One of the earliest memories that I have of my indoctrination is from a time period before I was in kindergarten. This would have been sometime before the fall of 1992 since I started school around August of that year. The memory involves me as a young child playing with some paper figures that my Aunt had given me. They were paper cut-outs of Biblical figures and they weren’t very fun. Having a cut-out of Jesus nailed to a cross wasn’t very interesting in my opinion. I couldn’t make him do anything useful, I was more interested in action figures that I could put into position to attack one another or at least pretend like they were talking to one another or engaging in acts that I saw on a daily basis from people in society. Taking away the story behind this man-god on a cross that many people throughout the world deem to be a powerful set of events, you only have a man nailed to some lumber, is that really something that you want to give to your child? I wasn’t afraid of it, I just saw it as a paper cut-out that didn’t have the potential of any of the other pieces of paper, however I kept the cut-outs because I knew it was something that my family wanted me to have. Sadly, just like any other toys that aren’t exciting or fun, once they were put away in the toy storage area they were never heard from again.

Beginning in the summer of 1995 I started attending Church with my Dad. This is the year that my parents divorced so one of the things that I did with my Dad was go to church. My Dad and I would arrive at Concord Baptist Church on Sundays around 9:45AM. The first few times I went with him I also attended Sunday school, it started at 10AM and we would read and interpret many stories from the bible. These stories weren’t very interesting to me, and I kinda felt out of place, these also may have even been some of my first memories of feeling socially awkward. This was because I had no issues with reading. Thanks to my grandparents, who gave me lots of books (that were a lot more interesting than paper cut-outs) at an early age, I could read quite well and the times whenever we had to read aloud in Sunday school I was applauded for being able to read it so easily. I didn’t really like receiving the praise though, a few of the other kids in my class couldn’t read very well and it made me feel bad to get adored while they struggled with their words. It felt awkward, the class wasn’t challenging enough, and I got bored very easily. Eventually I started attending my Dad’s Sunday school class. They were assigned passages in the bible to read and then would have conversations concerning said passages the following Sunday. While I understood what they were talking about, it was still of no interest to me. So I would usually lay down and put my head on my Dad’s leg and fall asleep.

After Sunday school was over everyone at church would assemble in the chapel and get ready to listen to Brother Walker Preach. Brother Walker is a very honest and sincere man from what I have gathered over the years. A few little things that I remember about him is that he could deliver a sermon to the audience in a way that would could keep an eight year old’s attention, or at least it kept my attention. He knew when to change his tone and could project his voice very well. He would also always shake my hand as everyone walked out of church at the end of the services, oddly enough, that’s the part I remember the most about my attendance and what I enjoyed the most about my interactions with him. Shaking hands was something that the grownups did, so it made me feel important. He made me feel comfortable and I actually looked forward to getting my hand shook the next time I came. I was part of the group, and this group gave me a place in the community.

On occasion, my Mom would get together with some of the parents of my friends and we would attend First Baptist Church. This was around the same time that I still went to church with my Dad, so probably around 1995-1996 is when this took place. I remember my friend’s mom saying that her son (my best friend at the time) didn’t really pay attention during the sermon, so she let him bring toys to play with. After hearing this, my mom allowed me to bring some of my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures. Most of my friends from school went to this church, so I was quite familiar with it. Their Sunday school wasn’t very appealing to me so I didn’t attend. I just wasn’t interested in finger painting or molding clay into anything (except for things that the adults would frown upon). Although this church was much larger than Concord and had more attendants, it still wasn’t very fun, and no one shook my hand at the end so I didn’t really have anything to look forward to.

Sometimes, whenever I would get bored, I would read the Bible. At least the parts that interested me, this was mainly the book of Revelations. This book had a lot of action and supernatural beasts in it, it really made my imagination explode with images and thoughts of what was to come. Some of it was really cool, but then the idea that it was actually going to occur started to set in. “When was this going to take place and was it going to happen in my lifetime?” No problem, I’ll go ask Dad. Luckily he said that I shouldn’t worry about it, however, it was still pretty scary and the passages made me paranoid to look up at night sky and see a moon that was tinted red. “Oh boy, things are set in motion” I thought to myself, so I would then run into my bedroom and hide. I remember sometimes falling asleep at night with hopes that I would wake up the next morning safely. For all that I knew, all of the bad stuff could happen while I was sleeping and I could even be killed during the night. I’ll devise a plan. If some thing or things start coming for everyone, I’ll just stay hidden. I’ll keep a bunch of food here in my room so I don’t have to constantly go to the kitchen, that should last me a few days maybe. Most of the monsters that I’ve read about I imagined to be on the ground and I can climb trees really well. I’ll be able to hear them coming and I’m certain that they will be after my neighbors first since they are a lot slower and older than I am. Living in the last house on the left on our street is giving me an advantage here it seems. I’ll take the screen out of my window so I can just open it up really fast and dart out into the woods that are 15 feet away from my room. Those trees are tall, really tall, I can climb them though. The beasts won’t think to look upwards into the tall trees for me, plus I have camouflage and I’ll be able to see in every direction. Maybe I can even build like a home up in the trees, like a nice treehouse and turn it into a little colony, that’d be cool, I’ve always wanted a treehouse.

I was literally trying to create a survival plan for the apocalypse. I had no idea if it would work or not, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I didn’t know much about the Bible, because I had only read the action-packed parts in Revelations. Earthquakes, volcanoes, blood-colored moon, etc. Chaos everywhere, I was told that this book was true, and I wanted to continue to live so instead of letting it happen, I had to come up with a way to survive.

On Sunday nights while most of my friends were at Church, I was at home doing something that I actually enjoyed. At 7PM I would be in front of my television watching Fox, channel 13 at the time, waiting for The Simpsons to come on. It was one of my favorite shows, it would come on and then shortly afterwards at 7:30 King of the Hill would come on. These shows made me laugh and the kids, Bart and Lisa, felt the same way about church that I did. They were not excited to have to go and they seemed to see it as a chore that took 2 hours each Sunday. This let me know that at the very least whoever was writing the scripts to this show either did not enjoy going to church as a child, knows a child that does not enjoy church, or at least acknowledges that some children don’t enjoy attending church. This made me feel better, I could relate to this show. Pretty much all of my childhood friends went to church and while at school we seemed to talk about everything, there were very few friends that I could talk with about not attending church, that circle of friends was fairly small. So whenever anything religious was brought up, the conversation immediately became boring.

As a few more years passed I became more familiar with my classmates. We had known each other since kindergarten and it was now 3rd grade. We enjoyed each other’s company and started hanging out after class. Eventually our parents heard news of a local boyscout troop. Since Ripley, MS had absolutely nothing for children our age to participate in, a cub scouts group was formed. This was a pretty awesome idea, I get to hang out with the guys and we actually get to do really cool stuff. We built squirrel feeders, made bug collections, went on nature walks, trips to our state’s capital, participated in the popular Pinewood derby, went camping, all sorts of fun things. Also, if you join Boyscouts, you get this really cool thing that makes sparks, that toy alone is enough to persuade any kid to join a group.

“Hey, we’ll let you play with fire if you join us.”- Yes, Please!

I remember, having to do tasks that were good for our health, we had to be able to do X amount of push-ups and the like. These badges were fairly easy for me to earn, and while I haven’t always been in shape, I’ve always been very active. We started out with blue outfits and I think the last outfit I had was brown, called a Weblo perhaps? I can’t exactly remember, but I remember that as time went on, things got a little bit more religiously oriented. In fact, I remember when our first member dropped out of the group. Our leader came in and she was a little bit emotional. She let us know that throughout our lives, people will come and people will go. The speech was pretty short, but I remember from looking around that some of us didn’t care, some of us were confused, and some of us were just wondering why our group was missing one person. Now, I’m not sure if the increasing religious tone had anything at all to do with the member leaving, for all I know it may have just been coincidence. But I didn’t see the religious ideas being taught as a bad thing. My friends knew that I didn’t attend church regularly, and I felt that most of the stuff being taught were things that all people should be doing anyway, they just seemed like a “generic set of good things” to me. I ended up staying with the cubscouts for quite some time. I actually remember the last time I met with them all for an official meeting. It was our transitional meeting from being cubscouts to official boyscouts. We met as cubscouts and then at 7PM we entered this other room, quite loudly actually, and we were all asked to leave and come back inside while being quiet. The guys running the show in there were incredibly strict. At my current age I can look back and see that we were very loud so being disciplined doesn’t bother me, but at the time, I perceived anyone as strict as a “mean person”. I didn’t mind being corrected, but these guys were very assertive and I could feel force behind their voice. I immediately lost interest and I did not attend any more meetings after that.

