The Day I Became an Atheist

Kurt Vonnegut says that you should begin stories as close to the end as possible.  He also says that you should break every single one of this rules for writing.  Today, I won't.

I stopped dead in my tracks next to what seemed to be a dormitory.  It was a warm day in Spring.  The clear blue sky, the warm Texas sun, the constant blowing wind of Abilene, Texas.  The building next to me was a three story beige brick building.  I was standing on a concrete sidewalk with green grass on either side.  (New Testament Scholars will notice the green grass).

The reason I stopped dead in my tracks is that I had solved a problem I'd been thinking through for the last several weeks.  You see, in my New Testament Theology classes, taught by James Thompson, we'd been discussing homosexuality and the church.  I had no personal problem with homosexuals, but I thought the Bible was pretty clear on the subject.  Many of my classmates disagreed.  They often said, "Paul didn't mean such and such," or "if Paul were alive today" whatever.  I often replied, "we can't put words in Paul's mouth.  He's dead.  We can say that Paul was wrong, but this opens up a whole can of worms I'm sure sure we're ready to eat."  And so the conversations went.

What I had realized was that people were born hermaphrodite.  Okay, I didn't realize this.  There wasn't some pile of newly born hermaphrodites sitting on the green grass next to me.  I realized that the information was relevant to the conversation we were having in class, and the one I was having with myself.

Listen, I don't know how you talk to yourself.  We all have internal dialogue.  Mine works like this.  At any point, at almost every point, I am working through some idea.  The voices in my head generally take up a wide variety of perspectives concerning the idea and fight it out.  The arguments are intense, but not emotionally adversarial.

Anyway, when I brought up this point to myself, it was such a consequential moment that I had to stop dead in my tracks.  My life was about to change and I knew it.  So I stopped and looked around.  "This is where I lost my faith."  I didn't want to admit that to myself, but it was obvious.  I could see the dominoes falling.  I'd been holding back so many questions.  Only, they weren't questions.  They were answers.  "Why do traumatic brain injuries change one's personality if one's personality is driven by spiritual things?"  "Why doesn't the Bible have a problem with slavery?"  "Why doesn't the Bible care about women in society?"

I had chosen, quite intentionally, to shelf these questions because my faith was more valuable than the obvious answers.  To be honest, the question of homosexuality was a straw by comparison, but....

I stopped for a minute and took it all in.  I said a prayer.  And then I continued my walk from the Bible building to my car, which I'd parked, as usual, next to David's and Mark's house.

About the Blog

Years ago, I wrote a series called, "How I became a secular humanist."  In it, I cataloged my progress from the young member of a narrow-minded sect within Evangelical Christianity to leaving the church.  In this blog, I intend to begin there and go beyond to discuss my experiences and growth as a secular humanist.

My series from years ago was often reactionary, a place for me to express my feelings.  Leaving behind a religion that meant everything to you is an experience that must be similar to the end of a very long and deep relationship.  It takes years to figure out exactly what you've left behind, and longer to redefine yourself outside of it.  I don't think many of my friends understood that, even though, I often tried to explain it.  I had been very devout even from youth.  I was one of the weird kids that read the bible on his own, prayed on his own, and honestly enjoyed church.  Ironically, I still do.  I suppose those are others stories.

This series will detail many of the same experiences, but from a less bitter and, I hope, more even-handed approach.  I have no doubt that my Christian friends will still find much of what I say controversial, and at times oversimplified.

I will say at the first that it wasn't bad experiences at church or in life that made me leave the church.  I'm no saint, but I didn't leave Christianity for love of sin.  I don't live much differently now from how I did then.  I traded a rather secure path for an insecure one.  I gave up something I loved doing, ministry, for something I knew I wouldn't care much for, Soldiering.  That reminds me of Krogering.  Let's go Krogering.  Anyway.

I didn't have too many questions.  I think some people would assert that about me, but not people who know me well.  I had answers and they didn't jive.  It was all cognitive dissonance, and I came to believe that Jesus did not rise from the dead, that there is no Holy Spirit, and no god interacting with us in the way Christianity and like religions often claim.

A lot of what I write in this series will be rather philosophical.  I'll delve into church history, theology, philosophy, science, and a wide variety of other topics.  I'll try to make everything easy to understand.  I agree with Hume that much of philosophy should be written so that non-philosophers can understand.  In any case, I'm not a philosopher, and I think and write best when talking about every day life.  And that's what religion is anyway, isn't it.  I mean, if it doesn't every day life, then it's probably artificial, not actually relational in any way that a human would understand.  I'm getting ahead of myself.