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Did you have a 'road to Damascus' conversion to atheism? How old
were you at the time?
On this just completed trip back east my mom gave me both my baby books. "Both?" Both. One Catholic and one Lutheran. I read them and found them
to be quite sickening and I damn near heaved my guts. Drones and clones, pawns to be sacrificed at the will of the clergy. Nothing about an individual-just another cookie cutter clone.
[>How old were you at the time?
I probably shit canned the whole thing by age 8, although I went
through the motions on penalty of beatings from a construction worker
dad. He was pretty much out of the picture after that as parents
divorced and dad abandoned us all.
He died two years ago of cancer. All there was on my part was a twinge
of sadness at a door that could now never be opened. I had been told
that the docs managed to keep the pain away, but have found out such
wasn't true. For the last six months of his life he was in agony and he ended up drowning in his own blood when it filled his lungs. There was
no reaction when I found that out which surprised me.
I had called about two days before he died to talk to his ex-wife [2nd wife]. As far as I knew, he was still in the hospital. He didn't have enough strength to do more than gasp faintly before handing the phone
over to his ex-wife who was taking care of him. I had always wondered
if he recognized my voice. She said he did and that he wanted to talk
to me, but couldn't. Recognizing my voice is believable, but him
wanting to talk to me isn't. He couldn't be bothered to talk in other
than single monosyllables for years.
As a result of the 'tug-o-war' there hasn't ever been more than
superficial conversations between my mother and I. Is it a lack of
trust-due to such trust being torn to shreds by my parents and
grandparents [on my mothers side] or is it a lack of anything in
common?
On the trip, I saw relatives I hadn't seen in years. Good people, very irish and very catholic. Very very alien mindsets though. One aunt
said something to another of my aunts in a joking manner and the first indicated you know where you're going for that [breaking of the 9th commandment]. I visualized a broken dog licking the boot that was
stomping the life out of it. Talk about skin crawling... (Stoney #9)
In my case I was 14 and watching the movie Dark Star one sunny weekend afternoon. For those who haven't seen it, it's a rather fun yet bleak science fiction film set in a decrepit spacecraft on a long mission to
blow up planets in preparation for colonisation. The crew are borderline psychotic, Earth has basically abandoned them to their fate and the
acting commander consults with the dead original commander who's in deep freeze in the hold...
Anyway. The bombs used to marmalize the planets are intelligent, but
due to an encounter with an asteroid storm the drop mechanism becomes faulty. One bomb is ready to drop when the sequence goes wrong, but it decides to explode anyway. The acting commander can't talk it out of
this, so pops down to talk to the cryogenic commander. "Teach it phenomenology", advises the chilled captain. There then follows a nice sequence where the bomb is convinced that it has no way to make sure
that the commands it thought it received were in fact correct, because everything is relayed to it via its senses and these could be faulty. I won't give away the end, except to note that it's particularly fun for atheists... and to recommend the film highly in any case.
But phenomenology immediately fascinated me, and I went hunting through
the local library. If it was right, then there WAS no way to be sure
of anything... and Christianity, which preaches an absolute certainty
about the Truth, couldn't really back up that claim. And, when I thought about the basic logic of phenomenology, I couldn't fault it.
Up to that point, I was a good Anglican -- my father's a priest -- but
with an increasingly uncomfortable feeling that I couldn't really match
up what I was taught with what I observed. Much of the history in the
Old Testament didn't seem to make sense (God created Man -- ok so far -- but then got annoyed at him and wiped him out in a flood? But left
Noah, whose descendents promptly went wrong again? And all that smiting, and not wearing mixed fibres... THIS is the work of an omniscient, all-loving God?) and while I was (and am) very enamoured of lots of NT
theology I never really understood the necessity of the Resurrection in
the context of divine redemption. And the world I observed didn't really seem to show any evidence of a Creator -- or if it did, there was no way
of working out the nature of that creator from what I could see. But I
was told by everyone that it was all in the service of Christian Truth,
so I went along with it... until I saw Dark Star, discovered
phenomenology and realised that everyone who told me this really couldn't be sure themselves. They might *seem* sure, but nothing that might make them sure -- the Bible, divine revelation, whatever -- wasn't open to alternative explanations which didn't need god or gods. And, since I'd
seen nothing of those god or gods, why! They might not be there at all!
It was a great relief.
At a stroke, I had all those paradoxes answered -- or at least rendered amenable to logic -- along with such irksome worries as 'why are there
so many religions?' and 'Can natural disasters really be caused by sin?'.
I have never felt the need to have a 'meaning to life' so I didn't miss that particularly, and while I still recognise (and enjoy) religious tendencies within myself -- and have experienced some transcendentally beautiful and enlightening moments -- I don't take them as pointers to there actually being deities out there.
Of course, it caused a little friction within the family :)
As is the case with so many atheists I retain a fascination with and
some knowledge of the Bible, as well as other religions (my parents
joke that I read the Bible more than they do). I also wonder about
God's existence as a sociological construct, and am quite prepared to
go along with the idea that concepts held in mind have some subjective existence in our individual consciousness and group identity.
