A Christian commented on a post of mine and asked me for "my story"--She wanted to know how I became an atheist. The following is how I replied.
My parents were both Catholic, but we didn't go to church that much when I was a kid. My dad's mom lived with us for a little while when I was really young, and she was very deeply Christian and also had the unfortunate combination of also being Schizophrenic. Paranoid Schizophrenia is one of the worst and saddest diseases on this planet--my grandma was plagued with grandiose delusions unimaginable by sane people. But she read the bible to me when I was very young. I remember once she told me that "the devil" was always "trying to get me." I realize now what she was probably trying to say is that he was trying to tempt me to sin, but I was so young that I took that literally to mean that little red demons or devils were always following me around trying to kidnap me. I used to walk to school every day looking out for them. I was afraid to be alone because I never knew when a devil was going to appear and throw me in a van and drive away.
My grandma moved out just before I started school and my parents never talked that much about Jesus to me. My mom did sometimes, but it was only when I was in trouble or when I asked. Once I squashed a bunch of bugs on my porch and my mom yelled at me and told me that God gets angry when I kill his creatures. So I definitely believed in God, but I didn't know the stories in the bible, I didn't understand sin or salvation, and I didn't know really anything about Christianity other than if you believed you went to heaven and if you didn't then you went to hell--and hell was bad; you didn't want to go there. By the time I was 12 to 14 years old, I really started to wonder why God never talked to me. I just didn't understand why I couldn't hear his voice or see him, or ask him questions. I heard of other people "having a relationship with god," and I didn't feel I ever had that. My parents loved me, and I knew that because they took care of me, and they did things that made me feel good. People told me that God loved me, but I didn't know that because what had he ever done for me? Nothing that I could tell. Every good thing that ever happened to me was because people worked to make it happen--not God. people got jobs and made money to buy me clothes, food, and toys. God wasn't to thank for that, it was people. When I was sick, god didn't heal me. I went to the doctor and they gave me medicine. If I got a good grade in school, it was because I worked hard and studied and got that grade--God never helped me--I did it all myself.
But the bad things that happened--I wanted to know why God didn't help in those situations. I had very bad acne as a young teenager and it made me very self conscious and some kids even made fun of me. I didn't understand why God didn't make my acne go away--or at least make the kids stop making fun of me about it. I really started to wonder... Maybe there is no such thing as God? I can't even tell you how SCARY that thought was. Try to imagine [as a Christian] if that thought started creeping into your head. You would be so scared that God would punish you for those thoughts, wouldn't you? I tried to keep those thoughts hidden, but I also believed that God could read my mind, so I believed that he already knew that I was doubting him, and I was scared that he would punish me so badly for that. So I started thinking, maybe I could ask God to give me some signal that he is really there and wants me to have a relationship with him. I asked God "If you're listening right now, please make some blue light appear in my room." I would close my eyes, then open them and I was hoping so hard I would see some blue light. But there was nothing. I asked him to make some sound happen in my bedroom so that I would know he's in there with me. And I'd wait. And there was nothing audible that I could ever tell. I did this many times over many years--sometimes being vague with my request, simply saying "give me a sign, God," leaving up to him whether to produce light, sound, or something else. I never got any response. I never heard a sound or saw any light. Whenever I asked God for some sign, my request went unanswered. It was pretty clear to me that God was totally ignoring every request I ever asked of him. I prayed for my acne to go away and it didn't. I didn't even know it was possible to not believe in god. But I was starting to not believe. I was far too scared to admit that though. At first, I was afraid to admit it because I was afraid God would punish me. After many years, by the time I was either 18 or 19, I wasn't scared anymore. I just said "I don't believe in god anymore. And I'm not afraid of hell because it doesn't exist."
By my senior year in high school, I was definitely an atheist--but that word had never become a part of my vocabulary. And if anybody asked me if I believed in god, I'm not sure how I would have answered. It might have depended on who asked and the day of the week. I may have said 'no' or I may have relied on some euphemism (which I have now come to despise) like saying "I'm spiritual, but not religious." But I remember the first time I ever heard the word 'atheist.' There was a song that got stuck in my head. I wish I could remember the song but I really don't remember what it was. I just remember there was one lyric in the song that sounded like "I have the power to destroy you." Now, I knew that that wasn't the real lyric to the song, but it sounded like that's what the singer was saying to me, and one day I was humming the song and sang, intentionally, the wrong lyric aloud during class. When I sang the tune "I have the power to destroy you," a younger kid in my class looked at me, horrified. With his eyes wide, he asked "What is that, some kind of atheist song?"
I wish I had been informed on what that word meant at the time, so that I could have corrected him. I had no idea what an "atheist" was, but in that context, I knew it must be bad. I spent at least the next 2-3 years of my life believing, whenever I [rarely] heard the word 'atheist,' it must mean an evil, destructive, immoral person. Then, I realized one day, what the word meant, and I realized that I was one. But something strange still continued to happen...
I spent the next decade of my life, as an openly atheist person, believing that religious people were more moral than me. I'm embarrassed to admit that nowadays, but it's true. There is a stigma that non-religious people and openly atheists are morally bankrupt people, and I believed that was true. I had read some quotes and even some books that argued otherwise, and I took some very interesting philosophy classes in college that helped to cleanse my mind of that horribly incorrect notion, but I kept subconsciously letting my brain default back to that after a while.
