You’ll have to work fast, since the contest closes tomorrow — send in your story about why you are an atheist, and you can win an autographed copy of Why I Rejected Christianity, by John Loftus.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I’m an atheist because God told me to be one.
I was born an atheist.
Well, I was raised that way. Do I win?
Sorry to interrupt. Someone hijacked my identity “jsn” yesterday, here a Pharyngula.
jsn and Jsn are taken on this blog, so whover commented yesterday using jsn, please use another I.D.
And now baack to deconversion stories…
Although you no doubt will get many interesting stories, Dennis N’s comment #2
is spot-on. However, for the sake of completeness, he should append the clause “and I stayed that way.” As written, it applies to everyone.
Teacher fired for Wizardry
http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Teacher_fired_for_Wizardry
Enjoy.
I was raised Lutheran, and was a rather literal child. The ‘magic’ in religion never made much sense to me…I remember one discussion with another such child at five or six years old where we attempted to ascertain how dead people got to heaven; we thought about airplanes, but knew that the people couldn’t rest on a cloud – they’d fall right through, b/c of gravity. And outer space had no air, so nothing could live there, even in Heaven.
And I couldn’t stomach the crap being meted out by church-y parents hiding behind dogma and scripture, and the culture of backbiting and general nastiness it engendered.
So, after a good solid ten years of being subjected to this stuff by a Lutheran mother, I decided at 15 to cease the whole church thing. She told me “fine….you just have to get up in front of the church and explain why.” She figured that I wouldn’t do it, being too abashed/ashamed of my newfound lack of belief.
However, I *did* do it. In church, I got up, interrupted things, explained that the examples I saw of blatant hypocrisy and failure to follow the simple ethical rules set forth (not to mention the excusing of same due to ‘saved’ status) was off-putting to me, and that God as a concept made no sense. It wasn’t rude, and it wasn’t ranty, and it took all of about two minutes.
And then I walked out, and walked home (5m). By that time, my mother was already home in tears and my father (lapsed Catholic) furious at me for having ‘done this to her.’ I explained that she’d told me what I had to do to cease going to church, that I’d done it, and that I was done with church and religion.
With all due respect to my mother, she asked for it; she was trying to embarrass me into staying, and I called her bluff. I have no apologies for having done so. I find interesting that my religious cousins are, by and large, scraping by, while I’ve managed to get a couple of degrees and tend to be successful….I think it has to do with the atheist’s [general] willingness to confront facts rather than giving in to magical thinking.
Haven’t gone back to a church since, except for weddings and funerals. And I won’t. I don’t need a supernatural force to scare me into behaving and I don’t need a supernatural force to define right and wrong.
Gah…I’ve been wanting to do this for a while (though it would really be a conversion-deconversion double feature), but I have a mol neurobio midterm tomorrow that I need to study for…must not let this distract me…ooh look, something shiny!
One day whilst hiking in the mountains I saw a two-stream waterfall and realized that the holy Trinity must be false.
Luckily, I had already posted my story on various sites I’m a part of.
I was very much into faith and religion when I was younger. I don’t think I was ever one of those psychotic kids who went around talking about Jesus all the time, but I truly and deeply believed in it. I loved learning about it in Sunday school, and I loved participating during mass. I was and altar-server…for those of you who don’t know, in the catholic mass, young kids help out during the mass…carrying the cross and the candles, ringing bells, and pouring the wine and water for the priest to bless and whatnot. It was a great feeling for a while. Then something happened. I still remember it quite clearly, though I’m not really sure where on my timeline it took place…either in the 7th or the 8th grade. The day I began my questioning and my doubt was the day my mother sat us all down and told us that her mother had cancer. I remember the sudden spike of anger I felt towards god…as if I’d been spit upon or betrayed. Afterward, church just didn’t feel the same. Serving became tedious, the preaching was repetitive and unrealistic. It was when I got more out of staring at the steady stream of smoke coming from the candles than I did from any other aspect of god that I started to worry. I still believed in the word, and I knew what was in store for the doubters. It tore me up inside…something that had once meant so much to me was fading away…and in the ultimate catholic guilt trip, I told myself it was my fault – that I was a sinner and a fraud. It was the first time in my life I felt self-hatred.
It took some time before I could admit to myself that I didn’t believe in a lot of what the church was teaching me. After a while and more doubt, mass became interesting again, but for a very different reason. I found myself paying more attention to the readings and the liturgy more than ever…and I was seeing the many contradictions and ridiculous notions that led to even more questioning and straying from the church. By the time I hit high school, I knew I wasn’t a catholic anymore. I wasn’t sure if I believed in christ or god, but I was starting to figure out that there were more people like myself who were going through much the same thing. As I started going to classes for confirmation (a sacrament I adhered to for my family’s sake) I quickly became the “bad kid” in class. I asked the tough questions that were nagging at my mind, and got in trouble a lot for making the teachers nervous and silent. I also started actually reading the bible for myself, hoping that I’d find some of the answers to my questions from the holy text itself. Of course, this just led to more disbelief…if I couldn’t believe one part of the bible, how could I be sure any of it was true? So, by the beginning of my sophomore year in high school, I decided that I didn’t believe in christianity or in christ or in their god anymore.
But I wasn’t sure where to go from there. This was by far the hardest part of giving up my faith. I felt lost…I didn’t know how to deal with life without faith in something…I was sure I needed it. So I started looking into other religions, hoping I could find some guidance within another version of god. At first, I tried Buddhism. What immediately drew me to it was that it isn’t necessary to believe in a god to be a buddhist. I leapt on it, and fell in love. There are many nice aspects to buddhism, but I soon found it wasn’t for me. Just another set of rules to live by that really didn’t seem to fit my plans. There was also a bit of an incident when I told my mother I was a buddhist…she sent me to talk with our priest, which was very uncomfortable and annoying, even though I proved my point to him directly and was able to truly say goodbye to christianity. So yeah…fun times.
From there, I kept exploring different faiths. Wicca and other forms of paganism seemed plain silly to me…I was never one to believe in magic or spiritual energies stemming from the planet. Satanism was fun and I enjoyed its hatred of all things godly, but it still felt like it was too influenced by god for me (if you do everything as an affront to something else, you are still bound to that which you are rebelling against). So midway through high school, I was at another turning point. I knew I didn’t really believe in god or heaven or hell or anything of the sort, and I was too much of an individualist to really want to be told what to do by people who existed centuries before my time. I finally admitted to myself that I was an atheist…or an agnostic…or something. Since then, I’ve become very proud of my beliefs (contrary to what many people think, being an atheist doesn’t mean that I believe in nothing) and have sought out others who think like me. The best thing that happened for me was the discovery of a great collective of non-theists having debates online. It was like reading my past inner struggles with religion. I became a frequent poster on many religious forums debating believers and learning more and more how to defend myself verbally and to become strong in my reasoning. I’ve become quite the master debater because of this ;).