Around fourth or fifth grade I got my first computer. I had asked for one and shortly afterwards I had forgotten about asking for it. So whenever I came home one day from class and had three large boxes sitting in the living room, I was ecstatic. It was an Acer Aspire, an expensive set up that was charcoal grey and had a whopping 200MHZ processor with 32MB of ram (upgradable to 96MB), also Windows 95 (Like a boss). I had no idea what any of that meant, but technology was interesting to me and I was in love. My mom wouldn’t let me take it out of the box because my Aunt had mentioned that computers could get viruses, so we had to get an anti-virus first and she, my aunt, was going to come set it all up for us.

After two days she never arrived, so I asked mom if I could set it up and she was very hesitant about it. Neither of us knew anything about computers, but eventually I convinced her to let me give it a shot. It turns out that if you can match colors, then you can hook up a computer. It also helped that each cord would only connect to one port. This seemed impossible to mess up. My mom paraded me around as a genius for being able to do it, I have no idea why. She was excited to see what all I could do with it since she had heard me talk so much about the one at school. So I checked out what software came pre-loaded with it and fired up my first program of interest.

My mom was pissed.
However, I then showed her that a word processor and other tools were included as well. Her mood immediately changed to happy now that she realized that her and my Dad hadn’t spent a ton of money on what solely appeared to be a digital deck of cards. It wasn’t complete though, I wanted Encarta 97. We had it at school and it had a really cool maze video game that asked you questions, it was never-ending, but I loved being quizzed on this encyclopedia. I had a new source of information, and I was very pleased with this.

I didn’t get internet until around sixth or seventh grade. We used Dixie-Net which was located in Ripley, MS. It worked great. I had a 14.4kbps modem and I was flying through text-based webpages and chatting on Yahoo! Messenger. My modem eventually died though, and I was sad. I took my computer to the local computer shop and they started speaking to me a little bit about it. They upgraded me to a 56K modem and my mind was blown. What I liked about this place was that they actually talked to me as well as my mom. I was included in the conversation so I was learning about computers. Eventually after a few trips up there with other issues, mom realized that it was kinda expensive. So the next time it broke, I didn’t tell her. Instead I played with it myself and much to my surprise, I fixed it. My curiosity had paid off, I can’t remember what the first fix was, but I did it. Whenever my next issued occurred, I jumped into it again, and fixed it again. Eventually I had gotten very comfortable with this machine, so whenever my monitor went out, which was due to a family member carelessly finding a way to bend the pins on the inside of the vga cable, I went inside the monitor and detached the cable and came strolling into the computer shop. As soon as I walked in, he told me that he didn’t have that part, but he told me exactly what it was and applauded me for being able to bring it in. I really liked this place, this guy was helping me and encouraging me to learn (something that I now value heavily). I went back home disappointed though, because I had no screen. I decided not to give up, I got a pair of needle nose pliers and tried to bend the pins back into place. It worked, I was unstoppable. Taking chances and doing things that others (my parents) were too afraid to do was yielding lots of success for me. My parents were very impressed that their son in middle-school could do these things. Eventually I had developed a reputation as a “tech kid” in my neighborhood. Each neighborhood had a few. In fact, we were all in the same class it seemed. My curiosity had rewarded me well.

Jumping over to High School, since not much else occurred in middle-school dealing with religion, I had signed up for classes and my very first one was Biology 1. On the first day of class our teacher, who was a Coach and fairly religious since he had survived a terrible wreck earlier that year, kinda surveyed the class. He talked to us about what would be taught and what he hoped that we would learn. He then told us that he would be teaching evolution and then included that he didn’t believe in it. I didn’t care, I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t know that some people opposed it being taught because they thought it was “heresy”. My feelings were neutral on the subject of evolution. However, one classmate spoke up and asked about dinosaurs. She informed the teacher that she did not believe in them because of what her Church taught. This was a shock to me, how could one deny the existence of dinosaurs? Most of the books that my grandparents had given me were about dinosaurs. I literally had 50+ books that contained 20 pages each that went into specific details about dinosaurs. In fact, each book was about a different dinosaur and included tons of information. This girl was denying their existence? What did she think fossils were? Oh well, my mind was blown. I never took the opportunity to speak to her about it, but that situation definitely bothered me. I had no idea if she was being serious or what I would commonly call today as “trolling”. It turns out that she was serious. As time went on, I began to find that some people didn’t believe in evolution. I still had access to my computer and internet at home, so I began investigating to see why. All of their reasons stemmed from their religions. They then began to cite scripture, I was immediately not interested and moved on to something else.

That something else was TOTSE. Temple of The Screaming Electron, it was a forum that had all kinds of awesome posts in it. I liked the Pyro section. I didn’t have a bible, but I did have online access to the Anarchist’s Cookbook, and holy mother of God was it awesome. It was basically a collection of instructions on how to make bombs, flame throwers, and many other things. A terrorist would have loved it. I loved it, however I didn’t classify myself as a terrorist, mainly because I didn’t know what a terrorist was, and that I had no intentions of terrorizing the neighborhood or causing any harm. I was just a young boy being a boy. I mean, I joined boyscouts for the spark/igniter thing, what would you expect? I was interested in all things that most boys loved: Fire, mud, running, jumping, climbing trees, Mortal Kombat, bikes, tools, electronics, music, everything. This forum quenched my thirst for knowledge.

One of the sub-forums on TOTSE dealt with the supernatural, it had sections for ghosts, crypto-zoology, bigfoot, the lochness monster, mysticism and spirituality, telekineses (Yeah, I tried to learn how to do it, so what?), as well as a religion section. Why was religion in the supernatural? Oh well, religion is boring anyway, nothing to see there.

Eventually after I had basically scoured every forum for the cool stuff I decided to check out the religion forum. To my surprise, I found out that there were actually people who didn’t believe in Jesus. Wow, they must be stupid or something. How can you not believe in Jesus? I wasn’t even very religious, but I knew what my grandparents had told me and what I had heard in church. I’ll just go ahead and post in here to show them that God is real… Oh look someone already beat me to it.

Inner dialogue
“I bet they had a convincing argument. Yep, that looks good to me. The response is…..no no this isn’t right, Jesus isn’t like Zeus and the other gods, those are myths. How can I tell the difference? Well, you see…. …. …. Well I don’t know how to explain it but… you ask a lot of good questions. I’m gonna go play outside and if I think of something I’ll reply. Oh you’ll be waiting? That’s cool, I’m sure I’ll think of something here soon.”

“Well I couldn’t think of anything, you’re an atheist? What’s that? Oh ok, that’s weird. “

After realizing that I didn’t have any convincing arguments for these people, I just went back to looking up home-made ways of how to make C4, or as it was called on the website “semtek”. The idea, which I can’t remember all of the ingredients, involved a lot of stuff that had to be put into the oven in a pan. I did it, but it didn’t work. Also, my mom wasn’t home whenever I tried it. She would have killed me, and come to think of it, had my current self been there, I probably would have killed me too for doing such idiotic things. That was when I learned what an atheist was though. It was so weird that someone could deny that God exists.

