Descent From My Pedestal of Ignorance

Not long ago I was Christian. My dad has always been a Christian, but not the fundamentalist right wing nutjob you might expect from someone who's developed such hostility towards the faith. On the contrary, my father has always been a very liberal person...he was once a hippie. Due to his upbringing - with an extremely racist and abusive mother, and few examples of a kind and loving person except for his grandmother, who was very religious and would read the Bible with him - he developed his own strong set of principles. He's always tried his best to put his all into his work, he avoids lying and stealing and wronging others, and despite his faults is, at his heart, a kind and compassionate human being who I'd say was far closer to the message of Christ (with the exclusion of hell) or even Buddha than a pope or priest. Because of his, and my mother's liberal nature, they allowed my brothers and I to think for ourselves, they didn't indoctrinate us, but always encouraged us to strike out on our own, even if they aren't happy with where we've wound up. In addition, my oldest brother has been a great influence on my philosophy.1

From the time I was a young boy, I remember learning to read with the Bible, and having long discussions with my dad. Even at that age, I had a lot of questions about stories like Noah's Ark, though I don't remember the details, and would be lying if I said that I questioned the logic of them at such an early age. The truth is, I don't know the details, they're too fuzzy. What I do know is that I had an open and inquiring mind that was never constricted by the dogma of Christianity. My dad focuses not on the Old Testament, or the condemnation of people, or the genocide or the multitude of other disgusting features of the Bible, but focused on a message of love and compassion and kindness and honesty and every other attribute one would consider saintly. I don’t know exactly what I thought of Jesus and God at the time, but I believed in God, I believed in a divinely benevolent being who permeated the universe, who loved the human race and created them. I believed that Jesus was his son, that Jesus was some divine incarnation of god, an avatar, if you will, who roamed the earth teaching god’s message. I didn’t consider other religions as a young boy, though I often had long metaphysical discussions with my oldest brother, and even had discussions with one of his more interesting girlfriends. I suppose it’s rather odd when you have a 10 year old having these long talks in the starlight with a 25 year old guy and his girlfriend, but that’s how it was. They made the world seem so interesting, a universe full of mystery, and I developed a strong interest in…the universe. Cosmology, god, religion, divinity.2

I continued to go to church on and off during this time, and was disgusted by much of the teachings there. I learned that God condemned homosexuality, that he slaughtered innocent women and children, and did all sorts of things I didn’t agree with. Even as a child, I never condemned anyone. I always viewed other cultures and other people with open interest: Muslims, Buddhists, all of them, and I still do. I sought to learn what it is they believed. It was a few years ago, about 15 or 16, I began to separate from the church. I didn’t realize at the time that my views were so blasphemous, that my pantheistic, henotheistic view of the world in no way reflected traditional Christian dogma. Most of my arguments developed in Sunday school, where I presented my idea that other religions were equally valid, that how a person lived was far more important than whether or not they believed in God or Jesus, whether that person was a Jew or a Buddhist or even a dreaded atheist. This perspective was met with open skepticism, dismissal, and not a small amount of “huh? What are you talking about?” 3

One particular instance I recall is when we were each asked to draw what we thought god looked like. I think I was about 13 or 14 at the time Nobody showed their pictures to each other until we were finished, then we presented them. Every single other person in the class’s picture, as far as I recall, was some type of humanoid figure. My picture was a series of concentric circles of rainbow color. I was very proud of my picture, explaining that I perceived god as being the “energy” of the universe, that god was “all”…I don’t know all the details of what I went into, but when I visited a Hindu temple their explanation of God stunned me as nearly the same thing as how I conceived of it: all, one, and everything. Pantheistic/Monotheistic, and their “polytheism” made perfect sense to me, the manifestations and all. I would further go on to develop this pantheistic perspective of god….and oddly enough, completely on my own. At the time, I didn’t even know what pantheism was…I didn’t know anything about Spinoza or anything of the sort…I just sort of conjured up this pantheistic god independently. Anyway, I probably had enough external input that my pantheistic views were hardly much of an accomplishment.4

At any rate, I dropped out of school when I was 15. I delved into a deep state of depression, the height of a chronic depression that began as an early child and got significantly worse after I was about 7, for reasons I don’t really want to go into here. I had serious social problems, never got close to anyone (and still haven’t, really), and have always been withdrawn from society. I played Everquest for about a year until I finally gave up the game, got my GED without a hitch – got the highest grade of anyone at that particular GED testing center ever. I guess I’ve never been a stupid person. Anyway, I started up at college. My first course was anthropology. Here I learned about the evolution of the human. By this point, I was already vaguely familiar with evolution and it’s incompatibility with creationism, and this only furthered that problem. Courses on astronomy made me more aware of science and physics, but the straw that would eventually break the camel’s back would be on the fateful day this guy I vaguely new convinced me that it might be a good idea to go see this “James Randi” guy, a “psychic investigator”. At the time, I believed in all sorts of woo-woo ideas: astrology, numerology, psychics, ghosts, aliens all over the planet, virtually every quack idea you can come up with, I had even been duped by the Bible Code, a most absurd and nonsensical idea. Expecting him to actually BE a psychic, boy was I in for a life-changing epiphany.5

