Those of you that read my introduction are aware that I was raised a born-again evangelical fundamentalist Christian. I thought I would share my story of how I turned away from that and became an atheist. Sorry this is another really long story haha sorry for giving you my life story but I think that its all relevant to show the process
From the time of my birth I was enveloped in a Christian home. All of my family members on both sides of my family were Christians, my mother was Christian, my father was Christian. I was raised in the church, I went to Sunday School, and the formative years of my education were spent in private Christian schools. From the beginning I was indoctrinated into this fundamentalist evangelical faith. I distinctly remember being a child at the age of around 8 or 9 years old; my mother could no longer afford private school for me so she wanted to send me to public school and I can distinctly remember stating that I did not want to go to public school because I did not want to learn about evolution. In retrospect I'm very grateful that I in fact did wind up going to public school, it allowed meet people from different backgrounds and to hear ideas that were different from the ideas I was raised in, including the evil doctrine of evolution that I so feared
I never really liked going to church during my teen years but it was during my later teen years that I began to doubt (I'm 22, turning 23 in 4 months to give a timescale here). I had some serious questions such as: If god is fair and just and merciful then why does he send people to hell? This was quickly dismissed by what I had been taught, that those who go to hell simply rejected the gift given by Jesus Christ's death absolving us of sin and thus have chosen to go to hell. Easy enough to dismiss, but another question also lingered in my mind: what about babies who die before they can understand anything? Or the people who have never heard of Jesus Christ now and all throughout history? Did they also go to hell? The some of the answers given by my family ranging from: no babies and people who never knew of Jesus and the Gospels are exempt to God is fair and maybe he assesses what they would have done if they had known.
Both of these presented a fallacy for me, the second argument completely obliterates the free will notion that I was raised with and that many Christians use as justification for hell. If God knows what you will do and can assess based on that free will is out of the question, furthermore its very Minority Report-esque judging you on what you would have done or could have done not what you have actually done. Many born-again Evangelical Christians will say that God knows his children even before he created the universe. This is to mean that God knew all the people who would come to accept Jesus even before he said "Let there be light."At the same time they try to make a case for free will in regards to original sin and for damnation in hell. Original sin happened and all sin by extension because Adam chose to disobey God. Those who do not accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior have condemned themselves to hell by their own volition. These two ideas are direct contradictions. One idea is promoting the notion of fate, predetermination, and predestination, while the other is promoting the idea of free-will and freedom to choose your own path. They mix about as well as oil and water, they are paradoxical notions. I always had a problem with the story of Adam even when I was at my most devout. I never could understand why a god that was all merciful, all benevolent, all knowing, and just would set up a test for Adam when he already knew the result and knew he would fail it. I never could see the logic behind it and the notions that God has a plan or works in mysterious ways never adequately addressed this problem to me.
The first example I gave: “what about babies who die before they can understand anything? Or the people who have never heard of Jesus Christ now and all throughout history? Did they also go to hell?” I have already addressed the idea of the Minority Report-esque God who would judge these people on what they would have done. So I would like to address the other idea I was given that they were exempt and were allowed into heaven. This also presented a huge problem to me even at my most devout stage in life. If ignorance of God and Jesus is a guaranteed pass into Heaven then why would you tell anyone? Why would you tell them information that at the moment of you telling them if they do not except they will be damned for an eternity in hell? Wouldn’t that make you partially responsible in their damnation? Would that even be ethical to play a hand in that? Surely if they are guaranteed a spot into heaven then its best not to tell them. But I shrugged these things off at the time assuring myself that God knows best. Indoctrination is indeed a powerful thing.