As years passed I visited that section of the forums here and there, but I eventually fell away from TOTSE as a whole, especially once I got my first truck. I really had no reason to stay cooped up in the house anymore if I didn’t have to be there. Except for one instance, nothing really religious stands out to me in high school. I didn’t attend the FCA meetings because they were boring. The one instance though, involved me and some friends in my AP Calculus class. They were discussing church and I mentioned that I really didn’t like to go because I didn’t really like or talk to most of the people that went to my Dad’s church, with a few exceptions of course. One friend replied “you don’t go to church because of the people, you go there to glorify God”. I was speechless, I didn’t know how to respond. I hadn’t prepared for that so I was just caught off-guard and responded with “oh ok”. I knew something was wrong though, because that didn’t make sense to me, and while I’m not the brightest of the bunch, I can usually tell whenever something isn’t in line the way it should be. I ended up letting it slide and went on about my business.

College came shortly afterwards and I was ready to begin a new life of partying and whatever it is that college kids do. I chose my major, engineering (mechanical), and then I found out that choosing engineering as your major while having a part-time job that gives you full-time hours is another way of committing social suicide. Chemistry 1, Calculus 1, and whatever else I had to take was not what I thought college was going to be at all. You actually have to do work here, and it’s hard work at that. Oh well, I can do it.

I mentioned that I had a part-time job, this job was at BestBuy in Tupelo, MS. This was the first time I had worked in a corporate setting. It was also in a city that was much bigger than my small home town. Going out and working in a place like BestBuy gave me my first taste of the world. In fact, after the last interview I had to go get a drug test. I peed in a cup and handed it to a woman behind a desk, it was incredibly awkward, and I let her know that it was very awkward. She laughed and said “You’ve got a lot to learn, welcome to the real world.” I had no idea that she knew exactly what she was talking about.

After I got hired on at BestBuy, I discovered that a few of my co-workers were gay. I had never worked with gay people before, what was going to happen, are they going to try to convert me? It turns out, no. They were actually normal people just like everyone else it seemed. My grandparents had told me about “the gays” trying to destroy our country and how what they did was against the Bible, but I decided that these gays were nice and they were my friends. So I didn’t mention them to my grandparents, or what my grandparents thought about gay people to my gay co-workers.

One of my co-workers was a cross-dresser, I didn’t understand why she would want to dress in a masculine way, but she was incredibly nice. In fact, she was one of my favorite friends from work, and every time I came into the building she would always smile, wave, and talk to me. She made my days better whenever I felt lame. When my friends are happy, then I am happy as well. I was a little troubled though, why was she a bad person, and why were the others bad people too? I couldn’t ask my grandparents, because they would ask questions which would probably lead to me having to quit my job. I didn’t care enough to ask anyone else though, I just knew that they were nice and that I enjoyed being around them just as much as I did being around the rest of my co-workers. As far as I was concerned, I had gay friends, and I saw nothing wrong with it.

But why were they considered bad people? I had to get to the bottom of it, instead of asking someone why it was wrong, why not just look for myself? So I turned to my King James Version of the Bible that was given to me on May 22nd 2005 for my graduation at my Dad’s church. After reading the first few chapters of Genesis, I only had more questions than answers. I read it and would run into a question, but I would set the question aside and refocus because I was looking for an answer, not another question. This happened over and over and over, eventually I set the Bible aside and turned to something that had always given me answers whenever I needed them, something that had always been there for me ever since I was told the good news of it’s existence, the one and only…

Google was (and still is) the closest thing I have experienced that comes close to having any attribute of a god, it is the closest thing that comes to an all-knowing entity that I am aware of. With that said, I quickly googled my question of “Who was Cain’s wife?” After searching for quite some time, I still could not find an answer that suited me. They were either incredibly religious websites that cited tons of scripture and cross-referenced, or were from smug atheists that were trying to rain on my parade by saying that Cain never existed. The best answer that I could find was “We don’t know”. This didn’t make sense to me, and actually upset me. How can you not know? If you believe in Jesus and follow this book to help lead a happy life, how can you not know? I need to know who she was and where she came from, you don’t just introduce characters into a story of this significance and leave someone hanging about their origins. I have questions about my faith, I deserve answers. If I’m going to save souls, then I need to be able to provide an incredibly convincing argument to the opposition. The people I want to convince are my co-workers, oh well, I’ll find the part that says gays are wrong here soon hopefully. I didn’t pick my Bible back up for a while after that instance. I had work, a moderately religious girlfriend, and classes that I was trying to give my time to.

One of the more interesting classes that I was taking was English Comp 2. I had to write essays on controversial topics, and I had to research them very carefully to minimize bias. I was taught how to see things from a neutral perspective and how to make better judgement calls to determine if sources were reasonably reliable. I was introduced to what the instructor called “logical fallacies” and I had no idea of the role that they would play in the next few years. I learned that verbally attacking a person rather than their argument will get you nowhere- ad hominem. Just because everyone is doing something does not make it right- bandwagon effect, or just because many people believe something does not necessarily make it true- ad populum. These were among the general fallacies that I learned in the class. This class was teaching me how to reason, I really enjoyed it because I was actually quite good at it and it made a lot of sense to me.

I had to apply this reasoning to a paper that I wrote on human cloning. What I found out kinda surprised me. Every argument that I ran into that was against it dealt with religion or God. I saw many benefits to cloning and I had reconciled it with my religion as a Christian. Why couldn’t others do the same? “You shouldn’t be playing God” was a reason that I encountered, yet we played God every day and had been doing so ever since we had been practicing medicine. The arguments against cloning were inconsistent, yet the people using them didn’t seem to realize it. Whenever I would bring this to their attention they would just kinda look at me and proceed to give more reasons against it, all of which came from one source: their religious text. I left God out of my reports and essays, I actually figured he would support cloning since it was so beneficial to humans. At the time I had not been introduced to the word “secular”, but as it stood, I couldn’t find any secular arguments against merely cloning someone. I also wasn’t very well-versed with the separation of church and state, while I had heard of it from my high school government class, it was to come much later on.

A second class that I was taking around that time was intro to psychology. It was pretty neat, I actually enjoyed it. However, one day the question of God’s existence came up. I’m not sure how or why it was brought up, but I jumped into the conversation. I love science, and I was almost certain that I had an answer that would finish the conversation and allow us to move on. I was actually tired of hearing about how God doesn’t exist already from the internet while looking for answers to questions for my faith, the last thing I need is anti-god junk showing up in my classes. I quickly raised my hand and just gave a short and simple explanation: “The law of conservation of matter and energy says that matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, so either the universe and everything that we know has either always existed, or it hasn’t. Well, we’re here right now, so I’m gonna say that in some form or another we have always been here and only a God could make that possible.”

I immediately noticed that a large portion of the class agreed with me, and it felt good. The professor just smiled and was like “Well, there you have it.” Students in the class continued to discuss God after that, but it was kinda on a different subject, and I wasn’t eager to pay attention to it anyway after I had dealt what I thought to be a devastating blow to the idea, so I just tuned it out. I went home and told my mom about it, she was very happy because we had never really had a discussion concerning religion or God that was in depth. I had stood up for what I believed and it reassured my mom that I believed in God. She later told my grandparents, and they were very happy as well. In fact, my grandpa had me write down my argument so that he could tell it to his friends. I am his only grandson, and to this day he is very proud of me he says.

Later on I would find out that my argument was invalid. Through a little research on my own after using it in a forum on the internet, I found out that I had a very simple understanding of the law of conservation of mater and energy. It turns out that matter/energy can be created and destroyed, it happens all of the time. As long as it is conserved, then the law still stands. So it is possible for matter to be created and then disappear and the law still be valid. I discovered that it happens in a vacuum and has actually caused disturbances in technology on the nano level. In incredibly small devices, such as nano-devices, the particles that pop in and out of existence have effects that interfere with how the electronics work.This effect is called the Casimir effect and it has been observed to occur. This effectively killed my best and only “scientific” argument for the existence of God. It didn’t phase me though, I mean, I had faith and that’s all I needed right? Well maybe at the time.

