Lately I've been getting the question 'why do you' or 'what caused you' '-to believe that?' Some even have the audacity to claim that my husband has 'brain-washed' me into thinking the way I do. So. Let me set the record straight and answer those questions with my de-conversion story:
I was an avid christian growing up. I insisted, by the age of five, that my parents take me to church. We went to a Lutheran church and I attended the private school there until I was in the second grade. I then moved to public schools where, for a good year, I was bullied and beat up. My parents took me to karate lessons, but I never harmed my bullies. I believed that Jesus wanted me to turn the other cheek, so the bullies continued and I did nothing to stop them.
I did not question anything about my faith until I got to high school. To me my faith in god, Jesus, and the holy spirit were solid and unchanging as I believed the trinity to be. However, a friend from middle school had asked me some questions (ones that I no longer specifically remember) about my faith that I didn't have answers for. Questions that lingered in my mind unanswered. To find the answers I joined a youth group, a high school campus group, and continued going to church, a community church in the area, protestant.
Unfortunately, I was molested by one of the guys in the campus group that I thought was a friend. This experience taught me a few things though. It taught me that friends cannot be trusted - the guy that touched me or the people I thought would help me through who turned their back on me. It also taught me, through my parents reaction, that sexuality is a bad thing. This thing is 'special' for marriage and should not be explored other wise. If it was explored I would have consequences enforced upon me.
This is when I started getting my own questions about god, people, society, how the world 'really' worked. (Again, I don't quite remember the specific questions.) I dove into the bible face first - that's where I thought all the answers would be found. According to my faith, I believed god would walk me through this. I was never alone. All things are possible with god.
Before I got out of high school there were some traumatic events that happened within my parent's relationship. By my mother's previous requests I will not go into much detail about them, out of respect for the ideal of privacy. However, I did learn from them. I realized that I don't agree. I do not agree with their parenting styles nor do I agree with their relationship as a whole. I started questioning everything in my mind, but I never asked anything. I was afraid to.
I started community college where I joined a baptist bible study group. I felt like my faith was solid again. I still didn't have answers to all my questions, but I felt it wasn't that important to pursue the answers at the time. People from the baptist group got together in hung out in the common area of the school where others would join us. Many people joined in our conversations to ask questions about god. One guy in particular was a 'science geek' and posed some really hard questions then pulled out scientific articles to back up what he was saying. Though, he would also follow some of us around and wouldn't talk about anything else. It bugged me that he was putting seeds of doubt into my faith again.
My time at community college was fun though. It gave me time to recollect myself for the most part and have open conversations about everything! Though I will admit, faith was my favorite topic when that 'science geek' wasn't around. I made a muslim friend while I was there and I got into a relationship with a guy that was 'spiritual.' We had lots of thought provoking conversations about faith and became best friends in the process. It did bother my christian 'morals' to be in a relationship with him.
I moved to a christian university for my last two years of schooling before a had a bachelor of arts degree. I chose a christian university because (well, for a ton of reasons, but also) I wanted to keep my faith, I wanted to be immersed in it. I was too!
Christian history was a required class at the university, I had taken a couple world religion, and new testament courses at the community college. All the classes at the university were taught by christians and everything that happened on campus was tied back to the faith. The university itself was founded in the quaker denomination. I had many conversations with various professors, took elective classes in religious studies, and had many conversations with many believing friends so that I could get all the information I could on god's character and the christian faith. I felt like god and I had been though so much together that there was no way I could ever turn my back on him or doubt his existence. He had 'proven' himself time and time again.
At the end of 2011 my grandmother passed away. I was heart broken: she had cared for me many years when I was younger, going to elementary school and my mother was working. I hold many fond memories of being with her. Soon after I broke up with my 'spiritual' guy. We had been talking about marriage though the strain on our relationship from me being away at school in combination with me feeling disrespected caused an end to that. In my small college town I rode my bike to work and school, a few weeks after we broke up this is what I was doing when I was hit by a truck. I was scatter brained and in a bit of shock after the event and my tire was bent. I was so happy to be alive and mostly unharmed! I attributed that luck to god, thinking there must be a reason he kept me alive. The elation of the accident caused a 'miss-communication' between me and a coworker. I was raped. I has said no, but he was already in my apartment, no one else was around and he wasn't respecting that I was repeating over and over that I din't want that. I had no idea what to do or how to stop it from happening - it was already set in motion and it happened. That was in the beginning of 2012.
