Why I became an atheist

As a kid growing up in South Africa, I dreamed of being many things ( I always was a bit of a dreamer).  I wanted to be a vet, I wanted to be in the navy (what little boy doesn't want to blow things up) and I wanted to be a scientist, even though I didn't really understand what the scientific method was. I was just interested in bugs and again, in blowing things up. Perhaps a more surprising career path I dreamed up for myself was that of a priest. I didn't really know all the ins and outs of the job description and I was to young to know or care what celibacy was, but it meant becoming a soldier of God, and I thought that was pretty cool.

I often wonder if I lived in South Africa, would I still be religious to certain degree. I was pretty much surrounded by it.  It was in school, in the hymns we sang. It was in Sunday school where we learnt about things like Noah and the floods (via noodle art). It was on the lips of family and friends. I remember sitting in a christian show of some sort and getting up because I felt the presence of the lord, which I think was just a breeze from an open door wafting up my shorts. I remember being read the book of revelations and being told how anyone that was somehow imprinted with the number 666 would be damned, as if that was a good thing. As if the end of the world was something to look forward to.

That's not to say I lived in a fanatic or very religious environment. Far from it. If I had said that I didn't believe in God and didn't want to go to Sunday school, I'm pretty sure my parents would have said OK and that would have been that, but the thought never crossed my mind. It was just the way things were and I went with the flow.

Come the mid nineties, my family and I packed up and moved to the UK.  At this stage I guess you could say that I was a lazy Christian.  I believed... but never went to church or read the bible frequently (but let's face it, how many Christians do). I just accepted it and didn't think about it or question it too much, which is what I believe is the glue that holds regions together, but more on that later.  I would just say the occasional quiet prayer while in bed, say happy birthday to Jesus on Christmas day and put on the sad face when remembering the crucifixion at Easter, after scoffing my face with chocolate eggs of course. Things continued like this for years, though there was a brief time in my life where I became a Mormon.  Don't ask. It only lasted 2 weeks anyway... which was around the time they told me I couldn't even drink non-alcoholic beer as I should stay away from the appearance of evil. This was the actual answer given to me when I asked about this at the church and I remember thinking how stupid this was. I had friends who drank beer. Two weeks ago I drank beer. We weren't doing anything evil! So I had a hard look at myself and this Mormon mumbo jumbo and decided I would get drunk at the next church event and be done with the whole thing... which was fun.

From then on the path to non-belief was a very gradual curve. From my mid teens through university to about thirty years old, I went from believing in the bible stories, to believing the bible was mostly metaphors and a general guide to being agnostic. There must be a god out there somewhere, and the bible was just an attempt for us to understand him.  But again, and here's the thing, I still didn't think about it very much.  I didn't question it. If I had stopped to really think about of this, I would have opened my eyes and become an atheist much earlier. But the ideas of 'faith is a virtue', 'don't be a doubting Thomas', 'the lord's ways are mysterious', etc, just seemed to have seeped into my psyche. Without even thinking about it... I didn't think about it.

It wasn't until fairly recently, with the help of the internet and YouTube, that I did start to question. All these new earth creationists out there just seemed so ridiculous to me. It piqued my interest and I found out about people like Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens. When I watched a documentary by Dawkins, based on the God Delusion, well that was when the flood gates opened. He and others like Dawkins, didn't convince me to become atheist. They just reminded me of my critical faculties. Once I started thinking about it properly, it didn't take long and I became an atheist overnight.

So why does it matter? Did it affect my life in any major way? Does it affect yours? Is religion not beneficial to society? What about morality? These are all things I pondered when I became an atheist and let me tell you, I'm so glad I left all that dogma behind. The world is even a richer and more wondrous place now that I'm free to use my intellect beyond, "God dunnit." For those of you who would like to know why I think religion is harmful, how each new scientific discovery makes the need for a god seem less and less likely and how you can be just as good and moral (more so even) with an atheistic world view, well that's a topic for my next post. I think I've waffled on a bit too much on this one already anyway :)

Amen.

Click here for my next article on Becoming an atheist which delves a little into the actual questions I asked of myself and Christianity.