An Unbelieving Life, Part 2: The Temptation

I realize that in the first half of this post, I committed what may be a grave mistake. Many religious people stereotype atheists as "angry against God", and certainly I was a very angry person as a child. However, my atheism is mostly as a result of an excellent education which involved a great deal of training in critical thinking; also, the fact that both my parents are very nebulously deistic and did not steep me for very long in any religious tradition. I am certainly angry about unreason, and bigotry, and I resent conservative Christian dogma because it turned my uncle into a monster, my ex-boyfriend into an unloving automaton, and my father into an angry, bitter old man. I have no such sentiments toward Judaism, however, and I even admire some belief systems such as Buddhism or Jainism.

With that being said, allow me to move on to the rest of the story.

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I am in awe of the myth of Christ's sacrifice.

Yes, you heard me correctly. The idea that some special person in the long-distant past laid down his priceless life out of unconditional love for all humanity makes my spine tingle and my eyes fill with tears of awe and grief. When I was twenty-one, a useless college dropout with no job and seemingly no future, I turned to Christ in desperation because I couldn't stand feeling so bad anymore. What I found wasn't God's love for me, though; it was my own love, for myself and for the world in which I have the great fortune to exist. From the day I awoke from my god-soaked stupor and realized the true nature of my epiphany, I swore that I would dedicate my life to love and harmlessness.

I also developed a great tolerance for Christians. I finally understood what the big deal was, and I admired them for opening their hearts to unconditional love and acceptance of their brethren. Alas, if only it were true! The day that a group of my Christian coworkers gathered near my desk and began slandering homosexuals and unbelievers, I felt the fires of anger stir again in my mind. This was a different anger, though, one that blamed the ideas and not the people espousing them. Now, I am teaching myself to win arguments with Christians, to show them the hypocrisy of the dogma they are taught by their preachers and hopefully to lead them to a kinder, gentler, more informed practice of their beliefs. Like PZ Myers said in Expelled - I don't want to take away anyone's faith. I just don't want to see it ruining their lives and their minds.

An Unbelieving Life, Part 1

I was born to secular parents. My father is a deconverted Baptist, and my mother a deconverted Jew. While they did expose me to Christianity and Judaism - the latter more than the former, since my father's religious upbringing was extremely dysfunctional - it was more in the interest of acculturation than imposing belief.

When I was thirteen, my parents left me in the care of my father's brother while they traveled on business. Seeing his chance to save my soul, my uncle forced me to watch creationism videos, lectured me on the Bible for five or six hours at a sitting, denied me food when I was hungry, and forced me to attend church services, including a Jews for Jesus sermon where he took me to see the pastor afterward. When I told that pastor that I was withholding judgement until I was older and knew more, he told me that delaying my decision was like knowing that I had cancer and withholding chemotherapy because I didn't want to be cured until I was 18.

When I told my parents what was going on, they cut their trip short, catching the earliest flight that they could buy tickets for. I have never forgotten watching my father lift his own brother up by the shirt collar and throw him out the door onto our front lawn. Needless to say, for many years afterward I was very biased against Christianity in all forms, and still am to a certain extent even now. (Living in a heavily Christian, anti-atheist country really doesn't help.)

When I was 17, I met my first real atheist while working in a summer internship in meteorology. I loved her American Atheist pendant, her belligerence in facing off against woolly-headed theist forum-goers, her zeal for science and reason and secularism. She provided a touchstone for my nebulous adolescent rage, teaching me to channel it into battling the forces of ignorance. That summer was the happiest of my high school life, because of the fellowship I found.

Formative experiences aside, I never had a particularly strong interest in or desire for theistic belief. I contend that, even if my experiences had not been so polarized, I would have ended up the same - tolerant and open-minded, but an unbeliever nonetheless.