For about a year now, I’ve become more and more involved in the online atheist community. I regularly read and comment on various blogs across the web, and am growing ever more confident and sure of the validity and strengths of my philosophies. I want so much to be a part of changing the way non-believers are seen and treated in this world. I want to be a part of a revolution in the way we think of ourselves as humans and what our goals should be in life. I’m striving to make a change, and to be a part of something that is truly important and will hopefully leave a positive mark in our history. I’m hopeful about the future, for a change. I’ve embraced this part of myself and have brought it to the forefront of my life. It’s really a great feeling.
I think I was always an atheist but I used to be ashamed/scared to admit it. I then read the god delusion and did a complete 180.
Sorry if this isn’t well ordered. It’s a short reply so I suppose that balances it out.
I was born an atheist and despite my best attempts to find God, he’s been hiding quite well.
Both of my parents never thought religion was important either way (they’re both well educated so there you go) but having Christian friends that kept saying “you’re going to hell” made me worry about being non-religious for a bit.
After a while of going to the local churches and reading the “Jesus loves you so don’t make him hurt you” books I stopped worrying because they all seemed a bit off. (I also actually read the Bible a bit. Interestingly it had the opposite effect than my friends were expecting.)
Since that point I’ve been trying to understand religion (not just Christianity but any of the others I can get explained) and have taken to stealing parts of myths for stories and whatever (everyone’s done it I’m sure. Besides, they’re out of copyright) but otherwise religion doesn’t mean much to me unless someone tries to force it on others.
So, yeah. Book plz nao kthnx.
Raised a member of the United Church of Canada (possibly the farthest left church in existence, which spends a lot of energy on social justice issues), I boarded with extreme right wing fundamentalist evangelicals (oops, sorry, “non-denominational Christians”) while I completed my Masters. Did you know that the Shriners are a satanic cult, followers of Islam have been tricked into worshiping the devil, Halloween and Yoga open gateways for demons to possess your soul, [name your gender or race based stereotype] is Really True, and the annual migration route of a flock of swans is proof of god’s existence? I now have to work very, very hard not to sneer in the presence of the religious.
I was brought up as a Catholic, but gradually shed my imposed “beliefs” bit by bit over the course of about 20 years. The final clincher came when my best friend was diagnosed with cancer, and as he wasted away over the course of six months I summoned up as much faith as I could muster to pray for him to recover. Since I was single and he was married with a 3-year-old son and a loving wife, I prayed for god to take his cancer away and give it to me instead. I thought that god must grant this prayer since it was utterly selfless on my part. Of course it didn’t happen, and after he died my remaining shreds of faith finally evaporated. There were other incidents before and after that influenced me, but this was the big one.
Of course, as I live in the UK it is quite easy to be an atheist. There is absolutely no pressure to believe or not, it’s my choice and nobody else cares. But I often wonder how I would have coped if I had been born in another country. I think we all have to stop occasionally and consider how much of what we think are conscious decisions are actually determined by our surroundings. If I’d been born in Florida, would I have been a raving creationist? Or a devout muslim if I’d been born in Afghanistan? Etc. etc. I’d like to think not, but if I was constantly surrounded by such people, would I just end up going along with the majority? What do the rest of you think? Would you believe what you do now if you’d had a different life? It’s not an easy question to answer honestly.
A deconversion story contest? Well, here goes. It all started in 1985, when I was in that task force hunting insurgents in Colombia…
Duh! When I realized that I could get away with murder by denouncing God and giving up morals. Then getting recruited by Hogsweat’s Gay Mexican Muslim School of Heathen Magic® sealed the deal at Evil Secul-versity™ – I think it was their roasted baby buffet that really won me over.
I was brought up very loosely Catholic, in what might be called a semi-practicing family. But my parents taught me two very important things:
* It’s important to think for oneself, and to question statements made by those in authority
* They’ve known both good people and bad people of many different faiths, including theirs, so religion isn’t a determining factor in being a good person
In junior high, I started putting those two together. I took a good hard look at religion (specifically, Christianity) and realized it really didn’t make a lot of sense. It made too many implausible claims and even insisted its followers believe things that were provably untrue.
So I became an agnostic for about a year, and the more I thought about it the more sure I was that religions have it wrong. When you aren’t predisposed to believe any one religion over another and you look at them all from the outside, they all look about equally believable, which is to say, not very.
So after about a year, I realized that, pending some very convincing evidence that some religion had it right, I had to conclude that there is no supreme being–or beings.
Actually, this went a long way toward my deconversion. I don’t particularly have a story to speak of, but one realization which had troubled me throughout my religious life was the acknowledgement that throughout history, people have believed more or less as they have been taught to believe, with the same degree of devotion and passion, regardless of the religion or mythology in question. I realized that although I considered Greek mythology, for example, to be obviously false, I had no more reason to believe the Christianity that I happened to have been born into. This was highly problematic to me, a Christian who wouldn’t imagine that God would condemn vast swaths of humanity because they happened to have been born in the wrong religion, or at the wrong time, or to the wrong parents.
But yes, unlike many of the more natural skeptics here who never actually bought into religion, I am somewhat ashamed to say that had circumstances been different, I might never have deconverted. Regarding problems and conflicts like the above, I clung to my wishy-washy Christian apologetics as long as they remained unchallenged. It took an atheist in my personal life, asking difficult questions and not letting me get away with my standard evasive answers, to make me take an honest look at my beliefs. And they couldn’t hold up to honest scrutiny.
That’s part of why I enjoy this blog so much; it doesn’t take the standard, submissive “respect for religion” stance that enabled my beliefs for so long.
This isn’t such a simple question to answer. Really, several things happened all at once. Perhaps, the best way to tackle them would be in chronological order.
At Myrtle High School, I always was annoyed by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, their annoying worship, and their “culturally savvy” form of Christianity. Once, they invited a Jazz Musician to play for the school, or that was his cover story anyway. The truth was, they brought him to the school to preach. His jazz was horrible, and I covered my ears at the entire production. “Is your brother an atheist?” My brother was asked. I knew that I didn’t want to be an atheist. For my own good. I didn’t have very many friends, but I hardly had any enemies at all. I’d like to keep it like that for some time. I graduate in May of 2005.
Fall of 2005. I’m very lonely, have no friends, in a strange and cruel world. I’m encouraged to go to the BSU, and make friends there. I really don’t want religious friends, but see no other option. By May of 2006, I’m active at Northeast Community College’s “Baptist Student Union”. I’ve come up with a proposal to render unto science that which is science’s. Religion in science, I think, doesn’t do the student any good. They don’t learn anything from, “God did it.” Upon hearing it, a person I’d considered my best friend goes into a fit of rage. How could I have said something like that. I was annoyed, to say the least, that someone so nice could be so irrational.
August of 2006. I take psychology with Dr. Colin Billingsley. The first Friday of class, we are challenged to debate the existence of God, and are given a weekend to formulate our arguments. I take the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s God Argument, and use it to challenge “Proof of God”. I run this argument by as many people at Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church in Dumas, MS, as I could. The Preacher is stumped, and I assume it must be a good argument. In class, I start out with my argument, and counter the 55 other people in the class. No one could poke a hole in it. Someone finally asks me what my religion is. I think about this for a second and settle for, “I haven’t decided yet”. “Kinda like your major!” Dr. Billingsley said, always a cut-up.
