(Via Brother Richard)
I pretty much grew up a “heathen.” My Mother was raised Catholic so occasionally we would attend Midnight Mass at Christmastime, and my Father was raised Methodist, so we went to a few Easter Sunrise Services. Other than that, I only walked into churches for weddings, funerals, and every once in a while, one of my cousin’s First Communion.
I had an extreme “born again” religious conversion as a teenager. I had run away from home and was somewhat manically depressed. (although never diagnosed). On my return home, I found God—like many people do—watching religious television. Make no mistake; it was very much a “real” experience. I physically felt a change, and it saturated my entire life. I became one of those annoying Christians who passed out salvation tracks on the streets. I started going to a Charismatic (tongue speaking) church and immediately felt the call to prepare for ministry.
When I graduated High School, I enrolled in a Bible College that was run by a 12,000 member mega-church. While I attended school, I met just about every televangelist (Jim and Tammy Bakker, Oral and Richard Roberts, Pat Robertson, Robert Tilton, Jimmy Swaggart, etc.). Looking back, I think I was “Forrest Gump” of religion.
Not long after I graduated, I began doing God’s work. A couple years later, I found myself in a church surrounded in controversy. Several of the pastors were caught up in sexual scandals. There were lawsuits and news reports almost daily, and Sally Jessie Raphael, Inside Edition, and Larry King dedicated entire episodes to our predicament. I stuck by the ministers through the hard times and didn’t leave the church until I stumbled upon what I felt was money mismanagement. I could no longer condone this ministry by remaining in leadership. My wife, newborn daughter, and I, walked away and had to start a new life.
Over the next few years, I attended a handful of churches and continued to study the Bible. I slowly evolved into what I now know is a deist. I wouldn’t even consider—not believing—my personal experiences were very real, and I was scared to go to Hell. So I kept God in a little box at the back of my mind and went on with life.
About two years ago, I decided to rededicate myself to the study of the Bible and Theology. This time, however, I would do so without any preconceived beliefs or theological presuppositions. Surely, I thought, if God was real and the Bible was His Word, they both would stand up to reason, doubt, and logic.
It was not a pleasant experience. I was shocked to find out how many contradictions were in the Bible and how much it had changed over the centuries. I didn’t allow these revelations to change my mind about God, but, I did allow myself to let go of the idea that the Bible was inerrant.
Next I decided to study the Creationism vs. Evolution debate. I had always been a strong believer in evolution, and simply thought that we didn’t understand Scripture. I was amazed to discover that there really was no controversy; Creationism and Intelligent Design were not scientific theories at all. They were so bad they were not even wrong. The entirety of their argument was irreducible complexity, which says that some things are so complex that it is impossible they could have evolved. That’s it; end of discussion. Creationists spend the rest of their time focusing on unresolved evolutionary components and inserting God as the explanation.
The final nail in my “faith coffin” was the last Creationist book I read. The author after hundreds of pages, made one last desperate plea for believers not to be tempted by evolution. His argument went something like this:
“There are many Christians who wrongly accept evolution and are not aware that it is in direct conflict with the basic tenants of their faith. Christianity teaches us that all death and suffering entered the world when Adam sinned. If man evolved, then by definition, his predecessors lived and died. I ask you, if sin did not cause death and suffering, why do we need Jesus? The Bible is very clear, just as sin came into the world through one man, Adam; salvation came into the world by the second Adam, Jesus.”
The author’s words terrified me. He was right; I couldn’t have it both ways. With those words—which I’m sure he prayed over—knocked me into non-belief. It was like blinders had been removed from my eyes. Suddenly, I realized that it was just as easy to believe that the Universe (in some form) had always existed as it was to believe that God had always existed.
It wasn’t until I read Dawkin’s book “The God Delusion,” that I accepted the fact that I was an atheist. All the books that followed helped solidify my beliefs and gave me the courage to “come out of the religious closet.”
Being a former minister, I immediately realized a great lacking in the non-believing community. When we had our first daughter, young families from our church brought meals to us every night for two weeks. When a brother or sister in Christ needed help moving, we were there. If one of us ended up in the hospital, we visited them and gave support to their family. It was wonderful. I am convinced the church pews are full every Sunday with individuals that are there only because of the friendships and structure it gives their families.