So what changed my mind? It was downloading and listening to the audio book The Necessity of Atheism by David Brooks. That book is not even in the top 20 of my favorite books I've ever read, but it is the one book that changed my life more than any other! I cannot put into words how my mind changed after reading it. I realized that I wasn't morally broken; that it was actually Christianity that was, and that Christianity was responsible for my being wrong all those years about atheists being immoral. That's how Christianity thrives: By convincing the population they are born with some magical disease that is only curable by devoting your life to the church (usually involving giving them lots of your money, too), so that you can gain a reward not redeemable until after you're already dead. What a scam!! Brooks got me thinking in a whole new realm. Never again would I lie, saying I'm spiritual but not religious. Never again would I say "I respect your beliefs." Never again would I say I'm less moral because I don't have a god threatening me with hell. After reading that book, I became obsessed with reading as many books about atheism as I could, and I found the likes of Richard Dawkins, Aron Ra, Christopher Hitchens, David Smalley, Dan Barker, Sam Harris, Seth Andrews, PC Dixon, and Guy P. Harrison. When I say that The Necessity of Atheism is not one of my top 20 books of all time, it's because those other authors wrote better works, but I never would have found them if I hadn't read David Brooks first.
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My parents were both Catholic, but we didn't go to church that much when I was a kid. My dad's mom lived with us for a little while when I was really young, and she was very deeply Christian and also had the unfortunate combination of also being Schizophrenic. Paranoid Schizophrenia is one of the worst and saddest diseases on this planet--my grandma was plagued with grandiose delusions unimaginable by sane people. But she read the bible to me when I was very young. I remember once she told me that "the devil" was always "trying to get me." I realize now what she was probably trying to say is that he was trying to tempt me to sin, but I was so young that I took that literally to mean that little red demons or devils were always following me around trying to kidnap me. I used to walk to school every day looking out for them. I was afraid to be alone because I never knew when a devil was going to appear and throw me in a van and drive away.
But the bad things that happened--I wanted to know why God didn't help in those situations. I had very bad acne as a young teenager and it made me very self conscious and some kids even made fun of me. I didn't understand why God didn't make my acne go away--or at least make the kids stop making fun of me about it. I really started to wonder... Maybe there is no such thing as God? I can't even tell you how SCARY that thought was. Try to imagine [as a Christian] if that thought started creeping into your head. You would be so scared that God would punish you for those thoughts, wouldn't you? I tried to keep those thoughts hidden, but I also believed that God could read my mind, so I believed that he already knew that I was doubting him, and I was scared that he would punish me so badly for that. So I started thinking, maybe I could ask God to give me some signal that he is really there and wants me to have a relationship with him. I asked God "If you're listening right now, please make some blue light appear in my room." I would close my eyes, then open them and I was hoping so hard I would see some blue light. But there was nothing. I asked him to make some sound happen in my bedroom so that I would know he's in there with me. And I'd wait. And there was nothing audible that I could ever tell. I did this many times over many years--sometimes being vague with my request, simply saying "give me a sign, God," leaving up to him whether to produce light, sound, or something else. I never got any response. I never heard a sound or saw any light. Whenever I asked God for some sign, my request went unanswered. It was pretty clear to me that God was totally ignoring every request I ever asked of him. I prayed for my acne to go away and it didn't. I didn't even know it was possible to not believe in god. But I was starting to not believe. I was far too scared to admit that though. At first, I was afraid to admit it because I was afraid God would punish me. After many years, by the time I was either 18 or 19, I wasn't scared anymore. I just said "I don't believe in god anymore. And I'm not afraid of hell because it doesn't exist."
By my senior year in high school, I was definitely an atheist--but that word had never become a part of my vocabulary. And if anybody asked me if I believed in god, I'm not sure how I would have answered. It might have depended on who asked and the day of the week. I may have said 'no' or I may have relied on some euphemism (which I have now come to despise) like saying "I'm spiritual, but not religious." But I remember the first time I ever heard the word 'atheist.' There was a song that got stuck in my head. I wish I could remember the song but I really don't remember what it was. I just remember there was one lyric in the song that sounded like "I have the power to destroy you." Now, I knew that that wasn't the real lyric to the song, but it sounded like that's what the singer was saying to me, and one day I was humming the song and sang, intentionally, the wrong lyric aloud during class. When I sang the tune "I have the power to destroy you," a younger kid in my class looked at me, horrified. With his eyes wide, he asked "What is that, some kind of atheist song?"
I wish I had been informed on what that word meant at the time, so that I could have corrected him. I had no idea what an "atheist" was, but in that context, I knew it must be bad. I spent at least the next 2-3 years of my life believing, whenever I [rarely] heard the word 'atheist,' it must mean an evil, destructive, immoral person. Then, I realized one day, what the word meant, and I realized that I was one. But something strange still continued to happen...
I spent the next decade of my life, as an openly atheist person, believing that religious people were more moral than me. I'm embarrassed to admit that nowadays, but it's true. There is a stigma that non-religious people and openly atheists are morally bankrupt people, and I believed that was true. I had read some quotes and even some books that argued otherwise, and I took some very interesting philosophy classes in college that helped to cleanse my mind of that horribly incorrect notion, but I kept subconsciously letting my brain default back to that after a while.
Thanks for reading.
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