'How could you let that happen again?' was a response when I was looking for support and help. It became obvious to me that I needed more help than friends or family could give. I searched for this god I had so much faith in to help me through. I went to counseling provided by my university (christian based.) If none of that helped I had a plan: my roommate at the time was hardly ever around. She had some medical conditions that caused her to have a lot of medications. 'I could probably just go in and, to her loss, take all the meds (pain killers included) in the apartment. While the medical field is pretty awesome, I'm sure it would be hours until anyone found me or noticed me missing and by then I'd be long gone.'
I made the decision to stay at the university and around people as much as I could for my own safety. I told the counselor I was seeing that I had made this decision and she made me feel good about it. 'It showed that I have an interest in being alive and that I knew and took responsibility for taking care of myself.' I was really proud of that. God wasn't doing that for me, I was making the decision myself. That was new to me.
It was summer break and I had one more semester until I graduated in December of 2012. A lot had happened. I had felt myself move away from christian faith and I felt a need to find myself. I lived with my grandfather that summer and tried a lot of new things. I got my first tattoo - my body had been violated, I wanted to reclaim it as my own. I read a couple of books about Taoism and living in the moment that brought a lot of peace to my mind. Going back to the university: I had a lot of peace about life. I still held the christian faith, but fairly loosely: it was 'common sense' in my mind, the only way to get salvation.
Got through that last semester and I put a profile on a dating site the last few weeks there. Honestly I was procrastinating from packing and I wanted to get some new life experiences meeting people. I had a lot of fun and my best friend helped with that. I started talking to (my now) husband on that site. When I met him he was a catholic. We started having serious conversations about (life & everything, but also about) faith after I moved in with him.
We started watching debates between christians and atheists (to answer questions we both had or had different opinions about.) I felt really frustrated that the atheists always made more logical sense in their arguments. I eventually I was left with just a few questions. Some had been posed to me before, but now they had really sunk in and I needed to answer them for myself. The most prominent:
Why was it so important to
me that there is a god?
After studying psychology and learning to step out side of situations to look at things objectively, I took a step beside myself to answer this question. I found the answer: control. I needed control of the situations I went through. I need control of the past, present, and future. I needed control over the things I felt I had no control over. I attributed that to god, to a higher power, to a supernatural omniscient, omnipotent being. One that I could pray to and leave all my cares behind. I was controlling my world through having an all powerful being. If I let go of god, I will not have control anymore.
It took a while.
'Atheist' was a dirty word though. I honestly thought that atheism was a group of extremely 'evil' people. I didn't want that to be what people thought of me. It all finally sunk in. I didn't need to hold control of everything surrounding me. That includes what people think of me. Took me just over twenty years, but welcome to reality!
I'm an atheist: there is no proof of the super natural and I don't
need it in my life.
...................................................................................................................................................
The transition into atheism has been quite a journey for me. Not talking to myself on a regular basis ('praying') was weird to me. Though, I actually found most of it to be quite freeing! Which I didn't expect. I didn't even know how I really felt about god until I realized he was non-existent! I don't have this 'great father' in the sky constantly watching over me, judging me, causing me to worry if I'm good enough for him or doing the right thing. When I donate money or my time to a cause now it's not because I want god to 'smile down on me,' but because I genuinely care and believe in the cause. I don't spend hours of my time worrying about people's spiritual lives and feeling guilty for not talking to them about 'the good word.' Now the only thing I worry about is if I'm being a decent person to those around me (and when I fail at that I have to put my big girl panties on and own up to it - there's no more brushing things off to god: 'sorry I sinned, forgive me.')
However, coming to this realization has made me painfully more aware than I ever was before at how harmful religion is! Just take a look into any history book, you'll find that almost every war that ever was, began with it's roots in religion. (Take the crusades for example!) This is still affecting us today, in 2015, with the war against the middle east.
Not only are politics and wars being affected by this but children everywhere are growing up in an environment of religion. Being taught the hate that is found in all religious texts, living their life thinking they need to appease some god. It's heart breaking!!!
Look at all the damage religion has done for humanity! It causes so much harm. I honestly really wish religion wasn't a thing.
This is why (at least in part) I now strongly believe that religion not only needs to be discussed and talked about but also questioned and at times mocked. Religion is an idea that has caused death throughout the centuries.
I live in America where we have a freedom of speech, separation of church and state! These two, unfortunately, seem more like ideals than actual constitutional rights sometimes because America is over populated with a majority of christians (and other religious groups.) They want to impose their beliefs into our laws. Take scientific findings (ex. evolution) out of our schools.
Honestly, for everyone's sake, I hope we can all take a step into reality someday soon. I hope we can all find the peace that comes with knowing there is no god. I hope that someday there is no religion to oppress us, stop us from moving forward in scientific fields, or hold us (humanity as a whole) back in any other way.
(Sadly, I don't think this will happen in my life time.)
