My Path To Atheism
jewel July 5th, 2008
Every now and again I get asked why I decided to become an atheist. Hopefully this post will answer that question.
First, and foremost, I didn’t “decide” to become an atheist. That implies waking up one morning and saying “starting right now I no longer believe in god.” And it wasn’t like that at all. Religion of any kind just never really took. I did try a couple different “spiritual paths” for a few years in my teens and early 20′s thinking the problem was the religion itself, but the “feel good” factor wasn’t enough for me and I didn’t see anything that convinced me that it, any more than the religion in which I was raised, was anything more than wishful thinking. Giving up religion wasn’t at all traumatic for me like it is for some people. I probably made the whole process a bit harder than it needed to be, but I wasn’t left feeling sad or empty or without purpose. I actually felt liberated. Like I was seeing the world for the first time and everything just made a whole lot more sense.
I was loosely raised Southern Baptist. I say loosely, because I stopped going to church when I was 10. It was my decision and my mom didn’t force me to go after that (a decision she says she regrets). She was (and is) still religious and I still claimed to believe in god, although I was having strong doubts even at that young age. Why did I stop going to church? Well, of the few things that stick out from my memory , I can say the sermons didn’t make any kind of sense. For instance, I remember one sermon that was about how TV was “evil”. That was actually my breaking point. I remember coming home and asking my mom why, if TV was so evil, did so many preachers broadcast their sermons on the evil TV. If I did go to church again after that I didn’t go for long.
Although, I didn’t actually have too much trouble letting go of the ‘god’ concept, ‘hell’ was another matter entirely. I spent a good deal of my childhood feeling that I was destined for hell. There was actually a time when I thought my inability to really believe in god and religion was some sort of deficiency. I thought there was something wrong with me because other people claimed to be able to feel the presence of god – but I never did; not once. No child should have to live with that kind of anxiety. Thankfully, I did figure out before I reached adulthood that the hell thing was just a scare tactic to keep people believing. Fear is a powerful motivator. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Religions make a lot of claims, but they are very light on the evidence.
In my teens I became interested in Paganism, Wicca specifically, and so I gave that a try for a while. In my early 20′s I even went to Pagan gatherings and I had a lot of friends that were Pagan. But, once again, when I actually thought about this stuff, it felt good but I didn’t really believe any of it. I realized I was just going through the motions. Plus, it was all just a little too much like cotton candy for me – all fluff and no substance. I stopped calling myself Wiccan or Pagan and just went with agnostic. I even read up on a couple Buddhist traditions, but in the end I found them lacking, too.
What I consider my real turning point, though, was reading Pale Blue Dot and The Demon Haunted World both by Carl Sagan. It was then that I started learning about critical thinking, and not just in regard to religion but also other aspects of life. In regards to religion, though, Carl Sagan really said it best for me. In Pale Blue Dot, he spoke of a picture taken of Earth by the Voyager I probe. To the left of this paragraph, I’ve linked to the picture of that blue dot he talked about.
Look back again of the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic, or religious subdivision. If this doesn’t strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?
I thought about that one paragraph for days. And I mean really thought about it. And he was right. Nearly every religious sect claims to be “the true one” while all the others are “false”. Just because I was raised with a particular point of view doesn’t make it right. Of course it doesn’t make it wrong either. Everything must stand on its own merits and, for me, religion fails spectacularly to do so – and reading the Bible from cover to cover convinced me more than any other source that it is false. Also, which religion a person belongs to tends to be an accident of birth. Those born into Christian families tend to stay Christian and raise their children in their tradition of Christianity. Same with Islam and Hinduism and probably most others.
Once I started reading books by Carl Sagan the flood gates were opened. In the past dozen or so years I’ve learned so much about how we know what we do know and also that there is so much out there that we don’t know yet – that gives us so much purpose. And I do have to say that the universe is really much more breathtakingly beautiful than any pseudoscience or religion could ever portray it. Have I lost that feeling of wonder since I became an atheist? No, just the opposite, actually.
I was raised as an Anglican until I was 9. I never really bought into it, but many of my friends from school went to that same Sunday school, and a lot of people seemed to think that a little boy in a suit praying was cute… so it was good for some attention.
Even then though, it sort of bugged me that what I was learning on Sundays didn’t wash with what I learned M-F.
At some point when I was 9, my mother (she was the one driving this, my step father couldn’t have cared less if we went to church) figured out that the local Pentecostal church sent school buses around to pick up kids and take them to Sunday school / church. She jumped on this because it meant that she could unload us without actually having to go to church herself. Even at 9 years old I could see the flagrant hypocrisy.
Now, I don’t know what your church was like as a kid, but Pentecostal church is REALLY alien. There’s lots of halleluja, and lots of fire and brimstone. And discipline. You follow the plan, or else. At Anglican Sunday school, if you asked a question like “why are there no fossil men with dinosaurs if the flood happened” you would get an obfuscated answer and a subject change. At Pentecostal Sunday school, you got humiliated in front of the class for being stupid and a tool of Satan AND they called your parents and explained how disruptive you were.
I started to skip Sunday school and go to the main church service (seems that they didn’t take attendance very well). At the main church hall they spoke in tongues, which was weird… but the REALLY weird thing was the weekly collection. They posted last week’s collection on the wall and it was always a number less than $500. But the collection plate passing me, one that had only passed a few rows, usually had more than $500 in it in loose bills, not counting the sealed envelopes. I recorded this for a few weeks and mentioned it to one of the minions of the church. This resulted in another “tool of Satan” lecture and a call to my parents, and monitored attendance at Sunday school.