There’s a lot of failed love in here, somewhere, that’s a different story, but I don’t think any God worth worshiping would allow someone so desperately single to exist.
Summer of 2007. My father and I begin to argue a lot. Eventually, he decides I’m going to talk to the preacher, or I’m not going to live under his roof during this summer or any other. The same preacher from before couldn’t answer any of my pertinent questions. Why is faith necessary? Would God damn a good atheist, and save an evil Christian? His answer was, largely, “We can’t know these things.” And my response was largely, “Then your god is largely useless to me.” It was then that I knew I was an atheist, if there was any doubt in my mind before, it was resolved.
Now, I hide my atheism in myself, and hope that no one will ever find out I’m an atheist, for a few years, until I’m financially independent. But at least at college, I’m free to disbelieve in God all I want, and no one can give me lip about it. I’m trying to help my roommate set up a college student body of atheists. I’d like to think I’d find love there, because God sure as hell never helped; maybe intellectual honesty will.
I never stopped debating theology. It really is the only thing that makes forced Church bearable. Recently, I decided to find the difference between belief and faith. It should be noted that while the two are synonyms, belief can also mean belief in the existence of God. In fact, there are two requirements, according to the church, to believe in God, faith in God and belief that he exists. I don’t think I really ever believed he existed, except when I was a child and believed in the Hogfather and Soul Cake Duck, so maybe I’ve been an atheist since I was ten.
Alan White
D’oh! Not enough time to carefully craft an essay! I’m staying up late tonight…
Born an atheist.
Head filled with a bunch of bollox as a child.
Nervously discarded (wary of godly punishment) the nonsense at age 12.
Currently building flying robotic suit to wreak revenge on those responsible for indoctrination.
The end.
I became an atheist because of creationism. Religion never played a big role in my life and all these fancy stories about the miracles of Jesus and whatnot were always considered to be metaphorical by me and everyone close to me.
Well, of course that’s no accomplishment considering that I’m European and my family and friends are all well educated – and even if they weren’t, religion is considered to be something private over here (as Elwood already pointed out), so no one makes a fuss about their belief in whatever deity they prefer.
Anyway I was once surfing the net for some nerdy stuff and stumbled across some kind of debating site. The link which brought me there said something about science versus creationism. The science part sounded promising and I didn’t even know what creationism was back then. Thusly I clicked the link. Little did I know what was waiting there for me.
Of course I knew that there are some nutjobs out there who believe in the literal truth of the bible, but I was quite shocked to find out how common this assumption is in the United States.
So I started to read a lot about creationism (almost the whole Talk.Origins archive) and began tho question my own beliefs.
In the end my already very liberal Christian views changed into deism, which in turn changed into agnosticism and finally into atheism.
On a more serious note, while I went through what I call my “Skeptical Seeker” phase, I was not really raised religious.
I remember once in grade school getting in trouble for comparing Greek Mythology to Christian Mythology. I thought the comparison was innocent enough and valid, but apparently the school disagreed and said they were different.
I also remember being in a class which was asked what the most adaptable animal was. I had answered “man” but the teacher did not hear me, so sent us home to think about it (no one else had a correct answer). The next day, he asked again, and some kid in my class answered “man” and was praised, but I objected – not that I had answered that already, but that I had decided I was wrong, since birds live on every continent, yet mankind adapts our environment to ourselves, and that technically we are somewhat limited in where we can live naked.
My teacher declared me a “smart alec” and sent me to the Principal’s office. I think these two moments were the beginning of my distrust in authority, or rather of mindless faith in authority. Well, that and the hypocrisy of organized religion :)
I was raised in a protestant Christian household. We went to church every Sunday and most Wednesday nights. My earliest memories of my questioning of faith were when I was probably 5-6 years old and I wanted to understand speaking in tongues. There were a few people in the church who would do this from time to time and I asked about it and never got an answer that satisfied me. It just sounded like they were faking to me. I cannot remember for sure but I believe they were trying to teach us kids how to do it.
As a kid I always thought going to church was a waste of a good weekend and would rather hang out with my friends most of which were not religious; or at least they didn’t go to church, we never had theological discussions.
I think I did stay fairly believing at some level till I was in junior high when I started questioning faith again. This time it was hypocrisy and the way my parents and others in the church approached prayer. It was like prayer wasn’t a way to speak to god so much as a way to make the people around you hear what you are praying for. So if you want your son to behave better, you pray to god with your son right next to you to make your son behave better. Things like this just drove me nuts. I also remember looking at the supposed “good” kids from our church and I couldn’t see them doing anything good. They mostly ignored the pastor in church and talked amongst themselves. Alot of the teens all seemed to move to the same section together, me included.
Science probably had something to do with things as well as evolution and other concepts were more fully introduced to explain the things that I had no other explanation for than what the church said. I remember debating evolution with my youth paster as a one on one when I was around 15 or 16. He didn’t bring up anything I couldn’t refute and he didn’t make any dent in my new stance on life.
I was still forced to go to church by my mother until I was 16-18 so I mostly found ways to occupy my time by doing oragami with the bulletin or ditching for an while to go to the donut shop nearby. One memorable day the pastor looked to the teen section and asked how many of us were forced to be there by their parents. I raised my hand high and proud. I don’t think any of the rest of the kids were paying that much attention but I know none of them would have dared to do it. Most of the church looked our way. I stared at the back of my Mom’s head the whole time and she never turned around. She knew I had my hand up. The Pastor thanked me for my honesty and we briefly talked afterwards.
I gave up being Catholic for Lent.
Near the end of my sophomore year at a Jesuit high school, my advisor suggested we give up the thing we thought we most needed. I had spent the first two years going to every Friday morning Mass, working through the Ignatian exercises and generally trying to find my purpose through my faith.
When I gave that up, I had to rely on things other than simple belief to explain and give meaning to my life. I did.
I found I can be an ethical person, and have respect for the people and world around me, without falling back on “God will punish me if I don’t.” I found I can give meaning and purpose to my life without dedicating it to the Greater Glory of God. And I found that a reflected life has value without reference to the supernatural. The natural life I have is enough.
I still struggle with what it means to be a self-aware, sentient, but mortal person. I still am looking for answers, but those answers have to be based in reality, not an appeal to forces unseen. I thought finding God was what I most needed, but I was wrong. What I most needed to find was myself.
tc>
As I’ve posted my own story here before, the condensed Cliff Notes version is: born atheist, had a cool science teacher dad so stayed that way, and despite a lukewarm religious mom’s halfhearted efforts, stopped attending a liberal Presbyterian congregation by my Middle School years. No real deep conflict with them, just thought Church was boring. Had gone through the motions as a kid to please mom, but didn’t feel like playing “make believe” anymore every Sunday. Atheist all the way through High School and undergraduate years. Went to grad school, got brains f*cked up by Postmodernism, had brief, intense, purely personal religious phase as a result, then cleared my head and dropped it (too painful to put my expanded mind back into that smaller theistic box), but became more disillusioned & nihilist than well-adjusted atheist. Investigated Judaism for the better part of a year, then respectfully said “no thanks” (though enjoyed the Xtian-to-Judaism reconversion narratives I read along the way, and gained appreciation for purely secular Jewish culture), then ended up back at scientific atheism/secular humanism, but with a much deeper understanding of why I am the way I am.
