home to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. My mother was a Lutheran, and my father was raised by a strict Irish Catholic family. Both grew up in lower class families, and money was tight. When my parents graduated high school, my dad went and lived on a farm and raised pigs, and my mom began work at the local newspaper, with neither ever receiving a college education. They married soon after graduation.

When my sister (who is ten years older than me) was five, my mom believed that my sister would be in the zone for the nearby public elementary school, which was only three blocks away. Instead, my sister was selected for an elementary that was infamous for its notoriously delinquent student population (the school is now a correctional facility for kids out of detention centers). So, my mom did her research and discovered the local Catholic grade school. Tuition was over $4000 a year, and to cover expenses, Mom and Dad took on other jobs. Dad started a lawn care business and Mom began managing taxes and things for other family members. My mom began the RCIA program, through which an adult becomes Confirmed in the Catholic Church. Soon enough, my older brother began school, and I followed two years later.

Grade school was an awkward experience. I was an awkward, antisocial kid who enjoyed being alone. I did not feel lonely, partially because I always thought God was there. I absolutely loved everything the teachers said about God: the metaphors, the biblical stories of ancient men parting seas and building massive boats. It all played wonderfully on my mental movie screen. I “talked” to God; I even have memories of regurgitating my religion lessons to my faithful Border Collie, Lucy (who, sadly, could not defend herself from my proselytizing). Religion classes came to be associatd with positive things: candy, parties, and fun! My mind made that connection subconsciously. However, as the years wore on, I “talked” to God less and less. It just didn’t occur to me as a necessary thing to do, because I obviously wasn’t doing it right. I wasn’t experiencing the “voice of God” that the teachers told me would be there.

In fourth grade, I had a life changing experience. I was introduced, forcibly, to theatre. My teacher was concerned about my antisocial tendencies, and had a conference with my mother. My mother then signed me up for Oliver!, the musical. Long story short, I hated it at first, then came to love it, and became a lot more friendly and sociable. However, I can safely say that the most life-changing aspect of the whole experience was the fact that I was exposed to entirely new schools of thought, most notably, liberalism. My parents were always conservative (and still are), and all I ever heard growing up was that George Bush was good and the Dems were bad. Of course, I took my parents’ side, not yet being of reason. I had never heard people talk openly about gay people without sounding hateful, and I had never heard anyone speak such rational, genuinely good thoughts. Thus the seed of doubt was planted, as well as a newfound love for the arts.

The years progressed with little change, save for the meeting of my girlfriend of four years, with whom I recently separated. My family rarely went to Church. We were very much- in the words of a close friend- “two timers;” we attended basically twice a year. This only changed for our Confirmation processes, during which we attended every Sunday. The year Confirmation started- 7th grade- was awful. My hormones were raging, and I became depressed and angry, all natural things for a teenage boy. I had a piss-poor attitude about school, and my grades suffered accordingly. It was at this point in my life that I began to really look at what was happening in our world. I was especially concerned with gay rights, as I had many homosexual friends being in theatre. I began to become genuinely apathetic about my faith, which was not helped by the fact that I was going through the Confirmation process. I began to feel guilty, and guilt perpetauted anger, which perpetuated more guilt, and so on. Over that summer, I found a deep peace with the realization that I didn’t have to be Catholic. I could still be a Christian and still be a good person! Eighth grade year was smooth sailing, barring one incident that still sticks in my mind to this day. Before Confirmation, my eighth grade teacher stood in front of our class and looked all of us in the eye and asked, “If you’re not one hundred percent sure you don’t want to do this, then don’t. Don’t just do it because your friends are.” I should have opted out. I should have said no. But no one was going to, and there was no hurt in going through with it, right? But, when the day of Confirmation came, I felt absolutely nothing. I walked down the aisle, went through the motions of saying the prayers and bowing the heads, but I felt like I was betraying myself, because it just felt empty. However, these feelings soon passed, and I rationalized that I still thought the Catholic faith was correct, but the Church itself was wrong.