During my later teen years where I was doubting but also most devout I made the same arguments that Christians make today in regards to atheism. It takes more faith to believe everything came from nothing than that someone created it, atheism is a religion just like Christianity, the reason that our country is in decline is because we have removed God from the society, Christians are persecuted by atheists, atheists don’t have morals etc. I was very conservative at the time, a classic Christian Conservative to the T. I remembered at the time thinking to myself that I wish I could be as certain of my faith as I was about my politics, little did I know at the time my political beliefs would come crashing down in time too along with my faith. I remember around the time that someone had said that many people who are atheists used to have faith and their deconversion to atheism was usually not quick but slow. They went through many doubts and desperately try to cling to their faith as they are losing it and once they let go they feel liberated. I forgot where I heard that but I think it was on a Christian radio program I used to listen to where an atheist called in. I wondered at the time if I was going through this process because it sounded like me. It was a notion I wanted to reject and that terrified me because I didn’t want to go to hell. But I could not deny my doubts either and my attempts to hold on to my faith.
The idea that atheists don’t have morals was challenged by a friend I made in high school, and indeed a lot of the ideas I had about atheists were challenged by him. But they weren’t challenged by any argument he made, anything he said, or any of that. He made no arguments, he said nothing on the topic of religion, I have known him for 6 years and only have been on the topic of why he is an atheist once (and that was quite recently when I myself was already an atheist by that point). It was what he didn’t do that challenged all of my preconceived notions. He never bashed anyone’s religion in fact he supported the rights of everyone to believe, he never made me feel bad for being a Christian he never persecuted me; in fact he was one of the few people who genuinely was kind and accepted me in high school, he had convictions about ethics and morals just like me. He didn’t do anything that warranted any of my previously held stereotypes about atheists.
I also had many issues trying to reconcile science like the big bang and evolution. I was pretty much an old earth creationist at the time. I frequently made the argument that a day in the bible could mean millions or billions of years to God as God is timeless. I said that the big bang was God’s method of creating the universe, and on the topic of evolution I was all over the board and it depended on which part in time you talked to me as to what I would say but my views on it progressed toward adopting evolution in its entirety. I started from denying evolution altogether, to accepting microevolution but not macroevolution, to a position I consider very odd and I’ve never heard it before. I remember saying after seeing the series “Walking With Dinosaurs,” and “Walking With Monsters,” that I could accept evolution for all the animals and plants but not for humans because humans aren’t animals but God’s children, truly a bizarre position that today I find quite humorous. But it was an attempt to cling to what I had been taught my entire life rather than to face the facts.
My true unraveling from faith and enlightenment began I think when I was 18 and Barack Obama was campaigning for his first term in office and there were gay rights issues like Prop 8 going on in my home state of California. At the time I was vehemently anti-gay marriage. I had made the arguments that a lot of Conservative Christians make about gay marriage as well such as: they should have civil unions but don’t call it marriage, gay unions will be the undoing of America, etc. I was a Christian Conservative to the T. Oddly enough I never made the religious argument though, in fact I prided myself on not making it and making arguments that appealed to logic and reason as I acknowledged that not everyone is a Christian so the religious argument is a bad one. I had networked with many older like-minded Conservative Christians, who not to be to critical on them; were people who did think about things however misguided. But these people were more than happy to show me the ropes and teach me how to debate (which I say bit them in the ass in the end). They were good teachers though, and they taught me the merits of learning the oppositions positions because it is useful when debating. They taught me the merits of letting your opponent lead the conversation and/or bringing up positions you know that they would agree with before you raise any objections giving them enough rope to hang themselves with later on in the discussion. I would say that I learned a lot about effectively making an argument and setting up a position from these people and I still use a lot of the same tactics when I debate someone.
That was a little bit off topic so lets get back on topic
The unraveling both religiously and politically I think can be traced to one example that would set off a chain of events that would completely overturn all of my held beliefs both religiously and politically. I was discussing gay marriage with an older man and asking his advice on better arguments I could make against it to people, he ran me through a thought exercise where I would present an argument of why the founding fathers did not allow gay marriage in the founding documents. I presented all sorts of ideas I had steering clear of the religious argument because of reasons I have stated above. He dismissed all of these arguments to my surprise. When I told him I give up and I don’t know what other argument I can make he told me that the founding fathers didn’t allow it because they were moral and godly people who were concerned about following God’s law and homosexuality is against God. He had made the argument that I had so desperately tried to avoid. It was then that I realized that I could not make a sound argument against gay marriage without using religion. From then on I never debated it again but I didn’t begin supporting it immediately either.