Bummer. I don’t have a deconversion story. I was born atheist, raised secular, and came to the conclusion that this “god” stuff everyone was talking about was bullshit at the age of five. By then, I’d already read some of the KJV. I used to piss people off by demanding that they show me some “Jesus bones” if they wanted me to believe in Jesus. I said that I could go to a museum and see dinosaur bones, so why not?
I’m still waiting, and nobody ever managed to convince me that “it doesn’t work like that,” despite trying hard.
I realized by age twelve that religion was made-up crazy stuff. In over fifty years since, I’ve never once doubted that.
As for the prize – I’ve already had it. Fifty something years of not being deluded. I can’t think of a better prize. Religion’s for feckin’ edjits.
These have been quite the interesting read. I wish my parents had left me alone about religion. I grew up completely brainwashed but happy in a prosestant family. My mother is intensely religious, but often I feel it’s more out of fear than anything else. Whatever makes my parents happy, they can do that. What turned me off religion completely was a conversation I had with them regarding a lesbian woman who had joined our church. She got up in front of everyone, gave the low-down on her past life, said she’d turned it all around by god and whatnot (I was pretty skeptical at this point anyway, but it sounded like hard work and support is what got her through) and I felt very happy to see someone who’d actually worked hard to clean up their life. My parents, on the way home from church, happily were chatting about the woman’s life and what she’d done. And I will never forget, my pious, sweet, love-for-all mother saying this “Now all she needs to do is stop being a lesbian, break up with her girlfriend and find a nice man, and she will be able to go to heaven.” I was horrified. This woman had a VERY nice partner, who’d been by her side through all the rough times, and been there to help her when she needed it. They were deeply in love, and according to this church, had to end it in order to be xtian. That struck me as nothing more than just sick. I wonder if the women knew what sort of people they were getting involved with when they joined that church. I have since been an atheist for almost 10 years after a lot of digging around in the dogma, and have never been happier. It makes me sick watching people lie to themselves. And I’ve never quite looked at my mother the same.
It’s quite simple.
My great sense of wonder and my desire for an unshakeable standard of Good in view of the pervasive human wickedness throughout history necessitated the existence of a God in my cosmology. The separate histories of my parents insured that “God” was Christian, the iron will of my mother assured that he would be Anglican as opposed to Roman Catholic, which my father would have preferred.
Education and reflection caused me to re-define God sporadically from the Old Testament Yaweh of early childhood, to the Jesus-Saviour of late childhood-early adolescence. He had a “philosopher-Enlightened Being” phase up to my early adult years after Buddhism crossed my horizon, until shaking off the last crumbs of the Jesus-incarnation and settled into a comfortable oscillation between Deist indifference and pantheist impersonal immanence.
What was I left with? God is Love or God is the Laws of Nature… Well, Love is already Love and the Laws of Nature are not only somewhat provisional, but difficult to reconcile (relativity and quantum mechanics) and horribly mathematical in any case. Poof! “God” was gone and left no forwarding address.
Was raised Christian (Swedish Convenant Church, in case that means anything to anyone here), and thought of myself as a Christian until age 22, altho’ towards the end my belief had grown nebulous indeed. What caused my drifting away from faith was a lack of personal religious experience coupled with the realization that just about every argument of Christian apologetics was unsound.
Obviously, the fact that Christianity has become the exception in Swedish society made such drifting easier – in another time or place I might very well remain a believer.
I turned to park down an unlit back street in the nearly town of Loftus (from where where the author’s ancestors may have hailed) any my headlights illuminated a man in an England soccer shirt pleasuring a lady from behind. She was being energetically sick into the trashcan over which she was bent.
This whole tableau thrown into stark relief in the merciless glare of my headlights, I thought ‘God made that spotty fat arse in his image?’ It’s got to be bullshit.
This happened when I was too young to remember it, but my ma likes to bring it up from time to time. It leads me to think that, even though I was baptised catholic, (Irish, Italian and Portuguese grandparents) I was born an atheist.
When I was around the age of four my aunt (VERY conservative and VERY christian) and her daughters came to visit. As we were all playing in the living room my cousins informed me that “the dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t worship jesus”, at which point I ran upstairs and grabbed “My First Dinosaur Book”, which I still own 20 years later by the way, and began (to my mother’s dismay/delight) educating my cousins and aunt about the effects of an asteroid that hit the earth millions and millions and millions of years ago…
With my Finnish language skills (“Ai am veri happi.”) I won’t participate; and my tale isn’t that special, either:
Was raised a Lutheran. Fell for fantasy and science fiction and the whole idea of secondary worlds, fell for role-playing games and skepticism and science, learned to consider and doubt urban legends and ufo nuts, and then finally noticed that the old piece called God didn’t fit — so out it went.
Boring story really. Never had much use for religion, no one could answer my questions. Allowed myself to be terrified during a revival when I was young and be baptized, made my mother happy.
During my first war, I was a medic, I finally realized that prayer was not of any use when someone was bleeding out under my useless hands (only having two of them and needing four) and that life and death is pretty much chance. Luckily, from this, I learned to try to make good choices that made life better rather than just becoming a carping cynic to whom nothing matters, not friends, not family, nothing. I saw that happen to others and it is a sad thing.
I don’t miss not having a god, not having someone cosmic to whom I can turn. I have friends, family, support. If I was going to go back to god, would have done so when my wife died last November. The only thing that pissed me off during her funeral service, and later, was the people who wanted to pray with me or tell me she was in heaven…actually, since she was a suicide, had had several people gleefully tell me she is now in hell…thanks folks, so kind of you. Under her wishes and mine, it was just a viewing, no religion allowed or encouraged. Just scattered her ashes last month at the beach. Still no god, still do not miss one. I am getting through this with the friends and family I learned to cherish a long time ago.
Ciao
I’m a child of the 60s. I was raised in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, and attended every single church service through high school. I went to a UC campus for college, and encountered people who did not believe in god(s), an viewed religion as just a supersition for the first time. But there were two experiences that cemented my materialist outlook. One was a comment by Black Panther Party Chairman Bobby Seale who spoke at my school, that monotheistic religion is an ego trip invented by people who think they’re god. That got me thinking in a comparative religion way. why was “my religion” any truer than any other?
The second experience was reading something by Friedrich Engels, where he referred to the materialist viewpoint as accepting the material world “without reservation.” I felt a warm glow spread through my body as I embraced science and atheism. (I’ve always thought of that when I read people like Karen Armstrong talking about the emptiness people feel when they “abandon” god.)
