How I Became An Atheist: The Fear of Coming Out

3/4/2012

   I was born in 1976 to a family who were members of the WGC or Worldwide Church of God, now known as Grace Communion International.  When I say my "family", I mean my entire family.  Grandparents on both my mom's and dad's side of the family on down through the generations went to this church even in different states.  I linked to the Wikipedia page so that you can read about it if you'd like.  They were in the middle of a scandal when I was born...something about malfeasance.  My memories of the "rules" of the church are similar to that of Jehovah's Witnesses.  I didn't celebrate my first Christmas until I was about 6 or 7, I think.

    I was a curious child and remember wondering about lots of things.  Thankfully, my parents did everything they could to encourage that from buying science kits to sending us to weekend science classes of our choice called Super Saturday School where we learned about all kinds of sciencey things.  One I remember in particular was on geology, which I enjoyed immensely.

   I remember most of the people from the church being very nice.  I remember living in a community where a lot of our neighbors went to the same church, so those were the people we spent social time with as well.  One of the members was my sister's and my babysitter for a very long time.  I remember my mom and dad leaving the church for good, but I don't remember why.  (I think I'll ask them about that.)  After leaving the church, I remember my mom having problems with her mom because she left.  It wasn't pretty.  My dad's side just seemed to ignore us for a while, which wasn't too nice either.

   I remember finally getting back together with the family several years later and we started having monthly picnics and getting back to normal, as it were.  My parents just kinda left religion on the back burner and still don't attend any church.  I did most of my growing up believing in a higher power, but I was reluctant to put a Christian "God" label on it for a very long time.

  At 15, my dad came out as a gay man.  Again, there was a ruckus in the family coupled with a few family friends who ended up being less than accepting.  Dad was forbidden from eating on their plates or swimming in their pool for fear of AIDS, because, you know, all gay men have AIDS.  This was the early 90s and the information was there, but, as we see everyday, people ignored it or didn't believe it.  It was a poor rendition of the "Better Safe Than Sorry" attitude.  This, believe it or not, is what has had our extended family separated to this day.  I wish I'd known then what I know now...

   When I was about 20 I became a born-again Christian.  I went to church in bare feet because I felt it brought me closer to Jesus.  I read the Bible, though, I must admit, not very much.  Maybe that's why it took me so long to put all of it aside.  I prayed.  I sang in church with my hands up, crying and feeling the holy spirit.  I went to group meetings set up within the church.  I went to Bible study groups.  I was, without a doubt, a Christian.

    I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but I started doubting.  However, I think most of my doubts started when I started watching LOTS of documentaries about the natural world, most of which were presented by the fabulous Sir David Attenborough.  Who better to teach me about the facts of the world?  He is the most well-traveled and one of the most knowledgeable men in the field of natural history.  I watched the programs lots of times over several years and absorbed as much of the information as I could...then I started thinking.  It was like taking off the "rose colored glasses" and seeing the world for the first time.  There wasn't really an "ah-ha" moment until about 3 months ago, but it took me a long time to get there.

    I had been so ingrained with the fear of hell that I couldn't bring myself to actually say "There is no god."  It took me a year to convince myself that it was okay.  For most of that year, it made me physically ill to think about it.  The fear welled up inside me every time I tried.  Thankfully, I live with an atheist and that has been a way for me to connect in a small way and talk about the things that were scaring me.  He was, in no way, pushy on the subject.  He just helped me make it okay inside myself so I could let it out and actually say "I'm an atheist." and be thoroughly convinced of it.  It still scared me, but I was able to "play through it" and get passed it.  It still makes me feel nervous talking about it.

     That's when I realized how bad religion really is.  Not only was I holding on to anger I felt toward god for a particular tragedy that occurred in my life when I was 26, I was also more scared than I had ever been in my life!  There was nothing left for me to be angry about.  The entity to whom I delivered my anger was gone and now I could be okay with saying, essentially, "Shit happens."  That's just the way the world works and the only way to do anything about something you don't like is to learn about it so maybe you can fix it and it won't happen again.  As I said before, I still get butterflies when I think about the whole thing because I can still feel that fear, but my knowledge tells me that it's a psychological problem and nothing more.  Because I know that, I can work on getting past it.

    I watched a movie called The God Who Wasn't There and I have to say that the ending scene where the filmmaker, Brian Flemming, denies the holy spirit in the middle of the church where he became born-again was one of the most powerful moments I've ever seen on film.  It almost made me cry because I was that guy.  To someone who has never been a christian, it may just seems like a cool or funny ending.  For me, that moment was what Passion of the Christ was for me as a christian.  Yes, I totally fell for Mel's crap.

     Once I finally made that monumental leap and denied the holy spirit, I got unbelievably angry.  That anger didn't really have an outlet mostly because I didn't understand it, making it impossible for me to process.  I struggled with it for a little while and while on one of my YouTube surfing trips (query - atheism), I ran into Greta Christina!  That was truly and "Ah-ha!" moment.  I could finally put a label on what made me feel so angry.  This woman put it so beautifully that I couldn't really add anything to it.  She was speaking for me.