Science teaches us that the need for rituals and inspiration are an important part of our evolution. However, when believers give up their religious superstitions, often they don’t have anything to put in its place. I don’t think this needs to be the case. Why can’t we find inspiration in music, art, literature, and the beauty of the Universe? Why shouldn’t we honor traditions and celebrate holidays without the irrational beliefs? Why can’t we teach our children morals with stories and parables (even from the Bible) without teaching absurdities? And most of all, why can’t we enjoy the benefits of community with like-minded individuals? As the old saying goes, “We don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water.”
My wife and I feel that this is our new “calling.” If you live in the Atlanta area, help spread the word and let’s get active. If you live elsewhere, contact us and we can try to help you establish community in your area. If you already attend a similar group, tell us about it. We can all work together with common cause.
If you need an officiant for any traditional event and you want it religion free, I’m available. I have been ordained secularly and would love to help out. I am also available for speaking engagements and debates.
Finally, let me encourage you to come out of the atheist closet. Many of us have been blogging that being an atheist today is like being gay in the 80s. All joking aside, it is true. It is time for us to not be ashamed and to let our family and friends know the truth. We can’t let our society fall back into another Dark Ages. Spread the word. Contact your representatives. Write letters to newspapers and comment online. If you have a blog or web page, I ask that you provide a link to our site. We have provided various buttons on our site. I provide on my site and do the same for the others you enjoy.
Thanks for letting me ramble.
(Via Caleb T.)
I was raised by hyper religious parents, and I went to a private Christian school for the first decade of my education. Quite literally everyone I spoke to, every friend I had, and every adult-figure in my life was a fundamentalist Christian. The thought of atheism was to my young mind silly, though I felt sorry for all the people for their future stint in hell.
At the age of seventeen, I began to question things. I am bisexual, and it was at that age that I began to realize this fact about myself. For the first time I picked up a Bible and read it completely – from Genesis to Revelations, and for the first time I began to realize how barbaric and silly most of it was. It was at this point I became a deist. (I did not as of yet have the courage to reject God completely.)
I quickly graduated to an agnostic, and then more slowly developed into the militant atheist I am today. I still find myself mumbling prayers to myself, and I still have a bit of a fear of hellfire. These things are still so ingrained in me due to my conscription (I ‘accepted’ Christ at the age of 6) that it disgusts me, but over the years I am slowly healing, and slowly overcoming faith.
(Via Dust)
Okay, this, under most circumstances for me, would be a very hard thing to clarify. However, I am on the edge of drunk, on Bacardi 151, so I’m more at liberty to slew out my opinions of the moment, on my journey from general religion to general atheism (for the most part) or where I stand now. I’ll start out with my childhood. My dad was a Jesus freak, for the most part, or as far as I can remember. I remember him having us watch the sermons on TV when we woke up late at his apartment when I was visiting him. He was also, and I assume the overlapped, deep into drugs. Which was apparent in his death by heroine overdose. But I remember once, long ago, when I was probably five or six, my father and my older brother discussing revelations in the bible, and the end of the world as we know it, and how horrified I was, in my own quiet world (I’ve always been shy) sitting on the couch listening them talk about “doomsday”. I also associate this with, at this time, my first contemplation of oblivion, or imagining what it would be like to not exist at all, or to have never been born ,and the weird empty pulling that is associated with such a consideration. Then, another event involving my father, when we were at a pool in a hotel with a Chinese restaurant, probably 4 years later. There was a big golden Buddha outside the restaurant. I rubbed the Buddha’s stomach, I believe, and right after, my father told me an old superstition, that if you rub the Buddha’s stomach it’s bad luck, but if you rub his head, it’s good luck. (it could have been the other way around, I haven’t heard of this superstition since, and I don’t remember exactly what I rubbed) but either way I rubbed his head or stomach and thought that was bad luck. I thought of this while swimming, and until bedtime. I remember at bedtime I would pray, and this was my only connection with a god that I for the most part, disconnected with our Lutheran faith and the boringness of church. I would pray to pure light