I quit going to church around 13, but was still a believer. Many of the religious concepts had me scratching my head, but I continued believing. As time passed I noticed my religious belief didn’t inform any of my decisions, so it had become meaningless. Some people say that losing their religious belief was a painful experience, similar to losing a friend, but for me it was akin to losing a mentally ill acquaintance.
Ummmm, guys, PZ isn’t the one having the contest…
So? Less’n PZ tells us to do otherwise, this looks like as good a place as any to rough-draft what we want to say and get some helpful remarks from like-minded folks.
It’s typical of me to pick a nit within an admirable statement, so here goes. To be precise, special relativity is perfectly in concord with quantum mechanics; the two weld together in the subject of quantum field theory. It’s general relativity, which incorporates gravity, that has yet to be brought in line with quantum physics.
Three events have led to my being an atheist: I read the bible (age 8), I met Ken Ham (age 23) and twenty years later, I read Dawkins and Pharyngula.
I read the Bible from cover to cover when I was eight years old. Knowing what the stories and parables actually said (and not being shy about correcting over-simplifications) was enough to get me kicked out of Roman Catholic Sunday school on the very first day, as the sister in charge kindly said: “You don’t need to be here, love.”
I stayed RC until university, where I met the new crowd in town, which were fundamentalists from the US (Australia had not had a Creationist history at all). One of the people I met was Ken Ham, from whose lips I heard for the first time the notion that the creation story was literal. He was the first Christian that I had ever met that actually scared me. Australian creationists have to be particularly divorced from reality, since the animals described in Genesis are not native to Australia, and Europeans more-or-less introduced agriculture; can you imagine how nonsensical Genesis was to the aboriginal people as late as 1780?
I returned to the RC fold (the priest was Jesuit-trained), where we were encouraged to study and think, and look for historical context. A contradiction was seen as something to be resolved, not something to be ignored. The big question for me was how Jewish law, obviously so important up until the moment of Jesus’ death, could be jettisoned afterwards, not by the disciples that Jesus had hand picked, but by one who was given the task to stamp out the Jewish insurrection. This man suddenly, and conveniently, had a vision, and proclaimed the Law a curse, rather than The Way, completely reversing Jesus’ position, even in it’s extant form. Did God make such a mistake sending Jesus that a redo was required?
That more or less jettisoned my faith in Pauline Christianity, but it wasn’t until the meme of “teaching evolution is teaching a world without God” started hitting Australian shores, that I began to see how damaging religion could be.
I started to read Richard Dawkins’ books, and the bastion of rationality, Pharyngula, and the last shreds of belief in God fell away. Why not believe in the FSM, or an invisible pink unicorn? It would make just as much sense. There is simply no internally-consistent evidence on which to base a belief in any god.
I was born in Wisconsin and raised as a Lutheran. When I was four years old, I looked at all the chimneys in my neighborhood and thought, “And this is just one neighborhood in the whole world. And he does them all in one night?” Right then and there, Santa Claus stopped making sense to me. Christianity took about another 12 years, but the thought process was remarkably similar.
All those lurker types who have never commented before post elaborated deconversion stories, and the regular commenters are, with two or three exceptions, nowhere to be seen… Strange thread.
I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school from pre-school to the 9th grade. Everyone I knew was Catholic. By the time I was eight years old, I was sure that the whole of humanity shared the same religion. One year, when I was about 9 years old my family went to Disneyworld on the day after Christmas, and on the trolley going into the park, I struck up a conversation with the young boy sitting in the seat in front of me. “What did you get for Christmas?” I asked. “I don’t celebrate Christmas,” the little boy said, smiling, “I’m a Jewish boy!” I had never met anyone who didn’t celebrate Christmas, and I certainly never met a Jewish boy. It was the first hint that perhaps humanity wasn’t so homogeneous as I thought.
From there, I began to notice religious differences all around me. In my 9th grade religious class, we were taught all the precepts of the major religions. It was fascinating to discover how billions of people around the world, right at that moment, were worshiping in completely “alien” ways, and yet they were absolutely convinced that their religions were the “one true religion.” How could that be? Why didn’t they understand that they were wrong?
The next year, I went to public school for the first time and met Buddhists, Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. These groups, labeled “cults” by members of my church, struck me as perfectly normal people. None had any doubt in the truth of their religious belief. None showed signs of being mislead by the devil. They were as sure of the truth of their religion as I was of mine.
After high school I went to college and I became an English tutor to help pay my bills. I came into contact with even more sincere religious people, more Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus. I certainly met in the hundreds of religious people, all convinced in the rightness of their religion. I also met my first atheists. These people came from China, Hungary, and Vietnam, former Communist countries where atheism was the norm. And they were perfectly, 100% normal and happy and moral. They just did not believe in gods. That was it. They had none of the burden of trying to maintain belief in a religion which seemed to require constant rationalism. The little cracks in belief that required the old “God works in mysterious ways” spackling. They became my closest friends and companions. One would later become my wife.
By then, I had read Mark Twain’s “Letters from the Earth,” Voltaire’s “Candide,” Sagan’s “Demon Haunted World,” Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” and a many other rationalist books. I knew the flaws in my own religion well enough that I would harangue Evangelical proselytizers who came to our college campus to rail against the “liberals, and fornicators, and masturbators.” They would rile up the Christian students by quoting from the Bible, a power they had only because the students respected the book as “the word of Gawd.”
I was tired of the whole thing. I thought about Mark Twain’s quote “Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion — several of them.” In trying to explain the precepts of Christianity to my atheist companions, they would demolish their illogic with simple questions. “Why would god require the torture and death of his son in order to do away with sin? He’s god, he can do whatever he wants. It makes no sense.” And they were right. Original Sin? Ridiculous. Floods to kill all humanity from an all loving being? Crazy. As Mark Twain said, “It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.”
Being a movie lover, I was familiar with two great concepts: “the plot hole” and “the suspension of disbelief.” The bible was chock full of the former, and I could no longer achieve the latter. And I knew that all the other religions were as ridiculous to me as mine was to the atheists. There was no need for looking for a replacement. I was also happier. The world actually made sense once god was removed. It is blessedly indifferent. Sure, there is still suffering, none that I had personally experienced, but it is not due to some flaw of humanity. It just is.
In the end, I took my new found lack of faith for one final test spin. I confronted one of Campus Evangelicals after one of their harangues. “I have a friend who is an atheist,” I began, “She was raised in a Communist country, yet she is perfectly moral, is she going to hell?” The Campus Evangelical, looking somewhat sheepish, said, “Yes, she is, because that is what the Bible says.” “Really?” I said, in a tone which I hoped conveyed my complete disdain at the injustice of such a result, and walked away. Months later, I learned from one of the other Evangelicals that this particular Campus Evangelist had quit the work. I’m egotistical enough to think that I had something to do with his decision.
It’s been over a decade, and I’ve never felt the urge to try to “resuspend my disbelief.” I’m am happily atheist. So is my wife. So, I hope, will be our child. We live quite ordinary, moral, happy lives. We just do it without a belief in gods.
