As a child, it never occurred to me to doubt the existence of god. I’m not sure I even realised it was optional. When I was ten, after my mother’s remarriage, we started to attend my stepfather’s church, in which he was (and is) a very active member. This church is well known in Edinburgh for being ‘charismatic’ and ‘evangelical’, by which I mean that the organ had been dispensed with in favour of guitars and there was a lot of swaying and clapping of hands. They were very into the alpha course.
Every summer, the church would organise a retreat at a large house somewhere in the country for a week of prayer and bible study, and my older sisters and I were always taken along. The worst of these was when I was 12; that was the memorable year when the ‘Holy Spirit’ was sweeping through the land (or at least through the evangelical churches). For a week I was stuck in a remote house in the highlands of Scotland while everyone around me was filled with the holy spirit and started swaying, shaking, falling down and speaking in tongues. I spent most of the week hiding.
Around this time, I started to read a lot of old myths – Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Celtic and so on. It occurred to me that those people who had worshiped Isis thought they were right just as sincerely as I did about Jesus. And once I’d acknowledged that question, what about Muslims or Hindus? I asked my stepfather – how did we know that we were right? He told me that it was just a matter of faith (which was honest of him), and I accepted that answer. And I believed in god – but not unquestioningly. I had doubts. I saw so many contradictions in the world, so many things that didn’t make sense thought the lens of faith. But I ignored the contradictions and assumed I just didn’t understand. Perhaps we needed god to set off the big bang, I wondered. And perhaps he nudged evolution along.
Ultimately, what saved me was science. It never occurred to me to doubt that evolution is true and I never really believed that creationists existed until the horrifying day when I discovered that my mother and eldest sister (both highly educated, otherwise intelligent women) are creationists.
And one day, I finally caved to my doubts and actually considered a question that had been hanging around at the edge of my consciousness for years. It’s accepted among most Christians that humans are the only human beings to have souls. Dogs, cats, horses, goldfish – nothing. Chimps, nothing. We assume the Australopithecines had no soul. So what about Homo habilis? Or Homo erectus? No. So when had the soul appeared? Which individual was the first Homo sapiens and had the first soul? Of course, I knew that was a ridiculous question. But it had to be asked, because if there was no soul, there could be no afterlife. No heaven, or hell. And if there was no afterlife, there was no god, and it was all an invention of people who were afraid of death, and so convinced themselves that they would live forever.
Of course, that wasn’t all, and it look me a while to completely let go of my faith, but it’s gone now. I miss it sometimes. The idea that there is an omnipotent being out there who loves you and will do anything for you is incredibly comforting. But I’ll take what I have now – the ability to see and appreciate the world as it actually is and nothing more – over a lie any day.
Annabel
United Kingdom
Lovely, thank-you. My favorite line is this:
It’s a hard thing to realise that it’s not just that people are mistaken, somewhere along the line people you trust have been lying to you.
Beautifully done – thanks Annabel.
It strikes me that the evilness of religion and the damage it does is summed-up in its wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing, that is, its approbated concept of faith as virtue.
I think your words “.. until the horrifying day when I discovered that my mother and eldest sister (both highly educated, otherwise intelligent women) are creationists.” sadly attest to the evilness and wastefulness of religion. This statement invoked in me feelings of anger and sadness.
Yes we should be “militant”. Anything that can do that is a societal cancer that should be aggressively excised.
Thanks Annabel. Really liked it. I especially connected to what you wrote about human evolution vs the soul. When I first started struggling out of Christianity, I had the same thoughts. I was told that there was no problem with “guided” evolution and that I thus didn’t have to choose between accepting evidence and accepting Christianity. However, the soul is something binary, we’re taught. Either you have it or you don’t. But evolution is a gradual process. No matter where God draw the line in the sand, no matter at which time point he injected a soul into humanity, he would make a vast and unjust distinction between those born before that time and those born after. (I’m thinking the injustice would be for the ones born after, if Christianity is right. There would be no way for them to be Christians, so they would be guaranteed a tormented eternal afterlife.) And this change would in no way reflect how humanity was “created” by God through this supposed guided evolution. So I was left with a huge problem and it baffled me that other Christians weren’t taking this seriously. But I realized there’s a simple solution to this: No soul and no God.
Obviously the soul was invented to justify the childish heaven fantasy.
Right, of course. It’s important that Christians and other theists understand this. I never miss an opportunity to tell Christians they’re cowards. And I never miss an opportunity to tell young victims of religious indoctrination their parents are cowardly gullible morons.
I would have spent the week running – away. Such a pleasant entry, Annabel. I just had to share a quote that fits this post nicely:
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“If our forefathers had loved golf as well as we do, and feared Hades as little as we do, I doubt if we would have any churches at all.”
– Rev. Dr. Paul Frothingham (1864-1926)
I miss it (faith) sometimes.
I can kinda sorta maybe understand this.
But it just takes a little perspective and just like what you said the “ability to see and appreciate the world as it actually is” to quickly get over the feeling of loss. To feel a part of something bigger, to feel the connection to all things, to feel like you belong, all you have to do, on a clear starry night, is look up.
Answering the question “why are we are” with the real answer of “because stars exploded” gives me more comfort than I can express.
If that were all you’d written, I’d have thought that it was enough.
Glen Davidson
You are an original thinker. Congratulations on your journey to freedom and good luck blending in until you can get away from home.
Thank you all so much for your kind words! @Glen, I tried to explain to my mother recently just how ghastly that experience was, and she simply wasn’t able to understand how I could have hated it.
As for her being a creationist – I should at least point out in her defense as a person that she never raised the least objection to paying a small fortune for me to read Evolutionary Biology at university. I don’t despair that someday my patient explanations of the anatomy of whales and convergent evolution on the Australian continent and the rest of the world will bear fruit. It’s a small comfort to me that my other sister is with me on this topic at least, despite being a former evangelical christian who was personally converted to catholicism by Mother Theresa at her mission in Calcutta.
This story brings up an important point; many passive religious people would actually realize they are atheists if they ever thought about what they really believe. It just never occurs to them that not believing in god is something people do. This is why I am always skeptical of all polls that show the number of religious vs. non-religious people in the country.
Of course, this is why it is so important for religious leaders, religious-profiteers and Republicans to do what ever they can to keep the non-belivers quite. They realize that their entire racket could be brought down with a few billboards and a little critical thinking.
I would like to comment on two phrases:
…..The idea that there is an omnipotent being out there who loves you and will do anything for you is incredibly comforting…..
Quite to the contrary, even as a child I felt uneasy with a supernatural, invisible but omnipresent being I HAD to pray to but who never cared to answer me.
—
…..my mother and eldest sister (both highly educated, otherwise intelligent women) are creationists…..
Something I only reluctantly accept is the existence of many intelligent people who prefer the the certainty of faith over the pleasure to doubt and search and reason. Here is another example.
Nice entry Annabel, thank you for sharing.
Federico
Excellent WIIAA post, thanks for sharing. I had a very different path, religiously, than you, but ultimately came to a remarkably similar place. Without souls that somehow transcend our bodies, most religions (and all of the major ones) cannot be true. Full stop. And when I became educated enough to see that the brain is the source of the mind, that there’s nothing about me that did not originate from the matter and energy of which I am made and with which I have interacted throughout my life, I saw my agnosticism turn slowly to atheism (and antitheism, but that’s another story).