| Finding atheism |
[07 May 2008|08:57pm] |
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
-Richard Dawkins
I was once a very religious girl. At age thirteen, I attended a church camp that changed my life. I "accepted Jesus Christ" on August 2nd, 1996 and from then on labeled that day my "spiritual birthday." I believed that Jesus had died on the cross for my sins, and was waiting in the wings to whisk me to Heaven when I died (it turns out this isn't exactly biblical, but it's close enough). I was so devout, I spent most of my waking hours thinking about God, how to please Him, and how to do the right thing. I became obsessed with right-mindedness, with confessing my sins, with being in communion with my Creator. Looking back, I realize that my OCD (not diagnosed until my early twenties) was revealing itself as scrupulosity-- a disorder in which the sufferer is literally plagued with religious obsessions and compulsions. Every misdeed or misplaced word had to be confessed, and I lay awake at night tearfully fearing that I was in fact going to Hell. Confusing religious tenants didn't help me much. I heard that some people weren't really saved, even though they had prayed the Magic Jesus Prayer. Apparently, there was something that had to be right in your heart to really accept Jesus, and this idea clung to me and wouldn't let me go. I was convinced that I did not have the right sort of stuff in my heart, and I spent all my energy attempting to become the Christian I knew I should be. I tithed more than 50% of my allowance. I went to every church event, and cried when one week my parents wanted to take me to the beach on Sunday-- the Sabbath, you know. I prayed about once every two minutes (not an exaggeration) and asked for forgiveness for everything, from impure thoughts (including "that guy sucks" or "she walks slow") to not believing enough.
The complications of actually believing were too much for me. After all, when I looked in the sky and tried to sense God there, in a tangible way, I didn't feel Him. Sure, I could detach and ride the wave of contentment, believing God was there and that He had a plan for me. But I wanted to believe in a concrete, deep way. I wanted to SEE and HEAR Him there, without doubt. I wanted to converse with Him, to hear His voice, to take His advice. But every time I looked for it, I found in myself the hollow fear that I was speaking to myself, that I was alone. Immediately, the thought was repulsive to me, and perhaps blasphemous. I would pray for forgiveness immediately. "God, give me faith! Help me to believe in You!" I would ask Him to burn a bush, to open a window, give me a Bible verse. Anything to make this hollow heart believe fully. Of course, no one could have believed more fully than I did. I believed it so completely that I was able to fear Hell with every waking breath-- how much more can you believe? But that gnawing feeling that something was not right ate away at me. Why wouldn't God just spare me this misery and send me a sign?
In college, I had an awful breakup. He was a nice boy, though not worth the torment that followed our calling it quits. I wanted to stay friends. He didn't. Strangely, I let the relationship go quickly, but I couldn't let his friendship go, and I went into a pit of depression that I luckily got out of alive. Soon after these events, I began to be friends with a boy in my philosophy class. Keith was charming and friendly, and spent three hours a week in Bible study. Before I knew it, I was accompanying him, reading books with him, and talking about God more than an hour a day. In the time between high school and my second year of college, I had fallen out of love with God. I was losing faith that faith was ever going to come, and agnosticism was a soft place to land after the obsessive religiosity of high school and junior high. But with Keith came a renewed interest in God. Keith was the first person I ever met who actually had solid reasons for believing in Jesus. He had read books, studied science, attended workshops, and he believed that this monumental event, Jesus leaving the tomb and ascending to Heaven, had happened in a real, historical way. He gave me books, met with me to discuss them, and prayed with me through my doubts. Sure enough, the consolation of a faith that could finally be backed by reason brought me out of the black hole of depression, and I became a Christian anew. I attended church weekly, began going to some Bible study classes, and kept up the important work of reading every apologist (faith-defender) I could get my hands on. Here was the answer! The Gospels were historically validated! Jesus' body was never found! He has risen indeed!