David, I think a lot of us got it out of our systems already – I remember awhile ago there was a huge deconversion thread, and there were a couple before that as well. Plus, it’s finals week in a lot of places, so the academicians and students among us are pretty frazzled.
I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school from pre-school to the 9th grade. Everyone I knew was Catholic. By the time I was eight years old, I was sure that the whole of humanity shared the same religion. One year, when I was about 9 years old my family went to Disneyworld on the day after Christmas, and on the trolley going into the park, I struck up a conversation with the young boy sitting in the seat in front of me. “What did you get for Christmas?” I asked. “I don’t celebrate Christmas,” the little boy said, smiling, “I’m a Jewish boy!” I had never met anyone who didn’t celebrate Christmas, and I certainly never met a Jewish boy. It was the first hint that perhaps humanity wasn’t so homogeneous as I thought.
From there, I began to notice religious differences all around me. In my 9th grade religious class, we were taught all the precepts of the major religions. It was fascinating to discover how billions of people around the world, right at that moment, were worshiping in completely “alien” ways, and yet they were absolutely convinced that their religions were the “one true religion.” How could that be? Why didn’t they understand that they were wrong?
The next year, I went to public school for the first time and met Buddhists, Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. These groups, labeled “cults” by members of my church, struck me as perfectly normal people. None had any doubt in the truth of their religious belief. None showed signs of being mislead by the devil. They were as sure of the truth of their religion as I was of mine.
After high school I went to college and I became an English tutor to help pay my bills. I came into contact with even more sincere religious people, more Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus. I certainly met in the hundreds of religious people, all convinced in the rightness of their religion. I also met my first atheists. These people came from China, Hungary, and Vietnam, former Communist countries where atheism was the norm. And they were perfectly, 100% normal and happy and moral. They just did not believe in gods. That was it. They had none of the burden of trying to maintain belief in a religion which seemed to require constant rationalism. The little cracks in belief that required the old “God works in mysterious ways” spackling. They became my closest friends and companions. One would later become my wife.
By then, I had read Mark Twain’s “Letters from the Earth,” Voltaire’s “Candide,” Sagan’s “Demon Haunted World,” Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” and a many other rationalist books. I knew the flaws in my own religion well enough that I would harangue Evangelical proselytizers who came to our college campus to rail against the “liberals, and fornicators, and masturbators.” They would rile up the Christian students by quoting from the Bible, a power they had only because the students respected the book as “the word of Gawd.”
I was tired of the whole thing. I thought about Mark Twain’s quote “Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion — several of them.” In trying to explain the precepts of Christianity to my atheist companions, they would demolish their illogic with simple questions. “Why would god require the torture and death of his son in order to do away with sin? He’s god, he can do whatever he wants. It makes no sense.” And they were right. Original Sin? Ridiculous. Floods to kill all humanity from an all loving being? Crazy. As Mark Twain said, “It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.”
Being a movie lover, I was familiar with two great concepts: “the plot hole” and “the suspension of disbelief.” The bible was chock full of the former, and I could no longer achieve the latter. And I knew that all the other religions were as ridiculous to me as mine was to the atheists. There was no need for looking for a replacement. I was also happier. The world actually made sense once god was removed. It is blessedly indifferent. Sure, there is still suffering, none that I had personally experienced, but it is not due to some flaw of humanity. It just is.
In the end, I took my new found lack of faith for one final test spin. I confronted one of Campus Evangelicals after one of their harangues. “I have a friend who is an atheist,” I began, “She was raised in a Communist country, yet she is perfectly moral, is she going to hell?” The Campus Evangelical, looking somewhat sheepish, said, “Yes, she is, because that is what the Bible says.” “Really?” I said, in a tone which I hoped conveyed my complete disdain at the injustice of such a result, and walked away. Months later, I learned from one of the other Evangelicals that this particular Campus Evangelist had quit the work. I’m egotistical enough to think that I had something to do with his decision.
It’s been over a decade, and I’ve never felt the urge to try to “resuspend my disbelief.” I’m am happily atheist. So is my wife. So, I hope, will be our child. We live quite ordinary, moral, happy lives. We just do it without a belief in gods.
I consider a rarity among Atheist, I was born to two parents that did not believe in God. Until I was around the age of 12 I had only been in a church about twice, and those were when I was visiting my grandmother, on my mother’s side, other then that my first twelve years of life were free of the Church. During that time I of course had friends that were “Children of Christian Parents,” but it never seemed to be a big deal that I did not go to church. Probably most of these children’s parents did not even know I did not go to church, I do know a few that did, and they never did every try to keep their children from playing with me(one of these kid’s father was a pastor),
When I turned 12 years of age, my father got out of the Army, and we moved in with my grandparents, my mother’s parents. Now they did not force me or my two younger sisters to go to church. Heck my grandfather did not even go to church, I do not know what his beliefs are one way or the other, really I don’t think anyone in the family does, but I can never remember him ever getting up on a Sunday morning and going to Church. I do remember an awful lot of Sunday morning him getting up early to go fishing. If there was anything he has ever done religiously, it was fishing, he even does it up to this day, and he will soon be in his 90’s.
I can honestly say I never was pressured by my grandmother to attend church with her. But after having lived with my grandparents awhile, I soon did. Looking back, the only reason I ever went to church with her was because my sister did, and they went with grandmother because they would all go shopping afterward. I basically went along to church with them was to get a free lunch, and to go to town on
Sundays. But after having attended services a few weeks in a row, the Church started to get their claws into me. The first few weeks I was there, I went to the adult Sunday School classes with my grandmother, but after having shown up Sunday after Sunday, the teacher in the adult class talked grandma into letting me go to Sunday school class with kids my own age, and soon I was in class getting the kiddy version of “How Great God” was, and “How We Should All Love Jesus.” Then came the youth church minister asking my grandma if me and my sisters would like to join the other children for the children services while the grown ups had their service. And of course it was geared toward making kids listen to the word of God, so they had all kind of videos to watch, and all kind of different games to keep us entertained, while we were unaware that they were brainwashing us into believe just like they did. And it was pretty easy thing for them to do, since all the other kids there grew up in this kind of environment, and that is what they heard week in and week out.
I soon fell for it, how could I not, they made it so fun, and soon I was a born again Christian. I was attending bible study group, funny thing was I was the youngest one there, the rest of the adults did not think their children needed to come to such meetings. I was going to pancake breakfasts, potluck dinners, youth church meetings, spring break camping trips. I went to all kind of events, you name them I was there, I feel into it deep. I like to think it was only because the stupidity of youth that I was able to go in for it all. I was like this from the 6th grade until I was a freshman in High School, I went every weekend. But then on the spring break camping trip the preacher said something that broke the hold Christianity had over me. We were camping in at a State Park in Kentucky, and had come up to a nature display. On the display were several trivia question having to deal with nature, and Brother Joel started to read them out to us, and see if we could come up with the answers. Well I must admit I was not really paying attention at this point and did not hear what the question were, but I do remember that Brother Joel did not agree with the answer to one of the question, but he did not have an alternative answer for it, he just did not accept the one that was offered by the State Park Department. All I can remember him saying that we all know that the answer was wrong because “we did not believe in evolution”.
