I was asked recently to share my account of how I became an atheist. I agreed to do so, thinking it would be easy. Ha! I had some trouble recounting it all. Some of the details are lost in the recesses of my head, and some just weren’t worth including. If I had known those events would have meaning later, I would have paid more attention! It isn’t written as well as I would like, but it’s the best I could do with the amount of patience I had at the time. Ugh, writing the long version would have killed me.
For your edification and delight… my path to atheism.
When I was four and a half years old, my mother left my father, and she took me with her. She was concerned about gaining custody of me in the divorce. She began trying to cover all bases that related to her perceived fitness as a mother. One effort was to begin attending church. Surely a religious mother was better than a nonreligious one. That’s how I was exposed to Christianity.
She raised me and forced me to attend church. I attended Sunday school and the service every week. I did this up until about age twelve, when I was considered old enough to stay home alone some of the time. Since I didn’t like church, I stayed home every chance I could. I still attended on odd occasions and holidays, but mostly to please my mother and grandparents. I did enjoy the Christmas eve service though.
Regardless of my displeasure for church, I was still taught the ideas. What I learned in church, from family members, friends, and culture to that point could be fairly described as mild to moderate indoctrination. I believed in the Christian god (and / or Jesus). By the time I was sixteen, I stopped going to church completely. It bored me, and wasn’t worth trading for sleep. I considered myself a Christian, like most of my peers, but never did much about it. I understood that being “good” meant being a Christian, and I certainly considered myself “good.”
A few years later, I had an enlightening experience. I was in a friend’s garage, sitting around and smoking pot with him and another friend. Somehow, the subject of “god” came up. The question was asked, “Do you believe in god?” I can remember how quickly all of us professed Christianity without hesitation. It was a given to us, though we didn’t recognize our hypocrisy. At the time, it meant nothing to me. We moved on to other things, and did as stoners do, laughing hysterically and spacing out.
I was in my early twenties, still claiming to be a Christian, and still doing almost nothing about it. I prayed from time to time, which was an tendency leftover from my childhood. I became somewhat interested in Christian claims, and began asking questions. I asked my mother, by then a genuine Christian, and she couldn’t answer most of them. I was just curious at first, but then began to realize just how many questions I had. My interest in it came and went for a while, though I never took any of it too seriously.
Then, one day, I remembered my brief conversation about god with my friends in the garage. That was the moment that I realized how hypocritical the Christian part of me was. I had been claiming for so long to be a Christian, but I didn’t live as one. I considered the Christian beliefs I had to be important, but I didn’t know why. I had more or less been on auto-pilot to that point, being just a product of my environment. I knew that a part of myself was artificial. I had been taught to believe that god was real, and all that went with it. I believed it for other people, and not for myself. None of it really much at all to me. I decided to scrap it all and begin again.
I started out on my own to study the bible, talk to god, and live my life as a Christian. I did it for myself. I intended to become a real Cristian, and build a relationship with god. Interestingly, I never considered the possibility of failure. That I might not find god was not even a consideration. I was totally optimistic. I figured that if I actually took it seriously, then I would figure things out. The plan was to put aside my doubts and my questions and focus on living according to what Christ taught. I thought that if I found god, then the questions wouldn’t really matter.
Not long after beginning my new quest in the religion, I met a guy. He was my girlfriend’s friend’s boyfriend. We had things in common, and got along pretty well. Some time after meeting him, my girlfriend noticed that I was taking Christianity seriously. She suggested that maybe he could help me along. I didn’t know when I met him that he was a pretty serious and knowledgeable Christian. She talked with her friend, who talked to him. The next week he stopped by and we had nice talk about Christianity. It was motivating and got me fired up. He also gave me a book – “The Case For Christ” by Lee Strobel.
I read through Strobel’s book and loved every line. It was answering lots of the questions I had, as well as ones I hadn’t thought of. He made what seemed to me to be an excellent case for the existence and divinity of Christ. It was exactly what I wanted. I finished it and was “on fire” for Jesus. I felt like I was really close to finding god, and I started praying more and more. I read and studied the bible regularly, and I shared what I knew with others. It felt like it was my purpose.
After a few months of positive energetic devotion, I started to lose some steam. I had new questions and my doubt was becoming difficult to ignore. My solution was to read Strobel’s book again. I also bought his next one, “Case For Faith.” After reading them, I was right back where I was before. I was fired up and confident. Again, Strobel’s words were exactly what I needed to hear. Unfortunately, the feeling didn’t last as long the second time. I was still having doubts and wanting to ask questions.
I talked a few time with the friend who gave me the book. He had entered seminary school, so I felt like he was a good resource. I asked him some questions, and he offered decent responses. Some I accepted, and some I didn’t. At that time, I also began studying apologetics and hanging out in Christian chat rooms. I tried to help others with their faith problems, and hoped I would help myself in the process. Once again, this boosted my faith and confidence. I felt like I was doing what I supposed to be.
I was beginning to feel like I was getting close to god. I was praying pretty much all day long. I talked to god as if he was a friend at my side. I asked for guidance, and I saw the world work in a way that revealed his wisdom and intervention. But studying apologetics was causing a problem at the same time. I was learning about common objections the Christianity, which exposed me to other points of view. I remember learning about other god-men messiahs who were very similar to Jesus in description. It made me curious about why one messiah was special and real, and the others weren’t. But I accepted the apologetic answers and tried not to think about it.
