JaxsonBateman
8th June 2011, 09:42 PM
Hi folks,
My story isn't really amazing or impressive. But it's my story, and being in a world that is predominantly theist, I'd like to add to the tapestry of atheism. :)
I was born into a non-practicing Catholic family. That is, we labelled ourselves as Catholic Christians, but rarely attended church outside of big events like baptism and confirmation. I went to a Catholic primary school, and wasn't really big on religion - I believed it, but didn't think too much about it. The school itself was great though, and I did enjoy it. It also encouraged a lot of good out of religion, like helping the poor and those in need, which is one side of religion I don't mind.
I then went to a Christian high school - and like many other high schoolers, I had some tough times. And like many other teens, I was a bit of a romantic, but I didn't have too much success with the girls at school. This led me to pray - heavily - as I was desperate. I would almost ritualistically pray as I felt like nothing I could do in the physical world could help me with the unrequited feelings I had all throughout high school. At one point in year 9, I even decided to become much more religious, started attending church weekly for about half a year, and declared that I would become abstinent. While that phase of actually being religious was brief, I still believed in God during my time at high school, and prayed regularly for what I wanted. I wasn't a good Christian though - I often threw in prayers for family members and those in need, but they were selfish additions, as I felt like I would have to include them in my prayers for God to consider my other requests.
Now, I want to mention that I am an intelligent person - I didn't actually believe the bible or all the rules it laid out. I believed in evolution and did not believe in a 6 day creation story or a global flood, or anything like that. But I did believe in a higher power.
After leaving high school I went to uni for a year, but after discovering that I didn't really like the course (commerce - one of those courses a lot of people who can't figure out what they want to do pick) - I started working full time for the next few years. During this time, I was still Christian and believed in a higher power. But the only practicing I did was prayer. And I still didn't believe in the bible.
I do a lot of thinking when I'm laying in bed at night - thousands of thoughts tend to race in my head, and some of my greatest epiphanies come during this time. As an example, a couple years ago I was laying in bed, and the idea of determinism came to me, and made perfect sense. For a short time I thought this was a new, revolutionary concept, and was blown away to learn that people had considered this idea for thousands of years. It made the idea of determinism that much stronger in my mind, as multiple intelligent people coming up with this idea independently surely meant that it had some merit.
But I digress - about 4 years ago I was laying in bed one night, and started evaluating the state of the universe. How everything had a reason for it, and that nothing required a supernatural force in order to be possible. I was reluctant to discount God, but after a few nights of thinking, I accepted Occam's Razor - that if a supernatural force wasn't required for the universe to work, then there was likely no supernatural force at all.
This was bitter-sweet for me. I'm a person of knowledge, and always prefer bitter truths to sweet lies, so I was glad to feel like I knew how the world worked, and know the truth of it. But it was bitter in that I now felt very, very alone. It wouldn't last though - while I definitely don't believe the religious side of it, I had been learning about Buddhism during this period, and meditation and thought helped me get through it. I'll say right now that while its religious side is something I won't buy, the lifestyle side of Buddhism actually makes a lot of sense from a psychological point of view, and is something I appreciate.
So for most of that point on, I considered myself agnostic - it took a while for someone to point out to me that I was actually an atheist too, and that the two (agnostic and atheist) weren't mutually exclusive. I wasn't willing to say "God doesn't exist" as that would indicate that I overestimated the limited knowledge of the human race, but I did fully believe that he likely didn't exist.
However, as I said, for most of that point on... I must admit, early last year, a string of strange coincidences occurred in my favour, and it felt like for something so remarkable to happen there must've been a higher power. In retrospect, it was just me being narcissistic, and believing that nothing so good could possibly happen by nature's will alone, but at the time I thought God was looking over my shoulder. However, that string ended with a crushing finale, and I was a disbeliever once more. Fortunately, in the time since I've been learning a lot more about the debate of theism vs atheism, and the evidence is overwhelming in the side of atheism.
While I'm currently between jobs and need to focus on getting into a stable financial situation first, I now feel like it's important for me to start getting active within atheism. I have no problem with people using religion for good, like I was taught to in school - I don't mind people doing good things at all, even if their good is based on flimsy ideas like a test designed by a higher power to allow life after death. But there is too much pain and suffering caused by people following religious ideas, and as a species with so much potential we can't let these superstitious bronze age beliefs hold us back and lead us to the brink of our own extinction. When you have countries banning gay unions, or killing adulterers, or campaigning against stem cell research, something has to change. Religion is something that people should practice without impacting on the rights of others, or the laws of countries.