It might have all continued this way if I hadn't met a third boy. When Evan and I got together, his faith in a particular brand of Christian fundamentalism was so deep and genuine, he worried that I could not be the one for him. Here I was, believing that God had sent Jesus to die for us, but that Jesus himself was not God incarnate. I didn't accept gender roles as prescribed by St. Paul, and I refused the idea that homosexuality could be sinful (somehow I retained these inherent truths in the face of all this scrupulosity). But we fell in love, and spent many hours talking through our differences. I tried to believe in Evan's teachings (passed down through a particular teacher with a somewhat large following in his hometown), even went to his parents' church to try to become the person he might want me to be. I tried to swallow the idea that God might want certain things from me simply because I had a vagina. But one day I broke. We were reading a book about men and women, and after the fifth or sixth time that the author told me I was responsible for acquiescing to my husband, I snapped. "Sexism!" I finally blurted the word. "This is all sexist. I can't do this!" And from there, the man who loved me was faced with a challenge. He could honor the God he'd been brought up with, the parents who had lovingly raised him in a faith that accepted no deviations, or honor me, and the pain I was going through. It took more than two years for Evan to come to terms with what he lost, but we are still together, and neither of us call ourselves Christians any more.
I still considered myself a believer for a long time. If nothing else, I would read the words of Jesus and feel comfort. I wished desperately for Jesus to be my Lord, and to fill me with the feelings of love I once had when I first accepted him, at age thirteen. But as Evan and I have grown together, becoming more interested and well-versed in the world around us, that faith has washed away with our youthful gullibility. The Gospels are not historical documents at all. Jesus was a wonderful subversive, kind of crotchety guy who still wanted to hold to his parents' religion even though he saw a lot of problems with it. But he died, and so will I. The God who loved Jesus, and loved me, was still in my sky, but He was quiet. He didn't bother Himself/Herself with my affairs, and we were sort of a great cosmic experiment. A very lassaiz-faire God, but I liked Him nonetheless. After all, He was the only God left.
In late 2007, I bought a book by Richard Dawkins, called The God Delusion. I had seen it in the store and wanted to buy it, but it was still in hardback and would have been $27 (looking back, I can't believe I could have had this book in my life sooner for a mere $18). I waited for the paperback, bought it at Costco for $9, and started reading it in early 2008. My world changed. I realized then that atheism-- no, Naturalism-- had been waiting for me all along. You see, it's not that we have to be committed to the idea of no god. That wouldn't be scientific of us at all. But we have to be committed to the ideas of discovery, truth, and honesty. And as long as discovery continues to show us a world that is exactly like a world with no creator, and as long as discovery fails to show us a world that points to an intelligent designer, we don't need a God to fill in our gaps. And we certainly don't need Him for morality. Since joining the ranks of the socially progressive (the vegans, the anti-corporates, the non-profit employees, the freegans, the philanthropists), I have met more atheists than I have ever come across in the rest of the world. The free-thinkers have no trouble finding reasons to be good, and no problem finding a purpose in life. In fact, the thought that this life is all we have is marvelously compelling. Imagine! It looks as though we were once matter with movement, but no life. We were cells waiting to accumulate, spark, and become life for a tiny period of time. And this is it! This is the time! We are in it! What could be more inspiring? I used to send up a prayer for every animal I saw on the side of the road. "God, please protect that soul," I'd say, as I saw a perfect being demolished by silly human activity. Yesterday, I saw someone, killed on the side of the road, and began the prayer, habitually. I stopped myself. What else could I do? What might be more productive? Suddenly I knew what needed to be done for animals like these. They should be moved to the soil. Don't let them decay on the pavement, where they accumulate on wheels and disperse into the air, useless. Pull them to the grass, and let them become life once again. This is my new commitment, when I am able.
I know that when my beloved animals (Tummi, Ella, Evan) die (if they die before I do), I will be riddled with grief. I will want desperately for an afterlife. But the great thing is, I don't have to deny that there could be an afterlife, and if I want to wish for it, I am free to. But wishing will never make it appear. And no matter how deep my grief is, I can be filled with the reassurance that Tummi was once a clump of matter, waiting to be life, and he got to be life! He got to be life! How lucky he is, how lucky I am to know him. How lucky we all are.
What an inspiring existence, to be an atheist.
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ana_in_college
rejected