Why Write I Write about Atheism

 

Meg took Emma up to Pinetop for the weekend a little early and left me to my own devices. It’s the first time I’ve been away from my little daughter since she was born five weeks ago, except for my daily jaunts to work and back. The house is ominously quiet, with the exception of my newfound freedom to rip farts, however loud, whenever I please without having to apologize to my wife.

 

I decided to drive to Barnes and Noble and pick up a fresh copy of PZ Myers’ book that came out today, The Happy Atheist.

Happy to Have a New Book

Not that I need more books, mind you. I’ve got my Kindle and a little over 12,000 eBooks waiting to be read. As aforementioned, if I read one book a month for the remainder of my life, I’ll finish my current queue at approximately age 1,031. (Maybe I’d finish a little sooner if I skip all the Glen Beck and Bill O’Reilly books that somehow snuck into my collection.)

While I was at it, I bought a collection of essays by Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder. I’ve begun to appreciate collected essays, ever since I started reading Christopher Hitchens, David Sedaris, and Sarah Vowell. If I were to have one of my books published, I think I’d choose to make it a collection of essays. I enjoy the almost blog-like format, the easy flow from one idea to the next, and the freedom of expression it allows.

So yes, I bought two new books. I’m not adverse to paper books—I think having a few hundred books lying around the house makes me look smart, unless they all happen to be romance novels or something. Maybe that’s why I have a penchant for non-fiction, on the off chance that someone comes over to my home, peruses my bookshelf, and suddenly turns around impressed, exclaiming, “What a remarkable collection of literature you have!”

I was hoping this would happen when my relatives visited two weeks ago, or at the very least, that my mother would spot my stack of atheist-themed books I have proudly displayed at eye level on the bookshelf nearest the kitchen. No such luck, I’m afraid.

My dear wife Meg did mention in passing to my mother that she was an atheist. While my mom said nothing in response, her face visibly paled, and I could see the thoughts turning over in her head, “Sweet Meg is an atheist? How could this be?” To my mom, atheism is still one of the worst fates that could befall fellow mankind, and ranks up there with abortion, homosexuality, and pornography in the land of Sinful Things.

My mom also has a profound misunderstanding about what atheism is; she’s under the impression that atheists are really people who are “mad at god.” I read a print version of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary that defined an atheist as “one who denies the existence of a deity,” so I suppose my mom is not alone in her skewed definition of the word.

In any case, I’ve enjoyed books on atheism ever since I got George H. Smith’s Atheism: The Case Against God, which I bought when I was nineteen. Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion remains my favorite of the genre, since it’s beautifully written and argued. By the time I read it, I was an atheist for many years and certainly didn’t need convincing to stay an atheist, but it’s a great book nonetheless.

Besides collecting and reading books, I frequent a number of atheist blogs and often write—or rant—about religion in its various forms.

Why?

Why not “live and let live”? If I’m not religious, why does it

matter to me if others are? Why do I get bothered by all the god-bothering?

I’ve been mulling this over in my head lately, and I thought I’d write an entry about it and see if I can produce a satisfactory answer.

 

I’ve written elsewhere about my deconversion from Christianity, but here’s a brief synopsis of the events:

Like most religious people, I was born into my religion. My parents had converted to Christianity themselves in the 1970s, and had subsequently experimented with various blends of protestant Christianity until they settled on something that resembled Southern Baptist, as far I as I can tell. During my childhood, my parents would frequent quite an array of churches of different denominations, and for a long time, they attended a large Presbyterian church, despite not believing in the main tenants of Calvinism (TULIP), like predestination.

My mom believed in ghosts, demons, angels, spirits, and Satan. She grew up believing in Spiritualism, and her beliefs converted quite nicely into Christian ones, since the Bible has all manner of ghosts and the like. It scared me growing up. Taking my mom’s word for truth, I believed in that “spiritual warfare” was taking place all around me, and that Satan was constantly trying to make me sin.

Sin factored largely in my childhood, especially when puberty hit. Every sexual thought and desire became iterations of sin for me, and I struggled with the ever-swinging pendulum of my hormones and my desire to be “godly.” (My diary entries from these years makes for some very awkward reading.)

I lived in Israel for two years right about this time, which exacerbated the balance of sin and sex for me, as well as reinforcing my biased religious beliefs. It’s easy to think all the Bible is true if you visit places and ruins the Bible mentions. It’s easy to overlook any evidence that contradicts predetermined beliefs.

(Case in point: did you know that there is no archeological evidence for the Israelite “exodus” from Egypt to the land of Canaan? The Israelites weren’t fleeing from the Egyptians; in fact, the Egyptians ruled the land of Canaan at the time. I once visited a site called Beit She’an, which has old ruins of an Egyptian outpost. I only realized its significance years later—at the time I just ignored the evidence against the exodus.)

As time progressed, I continued reading the Bible and praying daily, and feeling guilty for any private thought that flitted through my head. By age 18, I fretted that my atheist girlfriend was going to go to hell, and that I needed to convince her of the Bible’s truth.

One day when I was talking about evolution being a lie, she asked me, “Do you really believe that?”

I mumbled some reply, but inwardly, a little spark of doubt started to burn. I valued her opinion and I wanted to be honest with her. Why would she be so convinced I was wrong, when I was so convinced I was right?

I resolved to think about the existence of God and my religious beliefs, and I started to write it all down in a blue spiral-bound notebook that I kept in a locker at work.

July 20, 2000 was the first truly honest day of my life. I wrote:

I have a new life ahead of me. Now that God is not the guilty center of my life, I may free myself from it all. I am free. Free to think without being told what to think. I can be excited in mankind now, not so pessimistic as in all times past. A burden is lifted from me.

That single moment in my life when I tasted freedom for the first time was one of the most amazing feeling I’ve had in my life. A moment before I thought that sin was real and that God watched my every single move. I lived in the shadow of hell—what if I didn’t say the magic words right, and God would send me to hell for not being good enough? What if I could lose my faith? I didn’t want to be tormented. I didn’t want my loved ones tormented.

Then, moments after I decided to stop believing in God, fear dropped away from my mind. Nobody was watching me. It was just me. Hell wasn’t real. Sin wasn’t real. Reality was al

l a white page, ready for me to discover and fill in.

 

So that’s my answer when people ask me why I bother being outspoken about my atheism. It’s because becoming an atheist was one of the most transformative and awesome events that has happened to me. The new ideas I’ve developed since then were hard-won. I had to learn everything over again from a new perspective. I had to decide what I believed in philosophy, biology, physics, politics, medicine, and so many other areas of my life. The ideas I developed and continue to develop continue to affect and shape me every day, every moment. Being an atheist is as integral a part of me as any other.

Sure, there are other reasons why I write and care about atheism, and fight against religion. Atheists in the United States are a small (but fortunately growing) minority with much prejudice. There are many reasons to fight against the injustices, biases, and lies of religion on this country, and promote atheists’ rights.

There are also the personal travails I’ve experienced that influence me, like when my parents disinherited me when they found out I was an atheist. (I’ll save this story for some other day.)

And I simply like to discover and contemplate about things that are true. The belief in god is surely one of the biggest delusions that many people bear. Finding the actual truth about matters can be difficult indeed and worthy of examination.

But the main reason I write about atheism is to recapture the feeling I experienced that day in July when I realized I was finally free.