Growing into Atheism

This is the third installment and conclusion of my growing-into-atheism series. In this segment, I want to discuss how I’ve reevaluated my views, and myself, in the past two years since becoming an atheist. On one hand, I haven’t completely discarded everything I was taught in a religious context, though I no longer hold those religious beliefs, and I’ll talk about those first. On the other hand, I’ve had to reconstruct how I view things like morality, mortality, and beliefs different from my own.
To start off, I’ll say what I’ve said in my videos before - I don’t view all things religious as bad, misguided, or foolish. I think in my previous two videos, I talked about how I knew many very nice people growing up in a Catholic parish and attending parochial schools. At the same time, I feel like when religious people say that they’re doing something genuinely nice because “it’s the Christian thing to do” or “it’s what Jesus would have done,” they’re deferring credit that they should take, with all due humility, for themselves.
So one thing that I take from my religious background is a compassion for others and a desire to do service work. As a kid I was told to be kind to others to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, and to share my talents generously with others as instructed in Matthew 5:15, but as a non-religious adult I freely choose to continue to be kind and serve others in whatever ways I am able to because I want to. I remember the difference that teachers, mentors, friends, and sometimes strangers, made in my life when they showed me kindness, went out of their way to help me, or made me recognize potential I didn’t see or believe resided in me, and I hope to help others in those ways. That’s the primary reason for choosing to go into a service profession, and why I want to eventually be able to teach.
Another aspect of my childhood religious upbringing that I find valuable as an atheist adult is the sense of community that many religious groups offer. I just finished reading Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age (which by the way, I enjoyed, except for the abrupt ending, but not nearly as much as Snow Crash), and I’m reminded of the passage where, when Nell reads at the end of the primer that she “had supposed herself entirely alone in the world. But now she saw cities of light beneath the waves and knew that she was alone only by her own choice.” Many religions offer their adherents these “cities of light” – groups of people that reiterate to you that you’re right in your beliefs, and provide you social company and support – but while I think every person needs external support in some way, I don’t believe that by not belonging to a religious group, as the majority of Americans do, that I inevitably become a loner, a deviant, or a subversive. I just moved from the Bible Belt to what I’ve deemed the Bible Collar, where yet again every time I go out, I see a handful of various denominations of churches, and the occasional “April 1 – National Atheists’ Day” bumper sticker. I was walking in a shopping plaza this past weekend, and I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone – as soon as I walked in, I was greeted the sounds of an older lady strumming a guitar and singing church songs in a Mother-Abbess-voice to a group of senior citizens; meanwhile the mall’s stores, a motley sort of independent shops featuring a “Senior Odyssey,” a few restaurants, and a Bible education kiosk (which should have tipped me off, I guess) , were mostly closed (on a Sunday afternoon!). I digress; anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that as religious non-adherents, it’s true that we are in the minority in the United States, but it is our own choice whether to remain in a self-imposed solitude, or to speak out and engage ourselves in the outside world. Community is important, and there are plenty of secular communities we can – and should – get involved in.
So from my religious background, I gleaned the importance of community and the value of service and compassion for others. However, since ceasing to believe in the Christian god, I’ve had to reconstruct how I view the world in many ways.
Christianity – and many other major religions – gives its believers a sense of security. Here’s your reason for existence (God); here’s your book on life (the Bible); here’s your moral compass (Jesus); here’s your group of like-minded people who will reinforce these beliefs and comprise a nice little community for you (your church). And what do you get for buying stock and investing in this offer? A sense of comfort now – you know God and/or Jesus are watching out for you and your community, that your life has a distinct purpose, that you can have a personal relationship with the almighty and ask him for guidance, support, and maybe a miracle or two; if you praise him well enough for long enough, he just might come through for you; if he doesn’t, oh well, it wasn’t in his great-plan-for-all-eternity. And here’s the selling point – be a devout follower in this life, and you get to spend all of eternity with the almighty, and with your previously deceased loved ones. If you don’t, mmmm, I guess you’ll be in hot water, literally or metaphorically depending on your denomination. I used to wonder as a kid - how can a blissful reunion with all your loved ones in heaven be a feasible concept? My parents had parents who had parents for thousands and thousands of years – an unbroken chain of life – and if all those parents had other children who had children who had children, etc., wouldn’t heaven be unbelievably crowded with the billions of people who’ve lived, and those who have yet to live? Also, how could a person ever be happily reunited with all of the hundreds or thousands of people with whom they had ties if all of those people had ties with countless other people? Is heaven so infinitely large that you won’t get to see all your loved ones, or so tiny and cramped that each new soul is a new sardine being stuffed into a way-overcrowded tin?