But the old man in the sky with clouds up his bottom? Gone, thanks to a low-budget SF flick. (Rupert Goodwins)
It was a gradual process. I wasn't aware of it. I was about 34 and
one day realized that although the religion I was in was quite
satisfying, if there was no god, it was all kind of silly. I packed up
all the religious-based books, took them to the local group and donated them because I realized I had absolutely no use for them.
The religion I was a member of was Baha'i. They're a good bunch.
I notice there isn't a lot of mention of them here.
I'm sure some of the books I was reading during the previous years
had some influence on me. When Julian Jaynes mentioned offhandedly
that there was no god, but wouldn't it be nice, I think it made an
impression because I had never seen it expressed quite that freely
before.
But one day I just said, "Wow. There isn't a god." It was a very
heady moment - not because of the revelation, but because I realized the magnitude of what I was doing. I knew that the entire social structure would be abandoned. I knew that there was a mix of freedom and loss. I certainly have never regretted my decision. That was about seventeen
years ago. (Herk #1627)
I had been a depressed 'born again' Christian. Depressed because I
could not understand why 'God' could not some how alleviate my doubts. Plus, I felt guilty for having these doubts, in the first-place; which made me feel even more depressed.
I eventually came to the conclusion that: 'God' would not want me
laying in bed (depressed) 16 hours a day. So I told myself that it
must be un-Christian to be so obsessed with doubts. I decided that: the right thing to do was to temporarily stop
worrying, and just give these doubts 'up to God', and eventually 'He'
would help me.
About six months later I realized that none of these doubts had been alleviated; if anything, these doubts were seeming more and more
rational to me. And soon after this, I suddenly realized that I could
no longer believe that 'He' actually existed. (pan #1432)
It was at that point that I decided I couldn't believe in god any more.
(chibiabos)
My father asked me what made me turn my back on god, and suprisingly
enough for me, I had an answer. It wasn't so much a single event, it
was a combination of many events. They and just a general skepticism
on the premise of a supreme being let me to atheism. For example, I
asked my dad if he and my mother ever wondered why I didn't want to be
an altar boy in the fifth grade, when all of my classmates and friends
were getting involved. They were both really cool about my decision,
they didn't hassle me about it (being an altar boy) but I know it bugged
my mom (who was the one responsible for converting my dad to catholicism.)
We never talked about that decision after the fact. That was the first
inkling I had that maybe I was an atheist at even a grade school age. It
just took me another 15 years or so to realise it. I fought these
skeptical feelings about god and religion for a long long time. I
thought if I got more involved with the church, with mass, it would just
kind of "click" for me, that all this religios dogma would make sense. I
taught catechism classes for 5th and 6th grade kids when I was still an
undergraduate, I knew the catechism, knew the "rules" and teachings, but
I'm not sure I really believed it all. An example, in this CCD class one
time we were talking about the origin of the universe, how god created
it all, and I started talking about the mechanics of the universe, the
big bang, and how god played a role, but the more I talked about the
scientific principles, the more I started to thing "gee, what if god
didn't really cause the big bang?" I read scripture at mass, thinking
that this was something I was supposed to do as a good catholic. My
father lectored too, and we'd team up to read at the same mass --
something that meant a lot to my father.
After watching my mom die of cancer, praying all the while as she did, I
got kind of bitter. Why would a supposedly kind and loving god cause
this woman who only wanted to worship god -- why did she have to suffer
so. I remember when my mom was in the hospital that last time, the
parish priest came in to be with the family. My dad didn't want him
there in the room with the rest of the family (giving me to this day the
slightest glimmer of hope that maybe my dad is a bit of an atheist or at
least an agnostic deep down -- kind of like how Luke Skywalker was
convinced that his father still had good in him ;-) Anyway, I took it
upon myself to essentially distract the priest from being in that room.
I talked to this priest in the hospital lobby, waiting area, cafeteria,
everywhere to keep him out of my mom's room, for about a day and a half
or so. It was mentally exhausting, but I learned a lot about the
shortcomings of my religion from talking to the priest. We talked about
god's plans for my mom, which apparently involved torture and suffering
for her eternal rewards, which may or may not involve heaven (shrug).
Even after my mom passed, I held tightly onto the religion. I still
think I was just trying to forget my doubts. Eventually, about 9 years
or so ago when I moved to Oklahoma and witnessed the bible belt
mentality first hand, and the hypocrisy of so-called people of faith,
I'd had enough. It was easy to look at other religions and criticise
their visions of this ultimate truth. It was easy to say that other
people and other religions weren't "good christians." I looked at what I
was brought up believing and it was as nonsensical as the rest of the
religions.
I read some books, "The Most Dangerous Man in America" by Rob Boston,
and "The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You to Believe" edited by Leedom
and it just made sense. It wasn't just other religious flavors that
didn't make sense, it was my own religion that was no different than the
others. Once I quit going to mass, quit getting that constant
reinforcement of dogma, I was amazed at how clearly I was able to think
about this religious mumbo jumbo when my thoughts weren't clouded by a
regular message of "God loves us."
A road to Damascus conversion? Nah. I just wised up and smelled the
coffee ;-) (Dan Chaney #1144)
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