Dawg
Having read some of the posts here, my story seems pretty typical. Since I’ve never really told the story or even thought about the progression as a whole, I thought, “why not write it down here?”.
So, I was born into a Roman Catholic family 37.5 years ago. I was sent to Catholic grade school and high school (I actually got a pretty good H.S. education and was introduced to the scientific method and evolution there). I lived a sheltered life, forced to go to mass every Sunday and to do the altar boy thing for a while too. I never really got anything out of mass…ever. After I went to college, I never went to mass except when I was home and my parents made me.
The first memory I have that something wasn’t quite right was when I was about 8 or 9. I asked my mother if god had parents. My mother was friends with many priests at the school I attended and she told me to go ask the priest who taught the upper level religion classes at the high school. He told me that god did not have parents, but that he had always existed. I pressed him for details. If he wasn’t born, then how did he get there? Answer: he was just there. Rather unsatisfying, don’t you think?
By the age of 13 or 14, I remember thinking that the whole resurrection thing (and all the miracles) just didn’t seem like anything I could believe in. I never thought of calling it quits or anything, I just went through the motions to keep my parents off my back and didn’t really concern myself with thinking about religion. I continued along this path for many years, always thinking in the back of my mind that all of this religion stuff was useless and a waste of time.
I finished college, worked a few years, got married, and went to vet school. When I moved to my current home, my wife started going to church. I was having some problems with my temper due to stress and anxiety about my new job and my wife convinced me to try going to church with her. I tried really hard to get something out of mass (Episcopal), but remained bored with it and generally unimpressed with the whole scene. We joined a young adults group and went to some classes/discussion groups/etc. I found that everything they talked about (e.g. the power of prayer, the resurrection, etc) was absolute bunk. I kept looking for some kind of proof for the claims people made, but only got arguments from personal experience and arguments from authority (you know, the usual garbage). So, I stopped going.
It was during this time that I first read Carl Sagan’s wonderful book, “The Demon-Haunted World” and discovered a term for what I had been experiencing all those years without knowing it: skepticism. Suddenly, it was OK to doubt all these things I had been indoctrinated with–it was natural to do so and it was right to do so. I began reading voraciously about science, evolution, cosmology, philosophy, etc. My mind was opened like it had never been before. The more I read, the more I drifted away from my religious burden.
At this time, I was working with a woman who was very smart and science-minded, yet, oddly, 100% convinced of god’s existence and the truth of the Jesus story. We began talking about it frequently. I argued against god’s existence often. One day she asked me if I was an atheist. At first, I said no. I never thought of that as an option. Me? An atheist? No, I’m just playing devil’s advocate.
Then, I listened to “The God Delusion”, read Dennett and Harris, explored the myriad internet sites related to atheism, and started thinking. At some point about a 1.5 years ago, I accepted the fact that I am a non-believer and a non-christian and slowly introduced my wife to this new position. She’s coping with it and is (maybe) beginning to think about some of my points and (just maybe) beginning down a similar path.
So that’s it. I think deep down, I’ve been an atheist most of my life, but only recently understood it was an position I could take and still be a moral, loving, and caring human being.
[ratings]