A semester or so later I ended up taking Philosophy. We had to write papers in this class as well, I really enjoyed it, and since I had a fairly good understanding of basic science, with a dab of more complicated science in the mix, I was eager to see what this class would offer. I liked this class because I liked thinking. I didn’t realize it at the time but the class strengthened my reasoning and logical skills. We had to write an essay on different methods of determining truth, I chose the empirical method. It seemed right up my alley, and apparently… it was. I got a 98 on it, the only points that were taken off were from me using the phrase “concrete evidence” over and over, I should have had a thesaurus at my side. I also had a little note at the bottom from the instructor saying that he was impressed at how well I understood the subject at hand. I really liked that, he also started calling on me a lot in class for the discussions, he always seemed delighted whenever I jumped in.
We wrote three or four papers in his class, however, the final paper was my favorite. “The God Question” was one of two or three subjects that we had an option to write about. This was another chance for me to show off my reasoning skills and love of science while still believing in God. I was very excited to write the paper. In the paper I basically showed that really the only reason people have to believe in God is through their faith. There is no actual empirical evidence of any god whether it be the God of the Bible, a Hindu God, or even one of the many gods from extinct religions, one has to have faith to believe in a god. I believed that faith was a great thing. It brought people together and had so many great things associated with it that it had to be good.

After writing my final paper for philosophy, I can’t remember my actual score but I know I did fairly well on it, I decided to look into other religions a little bit. I wanted to know it all, the smarter I can become, the better. I wanted to see how the other religions were wrong and how Christianity, the religion that I subscribed to at the time, was the right one. This should be easy, I’ll learn about these other religions and then bring them over to the one true religion, Christianity. Not only that, I can also help out my friends who are gay. I’m about to save every soul that I can, this is going to be awesome.

I knew from the get-go that all of the religions required faith to be believed. However, I did not actually understand what that meant. As I learned a little bit more and more about the other religions I realized that the methods that I was using to prove them false could also be used against my religion of Christianity. This made distinguishing between religions and trying to debunk them all except for my own extremely hard. In fact, I would eventually find out that it was impossible. Slowly but surely, I was heading down a one-way path to Deism. I didn’t want to admit it, but it was looking more and more like I wasn’t going to be able to accomplish this goal that I had set for myself. I eventually just put this goal on the backburner and got back to doing what I enjoyed the most, partying.

Partying was something that I took part in just about every Thursday night. I was the oldest of my close-knit friends so I was in charge of making the run to get the alcohol. I would bring it in and then we would party until really early Friday morning. Most of my friends knew that I was struggling with religion, so they would occasionally ask how I was doing with it. Unfortunately this was normally in the middle of the party, so opinions would come out alongside my newly acquired findings of the religion and with the alcohol added to the mix we were a little bit more passionate about these ideas. Several arguments, they started off as discussions but would end with everyone a little bit bitter towards each other, ensued throughout the night. We would try to stay away from the topic of religion, however it always got brought up. Either I would mention something, or a friend would and it set the same ordeal into motion every Thursday night. We were so close that we didn’t let it phase our actual relationships though. I don’t think we really cared that we disagreed about a lot of religious things, we just enjoyed each others company.

Once or twice we would actually have a conversation in the middle of the day and no alcohol would be involved so we could actually have a discussion that wasn’t accompanied with too much emotion getting in on the action. One of my friends was just wondering how I could go from not wanting my religion attacked to being so uncertain of my religion. I told him that the more I learned that the less it made sense. He was also curious if I still believed in God, and I answered with an honest “yes”. I just wasn’t sure if it was the Christian god. I did more research and found that I was basically a deist. I believed in a god that had set things into motion and stepped back to watch how things unfolded. However, I wasn’t even certain if that made sense to me. I took it as my new label, I was no longer a Christian, however I did see all of the good that could come from Christianity, I just wasn’t sure if it was true since it didn’t make sense to me. I remember at one point I reached out and asked for my Christian friends to give me their best reason for being a Christian. I wanted to know why they were Christians so I could maybe gain back my faith. They just said that I needed faith, other than that they didn’t have any reasons as to why they were Christians, or at least they didn’t speak up because a long awkward silence occurred after I asked the question.

During the summer of 2008 I rode with some friends to Memphis to watch a movie at the Malco Paradiso. On the way up there I rode with a friend who I knew was an atheist, but I had never spoken to him about it. On his facebook page he had “Militant Atheist” as his religious view. I was curious about it, but I didn’t say anything. He was reading something on his iPhone and I happened to glance over at what he was reading. I saw that it was an atheist forum, so I asked him what it was even though I already knew. He just told me it was an atheist forum. So I just replied with “oh ok”, because I was not about to step into something that I knew nothing about. I felt that he was wrong though. Now that I look back at it, I think it’s funny how I could be sure that someone was so wrong in regards to a belief, or lack thereof in his case, whenever I had no idea what I believed at all.

I decided to investigate a little bit and see what this atheism was all about. I still wanted to know everything that I could, plus if I could find something wrong with it then maybe I could also find that same error in my situation and redeem us both. I still wanted to save my friends, but now I also had to look out for myself. I guess deep down I wanted to be a Christian, but I was having a hard time with it so I couldn’t call myself one.

I wanted to save him, but I had no idea how to do so. So I went online hoping Google would show me the way. I searched for various reasons to believe in God. I want to gain my faith back and then spread it to others. I found several sites that gave me exactly what I wanted, so I printed out their arguments and started learning them. There was something that caught my eye though. Mixed in with the search results I noticed a few sites that supposedly countered the reasons that I was looking for. I was incredibly hesitant, but I eventually gave in and had to click the links. Each reason that I had printed out and studied was being dismantled right in front of me. I couldn’t stop reading because I had to find a flaw in this logic, I was under the impression that there had to be a logically sound reason to believe in God. If I kept reading I would find the flaw, I knew I would. Unlike whenever I read the Bible, this article was giving me answers that I had no reason to doubt or question other than me not wanting them to be true. I realized that just because I wanted these reasons to be flawed didn’t mean that they actually were flawed and this scared me. The logical fallacies that I learned in my English Comp 2 class were actually being applied to religion, and it wasn’t turning out the way I wanted it to, at all. They even had a list of the most common arguments used for the existence of God and then they explained how they were flawed. It’s like these arguments were typical and had been used for so long that a simple list explaining why they were wrong had been made.

“What caused the big bang? We don’t know so it must be God.”- Dismantled, argument from ignorance a.k.a “God of the Gaps”

“How many other Gods do you know that died for your sins and love you?” – Dismantled, appeal to emotions, just because it made me feel loved and cared for does not mean that it is true.

“The universe is fine tuned for life, the human body is incredibly intricate so there must have been a designer.” – Dismantled, our universe is incredibly harmful to life. The universe is not fine tuned for life, but life has fine tuned itself for our environment and it has done so through evolution. Evolution also explains the intricate detail of the human body. In addition to detail, evolution explains how our body isn’t anywhere near perfect and how it could easily be improved upon. If it was designed, then the designer did a terrible job.

“Morality, God is needed for morality.” – Dismantled, while many don’t realize that we can get our morality through reason alone, they believe that the Bible is a great place to obtain morals. Upon further inspection of the Bible, I found that it is the last place one would want to get their morals. If someone disagrees, I’ll only encourage them to read the bible in it’s entirety, because they are usually only citing the “feel good” passages if they cite anything at all.

“The bible is true, it says so in the bible.” – Dismantled, Circular reasoning

“I had a personal experience, so I know God is real.” – Dismantled, While this may be a “good” reason for the person who experienced it to believe, until it actually happens to someone else and can actually be verified that the experience was indeed God intervening, then it is not a good reason to believe in God. Personal experiences are without a doubt a powerful situation, however until we know for sure that it was God that caused it, then we have to be honest and say that we don’t know what it was.

