(Via Inversionmaster)
My story is probably not that interesting (until the more recent stuff) since I was never a believer. I vaguely recall kindergarten Sunday school and having doubts about the creation story. My family attended church off and on, due to my mother’s prodding. Mom might be considered Christian-lite and my dad is probably a weak agnostic. As a boy, I recall going to weekend cub scout event but if you didn’t attend the really wishy-washy church service you had to help in the kitchen (it was more fun anyway!). I left out “under god” during the Pledge in school (nobody noticed). A few years later, my mom made me attend confirmation classes but I thought it was a bunch of nonsense. Shortly after that we switched to a more modern Episcopal church where the minister would occasional swear and I even joined the choir (good snacks!). Too busy or not interested in church during high school. As a college student I never attended church but had a couple of strange experiences with the “faithful”. There was the student down the hall who sent 10% of his financial aid to the church and I remember thinking that was just wrong. There was a fundie classmate who was into the whole young earth creationist thing. This kind of blew me away since we were both in the cell and molecular biology program at a large research university. He refused to answer questions dealing with evolution and even showed me his exams with the zeros. I respected his determination but not the arguments. Up until this point I would probably consider myself a weak agnostic, other than a few run-ins with these characters, religion just had little impact on my life.
In graduate school I met a woman who was catholic. She was not that hard-core, though there were a couple of things she was strict about like not missing church and Lent. I cheerfully followed along, perhaps feeling like I did something “good” by attending church. After a couple of years dating, we married and had two beautiful, intelligent kids. Slowly the Catholicism was replaced by fundamentalist protestant Christianity. It started with a Bible study class which lead to Sunday *night* services and sometimes Wednesday prayer meetings, AWANA, Vacation Bible Study and other stuff. Our library is filled with books by CS Lewis, James Dobson, Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell and related ilk. I attend Sunday morning service but have made it clear that it is only to “keep the peace”. All of our friends are church members, so it is hard to develop more than superficial friendships. I can only protest in silly little ways; by *not* singing at church, *not* bowing my head during prayer in church, small contributions to the collection plate (to pay for the air) despite several pleas that god will bless us if we cough up 10%. I’ve told my wife she is free to get a job to pay her 10% but she is so tied up with bible studies that won’t happen. In an odd way this has made me much more liberal on many issues. We don’t attend any charismatic churches and I have told her that there will be serious problems if she moves in that direction.
So we have this impasse. I don’t know if religion has helped my wife become a fantastic mother but on other hand I know it has mediocre wife. To be fair, she probably feels the same way about me. We both know that if things were done all over again under the current conditions we never would have had a second date, so yeah, valentine’s and anniversaries are a bit awkward.
As my children are approaching the end of their high school years they will be under less influence from their mother. There are several looming issues pertaining to college. Their mother has really played up very conservative colleges. I fear attending one of these schools will lock them into a network of like-minded peers, alienating me even further. At this point, the kids have what they think of as a strong faith, is it my job to tear that down? This is a very difficult position, whether a secular or christian university, one parent is going to be disappointed. So in some ways I hope my story is a bit of warning to those consider being “unequally yoked”. From what I’ve observed, people tend to get more conservative in their religious views as time goes on, especially when children are involved.
(Via Poodles)
Sometimes memes can give you some motivation to write about something that should have been written a long time ago.
I think deconversion stories are important. I think they can be helpful to those rolling on the edge of atheism, scared or uncomfortable to take those last steps. The internet is a great tool for people looking for like minds and helpful information; I wish it had been around when I was reverting back to my birth state of atheism.
So, since I am “slow like that” sometimes, here is my story of losing religion.
I was born an atheist, in a catholic hospital here in Salt Lake City. Shortly thereafter I was taken to New York, where my family is from, to be baptized into the Catholic Church. I have godparents and all. My mom has never been baptized anything, my grandmother is a non practicing Episcopalian, and I don’t know what my father was. I grew up going to church with my Italian grandfather. I was a very good catholic. I went to church, I went to catechism, I studied hard, I passed my tests and I did my first communion. I sang in the choir (really I can’t sing, I kinda feel bad for them for that). I said my prayers every night “now I lay me…” and I paid the money my grandfather gave me to put in the basket.
During my youth, since my mom wasn’t stuck on one religion she let me go to Sunday school and church with my Mormon friends sometimes too. That was one religion I always found loony, but entertaining.
Around the time I was to start preparing for my confirmation I had mostly stopped going to church. Pretty much because I was too lazy to spend my Sunday doing that.