That summer, everything was going fine. I had to drop out of a show that I was in in order to be in a religious workcamp that would give me service hours for school; we were required by the high school to have completed at least 150 service hours. That always pissed me off; being a high school student is punishment enough without tacking on unnecessary requirements for graduation. So, the week before the camp, my girlfriend of two years called me and said she wanted to talk. She broke up with me, and I became really depressed because I loved her very much. So, here I am at this religious camp, completely emotionally vulnerable, and surrounded by proselytizing. I made it through the camp with the help of a good friend of mine who came with me (who is non-religious now). However, I started to become concerned about being Christian again. I became concerned about attending church regularly (which ended up not happening). By the end of the summer it was out of my system, but the effects were felt throughout the summer, eventually subsiding as school started. I eventually got back with my girlfriend, and it was like nothing had changed. However, during the interim, I was depressed, and thought about suicide more than once (unfortunately, I believe I have medical depression).

High school was a new frontier; I didn’t know what to expect. The local Catholic high school cost around $6000 a year, and my parents took on yet more work, even volunteering at the local sports arena to help pay for tuition. I met plenty of new people, many of whom became very close friends. Religion became increasingly complicated. Now, not only were we expected to be Catholic (or, at the very least, Christian), we were now soldiers of God. We were to become learned in apologetics and arguments for the Catholic faith. We had retreats, were encouraged to pray often, and took one Theology class a quarter. We also attended all-school Mass at least once a month. I sang in the choir, as the apathy put forward by students in the congregation was just unbearable. Our Theology classes Freshman yearwere Old and New Testament; it was mostly a blur. The teacher was young, but frail. She was actually a very bad teacher; I’m not just saying that because she taught Theology. She was legitimately bad. As I was not yet versed in common atheist arguments against the God of the Old Testament, I just sat back and got an easy A. I enjoy studying religion, so I occasionally was interested by some of the philosophical arguments put forward, and asked many questions when I found something interesting. However, the highlight of Freshman year was my Biology teacher, whom I’ll call Jim. Jim was a native of Florida, and an ordained minister at a nearby Protestant church. He had a hilariously inflated ego, and frequently included pictures of his “beautiful wife” and “super-smart kids” in his lesson plans; he also thought he looked like Steve Austin, and showed us pictures of his college baseball days. It was well known that he often obtained his notes from Wikipedia, and he didn’t check our homework for correct answers, just completion. My best mate and I frequently filled his photocopied worksheets with smart-ass answers, the most famous being a rhyme we called “Beaches, Sneeches, Leeches, and Peaches” and a worksheet I filled entirely with characters from Watchmen; I got 100′s on both. Long story short, I could not respect him. When the class inevitably came to the subject of evolution, his position was vague. He acknowledged evolution within species, but he was obviously uncomfortable with the subject. Of course, since he was Christian and we were Christian, we got the talk from the point of view of intelligent design. Though, I must give him credit, he at least attempted to teach evolution objectively. Looking back, especially now that I have heard Hitchens demolish the notion of intelligent design and evolution, I realize that ultimately, ID and evolution are academically irreconcilable. Eventually, our class got on the subject of abortion (abortion was a very hot topic at school; many students were members of our school’s pro-life group). Actually, it was a surprisingly civil talk; my best mate and I were the only ones who were vocally pro-choice / pro-woman. We stood our ground well, and eventually resolved to agree to disagree. However, the one thing that irked me about the experience was that a very “pro-life”, very vocally Catholic girl (who already annoyed the living piss out of me anyway) obnoxiously muttered, “No, no, you’re wrong, life starts at conception, etc.” WHILE WE WERE TALKING, intentionally just loud enough for us to hear. My friend and I were polite and respectful while the “pro-lifers” argued their points, and she was just ridiculously disrespectful.

Sophomore year was interesting. I began to experience some depression because my ideas toward religion were becoming increasingly less apathetic and more “let’s stop some of this religious bullshit.” I was still determined to be somewhat Christian, because even though I didn’t know it was called Pascal’s Wager, I employed Pascal’s Wager; Hell scared me. I tried to find ways to accommodate my Christianity into my very liberal views; I even went so far as to Google “Christians who smoke weed.” Yep, it was that bad. It was during Sophomore year that I decided that I would graduate a year early; it was actually fairly simple, as all I had to do was finish my service hours. To my friends reading this, it’s time to come clean: religion played a huge role in my decision to graduate. It’s along the same lines of attending a Muslim school and having to keep quiet about your religion I also wanted to do it because I wanted to get to college, because I have no issues with knowing what I want to do in life. So, I began my graduation journey. No real hijinks occurred during the year, though it was the first year that I heard that not attending Sunday Mass was a mortal sin, and that I would be damned if I didn’t attend regularly; unfortunately, this came from one of my favorite teachers, a man named George. I went through some depression again, but never reached any severe lows.