I’m going to skip a few years from the time I was 18 to 21 because nothing of any particular importance happens during this time period. I do begin to slowly accept gay marriage and gay rights peace by peace but its still a lot of doubting and questioning. Same kind of stuff that I have described above. What happened when I was 21 was I had an anthropology class and my anthropology professor phrased things to the class that made scientific theory more appealing to someone of a religious background. He said things like, there is no contradiction between the existence of a god and science and that science only works to prove the natural world and natural things not the supernatural. He taught an accurate view of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection and made claims that the reason many people are against it because it is improperly presented to them and they don’t understand (a view I hold to this day). I was very happy to hear what he was saying as it alleviated many of my fears and I began to trumpet what he said to my family. But more importantly, I finally accepted evolution in its entirety and when that happened I entered a category of Christian-friendly agnosticism. I considered myself agnostic at this point but friendly to religion and religious belief. Once my religious views collapsed my political views also began to change as well. I still had negative view point of atheism however, and I often said that I believe atheists are arrogant because they assert that there is no god but how can anyone really know? I believed that atheists were arrogant for believing that there could not be a possibility of a higher power than humans and I would trumpet this to people until I finally accepted my atheism. The last vestige of my stereotypes of atheists was this idea.
The spike in the coffin was this. During the time I was deeply enamored with a girl I had met online who was from Russia and also an atheist. I wouldn’t call it love but at the time I thought it was. This feeling was allowed to grow because it was being reciprocated instead of talking about it realistically like all feelings that develop via the internet without any person to person contact should be. Long story short my mother found out about my infatuation of this girl and also knew she was an atheist. She had a talk with me saying not to try to get involved with that girl because if you do and have children with her those children will just go to hell and why would I bring children into this world that are just going to go to hell. She said that maybe if she finds Jesus and converts then it will be okay but don’t get involved with her if she is an atheist for the children. This was the last straw for me, I was able to see Christianity for what it really was at this point. It was not a loving religion, it was not an inclusive religion, it was not a religion that accepted everyone for who they are. It was divisive, exclusive, and it was poison. It didn’t even matter if this girl was a good, decent person, and she was and still is. If she disbelieved she was damned to hell and so were her children who hadn’t even been born yet. It was at this point I became anti-religious. I still didn’t consider myself an atheist quite yet but I was open now to atheist and secular ideas more than I ever had been prior. I did some poking around and research about irreligion online and found a wikipedia article about freethought and freethinkers and decided that I agreed with their philosophy and proudly thought of myself as a freethinker. It was later when I actually started investigating atheism itself that I realized a freethinker by definition is an atheist. I understood that atheism is not necessarily the position that there is no god, but the position that there is not enough evidence to support the claim that there is a god, which was the philosophy of freethought (in simplified terms). With the understanding of the position of atheism I realized that I was indeed an atheist and my political views at this point had done a complete 180 from the Christian Conservative positions I had took 3-4 years ago as well. That is my deconversion story.
A point mentioned above. The caller that said on that radio program years ago that the path to atheism is slow and filled with constant attempts to hold onto your faith is true, at least it was in my case. But like he said, I do feel liberated now that I am here. I’m happy and I think the thing that makes me most happy is that the beliefs I have now, both regarding politics and religion are beliefs that I developed myself. I am responsible for these beliefs, they weren’t pre-programmed into me by my family or passed down to me from on high. I didn’t read Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens or any atheist book and think it sounded good. I developed my beliefs independently by myself by thinking about them. For that I am proud.
Topic: My Deconversion: From Christian Fundamentalism to Atheism