“Look at how many people believe in God, it must be true.” – Dismantled, the amount of people that believe in something has no bearing on whether or not it is true, ad populum

“All of these prophesies have come true, Jesus is the messiah.” – Dismantled, ask a Jewish man why they don’t believe that Jesus is the messiah, and look at the prophesies in greater detail and you will see that they are vague enough that you could fit many people into the answer. Also, some of them just flat out did not come true. This can also be applied to prayer.

“Believe in God and lose nothing if you die and he isn’t real, or don’t believe in him and lose everything if he in fact is real.” – Dismantled, Pascal’s wager, this doesn’t take into account all of the other religions out there that have an equal probability of being correct.

Reason after reason, they all failed to be good arguments for the god hypothesis. I was about to lose my mind. This was something that I valued deeply, I have no idea why I valued it so much because I was never even really religious. I felt like I was being attacked from just about every angle. If I looked to science for God, he wasn’t there. If I looked into philosophy, he wasn’t there. Even whenever I looked into religion, he wasn’t there. Was “he” even a he? Everything that I thought I knew about god was falling apart. I had no reasons to believe in him, and the reasons that I read about were all flawed. What made it even worse was that no one around me saw how the reasons were flawed. How could someone want something to be true and then seek out to ensure it was true for themselves as well as others only to find out that none of the reasons to accept it as a fact were justified? I needed this to be true, so for a few weeks I did the one last thing that I thought would save me. I prayed, and nothing ever came.

My mind was a disaster, on the outside I made sure that no one knew what was actually happening. They might have known that I was increasingly argumentative and a little more aggressive, but I’m confident that they didn’t know to what scale the chaos in my head was like. On the inside, everything had been torn apart. I started reading more and more religious websites to find something, anything, that could make me believe again. Religious articles, youtube videos, books by Lee Strobel, they were all filled with fallacies. These beliefs were unjustified and there was nothing I could do about it. Everything that I read, I could spot the fallacy or the misuse of reason within the first few paragraphs, these articles were useless. Finally one night I walked into my bathroom. My face was swollen from crying and soaked in tears. I took a deep breath and exhaled while watching myself in the mirror. I couldn’t break eye contact with my own reflection. I was staring through my eyes into something beyond them, peering as far as I could into my pupil for a glimmer of hope that had died in the weeks that had led up to this situation. I then said to myself: “Look at what has happened to you. You couldn’t let it go, you had to keep looking for reasons to believe, and as a result you have stumbled upon every reason to not believe. Where do you go from here? Do you still hold on to something that you truly don’t believe or will you finally admit to what you have known was coming?” Talking to myself out loud was something that I very rarely did and at that point, I was just stalling. The truth was obvious to me. Religion had motivated this search and the results were terrifying. At the end of that drama-filled episode I finally said it, “I am an atheist.” , and in the words of Dr. Manhattan “I felt fear for the last time.” I no longer feared an eternity in hell for being skeptical, and I didn’t have to fear for my friends or family. A burden as heavy as the world had been lifted off of my shoulders. I was finally free. My mind was calmer, I could think clearer, and everything was at peace.

This wasn’t a de-conversion, it was a realization. A process that took several years even though I was never really religious to begin with. In the days after my admission to myself I started seeing what responsibilities I now had. I have one life, I have to make this is as awesome for myself as well as the others around me. I started taking better care of myself, following a somewhat better diet, running occasionally, cherishing every moment I could with the people I loved, smiling more, and just making the best of everything. A month or so passed and I found myself at one of the local bars with a lot of friends. We were partying because we were actually all in town at the same time and there was a ton of us, so why not party hard? A friend approached me and told me that he had just ran into a guy named “Quran” I laughed a little bit because I thought it was neat. Apparently it was funnier to my friend though, especially whenever he delivered “the kicker” that Quran was actually an atheist. I laughed a little and then replied “Well, I mean, you know I am an atheist too.” My friend’s jaw dropped. He then went and told everyone else, one friend got pissed and went outside to smoke while the rest of us just discussed it a little bit and then let it slide. No reason to spoil the night. I was an atheist and I finally admitted it to my friends. Things were going great.

As time went on I started talking to more friends about my atheism, some were interested, some weren’t. You begin to realize that usually people are alright with discussing beliefs unless you believe different than they do. Some became more interested, while others began to distance themselves, and some just didn’t care.

The ones that distanced themselves felt as if “they were being attacked” is what they later told me. I actually knew what they meant, because earlier in this article I showed that I felt the same way whenever I had a discussion with an atheist online or read what they believed. However, I can now see that the atheists weren’t attacking me. I asked them why they didn’t think my reasons were good to believe in God, and they simply answered my question. I was confusing their reasoning and disagreement with a personal attack. It’s not personal, and whenever you think about it with an open-mind, you’ll see that it’s not personal. I told myself that I would keep an open-mind in order to be considerate of others, as well as an act of honesty. I’m perfectly fine now with saying “I don’t know”, because I know that my ignorance is not evidence of the supernatural. If actual evidence arises for the supernatural, then I’ll examine it, and if it is convincing then I will believe it. Until then, I am going to remain neutral in regards to all religions.

After a few months I decided that I wanted to find a few like-minded people. I then stumbled across what was left of the local atheist club. I rebooted it and was voted in as President, with the help of Chris Ramos who was the Vice President, we grew the group to a nice little weekly escape. Fellow freethinkers would join us and we got to hangout and discuss how we came to be who we were, what we liked to do, and just talk about how we could make things better. We named our club the Freethinkers, Agnostics, and Atheists, of Mississippi State University, FAAMSU for short. I was President from June 2010 until the first meeting of the Fall 2012 semester. The group was so successful that I decided to form a network to help get groups into contact with one another. Again with the help of Chris Ramos, we worked together and started this very website, SAUCE FOR ALL, it hasn’t even been around for a year and we have done some things that we have really enjoyed. Road trips, both local and long distance, and just general networking with surrounding groups. Both FAAMSU and SAUCE have resulted in awesome friendships that I value and hold dearly. Literally some of the best times of my life are a product of these two projects.

In Mississippi news spreads fast, it didn’t take long for the word to get back to my hometown. I didn’t care if people knew, as long as they kept it secret from my family for health concerns. One of my brothers gave me a phone call one day because he had heard the news. I didn’t lie to him, I just confirmed it and he told me that he wasn’t mad, but he was heart-broken. I consoled him and then the call ended.

Shortly after that the dreaded Amendment 26 started wreaking havoc throughout the state. The personhood amendment reared it’s head, and it was entirely religiously motivated. I could not support it, so I did everything that I could to fight it. My sister noticed this as I did most of the campaigning through facebook. Eventually I came out to her over the phone as well, she was at one point in support of the amendment, but I’m not sure where she ended up. Either way, all of her reasons for supporting it were religious and she was trying to convince me to support it, so that’s why I came out to her. She was upset for a few days but within a week she was joking about it. I tried explaining to her how wonderful the universe is by quoting Carl Sagan and explaining how we are made of stardust. She now thinks that I am crazy and that I believe that we are “star people”. It’s progress, and we joke about it so I’m happy with the way it turned out.

Declaring myself an atheist has been the single best moment of my life so far. It relieved me of tons of stress that accompanied religion. Dealing with reality on reality’s terms is so much easier than trying to make sense of things while trying to make them work together with your religion. I learned that it’s ok to be an atheist, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, it just means that you believe in one less god than most people. Where they don’t believe in thousands of other gods, you just go one god further. To make matters better, atheists are becoming more accepted within society. In the past they were the most distrusted and hated minority out there, according to surveys. It’s good to be happy, and I see myself as a fairly welcoming, but sarcastic, person. I’m just an atheist with a southern drawl. So if someone ever wants to discuss these ideas, they are more than welcome to approach me about them.

With love, with reason.

-Chris Dees
Co-Founder of SAUCE FOR ALL

We’ve replaced “Education” with “Resources“, a page filled to the brim with ideas and links to help you spread the word about Atheism and freethought.

“God is all loving (Omnibenevolent), all powerful (Omnipotent), and all knowing (Omniscient).”

