I would like to take some time and speak about my transition into Atheism. I have witnessed that by declaring myself as Atheist, it has caused some problems and tensions in my household, primarily my mother who transferred to Christianity.
Note: This is going to be a VERY LONG post so if you do not wish to read all of it, you can turn back now. This is mainly stuff relating to myself so it may bore many of you. I apologize in advance.
I was not born Atheist. Nobody is. Nobody is born Christian either. Simply being baptized as a baby at birth does not make one Christian. I think this forced process of baptizing a child limits the freedom of the child. Back on topic. Everyone is born as a non-theist, a person who has no understanding about religion or science or the world in which they have just entered into.
Same case with me. As a child, my parents believed in Buddhism. I was not educated enough to understand the processes so I only took part because I had no idea what else to do. All my parents and relatives show and express great amounts of faith to religion. When I was nearing 9 years old, my mother transferred into Christianity, where she claimed she had found her divine purpose. She dragged me along and I sat in the lessons, learning about God. At first it seemed interesting, so I paid attention. I learned the origin of the universe and Earth, all the plants, animals and most importantly, humans. Us. I also learned about the wild stories which were told and found them fascinating. I learned the 10 commandments and so forth. I was a pompous, obnoxious and naive little prick.
In school, we learned about HSIE (which most of you will recall). Human Society and Its Environment. I learned about how things evolve, how things change. I learned about how plants and animals came into existence, the origin of humans and dinosaurs and the evolution of technology. This is where I first hit my wall. I immediately began to notice contradictions between the Bible, which I was taught from in church, and what HSIE taught. Since I didn't have any complex textbooks back then, the Bible was my source for answers.
You might remember Scripture classes. I loved them. Learning about human values, faith and morals were great and my mother was happy.
It wasn't until the story of Noah that really started to question my faith and belief in a supreme deity. I was told that God is perfect in every element. God told Noah to build an ark, and take two animals of each kind aboard the ark and then set sail. God caused a great flood which wiped out a large population of civilians, save Noah, his wife and two of each animal aboard an ark which landed on a mountain. Okay, fair deal. What about "Thou shalt not kill"?
I pointed this fact out to the pastors and preachers at my church. I said that how can God justify his actions of killing people with a flood when he gives the commandment of telling others to not kill? This was a sign of a flawed God. An imperfect God who has no concrete establishments of his own words. One who breaks his own code. My question was met with discernment and anger. I was only seeking questions. I was about 12 by this stage.
I started asking others around me for answers to this question. Nobody had the answer to that. Some claimed that God does not need to justify his actions and that his supremacy allows him to do so. I didn't someone to tell me that was a ridiculous answer. One cannot make rules for others to abide if you are going to break them yourself and let alone, provide no justification for your purpose or incentive to do so. This was an imperfect God, which was met by the answer that God was spiritual. This led to even more contradictions. If God is spiritual, then that means God does not exist physically, so that means, he cannot physically hear or understand my prayers, only in the spiritual world, so how does a physical being communicate with the spirits? It finally made sense all of a sudden that why I am still being bullied. Still the loner in class. the one without many friends. The socially awkward and inept. The one with restrictive parents. The one who grew up by corporal punishment. The one with divorced parents. The reason why the preachers were so defensive about any questions against the belief of God. There is no God. There is no supreme deity.
I wasn't Atheist yet. I started by reading over the bible. Starting the the Old Testament and going over what it taught. I started with the Old Testament was because the churches focused primarily on the New Testament and the Old was at times neglected. I realized why. Contradictions. The more I read, the more I lost my faith in a God. I started to realize that everything that has happened to me was due to my own actions and lack of actions to change the moment and circumstances for myself. There was no God to direct me. It made sense now that I was hurt at school, threatened by bullies and too afraid to speak up was not because God would make it all better or God had plans for me. Why did God want me to get hurt so badly? Mentally traumatized. There is no God and that is why God did not attend to my prayers of making sure I was not bullied.
By age 14, I declared that I was not going to attend church any longer, but instead stay home or go to the library and read the bible. Which is what I did. I read the bible in the library and started to look for answers to what made sense. The reality. Science was the answer. It provided visual evidence, empirical evidence which you can actually witness before you. After several months, I declared myself Atheist. My mother had a bit of a tantrum saying that it's wrong and so forth. But my decision has now been made. I started to research more and more on Science and Atheism.
From then to today, I am Atheist and will continue to be Atheist and spread the word and my beliefs on Atheism. I believe it should deserve more attention and that religion sometimes is the cause of problems.
I want to point out a few things before ending. I don't have a problem with other people believing in a religion, but I don't like it when you try and suppress me with the psychological impact of going to hell and suffering eternal torture if I didn't. I have an argument for that too. I said I'm going to try and spread Atheism, but I will do it so that I leave the options open. I am not going to use force or anything other than the power of speech and language and inspiration.
I also do not mean to make an attack on religion. If I have done so, I apologize. I was only trying to communicate my process of transitioning to Atheism with questions and examples.
I have noticed that the Bible contradicted reality, and itself, which ultimately led to my choice of becoming Atheist.
If you have any questions regarding my thoughts on Atheism or would like to know more about my arguments and reasons of switching out of religion. Leave a comment and I'll hopefully get back to you or drop me an email.
Thank You.
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