That summer, I had an issue that hurt me deeply. My girlfriend (same one, whom I will not name out of respect for her privacy) began seeking a religion more conducive to her beliefs. She began attending the youth group run by a family friend at a local Protestant church. She really got into it, often praying in front of me, and becoming noticably religious. I didn’t have an issue with this; I was actually jealous, and halfway considered attending the youth group myself. However, after a few weeks, she told me she wanted to talk. We sat down, and she told me she wanted to talk about sex. Long story short, she told me she wanted to pull things back a bit. I said, “Ok, you want to wait to have sex,” being completely fine with the idea; we were sexually active, but didn’t actually have sex. She told me that she meant literally regressing to practically no sexual contact, except for kissing. That really hurt, because not only did I enjoy the intimacy, but it provided a physical representation of the love that we had for each other. Eliminating it just felt like a rejection of myself; cue the depression. However, the icing on the cake came in the form of ten phone calls at 3:30 in the morning. After I answered, I was greeted with the sounds of anger and crying. Turns out she had been cheating on me with a guy from the youth group. I wasn’t surprised; she had been hanging out with him often. Not wanting to be the suspicious boyfriend, I just let it happen, trying to control my jealousy. But I responded in the best way I could: I forgave her. I told her that we would talk about it when she was ready. Ultimately, things eventually got back to normal, and she stopped attending the youth group.

Junior (or rather, Senior) year was the year that I became an atheist. A few things led to the official acknowledgement of my atheism. For one, Theology this year was Church History and Church Vocations. Church History was not only dreadfully boring, but the teacher (a woman whose name I will not use out of respect) was so self-righteous in her teaching. She practically skipped the Inquisition, and she cheered the stories of the saints who demolished the idols and artifacts of “false religions” (redundant, I know). Quite frankly, some things she said were just downright ignorant and just… not ok. This continued until 2nd semester, which was Church Vocations. It was the biggest exercise in bullshit I have ever experienced; it actually hurts to think about it. We were taught about how women can’t be priests because they aren’t men and Christ was a man; we were taught that homosexual thoughts are disordered but not sinful, and homosexual acts are sinful AND disordered (an argument which I thoroughly destroyed); how the Catholic faith is the only true faith; honestly, it was the most hateful spew I have ever heard, wrapped up in the nicest package of supposed love and charity. Well, my true moment of awakening occurred one night in February (or January?) when I happened to catch a comedian by the name of Bo Burnham on Comedy Central; he was performing a stand up act called “Words, Words, Words.” I immediately fell in love with his sarcasm and double entendre. Then the show came to a point where he rapped about Catholicism and religion… and something just clicked. I researched his stuff online, and in searching his name, I came across references to Matt LaClair, which brought me to a transcript of the boy’s speech on a blog called the Friendly Atheist. As I read the words of LaClair, I realized that I could never support any religion. After I read the speech, I delved into the annals of Friendly Atheist. I loved everything I found; it resonated on such a personal level that I stayed up until 2 a.m. just reading and absorbing. As I decided to go to bed, I sat back and realized that I was an atheist. I immediately felt happy and fulfilled and assured and joyful and and and… just complete. Everything made sense. I was not depressed by the idea of not having an afterlife; in fact, I was imbued with a new desire to live every day of my life to the fullest. I realized then that atheism gives me the hope that religion gives to people of faith. I found a taste of true happiness in that moment.

