My Atheistic Journey

My atheistic journey was an uneventful one. I was raised in a mostly secular home. We never prayed, we never went to church, and we never had religious artifacts or symbolism around house. I remember asking my mother at about the age of 4 with the usual child-like curiosity about what happens after you die, and I remember her responding to me that when you die, you just die. In other words, its just like it was before when you were born.

That belief didn't stop me from being sent to a Catholic preschool for a year. I still don't know why I was forced to go to this day, although I assume it was my devoutly Catholic grandmother who spearheaded that decision. My year at Catholic preschool was the only attempt that I can think of during my youth, when I was indoctrinated into religion. My parents made no attempt at home to inculcate or coerce me into faith of any kind.

As you can imagine, I am grateful for this. But even in preschool, as I was being instructed to say my daily prayer before lunch, "god is good, god is great, let us thank him for our food, amen", I knew something was bullshit. I could smell it in the room somehow. I wasn't the sophisticated, world traveling, cosmopolitan, intellectual that I am today. I had no knowledge or of science, metaphysics, evolution, or philosophical argumentation. But I did have an inner intuition of reality and reason, even at the age of 4 to see past the fallacy of religion.

Throughout my adolescence my doubt in god and religion continued, altering from mere secularism to borderline anti-theism. I always had a distaste for religion, especially Christianity in my youth, yet I never was overly pugnacious with my beliefs. I remember being about 9 or 10 or so one summer when this girl, I believe her name was Linda, came to the playground where my friends and I used to hangout. All she wanted to talk about was god, and Christ and would constantly confront us with the fate of those who disbelieve in Jesus. I immediately began questioning her rationality and one particular day I remember spending hours on a splintered old bench going into the logical inconsistencies for and against god's existence. If only I could see and hear now as an adult what took place that afternoon.

I had a brief flirtation with agnosticism for a short period later. Agnosticism was the closest I ever got to believing. I think it is really important for one to deeply question their beliefs, even for atheists. It is a bit smug to assert a metaphysical claim without a steady foundation to stand on. That's why I am a thinker. I struggled with these concepts for years and years. It was not often easy. Even now, I do not entirely rule out the position of the believer. I really try to imagine the existence of god and of all individual religions as a serious, rational, and tenable argument. But it is not before long, that the ability for easy and pathetically unsophisticated criticisms chip away at that foundation and I return to atheism.

Now in my adulthood, the new atheists, like Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris, as well as the "old" atheists and skeptics like Bertrand Russell, David Hume, and Socrates have strengthened my atheism and its foundation. It is almost unbreakable. I still seek knowledge and truth and wisdom and I want to learn as much as I can during my tenure here on this pale blue dot. Philosophical and scientific argumentation is a near constant for me. In other words, my atheistic journey is just getting started.