But anyway, that's essentially how I got to where I am today. Hopefully you'll be seeing a lot more of me around these forums and in the atheist scene. :-)
Jax
My story isn't really amazing or impressive. But it's my story, and being in a world that is predominantly theist, I'd like to add to the tapestry of atheism. :)
I was born into a non-practicing Catholic family. That is, we labelled ourselves as Catholic Christians, but rarely attended church outside of big events like baptism and confirmation. I went to a Catholic primary school, and wasn't really big on religion - I believed it, but didn't think too much about it. The school itself was great though, and I did enjoy it. It also encouraged a lot of good out of religion, like helping the poor and those in need, which is one side of religion I don't mind.
I then went to a Christian high school - and like many other high schoolers, I had some tough times. And like many other teens, I was a bit of a romantic, but I didn't have too much success with the girls at school. This led me to pray - heavily - as I was desperate. I would almost ritualistically pray as I felt like nothing I could do in the physical world could help me with the unrequited feelings I had all throughout high school. At one point in year 9, I even decided to become much more religious, started attending church weekly for about half a year, and declared that I would become abstinent. While that phase of actually being religious was brief, I still believed in God during my time at high school, and prayed regularly for what I wanted. I wasn't a good Christian though - I often threw in prayers for family members and those in need, but they were selfish additions, as I felt like I would have to include them in my prayers for God to consider my other requests.
Now, I want to mention that I am an intelligent person - I didn't actually believe the bible or all the rules it laid out. I believed in evolution and did not believe in a 6 day creation story or a global flood, or anything like that. But I did believe in a higher power.
After leaving high school I went to uni for a year, but after discovering that I didn't really like the course (commerce - one of those courses a lot of people who can't figure out what they want to do pick) - I started working full time for the next few years. During this time, I was still Christian and believed in a higher power. But the only practicing I did was prayer. And I still didn't believe in the bible.
I do a lot of thinking when I'm laying in bed at night - thousands of thoughts tend to race in my head, and some of my greatest epiphanies come during this time. As an example, a couple years ago I was laying in bed, and the idea of determinism came to me, and made perfect sense. For a short time I thought this was a new, revolutionary concept, and was blown away to learn that people had considered this idea for thousands of years. It made the idea of determinism that much stronger in my mind, as multiple intelligent people coming up with this idea independently surely meant that it had some merit.
But I digress - about 4 years ago I was laying in bed one night, and started evaluating the state of the universe. How everything had a reason for it, and that nothing required a supernatural force in order to be possible. I was reluctant to discount God, but after a few nights of thinking, I accepted Occam's Razor - that if a supernatural force wasn't required for the universe to work, then there was likely no supernatural force at all.
This was bitter-sweet for me. I'm a person of knowledge, and always prefer bitter truths to sweet lies, so I was glad to feel like I knew how the world worked, and know the truth of it. But it was bitter in that I now felt very, very alone. It wouldn't last though - while I definitely don't believe the religious side of it, I had been learning about Buddhism during this period, and meditation and thought helped me get through it. I'll say right now that while its religious side is something I won't buy, the lifestyle side of Buddhism actually makes a lot of sense from a psychological point of view, and is something I appreciate.
So for most of that point on, I considered myself agnostic - it took a while for someone to point out to me that I was actually an atheist too, and that the two (agnostic and atheist) weren't mutually exclusive. I wasn't willing to say "God doesn't exist" as that would indicate that I overestimated the limited knowledge of the human race, but I did fully believe that he likely didn't exist.
However, as I said, for most of that point on... I must admit, early last year, a string of strange coincidences occurred in my favour, and it felt like for something so remarkable to happen there must've been a higher power. In retrospect, it was just me being narcissistic, and believing that nothing so good could possibly happen by nature's will alone, but at the time I thought God was looking over my shoulder. However, that string ended with a crushing finale, and I was a disbeliever once more. Fortunately, in the time since I've been learning a lot more about the debate of theism vs atheism, and the evidence is overwhelming in the side of atheism.
While I'm currently between jobs and need to focus on getting into a stable financial situation first, I now feel like it's important for me to start getting active within atheism. I have no problem with people using religion for good, like I was taught to in school - I don't mind people doing good things at all, even if their good is based on flimsy ideas like a test designed by a higher power to allow life after death. But there is too much pain and suffering caused by people following religious ideas, and as a species with so much potential we can't let these superstitious bronze age beliefs hold us back and lead us to the brink of our own extinction. When you have countries banning gay unions, or killing adulterers, or campaigning against stem cell research, something has to change. Religion is something that people should practice without impacting on the rights of others, or the laws of countries.
But anyway, that's essentially how I got to where I am today. Hopefully you'll be seeing a lot more of me around these forums and in the atheist scene. :-)
Jax