James Randi turned out to be one of most incredible men I’ve ever met. As a magician, he has a unique perspective on how easily the eyes and minds of people are deceived, and this keen insight has granted him an unusual glimpse into the human psyche. Quite in opposition to a self-proclaimed “psychic”, he’s actually a skeptic of all that is supernatural, and has taken up…for lack of a better word, a crusade against all those quacks and phonies out there who would swindle people out of their money with, as he would describe it, pseudoscientific baloney. His presentation focused on explaining how people are easily duped and tricked into believing silly things, and how a number of widely accepted ideas are not based on anything logical at all, but are in fact hoaxes and nonsense implemented by phonies to rip people off. He explained how homeopathic medicine was based on principles that were so far fetched and ridiculous as to be absurd, that you were literally taking water as “medicine”, and also explained how the government takes little interest in stopping quack ideas and businesses from proliferating, by showing how easy it was to get a patent for something that didn’t do what it claimed it could at all. I was so incredibly impressed by his show at BCC that it’ll forever remain imprinted in my mind. I don’t recall if he explained there or if I read it later on his site, but about a week later I decided to check out his website.6

www.randi.org7

Here I discovered that he had up a challenge against ANYONE who claimed to have supernatural powers. Anyone who could perform their supernatural powers under the requirements for testing that they have would win $1 million from the JREF (James Randi Education Foundation), and also win a lot of prizes from other similar organizations automatically. This challenge is to stand in defiance of all those who claim to have supernatural powers, like Sylvia Browne and Uri Gellar. If they have powers, it would be simple for them to prove it. Since they can’t…well, what does that tell you? I was extremely impressed by this bold challenge, and read further on his atheism. He talks about it matter of factly, he doesn’t spit out any violent hostility towards religions to the point of open bigotry and hatefulness. But his atheism interested me. As I read his weekly commentary for a while, I found myself more and more skeptical, I found myself developing more into a critical thinker. As I browsed his forums, reading all the comments and discussions between the members, I developed a keen interest in Atheism. At the same time as all this, I was in a philosophy class, and this combination of reading a skeptical atheist’s website while introducing myself to philosophy for the first time in an actual course, exposing my mind to so many new ideas, led me to ultimately break from any religious belief at all. I began reading about religions online, on skepticism, and finally purchasing a book…Atheism: The Case Against God. By the end of the book, I was finally a confirmed and convinced atheist. The book didn’t do it alone, but provided ample justification for atheism. Over on allphilosophy, if you read my posts from beginning to end, you’d see a startling evolution from a skeptic to a hostile atheist. The revelations I’ve encountered after reviewing Biblical passages have left me with no doubt as to the despicable nature and role religion has served through man’s history, and in particular…Christianity. I have read countless essays on religions, on skepticism, on philosophers and logic and reason and atheism and agnosticism and philosophical justification for one’s ideas and faith and knowledge.8

It’s all left my mind a pitiful mess of confusion, a deep skepticism and disillusionment with the world, and…to add to it further, my English teacher has progressed my ideas even more towards their inevitable destination without even realizing it. In English class I got my subject back in September. Asking each student what their major was, he then assigned a topic for our research papers. When I said philosophy, he chose Nietzsche. He couldn’t have chosen a more interesting and amazing philosopher, one who proclaimed himself in his insanity the “antichrist”. If you’re unfamiliar with Nietzsche, that right there should give you some idea why it was coincidental that he assigned precisely that philosopher to me. At this point in time, I am in the midst of devouring everything Atheism and Nietzsche…and soon will be heading deeply into Nietzsche’s philosophy. He’s amazing to me, I’ve never encountered a more brilliant and profound human being, and it’s hard for me to describe how much my encounters in recent years with the JREF site, with philosophy, and particularly with Atheism writings and most of all Nietzsche have influenced my views on the world. I’m too tired tonight to go all into Atheism and why I’m atheist or how it feels, but … well, I guess I didn’t answer your question, but instead explained the history of how I became an atheist. If you’ve managed to read this far, I’ll definitely explain how it feels sometime, probably soon.