When I got to high school in the late 80’s I had a friend who began asking me about the Catholic Church. He became interested in converting to Catholicism and he wanted me to help him. I knew this meant I would need to get confirmed. I began that road, it included a lot of reading, including, finally the bible, cover to cover, not because the church wanted me to, they really didn’t, but because it was important to me. Somewhere along the way, I started reading the road signs. Not the big jesus billboards they want you to see, but the little sticks with the mile numbers on them. I finally had to tell my friend that I wouldn’t help him because I couldn’t be catholic any more, it didn’t make any rational sense.
I then began a search to find out who and what I was. I went to many churches and studied many different religious texts. Not a one of them struck me as “real”. I continued my journey on into college, pretty sure by this time I was an agnostic at least.
In my last years of high school and early college, I fell in with the “Goth” crowd. We went to the local “Goth” hang outs (The Ritz, The Palladium and others). There my journey took me on a tour of Wiccan. My best girlfriend is a witch. I have spoken of her here. In the end though I thought that crap too. My best guy friend is a gay return LDS missionary, nothing like a little diversity.
During college, part of my studies included history and how it related to theater. That got me turned on to studying how religion and history related to each other.
I finally got it.
I knew I was an atheist by this time, and I finally got why. It was like a huge light bulb had been turned on. I understood why we have religion and how it was once a necessary evil that helped people try to explain the unexplainable in the only way they knew, but that it was never real or true. Now though, we know how the sun rises and how earthquakes occur, I am still in awe at how religion is still so important in our society, and continues. Money and power perhaps.
I met my husband my last year of school. We met at a birthday party for a mutual friend. We had nothing in common, except we cared for each other. There were two things I had to be clear with him from the beginning if ours was a relationship that would work, I was an atheist and wouldn’t change that, and I didn’t want children and wouldn’t change that either, so if he had a problem with either of those he was barking up the wrong tree.
We got married in April 1996. It was important to him to get married in the Catholic Church (because it was important to his parents). I could pretend; (um, hello, theater major). Since I had once been baptized in the church it was pretty easy, surviving the weekend long marriage retreat at the nunnery was not. It involved a lot of eye rolling and tongue biting.
Then came the wedding. Every god promise that was made had my girlfriends in my line giggling; I still think I owe them for that.
Sometime after that I told my family what I was. I didn’t sit them down or anything, it just kind of “came up”. My grandmother still thinks that it isn’t possible to be an atheist because “everyone believes in god” and my grandfather is in denial. My mom doesn’t really give a rat’s ass. It just isn’t worth arguing about with them.
I am like most atheists I know, in person and online, we are good people. We pay our taxes, we take care of our families, we donate to charity and we do these things in the name of Jesus Christ amen. Oh no wait, sorry Mormon Church flash back for a moment. We do these things not from fear of a deity that isn’t really there, or because if we don’t, Santa won’t come and give us presents. We do them because it is good for society, and it is good for ourselves. Our lives like any other can be snuffed out in a moment. We know there isn’t anything else, so we have to make this time great.
(Via Pink Atheist in Albuquerque)
I broke my mother’s heart in 1995.
I remained chaste and virginal until the age of 27. Hard to believe, I know. But for all of my sexually mature life, I had harbored the secret that “dare not speak its name”. At least, that’s what it was called a long time ago. I didn’t have horrible parents from a fundamentalist religious background. In fact, I was baptized and confirmed a cradle Episcopalian: one of the more progressive members of the protestant family (or it used to be). I was even from Dallas, which though in conservative Texas, is still a pretty hip metropolitan area. But in March of 1995, inexplicably, it was time. It was time to end the lies and be honest about who I am, and possibly be hated for it, rather than loved for who I am not. So, in a period of a week, I came out to everyone. Friends, family, cashiers at the grocery store…ok, I hope I wasn’t that bad…but it was a huge burden lifted, and I was happy about it.
As time passed, I got a partner, we adopted a son, and we all attended MCCA. I loved the fellowship of the people there, and I was happy to make my partner happy by attending. But deep inside, I knew as I always had, that I was yet again a liar and a fraud. I was pretending to be a believer in God, though I never really had been.
I grew up thinking of church as a place to go be uncomfortable in dress clothes, and to have potlucks. If the nonexistent god can be thanked for anything it is for deviled eggs, despite the irony in the name. These are the things I miss about church, and I wonder sometimes if the reason so many still cling to church is exactly because of that…we have become strangers to one another in our neighborhoods, and church is now the socio-worship center. I probably think too much, though.