Most are familiar with these basic three, but one other claim heard often is that God is “just”.  Not only do they claim that he is just, they claim that he is the highest form or degree of justice.

“God never has and never will do that which is ‘unjust’.”

The main response given in defense of God’s claimed “justness” is that he delivers justice via the afterlife.  For those who live their lives “sinning” or doing evil, hell awaits them, and for those who live their lives righteously and in accordance with doctrine, they will receive the ultimate reward or promise of salvation.

In modern day society, punishment is reserved for those who break laws, which, in some cases, means that they perpetrated some form of evil.  Hell, on the other hand, is reserved for people who simply don’t meet the requirements to enter into heaven.  As implicitly understood by the Christian doctrine, a person of the Islamic faith will receive a punishment of hell because they believe in Muhammad instead of Jesus Christ.  The same fate could be said about Jews and anyone else who does not conform to the Christian salvation requirements, (which includes those who have never been exposed to the teachings of Christianity).

Already, one can see that justice in the afterlife is not limited to punishing those who harm others or do evil, but its about punishing those who have different beliefs.  The equivalent of this is punishing someone for espousing their communistic beliefs in a democratic nation.  Surely, we can label this kind of punishment as unjust.

Secondly, this notion of justice allows for the following scenario:

Lucinda, a little girl, was kidnapped at age 8.  She was kept in a basement for 10 years and molested repeatedly.  This eventually drove her to commit suicide while kept in captivity.  10 years after her death, her rapist has a change of heart and realizes the evil he has done.  He sincerely confesses to Jesus Christ, asks to be saved, and lives a true christian lifestyle from then on.  Because he now meets all of the requirements for heaven, he will be pardoned of his sins.

If this is the case, then where is the justice?  If justice rests purely on punishment in the afterlife and he is not punished, how will justice ever be delivered for Lucinda?  This schism in the Christian doctrine clearly undermines the exact form of justice it purports to deliver.  We can label this as inconsistent because we can expect that justice will not always be delivered as promised.

In modern day society, we don’t dish out the same punishment for every crime.  For example, when someone breaks the speed limit, its considered a misdemeanor and is usually undeserving of jail time.  But if someone murders another person, we put them away for a very long time.  However, in the bible, homosexuality, which is a victimless crime,  receives the same punishment as something as obscene as premeditated murder.  Is this really the only form of punishment God can implement?  He gives only two options — Heaven or Hell.  Is there no in between?  Can he not think of any other way to punish that which he considers to be a sin or a crime?  Only an unjust God would allow this kind of system to stay in place.

We also don’t punish people for the crimes of their ancestors.  However, in the bible, everyone is born into sin because of what Adam and Eve did.  It is they who condemned every future generation to hell.  Why should anyone have to bear the burden for their actions?  A common response to this question is that Adam represented everyone.  To this, I quote Matt Dillahunty and say “I didn’t elect Adam as my representative”.  What’s more is that this kind of displaced punishment is clearly displayed in the salvation story.  God sent someone to be torturously killed to alleviate all of mankind from sin.  Both of these punishments would be seen as unjust by most people today, including Christians, if we simply took it out of a religious context and replaced it with a modern day scenario.  Clearly, this is unjust.

We at least try to make punishments reasonable, but there is nothing reasonable about the threat of hell.  It is a place where one is burned for eternity in agonizing pain.  We don’t punish those who do evil by inflicting pain, we simply lock them away to suffer though time.  Even when we give the death penalty, we at least try to make it painless.

Moreover, if we were to imagine the worst possible evil that could ever be perpetrated, could we honestly say that it would be deserving of a punishment such as hell?  I don’t know what the worst possible evil would be, but I would never wish hell upon anyone!

It’s also claimed by some that God punishes people in this life.  The earthquake in Japan, the stripping of fortune, and other natural disasters have been said to be the work of God.  It has been said that AIDS is a punishment from God as well, but all of these punishments simply punish those who disobey authority or don’t conform to the christian belief system.  They have nothing to do with punishing someone for doing evil or harming another person.  These have absolutely nothing to do with justice.

The biggest problem of all is why not deliver justice in this life.  Societal justice actually makes a difference.  It actually locks away bad people and deters people from criminal activity.  Imagine trying to govern a society without punishment based on the assumption that one will be punished in the afterlife.  Which approach do you think would be more effective?  Which would you prefer?

Most people should be able to see through the flaws of the Christian doctrine, but somehow, even the most egregious of ideas can be revered if you only place them in a religious context.  On occasions, societies may convict the innocent and acquit the guilty, so societal justice is far from perfect, but if anything, its certainly better than this biblical view justice.

T Townsend is a member of FAAMSU.

It starts off by saying “Do you believe in God?  Or do you put your faith in science?”  This can only lead many to assume that the either the writer doesn’t understand that science is evidence based, which is the opposite of faith, or that the writer wanted a catchy introductory question.   Whatever the case, what made the article so great is that two of the most well respected people worthy of speaking on the subject went head to head.

Michael Shermer

Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptic Magazine, and author of many great works on science and skepticism, argues that religion has failed miserably every time it has tried to explain phenomena about the natural world and that it has been science that has succeeded at what religion has failed at.  Science is our best tool for explaining the natural world and we need to let go of primitive superstitions that have been shown not to get us anywhere.  He also briefly elaborates on how the concept of God is not scientific because it does not operate in the natural and that the many claims made about God are nonempirical and therefore immeasurable.

Kenneth Miller

Kenneth Miller, a cell biologist, who is infamously known for laying waste to creationist science, (and I mean “infamously known”) argues that suggesting that the two are incompatible is to deny history.

“Any suggestion that science and religion are incompatible flies in the face of history, logic, and common sense. Modern science developed in the context of western religious thought, was nurtured in universities first established for religious reasons, and owes some of its greatest discoveries and advances to scientists who themselves were deeply religious. From Roger Bacon, the 13th century Franciscan who pioneered the scientific method, to George Lemaître, the 20th century Belgian priest who first developed a mathematical foundation for the “Big Bang,” people of faith have played a key role in advancing scientific understanding.”

He argues that people too often have the misconception that religion equals anti-science due to its history of trying to hinder and suppress it.  He then goes on to explain that if we are going to deem religion as incompatible, then we should also deem other scientific suppressors as incompatible.

“Look carefully at modern anti-science movements and you’ll see that many of the most important cases of science denial have nothing to do with religion. Industries and even democratically-elected governments have tried to control climate scientists and rewrite their findings when they found them inconvenient. For decades, tobacco companies mounted campaigns of disinformation and junk science to counteract the clear evidence linking cancer and heart disease to smoking. And big pharmaceutical companies have actively covered up scientific studies harmful to their products. Should we take such things to mean that free market capitalism is “incompatible” with science? And if we do, what are we to make of three decades of suppression of the science of genetics within the Soviet Union, all in the name of a leftist ideology? Is socialism incompatible with science too?”

He concedes that religion has been responsible for a lot of evil, but points out the evils that science has been complicit in as well.

“But we should also remember more recently that it was science, not religion, that gave us eugenics, the atomic bomb, and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments.”

He opines that there are many religious scientists whose faith presents no conflict with their science, and he makes it clear that he believes that there will always be conflicts between religion and science and says:

“It seems to me that any faith that might require the rejection of scientific reason is not a faith worth having.”

To end, he cites a study in which the opinion of most scientists is that there is no conflict between religion and science which is contrary to public opinion.

“Unlike my friend Michael Shermer, I think that the majority of the scientific community has got this question right. Science and religion are different ways of thinking, to be sure. But to insist that conflict is unavoidable is to ignore the common history of science and religion as well as the reality of scientists who see their vocation as perfectly consistent with their faith.”