     I found that video about a month ago and since then, I've been looking for an outlet and to connect with others like me.  I met a wonderful person living in India via my father.  We connected through a Flat Stanley project for my daughter for school.  We became Facebook friends and, through that, I found he was also and atheist.  It's cool to connect with strangers on a FB page who are in the same camp, so to say, but it feels much more like a connection when it's someone you have a deeper interaction with, even if it's just through friendly emails that have nothing to do with atheism.  Just knowing that someone who grew up in a completely different way would believe the same things I do gives me comfort.  I just think that's really cool.

    Thanks for listening to me.  It felt good to get that all out to the world.  "CLIMB OUT OF YOUR HOLES, PEOPLE!!"

"The Real God"

     I was helping a friend move some furniture in her house today and we managed to get on the subject of the World Trade Center and 9/11 and about how I was trying to talk to my young daughter about it.  She's 8 years old.  I explained to my friend that I'd told my daughter that some people took over some planes filled with people and crashed them into buildings full of people because they believed that god wanted them to.  My friend promptly suggested that I let my daughter know that they didn't believe in "the real God".  I paused ever so briefly before turning my attention back to the work at hand and changed the subject.  Now...

    I'm usually one who will speak my mind without worrying about it, however, in this case, it was time to keep my mouth shut.  This is a woman I've known for almost 30 years and she has, for that entire time, been a devout Christian.  Secondly, she is rather close to me and is sort of a mother figure to me as she is about 20 years older.  It took a great deal of strength for me to bite my tongue and NOT say what was on my mind at that time until I realized, rather quickly, that it would turn into both of us talking to brick walls, in essence, because there was no alternative way for that conversation to go.  She is unchanging in her belief, as am I, therefore it would have been a useless argument.

    So what do I do now?  Her comment kind of fired me up, but I didn't say anything.  Was that the wrong choice?  How do you all deal with things like this when everything in you wants to speak out, but you know it'll end badly?  Have you bottled up your anger and then you get home and your alone and just want to yell?  I'm starting to rant here so I'll close it up for now.  Thoughts?

Atheist Morality

    This is a question that seems to be on the forefront of everyone's mind.  If atheists don't believe in any god, where do they get their rules for morality?  Just recently I read a post from a family member who stated, in effect, that people who don't believe feel that way because the want to live a lawless, immoral existence.  I think that statement just reflects how little people understand human nature.

    I'd like to pose a question to those who feel that atheists have no sense of morality.  Let's say that there was absolute proof that there was no god in any form.  Would believers then go out and murder, rape, and steal?  This brand of thinking, in my opinion, implies that the only reason NOT to do these things is because god says it's bad and you will go to hell if you do it and don't repent.  This is the same kind of question used on the slippery-slope idea that legalizing drugs will somehow make everyone want to use them.  It's an illogical idea that needs to be put in the "old thinking" bin.  I think there's a deeper and much more reasonable source of human morality.

    I used to believe that humans were inherently selfish at heart and, most times, do for themselves regardless of the needs of others.  I've recently come to the conclusion that the exact opposite is true and that's where we get our feelings of right and wrong.  The answer to where atheists get their morals is easy; empathy.

    What is your first reaction when you witness someone getting hurt?  You likely whince and make a face.  That's instant empathy.  We know what it's like to get hurt and we know how that makes us feel.  We know how it feels when someone close to us dies and we usually feel at least some form of that pain when someone we know loses someone close to them.  We've seen what happens to children who are abused or neglected.  We know how it feels to have something taken from us without permission and never returned.  It's our personal experience and our ability to not only feel emotions, but to also apply those feelings to the other people in our lives and, in effect, feel what they feel.  That why lots of us cry when you hear a story about a parent losing a child, for example.  It's not our child and we don't know the person, yet we can't help but feel sadened by the misfortunes of others. (We're talking average people here, of course.)

    It's nothing more than millenia of experience and the development of empathy that allows us to act in a moral way.  It's my personal opinion that morality has very little to do with religion.  I think that the idea of morality existed long before there was ever any thought of a higher being who is in control.  In the earliest days of the history of humans, there were many dangers our earliest ancestors faced.  Humans lived in groups together and interacted with each other daily, just like we do today.  They witnessed the joy and despair of the others of the group and, I suspect, joined in the rejoicing or mourning of the people experiencing it firsthand.

    Where did our empathy come from?  The main purpose in the life cycle of all living things is to pass on their genes to the next generation for the survival of the species.  For those species who care for their young past birth, it is inherent that they react to the needs of their young.  For humans, hearing an infant cry will make a parent spring into action to try to fix whatever problem the child may have.  It would, in my opinion, naturally follow with the increasing complexity of our brains, that we would extend that empathy for our children to others around us.

    I read a Christians point of view on the subject (I'd really rather not share it because of my personal feelings about his reasoning, but I'm trying to be fair here) and he proposed that our opportunistic and survivalistic (don't think that's a word, but I'm making it one) nature would override our empathy when it comes to morality.  He posed a scenario in which, essentially, anarchy was the rule of law.  He stated that a lack of belief in a god (specifically the christian god) would  make people rely their survival instincts even if it means that another person could be harmed or killed.

    On the surface, it can seem a complex question, and certainly people who pose it see it that way, but it's really very simple and it doesn't take any mention of religion to explain it in my opinion.  It's in our genes to be moral and act in a way that promotes and guarantees the survival of our species.  If not for that, we'd have died out long ago.