Alan White
This isn’t such a simple question to answer. Really, several things happened all at once. Perhaps, the best way to tackle them would be in chronological order.
At Myrtle High School, I always was annoyed by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, their annoying worship, and their “culturally savvy” form of Christianity. Once, they invited a Jazz Musician to play for the school, or that was his cover story anyway. The truth was, they brought him to the school to preach. His jazz was horrible, and I covered my ears at the entire production. “Is your brother an atheist?” My brother was asked. I knew that I didn’t want to be an atheist. For my own good. I didn’t have very many friends, but I hardly had any enemies at all. I’d like to keep it like that for some time. I graduate in May of 2005.
Fall of 2005. I’m very lonely, have no friends, in a strange and cruel world. I’m encouraged to go to the BSU, and make friends there. I really don’t want religious friends, but see no other option. By May of 2006, I’m active at Northeast Community College’s BSU. I’ve come up with a proposal to render unto science that which is science’s. Religion in science, I think, doesn’t do the student any good. They don’t learn anything from, “God did it.” Upon hearing it, a person I’d considered my best friend goes into a fit of rage. How could I have said something like that. I was annoyed, to say the least, that someone so nice could be so irrational.
August of 2006. I take psychology with Dr. Colin Billingsley. The first Friday of class, we are challenged to debate the existence of God, and are given a weekend to formulate our arguments. I take the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s God Argument, and use it to challenge “Proof of God”. I run this argument by as many people at Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church in Dumas, MS, as I could. The Preacher is stumped, and I assume it must be a good argument. In class, I start out with my argument, and counter the 55 other people in the class. No one could poke a hole in it. Someone finally asks me what my religion is. I think about this for a second and settle for, “I haven’t decided yet”. “Kinda like your major!” Dr. Billingsley said, always a cut-up.
There’s a lot of failed love in here, somewhere, that’s a different story, but I don’t think any God worth worshiping would allow someone so desperately single to exist.
Summer of 2007. My father and I begin to argue a lot. Eventually, he decides I’m going to talk to the preacher, or I’m not going to live under his roof during this summer or any other. The same preacher from before couldn’t answer any of my pertinent questions. Why is faith necessary? Would God damn a good atheist, and save an evil Christian? His answer was, largely, “We can’t know these things.” And my response was largely, “Then your god is largely useless to me.” It was then that I knew I was an atheist, if there was any doubt in my mind before, it was resolved.
Now, I hide my atheism in myself, and hope that no one will ever find out I’m an atheist, for a few years, until I’m financially independent. But at least at college, I’m free to disbelieve in God all I want, and no one can give me lip about it. I’m trying to help my roommate set up a college student body of atheists. I’d like to think I’d find love there, because God sure as hell never helped; maybe intellectual honesty will.
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