The next few months saw some interesting changes. I became happier; I felt more outgoing and confident in who I was. I began to research scientific explanations for supposedly miraculous happenings, and found that there was a rational explanation for almost anything. It’s odd; although I was never particularly religious, let alone Catholic, I had some viewpoints and biases ingrained into my thought processes that I didn’t even notice we were there. I didn’t even know about the horrible and evil passages of the Bible, and I had never taken the time to think about just how much of an asshat the God of the Old Testament is. I had officially been successfully indoctrinated by the single most despicable entity in my world. I had to relearn how evolution and intelligent design are inherently conflicting. I read and read and learned and absorbed and became so fantastically enthralled by my discoveries of this new existence that atheism became my religion. Looking back, I understand why some people accuse atheism of being a religion. We have our idols and our prophets, whom some atheists follow… wait for it… religiously. The vast majority see them for what they are, but some take it too far and begin this weird idol worship that just seems odd and out of place. I understand that we need our sense of community and leadership, because atheism is as political and social as it is religious, but our strength is our rationality. Keeping things in perspective is what we’re supposed to be good at; that’s the only thing that’s going to keep this movement strong at all. Also, looking back, I see that I was evangelical in my atheism. I occasionally made the mistake of saying, “Hey, if you wanna check out this website, it’s great for learning about atheism!” I was the Jehovah’s Witness of atheism; in retrospect, it was a douche-y thing to do. It’s what many religious do – they find something that resonates with their psyche, and they assume that EVERYONE will resonate with the same concept in the same way. The fact is, different shit makes different people happy. No one has the right to enforce their particular version of happiness on anyone (unless that version includes good things like “eat food regularly” and “don’t stab people;” Those are invaluable) My best friend and I became closer. He considers himself an agnostic / nebulous believer in something, but he’s right brilliant, and he understands the atheist perspective on things. We often have hours-long talks about religion. However, I had a very odd moment of growing up one day. I posted my status on Facebook as something to the effect of, “I get to meet with the SSA :)” You know, something harmless and benign; nothing caustic or inflammatory at all. However, my mom asked me about it one morning, and when I told her the SSA was the local campus atheist group, she exploded. She accused me of trying to hurt my parents and intentionally being proud and arrogant. She bitched at me for days, screaming at me to take the post down. She had a very unreasonable reaction: she was worried my principal would prevent me from graduating because I was an atheist, and almost called him to let him know what I’d done. WHAT THE FUCK; that is not a healthy reaction. Looking back, I think the status flew in the face of her vision of being a perfect parent and that a belief in God was something she wanted to be able to say she had taught her children. She had a very rough childhood, and her mother was only nominally a parent; she was very distant. Anyway, so this personal hell (see what I did there?) went on for about a week until I caved. I fucking caved. I’m still mad at myself for doing it. I love my mother, but caving just made me feel spineless. It was odd though; my dad wasn’t angry, but it made him very emotional. He actually cried. Dad never cried. He cried, and I cried. I think it was an odd moment for him. His son was stepping away and making this decision, and he realized we legitimately didn’t agree on the subject. It was occurring to him that I was becoming a different person, and I imagine that’s an odd moment for a father. Since then, we haven’t really talked about religion, though I occasionally poke fun at the fact that they don’t attend Mass at all and pose the occasional question about religion to him or my mom. My mom doesn’t mention it, but she has pulled the “I bet you wish you had God NOW!” card when I have crises or when times get tough. I get pissed and call her out, and let her know that I didn’t really pray all that much when I thought I was religious, either.

So, my story is winding to an end; or rather, it’s just beginning. I’m studying Computer Science at the University of Illinois, and I’m constantly becoming more and more comfortable in my new skin. I participate in discussions when I can, I read ravenously, and I live the life of a seventeen year old on the verge of the most exciting years of his life. I thank any reader for making it this far, and I wish you the best in your lives, whoever you may be.

I guess that I have always felt godless. It was the pressure of family and friends that kept me in the belief system in which I was raised. It has been a long journey to where I am now. It includes spending time as: Episcoplian, Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism, Southern Baptist, Pentecostal, Roman Catholic, and my final godless status.

I am 13 years old, and I’m an atheist. I started thinking about religion after reading The Prophet of Yonwood when I was eleven. The book said something about one religion knowing they were right, and another religion knowing they were right too. When I turned twelve, I became an on and off atheist. I know this because I remember crying and asking god for forgiveness after getting an erection one night, lol. Anyway, for the second half of being twelve, I realized that there was, in fact no God. I then entered grade eight. I go to a Catholic school by the way. I keep utterly devastating my religion teacher’s arguments, and have turned at least one student atheist. I did this by showing sexism in the church among other things. I have only came out as an atheist to one of my friends, and he turned out to be very tolerant. I have not told anyone in my family yet because they are all psycho-Christians. I am also currently writing a book on atheism, which I will hope to publish (under a pseudonym of course) I really hope to be able to come out as an atheist to my family soon.