In 2002, I embraced my atheism internally. But I realized that the price I would pay for coming out atheist would be further isolation from the remaining friends and family who had stuck by me the first time I came out. I was also unsure how my partner would take it. He eventually showed me his Christian nature by cheating and walking out on me and our son for a teenage meth addict, then dragging the druggie to church, I guess to ask for forgiveness from god. Knowing I needed no god to be the moral person I was, I decided that it was time to move on. I quit attending church in the summer of 2003. I miss some of the people there.
As time has passed, I found more confidence in who I am, but I have found that the coming out process as an atheist has been slower. I found the Brights, and discovered a like-minded group of people with a much more positive attitude than I have ever considered for atheists. I eventually had the Bright logo modified a bit and tattooed on my left arm. My mom has seen it, and all i told her was that it is a “sunrise from space, symbolizing the age of enlightenment”. Technically, that’s true. But I left the deeper meaning out of the conversation. She would never try to have an exorcism performed on me, or disown me, but she would spend many more sleepless nights than she already does praying for my “soul”. Unless she finds out inadvertently, she will never know this secret.
I won’t break my mother’s heart again.
(Via Ungodly Cynic)
I grew up pretty much secular/agnostic, but essentially went with the flow growing up. Looking back, I remember reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in school (public) and now resent it. I never gave any thought to religion or spirituality until I started doing drugs (namely LSD) in college (Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale). I’ll add that I haven’t traveled down that road in quite a long time.
Religion was always a non-issue up until that point.
I’ve dabbled in mostly new age and pagan stuff; Wicca and Qabala for the most part. With all seriousness I was considering Qabala to be a system I could believe in, down to getting the robes, athame, and accessories. Then, I met my wife and all that dwindled away being replaced by agnosticism.
My in-laws are church-goers and I went to Christmas with them for a few years (Methodist). I didn’t care for it and knew it was a bunch of crap, my wife knew I felt that way, but I just didn’t care about church. It didn’t matter whether I went or not. I was just there.
Later, the in-laws decided they wanted to change their denomination to Episcopal (after some “goings-on” within the Methodist church there). My wife wasn’t happy. She wasn’t angry, she just didn’t like the change. Anyway, there was a little bit of friction regarding this “change”. Needless to say it all kinda ticked me off, I guess because of the whole situation in general, and I said, “To hell with all of it, no more.”
Since. I have only gone to church once, and that was a Christening, which I would not attend today. Note: I had not “come out” to anybody yet, but only in general conversations whereas I never said: “I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in God.”
A couple years down the road my father-in-law is over and we are partaking of some beers (I rather enjoy having a few beers with him and discussing politics and current events). Most of what I remember is just flat out telling him “I’m an atheist. I don’t believe…”, after getting into some debate about a secular issue. His answer was “I feel sorry for you.” My retort: “I feel sorry for you.” And I honestly do. That was the first time I ever came “out” and told somebody. Him and I are still on speaking terms and we still love to engage in political discussions. He’s pretty open-minded about that. Though he’ll never change his stance as a true-blue Blue Dog Democrat.
I might add that the whole religious issue arising within the political spectrum in the run-up to the 2000 presidential election really got me riled up. This prompted me to find out what these particular people stood for. And I found dirty truths that drove me further to disregard such jack-asses and…to tell the truth, this (religion and politics/separation of church and state), above all else drives me ideologically.
NOT whether a god exists or not, I could give a rat’s ass about that debate. I get so incensed reading blogs written by ex-Christians debating with Christians about the existence of god. What the hell is to be proven? Or disproven? One thing remains untouchable: faith. If one wants to believe in some fairy-tale, then so be it. One other thing remains untouchable: Don’t frickin’ shove it down my throat. Because I am free to believe what the hell I damn well please to believe.
Sorry, getting heated. Why am I getting heated? Because Christians (and I am lumping them altogether) do not see the cultural implications. They don’t see that the “foundation” of religion has influenced almost every aspect of society. That their inaction and complacency enables the problems that arise from putting trust into the hands of “faithful” politicians. I don’t know how to put it any other way. When our president starts speaking in code about a “crusade”, that should tell you something unless your brain-dead about history. When our dumb-ass president says “I looked into his eyes and saw a kindred spirit.” (speaking of Putin), the same man who said “I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.” Who does he think he is? The messiah? Seems some people do.