It got me to thinking that if there was some kind of all-loving, all-knowing God, this could not POSSIBLY be His will. It was an obvious, simpler explanation that this whole church thing was constructed by men to control people and make money. So sometime before my 12th birthday, I stopped believing in God. God ceased to be necessary to complete my view of the world. With no God, it seemed like the world was just a clearer place.
But I once mentioned that I didn’t believe in God any more to my mother, and got chastised. In fact, I was sent for confirmation classes back at the Anglican church (if you don’t believe in God, then you must need MORE CHURCH!!!). I went through the motions and got confirmed, and got some nice (mostly religious) presents. I still have my prayer book signed by the archbishop.
I was forced to attend church under whatever pain my parents could think of, until I was 16. Although after age 12, it became more of a joke. I’d sit at the back and horse around. At 16 I got a year of respite… then I went to join the army.
Now, the military is supposed to be pretty inclusive. However, when I asked not to swear on a bible, I was chastised and it was suggested that my military career would be much more pleasant if I wasn’t an atheist. Indeed, at basic training “church parade” was a requirement. If you claimed atheism, you STILL had to go to church, but you could stand at attention outside for the duration of the service and had your choice of which church to stand in front of. Some days, you could do 2 hours of battle PT instead of standing. I actually did the standing/PT a few times, and when I finally just decided to go to church services, people actually shook my hand for “seeing the light” and ceasing to be “contrary.”
When I left basic training, I formally changed my documentation to state that I had no religion. This formally prevented them from forcing me to go to church… but not from harassing me about it. Strangely enough, it was the Protestant chaplain at my next posting that helped out with that and of all the military poeple I ever had to deal with, was the most supportive of my atheism. I lost count how many times over 9 years of military service that I was told by senior officers that being an atheist would impede my career.
Being an atheist meant I drew Christmas and Easter duty pretty much every year. Because, after all, an atheist doesn’t have a wife, friends or family to spend time with.
I never mentioned atheism again to my family until a few years ago. You’d think I’d said that I molested baby squirrels. They seem to have gotten over it now, at least the ones who aren’t Jehova’s Witnesses.
Remember too… I’m in Canada. This isn’t a bible-belt story, it took place in pot-smoking, draft-dodging, beer-swilling, hippie Canada.
Well, you’ve certainly given me a different view of Canada. I thought you all were more sensible up there. Well, I hoped, anyway.
The Pentecostals are pretty alien even to this product of the Bible Belt. Southern Baptists don’t speak in tongues or anything like that, but there was plenty of fire and brimstone talk and threats of hell if we didn’t follow God’s Word (TM). Fear was used a lot to keep the children in line, adults, too, I imagine.
I remember people from the local churches coming around our neighborhood on Saturdays bribing the local kids into coming to church on Sunday by giving us all candy. They, also, would pick us up and drop us off. What a scam!
A few years ago I was having an argument with my mom over evolution (she pulled the random God card of the day) and I remember blurting out “Good grief, Mom, I stopped believing in God not long after I stopped believing in Santa Clause”. The look I got was absolutely priceless. I don’t recommend this method of coming out to ones parents.
>>I remember people from the local churches coming around our
>>neighborhood on Saturdays bribing the local kids into coming to
>>church on Sunday by giving us all candy. They, also, would pick
>>us up and drop us off. What a scam!
Yeah, that was the deal with the Pentecostals. And to be fair, they had good candy! There was a musician who used to ride our bus. He’d play the guitar and sing gospel songs. At the pentecostal church, I got to meet John Glenn (and got his autograph). I got to meet some super strong-man whose name escapes me now. So certainly the memories aren’t all really weird.
But you don’t have to be very mature before you figure out they’re bribing you to go to church. My friends and I used to openly refer to it as the “Bribe School Bus”, although there was a stern talking to and lectures about Hell if anyone from the church ever heard that term.
I was at a client site about 10 years ago, in southern Illinois. Over lunch, the folks were talking about their upcoming revival meeting or some such jiggery-pokery. Quite innocently, they asked where I went to church, and quite innocently, I replied that I didn’t go to church because I don’t believe in gods. Wow… that went over like a beer fart in an elevator. I guess God doesn’t teach ‘em not to ask questions they don’t want to hear the answer too. I think they decided not to dwell on it because I was from a foreign country
but the energy of the conversation was pretty much sucked away from the table.
I wish I’d had a cell phone with a camera. The look on their faces was priceless.
>>Southern Baptists don’t speak in tongues or anything like that
The only thing I’ve ever heard about Southern Baptists is:
“Why don’t Southern Baptists have sex standing up?”
… “It might lead to dancing”
Yep. And dancing leads straight to HELL!!!!! lol
Where did you serve, Evolving Squid?
My brother, an atheist, was in CF reserve for several years, and he never got a hard time about it. I never asked if he had to swear on a Bible. Aren’t there enough non-Christians that they have to accommodate that all the time? (In court, you have the option of swearing on a Bible or not before you give testimony.)
Are you allowed to swear an oath on a copy of ‘A Brief History of Time’?
Myself, I arrived at atheism from Catholicism. I have always assumed most people come to it the same way: we spend some part of our youth trying to reconcile these contradictory ideas in our heads, then one day we give up and start calling ourselves atheists. I was in my mid-20s when I did that, though. I think it took me a while because Catholic school was pretty lax in its indoctrination — they were okay with sex education (minus the condoms, though I didn’t notice that at the time) and evolution. I think when religion isn’t pushy, there’s less urgency for rational people to get away from it.
Thanks for posting Mango! Personally, I probably would have started calling myself an atheist a whole lot sooner if religion was less pushy when I was growing up. Looking back, I haven’t bought any of it since I was a kid. I tried, but it just wasn’t there for me.