I was born into a Catholic family. My grandmother was the ‘influncer’ on all things religion-that is the reason my immediate family went to church every Sunday, I went to a private school, and went to Sunday school. I was always the troublemaker though. Diagnosed with ADHD when I was 3, I was constantly asking questions. My mind was always jumping around, wanting to know MORE. Do people who don’t know about Jesus go to heaven? Did the Noah Flood really happen? What about Adam and Eve? Unusually, I was told these stories were metaphors, not to be taken literally. Ironically, we did try to chart were the garden of Eden might have existed. Talk about hypocritical. So, when my immediate family moved to a different city about four hours away, we were away from the watchful eye of my grandmother. I started public school, my mom stopped making me go to church. When I asked why, she said that religion had been forced on her by my grandmother and did not want to do the same to me. My immediate family still believed in god, Jesus, etc. But did not read the bible, pray, or regularly attend church. It was a very secular household. I was also taught to be compassionate no matter how different someone was from you. When I was 14 I stopped going to church altogether, because I was being to doubt the literality of the bible. From that point on until I was about 22, I did not really think in terms of religion. I still kinda of believed in god, but I did not give too much thought to it. For awhile, I wondered what was wrong with me? I noticed that at my Catholic High School, many people believed but never mentioned god or religion. Those who did were labeled as religious and were not part of the popular crowd. I even remember reading a story at my Catholic High School about a woman who is about to die, and she is waiting for Jesus to come and take her to heaven, but Jesus never shows up. When I entered college, I cared more about ‘secular stuff’ more than philosophy. However, as a senior in college now, I have recently begun to read books such as the God Delusion and God is not Great. I have moved from apatheist to rationalist or secular humanist. I would label myself as Atheist, but open to new evidence, as many Atheists do. The reasons why I am an Atheist is way to long to mention, but the number one reason is that if you are going to make a claim, then you must have evidence for it. Without evidence, someone could say that I am really a man. However, the evidence points otherwise. This applies to religion. If the bible can not be true with regards to scientific matters (why would an all knowing god tell his ‘children’ that the sun revolves around the earth when it clearly does not? Is that a test? What a malevolent being then) I continue to challenge myself to ask questions and not be caught up in “well it fits my ideals so I should go along with it” I recognize that new evidence is discovered everyday, but so far, the evidence is in the other direction of religion. I wish everyone on the planet could see that.

Firstly, I should probably clarify that I grew up in Australia, and that I’m still only 18 years old, so this is all quite recent.

My parents raised me I an environment sort of outside of religion. I knew it existed, vaguely, but didn’t really know much about it. Whenever I asked my parents if they were religious they always responded that my grandparents were, which I always took to mean that they were, too; it took me a long time to decode that sneaky misdirection.

One of my first experiences with religious belief in real life was in primary school in around year four or so. I asked my friends what they believed happened to them after they died and declared that I believed in a form of reincarnation, without the notion of karma – when you die, you black out, and then wake up again as some other random new person. One of my friends said she believed in Heaven. I thought this was downright fascinating. Really? People believed in Heaven in real life? I’d always thought that was just something people did on TV, like how in American TV shows you would always see those fire hydrants, or how kids in TV shows were always going out and kissing and stuff like my friends and I never did. It was completely honestly the first time I had ever met someone in real life who believed in Heaven.

My next exposure occurred when I was in year five. My parents planned me to go to a Catholic high school, beginning in year 6. I should clarify that religious high schools sort of worked differently where I lived. There were basically three different kinds of schools you could send your kids to – public schools, which were cheap but not very good, secular private schools, which were wonderful but expensive as hell, and catholic schools, which were somewhat expensive, but not prohibitively so, and of pretty good quality. So it wasn’t like some kind of cultish school where all the students were from fundie families – I knew heaps of people at school who were agnostics or atheists like me. It wasn’t a big thing at all. (Of course, my primary school was public.) It was sort of a sign of my family’s utter apathy to religion that my grandparents on my mother’s side were ostensibly Irish protestants and yet they never had a single objection to me going to a Catholic school.

So, anyway, that was the next time I really encountered religion. I had to have an interview with the vice principal before I entered. Beforehand, my mother took me aside and murmured that if they asked I should say that I went to church once a week. Nowadays I’m not certain that she was entirely serious but at the time I took her at her word. And it confused me. I had no idea why I would say that I went to church when I didn’t. What was the point? I just didn’t understand at all. In the end, the subject never came up, and I got into the school.