(Via Alexis)
I never went looking to become an atheist. I went to a Christian and Missionary Alliance church in St. Pete., Florida from as early as I could remember, singing “Jesus Loves the Little Children, All the Children of the World, Red and Yellow Black and White, They are Precious in His Sight…” While I am glad the song helped make me non-bigoted, now I realize it was a call for us to send missionaries all over the world and CONVERT these little children, whether they needed it or not. We’d tiptoe past the big church” where the grownups sang songs like “How Great Thou Art.” It was the late fifties and I wore dresses every week – I was shocked once that a girl wore a skirt and blouse instead of a dress. In the summer I loved the arts and crafts part of Vacation Bible School.
The first flash of light came when I was looking at a plaque on a bedroom wall in my house, saying “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and Thou Shalt Be Saved.” BELIEVE? BELIEVE? I was about seven, and had thought everything told me in Sunday School was FACT. Things seemed less certain.
I kept going to Sunday School, to keep my mother happy. Then came a Sunday School evening taffy pull, when I was nine. The teacher boiled up the taffy mix and we got to take turns pulling it. Things got weird; I don’t remember exactly what the teacher did, but she must have set this up – we had never been taught anything anti-Catholic, only vaguely knew who the Pope was, and certainly didn’t know anything about ring-kissing. The group of kids dressed one boy up as the Pope and put him on a “throne.” I was blindfolded and told to kiss his ring. I bent over an d kissed it, and everyone screamed with laughter. I pulled off the blindfold and found out he was wearing the ring on his toe. I just melted into the crowd and didn’t say anything, but I never felt safe again – my feeling was why did they pick ME, who never said anything skeptical or bad. I never attended that church again, and some of the kids, who went to my school, never asked me why I quit. I think they knew.
I found Isaac Asimov and watched science and nature shows on television. I decided I was an atheist, and stopped saying the “under God” part of the Pledge of Allegiance. I remember a Jehovah’s Witness boy in our class who would stand each day, like he was in front of a firing squad, and NOT say a word of the pledge. Everyone left him alone – I think they were afraid he would try to convert them if they even talked to him. To this day I have respect for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, partly because they gave ME, the closeted atheist, cover. My other little joke was, when we were FORCED to recite the Lord’s Prayer, I’d say under my breath, “My father, who AIN’T in heaven.” To this day I would fight any forced prayer in school. It’s intimidation. I read the entire Bible, like I read the Iliad and the Odyssey, as classic mythological fiction, but I wouldn’t have dreamed of publicly arguing for atheism. I was too young, I didn’t have any skeptical framework, and it was too dangerous to argue about the contradictions of scripture.
Our next door neighbor, a year older than me, knew I didn’t go to church and, obeying the commandment to haul in lost souls, dragged me to Southern Baptist church a few times. It was so colorless and preachy I couldn’t get into it. She also got me to go to “Pioneer Girls” weekly meetings at a nearby Methodist Church where we did rugged things like make frilly aprons. I remember being shocked by the painting of Jesus in the church hallway, because in previous churches it was one of the Ten Commandments to have no “graven images.” Somehow I babbled some excuses and escaped these outings without having to declare “I am an Atheist.” I found out decades later that this girl’s father had an affair with his wife’s brother’s wife, who lived next door, and this produced a boy. So my friend was half-sister and first cousin to the same boy, yet her family was so snobby about being tight with God.
In home economics at age fifteen, I got cornered. My four or five girl partners in cooking class would take turns saying a prayer, and finally it was my turn. I remember the triumphant glare one girl gave me. Out of sheer fear, I closed my eyes and said the only prayer I could remember “God is great; God is good, now we thank you for our food.” And then I never had to pray again. I was racked with guilt and shame over being such a coward and betraying my own integrity.
At 15, I went into an eclectic phase. I took up yoga and astrology, which worried my mother, though I had perfect grades and no vices, so she mostly left me alone.
My mother started getting depression when I was sixteen, so to cheer her up, on Mother’s Day, I started going to an Assembly of God church. It was growing rapidly from a few hundred to HUGE. I sang in the choir with bemused enjoyment, like I was an anthropologist. The choir director was the pastor’s wife, blonde and perfect. Once while in the choir the person next to me started breathing wildly, then leapt to her feet and spoke in tongues. The pastor stopped his sermon and everyone watched, rapt. She finished and slumped back into her chair, while congregation voices said “Praise God,” and “Thank You, Jesus.” I went to teen Sunday School classes in my little dresses, my two main memories being a gory description of the crucifixion, and being embarrassed that I’d forgotten to save my legs. On a church outing to a go-kart park, we were in a great mood on the bus ride home. I watched wide-eyed as the two youth leaders did side-splitting impersonations of the pastor and his wife, and they showed us how you could sing “Amazing Grace” (Which was THE song of that congregation) to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun,” and vice versa I got to see a wild fundraiser where the pastor gave an electrifying sermon and then people jumped up to give THOUSANDS for a new sanctuary. As I left (with relief) for college, a new sanctuary was rising, and the pastor was found guilty of adultery. The place is now a mega-church.