“WE DID NOT BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION!” Now I had only been introduced to the concept of evolution that year in freshmen biology, and honestly did not know much more about it then the survival of the fittest, but I knew that Evolution was right. I had heard a few things before this, but not that there was a whole Theory that explained how we all came to be on this Earth. Heck I did not even know that it was a theory. But Evolution made sense to me, and what Brother Joel had said did not. Soon I started attending church less often, until finally I confronted Brother Joel with what I was thinking. I told him that I did not know if I could remain a Christian and know that Evolution was correct at the same time. He gave me some lame answer that was designed to get me to stay with the church, but it was useless, by that summer I left the church.
My junior year I did not give any thought to what I believed in. I was playing football, I was on the track team, working part time, and trying to balance all that out, while still trying to keep my grades up and hanging out with my friends. So that year was pretty much spoken for. My senior year is when I was able to define who I was. I first heard the words agnostic and atheist that year, and I knew that was what I was, an atheist, but I had yet to confirm it to anyone. But it was pretty obvious that year that I was going down a path of my own. I stopped trying to be accepted by the popular kids, I began wearing clothes that defined who I was, not the clothes the “in crowd” were wearing. Most of these consisted of me wearing clothes with weird patterns and unusual colors, and odd sayings. Also this was the early 90’s and granny glass were coming back in style and I had begun to wear a pair of them in the hallways, just waiting for someone to tell me to take them off, because I was going to tell them to quit trying to make me conform. I was not being a rebel it was just years of me trying to be someone I was not just washing away. I mean High School would be over with in a few months, and then I would never see most of these people ever again.
One day during Government Class, the teacher was trying to get a breakdown on what people believed in the class. He admitted that he was a Buddhist, not that I promote such belief, but I thought that it was cool for him to admit it in front of a class in a small town in the Midwest. Then he just asked us to show of hands what we believed in, and he started to name off different belief systems, and then he asked if there was anyone who did not believe in anything, and their for the first time I admitted in front of a group of my peers that I did not believe in their God. The teacher gave me a big wink and a smile, and it was not a big deal among to my class mates.
It may not have bothered them that I was an atheist, but their Christianity did end up bothering me that year. A couple days before graduation, a federal court had ruled that a school official could not lead a group of students in prayer during a school event. Well my classmates heard this and they got their ire up. They were not going to be told that they could not pray if they wanted to. As usual,
my “Christian” classmate had missed the point of the ruling. It did not state that the students could not engage in prayer on their own, and I think the judge issuing the ruling even said so. But all they heard was no……..prayer……..students……school events. They
decided that they were going to get the whole class to stand up at the end of the ceremony and recite the Lord’s Prayer. I tried to argue that what they were doing was not a violation of the Judge’s ruling but that the Judge had said that they could do this very thing. But it was to no use, after nearly twenty minute of having my argument fall on deaf ears I gave up. On the day of graduation, the
ring leaders of this little exercise in stupidity were handing out Lord’s Prayer they had photo copied. Really, you are all good Christians, but you can not remember the Lord’s Prayer. Surely Jesus would look down on you with approval and place those words in your heart. That way he would not be embraced by having the lot of you seen reciting the Lord’s Prayer, something you should know by heart, off a sheet of paper. None the less they went on with this pathetic display of their First Amendment rights and at the end of the ceremony, they stood up as nearly one (I say nearly as one because I refused to do so), and read the Lord’s Prayer to the audience. I don’t know if they expected the audience to endorse what they had just done, but pretty much after they were done the crowd was silent
and on their seats, instead of up and cheering for their friends and family member who had just been honored. I had just sat there laughing, watching the whole thing from my seat.
Not a deconversion story (born an atheist and stayed that way, only growing more rabid with age), but worth sharing, given the context.
As a small child, some of the first things my parents read to me, after Dr. Suess, were Greek, Roman, and Norse myths. These lend themselves well to picture books, as you might imagine. I think we also had some kind of childrens’ Bible, which I mentally lumped in with all the rest.
So along comes kindergarten, and eventually Easter. Of course, I’d always celebrated Easter (as much as any <5-year-old can “celebrate” Easter) as a secular holiday with bunnies and candy. But our teacher for some reason was explaining it as a religious holiday, with something about the son of god being resurrected or whatnot.
At which point, my 5-year-old self pipes up: “Ms. Smith… which god?”
PZ, Please Delete #43, it contains link error.
They never had me totally convinced from the start, my having been properly primed for the abusive assaults of adults and their make-believe heroes. The early death of Santa Claus in our house helped imbue me with a healthy dose of skepticism towards adults and their other make believe friends.
Enjoy.
Dammit, I knew those angle-brackets were just asking for trouble. *Sigh*. Second paragraph should read:
I was raised by halfheartedly theist parents until about the age of 11, when my mother decided to start attending a traditional Anglican church mostly composed of 80 year olds, and brought me along. I became an altar server, it was fun for a while, then I started to get bored with it and actually think about it critically and realized I didn’t believe any of it. I suffered through a couple of years of weekly prison until I finally got the guts up to tell my mom I wouldn’t be attending anymore. The impetus for this was that I wanted to go to a party at my friend’s house and she didn’t want me to go because I needed to get up for church in the morning. She refused to let me just quit, told me I had to go talk to the priest first. So I did. I told him how I felt and that I didn’t really have faith in God or believe in church anymore, and he agreed that if that was the case it was probably best that I didn’t attend. So I went to my party and I have been an atheist ever since. :)
Like so many of you, I was raised as a Good Catholic Girl (TM) by my mother. (My father thinks religion is a crutch, and handed both my brother and I several Heinlein books at a young age. Silly engineers.) I remember in Sunday school, asking “too many questions” of my Sunday school teacher. But I believed in God, yasure youbetcha. My mom said there was a God, and she’d never lie to me about something so important, right? She was objective about her faith for the most part. She supports abortion, and, with the exception of homosexuals (who can be good people, but it’s still wrong,in her opinion. And no, I’ve not come out yet), is willing to concede she could be wrong. So, maybe it’s the fact that I was taught to use my eyes and brain. But I remember sitting in front of my window, looking at the tree across the street, saying my prayers. One moment, there was this more-or-less certainty that the world had some direction, that there was a reason for everything, Grandpa (who had, before he passed away, some seven different varieties of cancer) was going to get better. I was saying the “God bless” portion of my prayers when I realized that this was silly. I sounded retarded. I only believed in this God guy cause my mom told me he was real. I was seven or eight. The next year, I found Stranger in a Strange Land while on my quest to finish all the science fiction books in the public library (not all the real science ones were reliable. There’s this good story of my dad throwing one of the God-tainted bio books across the house, but that’s one for a different time). That pretty much solidified my disbelief. And you know what? I still think that people can be good, and have an intrinsic value (being living beings and all). Turns out that atheism doesn’t turn you into some fire-breathing demon, though that would have made high school a lot easier.