Of course, the school still was Catholic, so there were some religious things. Every morning in homeroom we’d say prayer, although in later years we didn’t have to participate if we didn’t want to and honestly kids just mostly used it as an excuse to dely the beginning of classes anyway. Once a term we would have a whole school mass which we would have to attend, but we weren’t obliged to do the prayers or take the eucharist. And we had some religious education classes, but not many, and they ended up being general motivational or philosophy classes just as often.

In the beginning, I just basically went along with it all. I said the prayers and did the sign of the cross. (Once the teacher made us do it over because I’d done it with my left hand which apparently wasn’t allowed!) I took the eucharist. I didn’t question any of it, but neither did I really pay attention to any of it.

In year eight, I was in one of those classes. My earlier apathy had morphed into something more like irritation, and I was pretty scornful at the idea of spending so much time on religion. But it never really occurred to me that I didn’t believe in it until one day. We were studying something in RE class that couldn’t be justified. It wasn’t philosophy. It wasn’t motivational. It wasn’t even interesting. It was something along the lines of the places St. Peter went to preach the gospel – something completely unnecessary to non-Christians and almost completely unnecessary even to those. (Funnily enough, the class was taught by the same vice principal I’d had an interview with it before!) I was just sitting in class one day complaining mentally about how ridiculous this class was when it hit me – I wasn’t Christian. It sounds stupid that it took me so long but I’d honestly never thought about it. My parents said my grandparents were Christian so they were, right? So I…well, no, that didn’t make me Christian. I’d never thought I was. I had, quite genuinely, NEVER thought about it.

So for a while I kinda lived as a quiet atheist. I made fun of the stupider aspects of religion, but so did my Catholic best friend. Like I said, there, it was kind of a non-issue. But, unfortunately, that was not the end of my story.

Some time a little after that I discovered Wicca. I was always very interested in fantasy and the idea of magic, so I fell in love with it instantly. I say ‘the idea of magic’ deliberately, because while I loved reading and talking about it, the actual depth of my belief was…limited. It was one of those strange things where I liked the idea of it so I pretended that it was true, dismissing as irrelevant the fact that I didn’t really believe in it. On one level I was aware, I think, but I never admitted it outright. And my disbelief showed itself in other places. I’d to psychic tests and routinely get completely unremarkable results. I would get tarot cards whose findings beared no relation to reality whatsoever. I’d cast spells that would have no effect. And I never really went out of my way to do any of the above – although I claimed to believe in all this sort of woo, when it actually came to casting spells, nine times out of ten I couldn’t be bothered. If I truly believed that these things worked, wouldn’t I have tried harder to use and rely on them? I’m grateful I didn’t, however. I hear many stories about completely sane and rational people being taken up by this sort of thing due to all sorts of fallacies like confirmation bias, and while I’m not sure why I didn’t ever really get taken by that I’m glad I didn’t.

So I just sort of drifted away from it. I read it for a while and declared I was Wiccan. But, no, that wasn’t a proper ceremony – I’d do one on the next festival. Oh, wait, I forgot. Well, the next one. Ahh, but, my family’s home tonight and if I disappeared for a while they’d ask why and it’d be embarrassing to explain. (See? Even then I kind of got that the belief was stupid.) Next time. Oh, but now it’s too late, and I really wanted to do it outside… And so it goes.

And that’s really how I became an atheist – I just sort of drifted out of Wicca. For a while after my parents would occasionally bring it up but soon I guess it became obvious I was no longer interested.

But my real first contact with the atheist community came in year ten. A year or so earlier I’d seen a book while glancing through the philosophy section of a bookshop – ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins. It seemed very popular, and it immediately attracted my interest for saying outright something I’d believef for a long time. However, I was too embarrassed to ask for it, so I just sort of let it go. But in year 10 I did work experience at a library, and on one of my breaks I came across that book and decided to read it while I ate my lunch. It was so interesting! There were so many ideas I’d never heard of! (To give an idea of how truly sheltered I was, when Dawkins mentioned the argument against evolution about it being ‘statistically improbable’ that this could happen by chance, I grimaced and acknowledged that this was something I’d wondered about myself!) And I’d never even realized there was such a controversy about all of this! By this stage I was a lot more aware of the Christian majority and my place with regards to it, but all these stories about what it was like for atheism in America was just horrible! What appealed to me most of all, though, I think, was how logical it was. I had always valued intelligence and rationality, but to find an entire movement – one I had agreed with for basically my entire life – devoted to it was, well, incredible. I was hooked!