So I went on living like that for months, no longer fired up, but content and convinced that I was pleasing god. I talked to him, and I felt like he talked to me. It was an amazing experience, but it didn’t last. One morning in the shower, while talking to god, I had an epiphany. I realized in one instant that I had been deluding myself. Over the course of trying to be a Christian, I had steadily been praying and looking at the world around me for evidence that my prayers had been answered. As time had passed, I did it more and more often, and with greater things. But none of it ever actually happened. I was looking at the world with rose-colored glasses. God hadn’t answered my prayers, or talked to me. I had no relationship with him. I was doing it all myself. I was alone. For whatever reason, all of this hit me at once like a punch in the face. I needed positive feedback so badly that I created it myself without even realizing.
I decided to scale back my eagerness and see if god was really there. I still prayed and studied the bible, but less often. Instead of trying to fit the world into what I wanted to see, I looked at it as it was. I didn’t feel special at all. I didn’t see god anymore. I stopped ignoring my doubts and questions. I began searching for answers to them online. I still felt like god might be out there somewhere, but that there was a reason I was having trouble.
I studied free will to help me learn about myself in relation to my faith. That’s when I learned about Calvinism. I thought for a short time that maybe it explained everything. If I wasn’t chosen by god to be saved, then it explained my difficulties. It wasn’t my fault. Though election solved my problem, I couldn’t stick with it. I couldn’t make Calvinstic theology work with the rest of the teachings of the Jesus. The contradiction I saw refuted either the religion, or Calvinism, so I dropped the latter.
Once again, I talked to my friend in seminary. He prayed over the phone for me, and I remember feeling so unsatisfied. It seemed useless, but I went along. Not long after that, my girlfriend visited him and her friend. She brought back a book that he sent for me – “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist” by Geisler & Turek. It’s an apologetics book, and I was happy to receive it. I had high hopes that it would set me back on course. Reading it helped me feel better. It was more scientific-minded, which was a new perspective for me. That was a powerful testament to the truth of Christianity and the existence of god. It also dealt with atheism, and that was new to me too… my first exposure.
But the book wasn’t enough. I felt lost and confused because I didn’t feel god. I didn’t see anything in my life that the Christians around me said I would. Why? So I continued learning apologetics and some theology online. I learned about agnosticism, and decided to use the term for myself because I was uncertain. I stopped calling myself a Christian, though I still believed to an extent. I still had the idea that I just wasn’t getting it.
Believe it or not, I went back and read Case For Christ again. But I did it from a more reasonable perspective. Instead of just letting the text tell me what I wanted to hear, I actually judged its claims and content. I was surprised to find holes in the arguments, and convenient omissions. I was so angry that I had been naive the first two times I read it. But I was trying to feed my desire to be a Christian rather than paying attention to the details. After finishing it for the third time, I found it to be a poor attempt to defend belief in Christ. So I pointed my reason toward I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. Surprised again, I found more problems and omissions in the arguments. And that was why atheists were wrong?!
I decided to investigate the other side. I went to the library and checked out “Why Atheism?” by George H. Smith. Much of it read as if I had written it myself. The questions I had about Christianity, religion, and faith he presented were the same that I had asked. I realized that I wasn’t alone in my doubt. I also realized that atheism wasn’t the wickedness I thought it was. It was honest doubt about the issues. It was sincere and free inquiry. It was me, except for the little bit of faith and belief that remained in me. I decided that I was still just agnostic (I was ignorant of the meaning then) and left it at that.
Not long after, I read a book by Charles Templeton called “Farewell to God.” It was about a man who was a preacher for much of his life who eventually rejected the Christian faith. It was enlightening, and much like Smith’s book, I identified with much of what he said. I learned that questioning and rejecting Christianity wasn’t unheard of. Templeton called himself agnostic in the book, and so I stuck with the label for awhile longer myself.
From then on, I lived my life in an effort to be good as best that I could reason it. I thought about my options and made the best decisions. I still had a small amount of faith, belief, and hope that god existed. But because I had tried my best, I didn’t know what else to do. I thought it best to leave it to god. If he wanted me, he knew where to find me.
I went on learning here and there about objections to Christianity as well as the position of atheism. Unbelief seemed to have the better arguments. In the process, I also learned about logic and reason, how to apply it, and how to spot invalid arguments. That enabled me to deal with some bad claims on my own, in the religious realm, and elsewhere. I also studied the tenets of other religions, and found that they had to say a lot of the same supernatural things, but in different ways. It all began to seem the same to me. None of the religions could support their claims. If it made sense to reject Islam or Hinduism because of a lack of evidence or poor reasoning, then why not Christianity?
My perspective changed. I sought the truth, whatever it was, instead of deciding what was true and then trying to find justification. If god could be proven, then it was okay with me. But the burden of proof wasn’t to be set aside for religion. It was no longer special – no longer off limits. After awhile, I realized that I no longer had any belief that the Christian god, or any other, existed. I was without belief, and that is what defines atheism. I finally worked up my nerve and told my mother. She was nothing short of horrified, actually saying, “I would have preferred if you had just been gay.” Anyway, that was it. I was openly atheistic, and finally accepted my position.
Admitting to my disbelief was the most liberating thing I have ever done. Nothing else has ever made me feel so free.