Now, to offer an opinion on this discussion.  I think its safe to assume that there are no quarrels with science here, the issue has arisen because of religious nutjobs who want to censor science, so I think that its appropriate to look at this from that angle.  I wish that the religious population as a whole (or even as a majority) viewed science as beautifully and as complementary to their faith in the way that Dr. Miller does, but sadly, this is simply not the case.  Religion posits answers (many that are demonstrably false) and science seeks answers and accepts the humility of not knowing.  Little by little, science has eroded the demonstrably false, primitive superstitions found within archaic religions.  If everyone were like Dr. Miller, or were at least in favor of the scientific enterprise, I would say that the two are completely compatible.  I see compatibility as simply being able to accept science without any problems.  Normally, if you are religious, you believe in a soul, but of course, all of the scientific evidence points to such beliefs being merely an illusion.  This is an example of something that some may define as incompatible, but when I talk about compatibility here, I’m speaking in the sense of being able to live peacefully without conflict, so I wouldn’t define this as incompatible within the context of this discussion.  My opinion is that science and religion are incompatible in the end.  Every supernatural explanation attributed to things we could not explain will eventually be explained by science, I assume.  However, I don’t think that science and all religious people are incompatible.  Dr. Miller and many others are well respected defenders of science who show that its easily possible for some to reconcile their religious beliefs with their science.

Source
Huffington Post Article

T Townsend is a member of FAAMSU.

Tonight alone we’ve gained 2 new groups that will be added here shortly. All groups are now able to promote their events, edit profile pages, and post articles to the “Road to Atheism” section.

The Sauce is spreading throughout the South. We’re bringing like minds together and the speed at which we do this is only going to increase as the Race to Reason Rally heats up.

Welcome to our newest groups that have been officially added –

Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics at LSU!

and

University of North Alabama Secular Student Alliance!
Prepare for rapid expansion within the following weeks.

Early on, I went because I was a child, and children go where their parents bring them. Later, as my mind matured and I realized that I didn’t believe a word of it, I continued to go despite my distaste for it in order to keep my mother happy. By seventeen I’d had enough, and simply stopped going. She took it surprisingly well; I’m fortunate in that it’s never been a problem for me.

Now that I’m older, and far better informed, I have a number of reasons for my disbelief, which I’ll expound upon later. But my youthful atheism remains a question. I was raised in a household where belief in God wasn’t a question, it was an assumption. Indoctrination of children, I firmly believe, is the only way religion survives in a world where we have answers to so many of life’s questions. I’ve read many accounts of people who were indoctrinated, believed for a long time, and came to atheism as they matured and learned. Why did this indoctrination fail so utterly in me? Truthfully, I can’t be sure, but I do have a theory; it has been discovered that, by stimulating certain regions of the brain magnetically, religious feelings can be artificially stimulated. It occurs to me that in my brain, perhaps this region is diminished, or missing, or has been adapted to another use. It’s about the only thing I can come up with, and it’s bolstered by the fact that I’ve never, not once, felt the slightest inkling that there may be a higher power, or indeed anything supernatural at all. I’ve never had a religious experience, not even a tiny one.

These days, I rely on logic and reason for the things I believe. I require that the things I believe be true, and therefore I require evidence in order to believe in something. And there is, quite simply, no evidence that gods exist, no evidence of an afterlife, no evidence of miracles. Nothing.

The religious will frequently use arguments from ignorance, or personal incredulity, to show why my atheism must be false. ‘How did the universe get here, then?’ they say, or ‘It’s impossible to explain the diversity of life by naturalism alone!’. I find both of these positions absurd. Historically, God has been offered as an answer to those things that mankind did not, at the time, understand – everything from thunder and lightning, to eclipses, to the origins of the universe and life itself. These questions are now answered, or are in the process of being answered. Physics, cosmology, and quantum mechanics are offering ways that the universe could have come into being which require no supernatural causes whatsoever. Abiogenesis and evolution take us from there. We now know how all these things came to be. What need have we for God? Why posit an all-powerful being when one isn’t needed? Even if we didn’t have these answers, I would far rather say ‘I don’t know, so let’s figure it out’ than ‘I don’t know, therefore God did it’. One approach inspires humanity to greater discoveries and achievements; the other stifles these. Imagine if everyone had simply accepted that disease was a curse from God, and neglected to study it. Picture such a world, and you will see why I cannot accept ‘God did it’ as an answer. Ever.

There being no gaps left in which God can hide, I require evidence before I’d be willing to believe in him. And I have seen none. A Holy Book is not evidence. The Bible is evidence in the exact same way that the Qu’ran, the Torah, the Enuma Elish, and Homer’s Odyssey are evidence for their respective claims. All ‘miracles’ that have been offered as proof of divinity have been shown to be cases of pareidolia, wishful thinking, delusion, ignorance of naturalistic explanations, or outright fraud. Prayer doesn’t work. Faith healing doesn’t work. Miracles don’t happen. The religious will offer all kinds of other so-called evidence for – their particular – god. It would make this essay impossible long to mention and refute them all, but suffice to say that every single one I have ever seen has been fallacious.

So there’s no need for god, and no evidence for him. Why, then, should I believe? My disbelief in god is the exact same disbelief I have for fairies, minotaurs, and Santa Claus. Until actual evidence for something, anything, supernatural is presented to me, atheism is my only possible position. You’re willing to try to offer me what you think of as evidence, if you’d like, but you’ll forgive me if I don’t hold my breath waiting to be converted. I’m open to hear it, but frankly, I don’t think it’s ever going to happen.

Because gods do not exist.

My parents had given up religion before I was born, therefore I did not have a road to non-belief.

Thanks,
Mike

When I was 12, I wasn’t your typical Mormon kid. I didn’t go to church every Sunday, didn’t pray much outside of Sunday dinner, my family only on occasion would pay Fast-Offerings, and I was very curious of how things worked. In my transition from 6th grade to 7th grade I became ill. Deathly ill. I would pray for days for forgiveness of any sins I could think of, and ask my father in heaven to help me in my one time of need.

At the beginning it started out as stomach pains, and moved lower. Before my parents and I realized how serious my sickness was, we tried many remedies. At first they thought I was constipated, so we tried Enemas; NOT FUN. Any medication was useless. Progressively it got worse. Finally one morning, at about 6am, after sleeping on the best place to sleep as a kid; the couch, I couldn’t handle the pain anymore. I was sobbing and shaking from this force in my stomach, so my mom finally decided to take me to the ER.

We arrive about 8am and there were already kids waiting to be attended. One of which I remember had the bloodiest leg I’ve ever seen. An hour wait later, a nurse called me back. After many words, and many more enemas, I was exhausted. But not shortly after I had to have a full-body CT scan. Within the hour they had the results. and concluded that my appendix had somehow moved toward my rectum and ruptured, and had been for nearly a week. The whole migrating thing explained why I felt constipated. The toxic aftermath was eating away at my tissues so we had to take action right away. The doctor told me that if I had not come, within the next few of days I would’ve died.

So they scheduled me for surgery the following morning. After much apple juice, and a few weeks in the hospital, I was set to be released. Before I could though, they had to remove SIX staples from my stomach. While doing so, the what I call, “Exchange Doctor” failed at removing my drain, and staples, causing me some of the worst un-drugged pain I’ve ever felt. You’d think my story couldn’t get much worse, and should be getting better, but you’d think wrong.

The day of my release was terrible. After getting home, my 5 inch wound was re-opening, and blood was getting all over my white shirt. Everything then went chaotic. We ran got back to the ER, and a nurse STUCK HER FINGER IN MY WOUND. I FELT MY INTESTINES! WHY she did this was beside me, but it had to have some medical purpose. They later found out that – now don’t take this name literal – my “gut sack” hadn’t been healing properly like it should. So back to the OR for a second time. This time when I woke up, I was in the worst pain imaginable. They maxed me out on every type of drug they could possibly give me. Later the doctor told me it was easily enough to sedate a horse. I think I would have rather given birth through my penis than feel this pain again. In the OR they stretched this “sack” that held my organs and sowed it back together – but leaving my wound open so that, slowly it could close itself back up. After waking up from the medication I remember seeing my parents, and being so scared. I cried and they told me everything would be ok. Again, time passed as I healed, and was forced to wear a “diaper” over my wound while it healed. I had to continue to wear this even when I was released a second time.