Somehow, I ended up searching atheism on the internet as well and came across Ebon Musings, a website devoted to essays on atheism. This was even better, if possible! The arguments here were just so logical, so well-structured, so irrefutable, it was like a breath of fresh air! Even now if I ever feel myself overwhelmed by the anti-intellectualism of the world I can just re-read one of Ebon’s articles and remember that yes, the world is still good in places.

As for how I came out to my parents, I’m not totally sure, but I think it goes back to my mum finding The God Delusion in my backpack and asking about it. I think she was a little impressed, and became quite interested in reading it, too. After that it was like the unwritten rule of silence was broken and we all discussed atheistic ideas pretty openly, with the possible exception of my younger brother who honestly just seemed apathetic about the entire subject. My friends probably just found out in the natural order of things, as I did about their religious leanings, and that was that.

And now? I follow several atheist blogs and am proud to consider myself a member of the atheist community. My atheist identity is very important to me, as are my skeptic, humanist, and rationalist identities. I had an extremely good experience in coming to see myself as an atheist and out myself to others, and for that I’m very, very grateful. I only wish that every atheist could have had a childhood like mine. (Except maybe for the painfully boring RE lessons, maybe?)

I was baptized when I was a baby at a Catholic church. Besides that I rarely went to church. I considered my dad and mom non-practicing Catholics, at that time. When I did go to church it was with my grandmother. So, I just believed because that is what I was told and never thought to question it. When I was ten my mom and dad decided to get divorced. My mom remarried and I have two brothers. My dad also remarried and I have two more brothers. I have the two best step-parents I think I could ever have. So my life changed big time when I was about twelve. My step-mom was a practicing Methodist. From not going to church I was now getting up early every Sunday and going to church. Now for a twelve year old that was hard (I did not like getting up early). We went to a Methodist church sometimes I listened to the ministers and sometimes I fell asleep. But I still believed; I had no reason not to. My step-mom taught me The Lord’s Pray and said it every night. I started to pray at night too, for the usual things a fourteen year old prays for. Help on test in school, for the other school kids not to pick one me, for that girl in my class to like me and for my family to get rich. So when I failed the test and the kids still picked on me and that girl did not want anything to do with me and my family never got rich. I thought maybe I should not be praying for things that I wanted so I prayed for other people. Like for peace, to help the homeless and hungry, to stop all the evil in the world. When God did nothing that is when I started to question my beliefs. So I started to ask God to show me a sign that he was there and listening to me and nothing happen. But I still believed because that was what I was told even though in science class I learned that that Sun was a yellow dwarf star and that rain is from evaporated water. Not God and angels pouring water form barrels in the sky. Then I was taught the theory of evolution and that everything evolved over 4.5 billion years. So to me religion did not make sense. So for the next ten years I did not believe, but was not sure. Only, until I was twenty-six when my best friend suddenly died, it was the hardest thing in my life so far. I realized that I will never see him again, because I believed there was no heaven. So I started to do research on all religions to find my own answers. To be honest I wanted to find the answers and evidence FOR religion but could not found any. I read stuff on both sides and also lessened to people on both sides on the internet and in person. I even read stuff out of the Bible; there is some going stuff in there. Like the golden rule, treat others as you would like to be treated. For being the word of God there is a lot of bad stuff like murder, rape, incest, torture and hate in there too. Even stuff that is taught to be good but if you truly understand the story it is not so good I am talking about the story of Noah’s Ark and that is just one. My skepticism did not stop at God. I ask for evidence for everything now. I don’t believe in a lot of superstitions things but what I do believe in is living the life you have in front of you, it’s all you have and it is short. Be a good person and family will always be there.

“Searching for atheism is not what led me to be an atheist, searching for the truth is what led me to be an atheist.”