In college I continued with yoga and tried transcendental meditation and tai chi. I still like them for the physical benefits. After college I started reading New Age Journal and even believed in that old fraud, Yuri Geller.
When I had children I felt compelled to take them to the closest church, an Episcopalian. I was enchanted by the ritual and the music, and the hands-off attitude that as long as you did the ritual, nobody was going to get into your face about what you really believed. I had both of my children baptized, figuring it would save them having to undergo the intrusion of an adult baptism if they married someone who cared about such thing. I thought being a Christian was still a worthwhile thing even if I had trouble with faith. I felt second class in the church, because my husband refused to go, and I couldn’t contribute much money. I contributed by teaching Sunday School, and had lots of arts-and-crafts projects for the kids – the kind I loved when I was a kid. I became resentful when some of the parents would NEVER teach Sunday school because they were “too shy,” as the religious education director put it. The real reason seemed to be because they were big contributors and they felt it was somebody else’s job to do lowly things like teach. The first grade boys especially were a difficult handful, and I didn’t like being alone every week, but at least the five-year-olds and up got to spend a few Sundays inside the big church which gave me a break. Each week we’d take the kids to a children’s chapel for a little service and try to keep the boys from crawling under the pews and laughing. I also didn’t like overhearing one of the teachers stressing how it was the Jews who crucified Jesus. The last year I was there, I taught four-year-olds, who never had a Sunday when they went straight into the big church, so I taught every Sunday from September to June with no help and no Sundays off. I only got to meet the equally overworked Sunday School teacher moms (there NEVER were dads) from other grades. I felt socially shut off from the rich moms and non-parents who of course could network all they wanted in the big church. Once a year I was able to lead the four year olds into the big church, on Palm Sunday, with all the children proceed behind a big pretty cross. I led my little lambs, waving palms as the congregation sang “All honour power and glory, to thee Redeemer King,” and felt a bit of acknowledgment. It wasn’t enough.
The final shaft of light hit when I read a book called “Orpheus,” an old skeptical history of religion, which pointed out that Jesus was only known to one historian of his era, as a leader of a rebellion, and that even Josephus wasn’t telling the whole truth. I then realized I just wasn’t ANY kind of Christian anymore. I moved to a Unitarian Church, which finally felt like home, since atheists go there happily. Even my husband was willing to go, and my kids were happy there. Every parent had to help teach, so I got lots of Sundays free to go the the big church and enjoy the sermon and fellowship. When I did teach, I had a second teacher in the room. The kids were much better behaved than in the Episcopalian Sunday School. Nobody ever laughed out of turn, or jumped up or crawled under the seats in Unitarian children’s chapel. We got to teach comparative religion, where when the kids ask why the Hindu’s don’t eat beef, I’d ask the kids questions like why don’t Americans eat horse meat, while the French do? I felt really free and enjoyed all the kid’s fund-raisers for Heifer Project, cleaning homeless shelters, and other worthy causes.
The public library in my town finally subscribed to “Skeptic” magazine, and it knocked my socks off. Finally, I could get back to my early love, science, and just leave the whole “supernatural” stuff behind entirely. We moved west, and I stopped going to church entirely. Now I read skeptic sites and science, always science.
My brother joined Scientology in the 1970’s and is still in there. He disconnected from my mother and sister and then recently disconnected from me, probably because I wouldn’t break off from my own mother and sister. His daughter is an underpaid middle manager in the Church of Scientology and looks twenty years older than her real age. The ideas and insights of skeptics have helped me focus my thoughts as I frequently post anonymously to anti-Scientology sites like www.xenu.net.
I utterly respect the solitary soul-searching that goes on in pre-teens and teens, and that often leads to atheism. The Alliance Church children sang “The Wise Man Built His House Upon a Rock.” This impressed me to choose house sites carefully, but also to found my arguments on fact, not mush. I want schools and parents to respect the search for natural truth, and not treat children as blank slates that will believe if you stuff more and more and more dogma down their throats, and if you forever protect them from any skeptical knowledge. I was never looking for skepticism when the shafts of light hit me. I found doubt with that first plaque that said “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ” that really started me saying, “Why do I have to BELIEVE?” The contradictions of religion just CREATE millions like me, young people who learn to doubt all by themselves. Like sunlight, the shafts of light FIND THEM.