and not even a humanly figure (which later became the basis for my “religion” while I had one, but after Christianity.) Yet, this particular night, I prayed to this essence of pure forgiveness, goodness, etc. A pure philosophical ideal: that I could be not be punished for rubbing the Buddha in the wrong way. I was praying to a christian god, to forgive me for enacting a superstition upon a Buddhist “god”. I find this ironic and hilarious in retrospect. Anyway. While drifting through the Lutheran church. Which, to me, is the democrat to republican, in Lutheran to catholic, and I later chose a third and more informed option on both right-left choices. (maybe logic) Yet, the entire time I felt something was off. The church did give me insight. Often in my later years, into things about philosophy and poetic concepts, yet never did I fully take them seriously, as they did themselves. I got confirmed, told them my idea of god (without selling out my beliefs) and was still confirmed into the church. (which is a process of carrying candles for the pastor and taking bible classes) I did all this at the will of my mother. Yet, when they asked me what seemed to be the final question about god, I told them as I actually did believe at that time, that god was a standard of good, and Jesus was a representation of that. The only place I stretched my beliefs with this question was in telling them that I thought Jesus was a representation of that whole good, when in fact, I was already considering the fact that he was just a smart prophet of the time, if he existed at all, and that there were many others since him more enlightened that A Christ or a Buddha. Since confirmation, I never went to church. it was a funny thing. I basically stopped right after that. I only go when my grandma comes to visit. Yet, since then, I have once been what is called a Deist. Which is a general philosophical notion that there is a higher power, expressed through nature, and that it’s not a personal god, or necessarily represented in any specific person. Yet, it is evident to me that some people are “smarter” or just generally more with their own act than others, and that these people are becoming more and more, and that awareness is spreading, not in a religious way, but in the way that possibly Jesus, as a character was, and that people will awake to freedom, and discard establishment and government. This is just a hope of mine. After Deism, I became intensely intrigued by Buddhism, Zen Buddhism in general, (not the folklore over the man Gautama Siddhartha the Buddha, but general Zen Buddhism, for peace of the mind) Anyway, this realization came almost side by side with psychedelic drugs and my journey into trying to discover the beyond, or what we can glimpse of that beyond us, while alive. This gave me a more democratic god view, which I haven’t totally discarded today. I considered the works of Huxley and Allen Watts, as what if everything is truly god, and that we all suffer the same way. Which still much intrigues me today, as do all religions, if thought about in combination or studied, but as they apply to politics and real life, they become dangerous, so I guess at this point, when I realized the combination of stupid religions and dangerous politics, have realized that we cannot afford group religions, because it becomes, like race, a way to separate people, and that all we can assume is that everything is god and that we must leave the balance to the nature of things, that which can never be understood or explained, so I remain agnostic, but with a strong inkling that the afterlife does not exist, which makes me feel more atheist, yet I’ve heard that even some Buddhist religions are considered atheistic, and I still sway toward eastern religion, it seems more fascinating, maybe because it is further from me. I even consider Christianity in a general sense, I do not like to take down the bible itself, however outdated, like other atheists. because, it all is metaphor, for what really is and can never be spoken, and from what really is and is here in front of us. It is all archetypes and myths of the great One man, the self, in search of whatever he must find in his pointless life, for the game of it. I think, if life is meaningless, you can have more fun with it. Society’s problem is making it serious, you do not NEED to achieve anything in life, but simply to live in peace. I leave you intoxicated, hoping to forget this section of my overall accumulated belief, but that it is genuine, and that I do believe it all amounts to nothing, but that is the beauty. A poet, a philosopher, an artist, yet not doing this for a god other than which I know is a metaphor for the ironic struggle, that is I.
(Via Rose Schwartz)
A few posts ago, I attempted to put myself in the theist’s shoes by going back into my own journey of enlightenment and godlessness. I admit it’s “too arduous of a task for me to think like a theist. I just don’t have it in me; moreover it would be an insult to theists.”
But I can go back to before I knew I didn’t believe.
