I have been an atheist most of my life. I say this because a number of blogs that I have been spending way to much time reading are from former or questioning Christians that have become or are seriously leaning towards atheism or agnosticism. I have mentioned a couple of my favorites but two more I have found are Sailing to Byzantium and Everyday Atheist. I should mention these blogs as well as Agnostic Atheism are much better written then mine, and they have much more Bible knowledge than I currently do.
The reason for this is simple. I decided at a very early age that I didn’t believe the Bible could be true. From the ages of 4-8 I can remember going to church somewhat regularly with my parents, mostly my mom. Even doing the Bible school in the summers. We still even have an old 8mm with no sound (hey it was the 70’s) of myself and my brothers coming home one Sunday after church in the snow in our best clothes. In my formative years of 5th through 8th grades I started going to a Baptist church with my best friend. I actually got pretty gung-ho for religion during these years. But then something changed.
Way back in the early 80’s I was a geek when being a geek wasn’t cool. I read a lot. I can remember reading a lot of Ray Bradbury and George Orwell. I don’t even really remember which author or book it was, but something set me off between what I was learning on Sundays and what I was reading in my spare time during the rest of the week. Meanwhile, back at church, I can remember feeling pressure to become “saved.” I remember people I didn’t even really know asking myself and my friend if we were going to “make Jesus our personal saviour,” and similar questions. I remember feeling a lot of pressure really, kind of like when you get older and buy a house or car for the first time. I was having doubts and my friend was just saying to go ahead and get baptised, what could it hurt? And I remember thinking, well, if there is a God, he would know I am faking my commitment to being saved. So, I decided to actually read the Bible, instead of just the scriptures required for the current week’s sermon.
I don’t remember my exact age, but I must have been about 13-14. I commited myself to reading the Bible and learning about God. But as I read through Genesis and Exodus, I began to wonder. Back then there was no internet, so I actually took my Bible to school and would go into the library during my spare time and both read the Bible and find ancient history book to corraborate as much as I could. The school library had some information but I recall even going to the public library because I wasn’t getting enough. I knew after reading just the Old Testament that I didn’t really believe most of what supposedly happened so far. I knew I would never believe in Noah and the Flood, Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt, the whole dinosaur situation at the beginning of Genesis, and many other problems that are brought up on websites today. But I committed myself to finishing the New Testament, but I remember not having the fervor that I had when I started, and it took a number of weeks.
So after reading the Bible, I knew a lot of it couldn’t be true. So my rationalization is if I know parts of it aren’t true, how can I know if any of the rest of it is valid? My friend ended up getting baptised, and I quit going to church. He and I remained friends, but he knew something had happened. During high school and college I don’t remember much fuss about when I would tell people I didn’t believe in God. I think since most of us are pretty messed up during those years anyway and it wasn’t given much thought. I do remember if I was trying to impress a girl or a group of friends I would normally stay out of religious topics until they knew me well enough so I wouldn’t get “that look.” I am sure being an atheist cost me more than one relationship I would have liked to see continue.
As I got older, I actually got more and more secretive about my beliefs. It seems young people are allowed to question God but as you get older you just submit. I will discuss this topic more later but the biggest arguments I have had about my beliefs in the past 20 years were with my wife after we were married. And there were a couple of knock down drag outs, but we perservered. We don’t discuss it much now at all. I am thankful I have found the blogging world, because it does let us who have been silent for awhile to discuss our beliefs and not get “that look.”
May 25, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Thanks for the mention!
June 9, 2007 at 10:10 pm
[...] from A Varitable Plethora on how actually reading the New Testament was the nail in the coffin of his beliefs, and the social [...]
June 10, 2007 at 9:32 am
Great post. I know exactly what you mean about reading the Christian bible and realizing that it can’t possibly be true. The culture (at least in the American bible belt) is bent on convincing those with doubts that there is something wrong with us. This is one of the main reasons that I devour as many atheist books as I can get my hands on.
BTW, this was my first visit to your blog. I came from The Humanist Symposium. It won’t be my last. As a fellow atheist blogger, it is always a treat to find others.
October 16, 2007 at 10:26 am
[...] After a few weeks of reading dozens of atheism blogs and posting a few of my own, I made the post That’s How I Got Where I Am. Here I went into how I became an atheist in my youth because I actually read the bible trying to [...]
October 17, 2007 at 5:44 am
I’m a religious person, but perhaps not being from the USA I found your comment “not get that look” a bit bewildering. Australia is a pretty agnostic / aetheistic country in which we allow religion to be taught at schools. We also have a 20th Century social history that grew an aversion to the irish ‘troubles’ and, although there is organised crime, newer immigrants mostly have, and are suuported in an aversion to mafia-like activities. I wonder if logically tricky religious attitudes are related to unmanageable socio-political destructiveness?
October 17, 2007 at 9:14 am
owen–yeah, here in the US you can get treated a little different for being an atheist. And “the look” you get isn’t one of hate or anger, but usually of disbelief. Like “how can you not believe in God?”, when in my opinion all the evidence points to there not being one yet I get the look of “you are an idiot.”
I don’t know much about Australia but I can’t imagine a country that would allow religion to be taught in public schools. That is at least one thing that has been able to be upheld here, but of course not without a fight from the religious right.
Philosophically and politically you are probably talking above my head (hey I’m just an IT guy for a small company in the desert southwest) but for someone who is conservative in nature but dislikes the religious right being involved in politics it makes it very difficult to find candidates I like and can get behind. And in the past 10 years or so it seems the gap is widening between the left and the right causing much more animosity between the sides which IMO filters on down the the public.