Here’s seven short stories, snapshots of life as I progressed toward atheism. I think if the moments of my life were songs, these moments would be a good atheism mixtape. At least a good first couple tracks. There are more, but here’s a start. Writing about it like this is the only way that made sense to me. You can read them all as one piece of skip around.
The Prayer Test
It’s a struggle to think of the moment when I came to the realization that I didn’t accept any claims about God. That’s like asking ‘when did you become educated?’ or “what was the exact date when algebra first made sense to you?” It’s less a matter of an event that led to a conclusion and more of a matter of a lifestyle that led to a worldview. The fact that some people question the religions they inherited at all is a fucking miracle. Especially if you came up Catholic, like I did. You’re told at such an early age this story and told that it’s true and so vital to living right that it doesn’t even make sense that it might not be true. It’s like The Matrix – a view of reality you ‘d always accepted unravels. I guess a single thread comes undone and you don’t even notice it. Something along the lines of: ‘If God answers prayers, I’ll pray for an answer.’ You pray for the answer because you believe perhaps God has a purpose for your life and you should probably plan ahead. I mean, even at 8 or 9 years old I knew if God needed me to do something I better find out as soon as possible so I can, you know, pick the right major or something. And you do get an answer because the next seemingly significant thing that happens to you or that you hear about immediately becomes that purpose. Someone falls sick, you should become a doctor. Happen to catch a news story about a robbery, become a cop. About an animal, a vet. Uncle mentions he’s an accountant, become an accountant. Everything becomes a sign from God. That’s what it is to believe something. To assign meanings to things that directly relate to you. Suddenly, you are the universe. Everything is in sync with you. You are the one the security guards are placed at the mall to protect. You are the one TV programming is designed to reach. Your personal education is the reason any of your teachers ever decided to get a degree in the first place.
I Am Not The Universe
As you grow, a hard-learned life lesson becomes undeniably evident: You are not the universe. It doesn’t all revolve around you. Not everyone loves you. You’re taught about the vastness of the oceans and the endlessness of space and you start seeing time as not just something on a clock, but as something that’s steadily crawled along since generations before anything left alive today was even conceived and will go on long after everything we recognize as the universe is completely gone. And, at first, you just wonder: Gee, there’s an awful lot God gave me that I can’t even access. I wonder if I ‘am the universe’ or if it’s more like God created the universe and I’m supposed to fit in it. But then that would have to mean that maybe those messages I got about the purpose of my life weren’t all messages from God. Maybe it was somebody else’s message or I interpreted it wrong or maybe I didn’t get an answer. Maybe, I’ll never get an answer. Maybe there isn’t even an answer to get. And then what would that mean? But, I’m still in elementary school, so I perish the thought. But it’s only lying dormant.
Who planted this self- righteousness here?
You meet someone or hear about someone who is not a Christian and a raw nerve is touched. You never hated this person before, in fact, you kinda liked them. For me, there was a girl, I sort of admired her ability to roll with the punches. She was nerdy, unkempt and teased fiercely, but I don’t remember her ever breaking down. I thought it was kind of cool. Someone confronted her about being Jewish and she said something about how annoying she found Christians because they were constantly trying to suggest she become one. My reaction was visceral. I wanted to attack her. I was prepared to shove her head into the brick school wall, even if she was a girl. I stopped myself before I did and was shaken by the feeling. I wanted to defend my religion so much I was ready to betray it. Maturity lessons can come all of the sudden like that. I understood the concept of self- righteousness and was repulsed by the unchecked aggression. I wrestled with it a little, trying to come up with a justification if I had hurt that girl. Ultimately, my dad’s lesson of ‘ya don’t hit girls’ played louder in my head than ‘don’t take The Lord’s name in vein.’ I struggle to find the Bible verse that relates to not hitting girls, but for some reason I’m convinced I did the right thing.
Rock ‘n’ Roll’s the devil’s music
You enter your teens and you start seeking an identity, a way to express yourself. For me it was the guitar and songwriting although it could just as easily been drawing for you; or a sport, or dance, or architecture or economics. It just has to be something that you actually enjoy learning about and developing. I guess I also had a particular knack for writing and was placed in advanced English classes. So as I sought things to write about, I, naturally, started examining myself. What do I think? What matters to me? What’s fair? It was an intense period of introspection as I meditated on song lyrics. Naturally, one of the things I meditated on was God. What I wrote kind of worried me when I looked at it later. It read like a list of reasons that the church’s rules didn’t make sense. I had worked at a summer Bible school a few years earlier and observed how the teacher instructed. How she shot down questions. How all her lessons pretty much amounted to her insisting Jesus was very interested in everybody’s lives. It didn’t sit well with me, but I couldn’t really explain why until later I started writing. She wasn’t teaching, she was training. It was brainwashing.
Being asked
By the time I’m 18 a girlfriend asks me if I believe in God and I realize I hadn’t been asked that question. And I’m a little surprised at myself when the truth pours out my mouth before I get the chance to think about how I should answer: Not really.
Myths
I continue to write about religion and study it with a different outlook: That it could be just the fairy tales of societies and that it’s different all over the world. You wonder what sort of just god would send all of Tibet to hell just for not accepting Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. It all starts to come together like that. Little moments. Little confirmations that stories about gods all over the world are just like stories about talking animals and monsters. Legends. Myths. Fantasy.
Ducks
Sometime in my early 20’s I take a walk with my dad. He shows me a park gazebo near a lake and mentions ‘this is my church.’ And he tells asks ‘why should there be any more than this?’ and points to some ducks landing. ‘some people they try so hard stuff themselves into church every Sunday morning when it’s all right here.’ It’s a touching moment. It’s as if he recognized that I needed someone to say it was OK, before I could really look down in my hand and see that single thread when I first questioned the effectiveness of prayer had completely unraveled.