See, this is exactly what I think is the fundamental problem of religion. This sense of security is tempting but false. I won’t reiterate all the reasons why I find religion to be scientifically, philosophically, and intellectually unsound, but the point is that people buy into religion thinking that it will have foolproof answers to all of life’s questions, put them on the good side of a magical king who has powerful influence over their lives, and ultimately save their souls, yet instead they end up losing something. When you let a book dictate your moral, social, or political stances and even shape your behavior, when you remain psychologically dependent on a voice you believe guides you and will protect you in this cold world, when you surround yourself with like-minded people who parrot your views and together view others who don’t believe like you do as poor, pitiful, or evil people that they need to be saved, recruited, or talked into believing like you do, under threat of violence in this life or damnation in the next – you lose your autonomy , your ability (and maybe your desire) to control over your own future, your ability to view the world with open eyes, learn from your experiences and grow mentally and emotionally as a human being.
So now, as an atheist, I’ve discarded this sense of security that religion handed me. Now I have to navigate my way through life on my own, seek out my own answers, and I have to accept that there are frequently questions that can’t be answered and things that are out of my (or anyone’s) control. I have to walk a tightrope knowing that there’s nothing below to catch me if I fall, but at least I’m not walking blindfolded with faith that there’s an invisible net below me. Life isn’t fair; bad things happen to good people; good things happen to bad people. The world isn’t black and white, but a billion shades of gray, and our behavior rarely, if ever, falls neatly into binary oppositions like ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ Since becoming atheist, I’ve had to develop my own set of morals – some borrowed from my religious upbringing, some gained from my experiences viewing the world more openly. I’ve had to accept my own mortality – that my life is finite and that ‘I’ – the nervous system and senses that allow me to store information, formulate and process ideas, and interact with the world – will cease to exist at some point in the future. In doing so, I’ve had to let go of the concept of being reunited with loved ones – family, friends, and pets – who’ve died and will likely die ahead of me. That part hasn’t been easy. I do view death is a natural part of life, and while it’s not too hard to feel sorrow mixed with relief upon the death of an elderly friend or relative, or someone who’s been suffering for a long while from a painful disease, it’s a lot harder for me when someone dies who’s young, healthy, and has so much potential. About a year ago a classmate of mine who was always smiling, who was constantly surrounded by friends, and who always struck me as a genuinely nice person, committed suicide. I’ll never understand why. He and his family were Christian, and they kept the circumstances of his death very hush-hush; maybe out of shame or fear or desire for privacy. I don’t know. I know almost everyone gets depressed and stressed out from time to time, myself certainly included, but from a non-religious perspective, this life is all we’ve got. I don’t think there’s any peace to be found on the other side – just cessation of existence, annihilation of the self, and a hard dose of grief to everyone around you.
In summary, re-evaluating and re-envisioning the world from a non-religious perspective, coming from a religious background, is a challenging and still-ongoing task . I’ve made mistakes and grown from them; I’ve had views, values, and beliefs that have been reinforced, and some that have changed over time. It’s been hard sometimes because I haven’t had a support system to talk me through this – I’ve had to come to conclusions largely by myself, in my own time, isolated in my own thoughts. In this time I’ve discovered that the little voice in my head – the one that I used to think was a more knowledgeable, wiser entity guiding me to make the right choices – the one that probably many Christians believe is their God or their spiritual advisor speaking to them – that that voice is, and always has been, myself. I am accountable for my own actions, and I have to trust myself to be, both scary and empowering. It may seem sometimes that choosing this path-less-traveled through life is condemning oneself to a life of solitude amongst a world of people who don’t share this view, but I don’t view it this way.
That’s it for now; thank you for listening. I’d love to hear your feedback. Until next time…