Everyone is born an atheist.
Then the church comes along and mindrapes you.
The catholic church goes a bit further and rapes you physically as well.
I was 5. At my first Sunday school class they told me about Noah’s ark. I had just been on a school trip to the zoo. I said no way was that possible. I started explaining about how many animals there were but they asked me to sit at the back and be quiet. After the class was over they told me I had to give them the 10 cents my Dad gave me for the plate. Needless to say I was pissed.
I told my Dad I didn’t want to go back to Sunday school because they lied and stole my money.
To my surprize my Dad said “Good!”.
My Dad ROCKS!
I was a theomaniac but I became an atheist when I realized I didn’t exist.
I was a theomaniac but I became an atheist when I realized I didn’t exist.
At age 10 my son told me he had decided to be a pagan (Wiccan). I would have told him that was a little young to make up his mind, but I distinctly remembered our Anglican pastor praising some South American boy of 10 for declaring that he was a Christian and sticking to it. So I said, “Fine.”
I was raised in the united church, they’re one of those awesome “be a good person, cuz then you’ll be a good person” kinds of churches. I went to catholic school where religion was just everywhere(the conflicts of attending a protestant church and catholic school didn’t seem to bug me at the time though now I can really see they were VERY different). I never really believed a lot of it, but I was smart (I KNEW that I knew everything), and somehow that translated into wanting to learn an awful lot about the bible and such and so I did, I knew ALL the stock stories that I’ve now completely forgotten. In grade 6, I watched ‘Contact’ with my mom (having a closet sci-fi nerd for a mom is AWESOME), and when Ellie was talking about Occam’s razor and the other small religious debates it really resonated with me, I kinda had a moment of “well, Ellie’s exactly right and just articulated whats been subtly nagging at me for the past few years” and literally overnight went from being a well educated, somewhat devout christian to scientifically obsessed athiest, and I haven’t looked back(the next day really cemented my anti-religious thought when somehow I was exposed in front of the other devout children and told by several that I was going to hell). I kept going to church (by that time my mom was running the sunday school) and participaed a fair amount in the youth group, somehow I managed to last four or five years there without it mattering or even coming to light that I was an athiest, we mostly sat around and talked about life and stuff, poked fun at the youth minister and made movies about the more ridiculous aspects of religion(like an All-saints survivor, with St Valentine as a womanizing jerk of course).
It was only a few years after we’d all parted ways that anyone found out that I was an atheist all along. That had to be one of the most awkward msn conversations I’ve ever slagged through, a (normally rather smart and rational) friend of mine seemed to think that without religion, nothing mattered, she seemed to think that my atheism could completely justify it if she were to kill herself (she didn’t, but yeah. AWKWARD.)
Over the years my beliefs definately went through what seem to be the typical stages of deconversion: the initial “this is all bullshit! Your books are all lies! God doesnt exist.” phase, followed by the inevitable “Religion is the source of all evil in the world! God is a douchebag!” phase and right now I’m at the addicted to science, “the real world is so freaking awesome, who needs a god?” phase. I couldn’t be more happy.
I still find it kind of weird that my entire view on the world can be directly linked to a sci-fi movie :)
Was brought up going to churches casually, and had kind of secular parents. Got sent to a religious(christadelphian) private school, and just stuck to the routine going to church on Sunday thing. Didn’t really have any strong connection with God or Jesus, more individualist than anything.Got to about 18 years of age and saw others getting born again and baptized, so i thought i would read the bible to see if i believed and could commit to something like baptism. Let’s just say i got about 3 books into the bible and threw it away laughing. I instinctively remember reading something about giants just before i threw it away.
After i threw it away i went online to search on Google for “is god real”. that introduced me to a world of information. Videos like this introduced me to the illogical conceptions of god. Seeing Eugenie Scott talk on P&T introduced me to evolution and sites like panda’s thumb and talk origins helped me grasp the hard to understand subject of evolution. Studied bible verses of supposed prophecy fulfillment’s to find they where just more fairy tales created by xians.YouTube videos also helped in almost all of these areas of understanding. I am an Atheist today.
Mine’s really boring… my high school chemistry teacher explained the scientific method and I thought “oh.. OK”.
I grew up in a religious family in an (almost) monoreligious country. I believed very, very seriously. I was an active member of my parish church, and was even teaching sunday school. I kept believing, with occasional doubts and caveats, all through my (scientific) studies, and well into my tenure track job.
What I most liked about my church was the enormous work done by my parish priest, who always seemed to have a smile for everybody – he used his “service” flat to house people who couldn’t find anything else (because they had been in jail etc) and ate cheap stuff so as to have enough to share. To me, he was living proof of God’s existence.
Then, as part of marriage preparation, I got a copy of the Cathechism, read a large part of it, and found out what my church was actually saying. And believing. I did some research – the Vatican has a very well kept website – and I started believing less and less. And then, one day, I was sure. I was free. And I’ve been free, and happy, ever since.
True story, and one I wouldn’t tell under my real name. When I was 18, and could drink in NY, I got a couple under my belt, and then walked into a Catholic church near the bar. I walked up to the alter, and gave G-d a good cussing out, not forgetting Jesus and Mary. I tried the thing again in a mainline Protestant church, and my own Schul just to get more data. No response! And the things I said were not the kind of things a jealous, proud, vengeful and omnipotent G-d could allow to go unanswered. Heck, even some sort of compassionate G-d would have been really, really pissed. It was good, crisp stuff. Deeply personal, and merited at the least a punch in the nose, let alone eternal damnation.
Anyway, He turned out to be either ineffective or not present, and either was good enough for me.
For me it was coming to understand just how utterly ridiculous and self-cancelling were the terms of the Salvation/Hell proposition, how much they resemble the average con game, and how obvious the reasons are for the church elders to wish me to believe in such foolishness.
The blatant borrowing of iconography and mythological details from previous religious offerings was just icing on the cake.
I am afraid my story is fairly boring. It can be summed up as: tooth fairy, easter bunny, Santa Claus, god.
For years I truly believed that all of the church and religion thing was an elaborate ruse to keep kids happy and to reduce their fear of death. One that all adults were in on, like Santa Claus. Only slowly did I come to realize that I was only partially right, that actually it was an elaborate ruse to keep kids and adults with stunted reasoning skills happy and to reduce their fear of death.
I was born an atheist, I’ll die as an atheist, so god help me.
… damn… i found it too late in dawkins`s website…
Anyway the contest seems very hard to win… which its
a great, since there are lots of hardworking ateists out there.
Thank you to everyone that participated in the book contest. The final entries are published and can be found and voted on here. I hope more of you get a chance at the next one. In fact, I will inform P.Z. in advance of the next one!
So many of you participated in the last contest that I had to run another. We are giving away a copy of “The Atheism Tapes,” Which is a 2 disc DVD set. Contest can be found at http://www.thejesusmyth.com/new-contest-new-prize.htm
ENJOY! June 21st deadline!