Back to a time when I wasn’t sure what to believe; but considered myself closer to that of an agnostic theist. When I stood in my parents’ backyard (at about 17) staring into the night, I imaged the pure blackness of the universe. In awe of its beauty. I wondered what “god” could mean to me. My definition was rather Einsteinian, feeling the depths of such a vast place flow right throw me. I was a part of it all; it was all a part of me. I was possibly more of a pantheist. But what is pantheism anyway? Just one step closer to atheism?
I was never really a theist, I believe I meant deist. I never prayed or expected intervention. I was raised Jewish with more emphasis on Jewish heritage as opposed to religion. My mom prays; my dad doesn’t believe in a supernatural being or the afterlife but refuses to go by anything other than Jewish. I always had a hard time making the leap that my mom makes. It’s just not in me.
I started cursing at an early age (occasionally) just because it got under my mom’s skin. I didn’t understand; words are words. What the f*&k’s the difference? I remember on several occasions exclaiming “goddammit” after stubbing my toe or bumping into something (I was a clumsy child). I was only taking after my dad. My mom would laugh because she saw my dad in me while saying to me, “Look up and say you’re sorry.” To which I’d reply, “Why does the ceiling care what I say?”
By this time I wasn’t sure what to call myself or what to believe. I just knew that I didn’t believe in an old man with a beard in the sky dressed in white. It just seemed silly. And I watched all the bad animated shows of the time (late 80′s, early 90′s); all the bad sitcoms and dramas. I love(d) science fiction and fantasy. I just knew that I was Jewish and it made me “chosen” somehow. Sure some of the family get-togethers are nice for children but to me they were about family and food, not god.
Religion was just never an issue…until high school. My parents like to shelter me; they raised me in a suburb of Miami where I had many Jewish friends to play with. They liked me sticking with “my own”, though it was never a requirement. I never had the issues my father had in grade school, though he did attend in the 1930′s (he’s much older than my mother). Being called a “dirty Jew” and getting into fights often isn’t fun. No, for me, the girls found other reasons to pick on me. And it made me a better person because of it!
Now onto high school. I posted a personal experience story on how religion does poison everything. A hypocritical Catholic boy I dated in high school showed me just how intolerant someone can be. I can only imagine if I was a declared atheist then. I was an agnostic Jew who was guilty of killing his savior but he loved me enough to verbally abuse me. I believe there were other matters involved, yet religion played a huge part.
In college, my roommate (who I was randomly put with) and I declared ourselves “nothing”; I suppose we were still scared of the term atheist or hadn’t been exposed to it enough. My college experience played a large role in me coming into my own. My roommate, a girl from North Carolina, was raised Baptist. Growing up, she got her parents to stop going to church as much. Somehow. She got them to start thinking a bit. And they listened. Actually, in college, I had far more free-thinking friends than ever.
I moved out to Hollywood after I graduated. Less than a year later, I met someone who would change my life forever. I saw something in his eyes at a party and tracked him down. Note that I was generally a single girl; I didn’t like being tied down (especially after that horrible high school experience) to anyone who wasn’t worth it. But he was. And is. I went from “agnostic” to “atheist” since I’ve been with him, though have always godless within. I have never been more fulfilled, more in awe of nature than when I was able to admit the word “Atheist”. I finally feel a purpose in this big machine; a link in evolution and a part of the wonders of the universe. He’s opened my eyes in a way I never knew; I have always been pretty damn open-minded. We are now happily married.
I came out to my parents by accident. In conversation with my parents and boyfriend, my mom asked straight forward if he believed in god. He answered “no” and somehow the pressure turned on me. I told them how I felt. And we’ve discussed it a bit. In a way, it doesn’t even matter anymore.
I briefly thought that I would marry Jewish and raise my children as such (which is what I told my parents years and years ago). I suppose I lied to my parents, as they once said. Perhaps after the few bad experiences, I knew I didn’t want to marry a Christian and I didn’t know of anything else. I’ve always know that having kids just isn’t for me. I may or may not change my mind, who knows?
I’m not ‘out’ to everyone at work; the topic of religion doesn’t come up much. I’m not that great of a debater so I try to not be put on the spot. Occasionally, I’ll lob a quick one: Once a coworker referred to Friday as “Act of God Day”. I simply replied, “What would you call Monday then?”