I don’t remember exactly how many days, but I’d been in that hospital for at least 2 months. Long enough to be confound to my bed for a week and a half, be sent home, come back, be bed-ridden for another two weeks, and barely be able to use a wheelchair to go outside and see fireworks on the roof for the 4th, and 24th of July (24th being Utah’s weird ass holiday. I don’t remember exactly what it is.) Those fireworks and my $165 dollars worth of apple-juice was about as good as it got for me.

Now I had to spend my last month of summer recovering at home in my own bed with antibiotics from bottles that looked like grenades. All I could do was watch Ed Edd & Eddy, The Powerpuff Girls, and Samurai Jack. It was easily the worst summer of my entire life.

So. How does any of this make me not believe in God(s)? Well. I’m almost sure you could answer that question for yourself. But just encase you can’t, let’s re-cap:

Praying is useless. This was shown in the way I asked for help or an answer and yet the Omnipotent Being in the Sky remained Silent. I prayed multiply times before, and while this all was happening. But to much silence made me give up.

You could say that God saved me through the doctors, and it’s a “miracle” I’m alive, but to believe or have faith that a Perfect, All-knowing God would purposely mess up so bad that I had to go back to the hospital for round 2 is ridiculous.

Anyone or anything that purposely puts a kid in the hospital during his 3 months of freedom is a Dick. Plain and simple. It’s abusive, and obviously had a huge impact on my life.

This is NOT punishment for being a “bad” Mormon. That is what hell is for. We are supposedly tested through the course of our lives THEN judged after we die; it’s not fair to punish me before judgement. You COULD call this whole thing a test – but seriously. This isn’t going to be another tell of Isaac and his kid. You can’t put me at the edge of death, then rebound me for some god-damn quiz. (Pun not intended.)

After the event, I was very skeptical. You could have called me an Agnostic-Theist right after and near the end of the event, but as time moved on, I grew closer to a Atheism. Many years later, more or less just recently, I’ve been putting a lot of time and study into religion, cosmology and astrophysics. You could probably call me an Anti-Theist now. I still have great respect for theists and my parents. I even on occasion will “say” the prayer for Sunday dinner. I could politely decline the request of saying it, but I feel I would break my parents hearts letting them know I’ve gone that far. Today my Atheist characteristics grow stronger, and I become very aware of how religious political figures will impact my future. I have to fight for the continuation of Separation of Church and State.

I may be stubborn, I may not believe what most people do, and I may think Evolution is a fact, but I can easily say I’m one of thee most understanding and kindest people you could ever meet. I will be your friend, even if that means putting myself out on the line.

TL;DR: Got deathly ill at 12, saved temporarily – but body fell apart. Lived, saw the world in a whole new light, and realized God doesn’t exist and is a big huge prick who enjoys giving kids the middle finger. Life sucks – hardcore – but you live it to the fullest and strive for happiness for both you and others.

I remember hearing this song for the first time when I was around 12 or so. I’m sure I had heard it many times on the radio, but I remember the first time I really stopped and listened to it. I was shell shocked. I couldn’t believe what he had said. “Imagine no religion”. How could there be no religion? How could there be no heaven? I was a little afraid at first. Afraid of the implication. Afraid of the way it made me think. But then almost instantly, it made perfect sense. I had felt uncomfortable around religion for awhile and this was the starting point of figuring out why.

In my hometown you either went to church or you didn’t go to church but you still believed in God. And not just any God, but the one of the Christian bible. Those were the only two choices. I went to a few different churches in my time. I liked some of the people there but I never really took to the sermons. And when I heard John Lennon say those words it clicked somewhere in my subconscious that religion was man made. I don’t know the exact correlation between those two things, that’s just the way it happened.

Then I as got older, I started admitting to myself that I thought there was no god. At first as soon as I thought about it I would change the subject in my mind out of fear of reprisal. From who? God I guess. I had entered the “Pascal’s wager” stage of conversion. And there I stayed for a few years. I knew in the back of my mind that god was not real, but if I was wrong it was better to just leave it alone.

Then earlier this year I started really becoming interested in faiths of different natures. I started studying faiths and trying to talk to some believers. I didn’t have much luck with the chatting, but I did stumbled across some of interviews that Ricky Gervais had done where he talked about being Atheist and it seemed like right then and there it made perfect sense. There was no god and I was perfectly justified in believing such. I’m not saying that he converted me (I don’t want to see any articles saying “Mean spirited, formerly pudgy comedian corrupts youth”). He just showed me that being a non-believer was just fine. That it was ok to be logical. That being a good person had nothing to do with any gods.

From Gervais I moved on to Penn Jillette who was already a long time hero of mine. From watching him I realized that I could speak out against religion. You could respect a person’s right to believe but that didn’t mean you had to respect the belief itself.
And then came the Heavy stuff. I discovered Christopher Hitchens.

He totally melted my face off. He shows no respect for religion. He called it out on every single account. He left nothing hiding in the shadows. He shows no restraint toward speaking out on the horrible things done in the name of a imaginary man in the sky.

I decided I want to be openly atheist at this point. I wanted other non-believers in my area to know that they were not alone. The more people who can be open about their non-believes, the more support we can gather. The more support we gather, the harder it is for the major religions to stifle our rights.

It can be intimidating to come out and it’s not for everyone. If you are afraid that there maybe serious repercussions that you can’t live with, then it’s not worth it. But if you can and you are willing to deal with snide comments for the “more holy than thou” club, please speak out. There maybe someone around you who just needs a little encouragement to be the person they truly are.

Dog On

We had just moved to a new town, and the only friends I had attended an Assembly of God church. I followed along. To make a very long story short, I converted and was accepted into their church; I witnessed “faith healings,” people speaking in tongues, even young kids fainting from “possession of the spirit.” I cried over my sins, I prayed my heart out–I even destroyed my collection of secular music, believing it would bring me closer to God. The religion became an obsession. I was always doing something irrational, something illogical, to allow my faith to consume my life, always ignoring my own needs to further the cause. I put my religion before my already fragile health, my family, and my personal sense of right and wrong.

I dated a boy my age from the church for nearly a year. Our relationship was the epitome of chastity, but I made the mistake of dating the church’s favorite son, and so we were constantly under attack–I was called a whore, he was told that I was never going to be close enough to god to deserve him. We endured it for months, but he died tragically in a car wreck. Our church grieved heavily; it was a small congregation, and he was an integral part. But when grief gave way to anger and resentment, it was aimed directly at me. It was my fault he died, because our relationship was against god’s plan, and god had to take him to preserve his plan–or some such nonsense. Attacks were built into the Sunday sermons about girls who defy god’s will. There was even talk about how illness and disability were signs that you had too much sin still in your life, that you were too separate from god–and I happen to have a paralytic neurological disorder, which my church knew about.

The people of my church had become unbearable. When I moved away to college, I took the opportunity to withdraw from the Christian community at large. I began to analyze my willingness to endure people who were too willing to turn their superstition against a teenage girl, and questioned whether or not I even shared those superstitions with those people. The longer I stayed out of the church, the more I was willing to admit that there were holes in Christianity; the more chinks in the armor, so to speak, the more my own logic took over and the less I believed it. The guilt of “sin,” of my inherent badness, was far heavier than I realized; when my belief went out the window, my depression followed shortly behind it.

Unfortunately, around the time I was leaving the religion, my family picked it up, in the same fundamentalist manner I had. There was no room for reasoning with them—they became convinced, and remain so to this day, that I am a terrible daughter, a sinful person, the spawn of the devil himself to know god and walk away from him. It took about six months for me to admit to myself that I no longer believed in god, in Jesus, in anything the Christian religion had to offer me; it took probably another two years before I would say it out loud. But now, five years later, I’m happier as an atheist–more fulfilled, compassionate, and committed to the happiness of others–than I ever was as a believer.