Alan Paone
I was raised in the united church, they’re one of those awesome “be a good person, cuz then you’ll be a good person” kinds of churches. I went to catholic school where religion was just everywhere(the conflicts of attending a protestant church and catholic school didn’t seem to bug me at the time though now I can really see they were VERY different). I never really believed a lot of it, but I was smart (I KNEW that I knew everything), and somehow that translated into wanting to learn an awful lot about the bible and such and so I did, I knew ALL the stock stories that I’ve now completely forgotten.
In grade 6, I watched ‘Contact’ with my mom (having a closet sci-fi nerd for a mom is AWESOME), and when Ellie was talking about Occam’s razor and the other small religious debates it really resonated with me, I kinda had a moment of “well, Ellie’s exactly right and just articulated whats been subtly nagging at me for the past few years” and literally overnight went from being a well educated, somewhat devout christian to scientifically obsessed athiest, and I haven’t looked back(the next day really cemented my anti-religious thought when somehow I was exposed in front of the other devout children and told by several that I was going to hell). It was probably inevitable and would have happened one way or annother, but its still fun to say that my entire view of the world can be dirrectly linked to a single sci-fi movie, next thing you know, ‘Contact’ will be banned!
I kept going to church (by that time my mom was running the sunday school) and participaed a fair amount in the youth group, somehow I managed to last four or five years there without it mattering or even coming to light that I was an athiest, we mostly sat around and talked about life and stuff, poked fun at the youth minister and made movies about the more ridiculous aspects of religion (like an All-saints survivor, with St Valentine as a womanizing jerk of course).
It was only a few years after we’d all parted ways that anyone found out that I was an atheist all along. That had to be one of the most awkward msn conversations I’ve ever slagged through, a (normally rather smart and rational) friend of mine seemed to think that without religion, nothing mattered, she seemed to think that my atheism could completely justify it if she were to kill herself (she didn’t, but yeah. AWKWARD.)
Over the years my beliefs definately went through what seem to be the typical stages of deconversion: the initial “this is all bullshit! Your books are all lies! God doesnt exist.” phase, followed by the inevitable “Religion is the source of all evil in the world! God is a douchebag!” phase and right now I’m at the addicted to science, “the real world is so freaking awesome, who needs a god?” phase.
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