Like most Americans and people around the world I grew up being taught the ways of a specific religion. I am a confirmed Roman Catholic, however if this could be removed I would, and attended Sunday school and various “required” religious studies until my confirmation. Although I was always skeptical about the idea of an all knowing all seeing “thing” up there I did believe. I believed because that’s what I was told for so long and by so many people. When we are young we will believe anything and I did. Now, as I am older and undoubtedly wiser, studying biology in my senior year of college I have almost no doubt that we, as in life as a whole, are alone with no superior entity controlling or observing us. I can’t say for certain that there is nothing because if studying science has taught me anything it is that anything is possible no matter how improbable. Therefore we must look to evidence, and all evidence that I have encountered points away from the idea of intelligent design. I only wish that the majority of the modern world would recognize this. Religions, although many do good things such as charity and fund-raising, are unnecessary and often disruptive to the path we must lead. I am an atheist and I donate to charities and organizations regularly (I don’t need a religious organization to guilt me into it). I believe that the beliefs of most people, that there is something higher looking over us and a place to go after we die, is preventing this world from surviving and thriving on in a prosperous manner. Take example probably the biggest problem facing humanity (although nobody wants to admit it). There is an environmental crisis; we are in the midst of a mass extinction as we lose a species every 20 minutes, climate change threatens ecosystems and civilizations as accessible fresh water is either disappearing in some places or causing flooding in others, habitat destruction as we kill our rain forests at an acre a second is destroying the lungs of our planet. Our seas are nearly empty of large predators (the fish we eat) and on the verge of collapse. Why then is nobody worried? Well I shouldn’t say nobody because I am and I know many of you are as well. So why are most not worried? Because, I quote my uncle “I am not worried about all this environmental stuff like global warming and extinction, because God wouldn’t let that happen” This was one of the scariest things I have ever heard. Putting your faith in an imaginary super-being to prevent life on this planet from disappearing. Please, I beg all those who ignore evidence and reason for blind faith, to open your eyes and start to make changes!

My story is a fairly boring one, and it mostly starts with my Mom’s story…
Basically, I was born to a 19-year-old mother who was a part of the Catholic church her whole life. She was devout, loved church and she had jumped through all the hoops, so to speak. (First Communion, etc.) But when she had me out of wedlock, she was immediately shunned from the church and her mother – my Grandmother – still holds unspoken judgments. My mom was confused and saddened that the church she had grown up in, the church she had treasured and loved, and even her own mother would throw her away because of something so victimless. She couldn’t find any logic in it. It was this push away from the Catholic church that paved the way for my free-thinking!

While raising me, my parents completely left out religion. I wasn’t exposed to any of my mother’s religious upbringing, nor was I exposed to my father’s stark Atheism – Although, I think it found its way through! ;) I went to church with my Grandma a few times when I was little, but that was mostly for the guaranteed breakfast afterwards. Growing up in California, it was easy to avoid religion in school, with my friends, anywhere. I feel very lucky for that.

When I moved to Colorado at the beginning of high school, I started going to a non-denominational Christian youth group. This was mostly just for the friends I had that went there. And while the loitering and hanging out with my friends was always a blast, the service was always totally uncomfortable. I remember feeling so worked up by all the live music and speaking in tongues that I totally see how the religious could buy into it… But instead, it just drove me away.

The rest, as they say, is history. Coming out as an Atheist to my parents was easy in that I didn’t really have to do it… They’ve always sort of known and my Dad is a stark Atheist, as I said before. I have a few close members of my extended family who are free-thinkers and the rest of my family… Well, we don’t talk about religion much. :P

I’ve heard and read many stories from people who have given up religion, this is mine.

Looking back on my life I was lucky to have been raised in a free thinking, relatively religion free household. Both of my parents had been raised in pretty strict catholic families. My dad was an atheist and my mom was only moderately religious. The only time I ever went to church was when I went with my grandparents around Christmas and Easter. I was never particularly religious but I did pray to “god” on occasion. My parents never tried to get me to believe a certain way so any religious beliefs I held were because I chose to. When I was a teenager my maternal grandmother became very ill and developed Alzheimer’s. Now keep in mind that my grandmother was strict Irish catholic and devoted much of her free time to her church. Near the end of her life her Alzheimer’s became so severe that she couldn’t use the toilet on her own nor could she walk or talk. I went with my mom to visit my grandma one day and as I stood there looking at how much my god fearing grandmother had deteriorated I wondered, “If “God” is so loving and caring why is he allowing one of his devout followers to die in such a horrible way?” “Why couldn’t she have retained use of her faculties and just fall asleep one night and never wake up?” Soon after that I began questioning the existence of a higher power and as I got older I dismissed religion altogether. The godless life is truly the good life!

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.