Defining Moments
Send us your "Defining Moment" for possible posting to webmaster@freethoughtoasis.org
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Chris
I always have been skeptical. From the time when I was a small boy when we would bow our heads in prayer I knew the voice in my head was not god, it was the voice of the preacher. To this day I remember the only prayer I ever prayed for from the bottom of my heart, was for a Nintendo entertainment system, and I got it. But, I knew it was because I had got my first job at the public library, for two summers.
I was home schooled and my mom worked nights so she slept most of the day and we had to read the books and do the homework. But before I was fifteen I had all day to watch television and at that time of day there was nothing on UHF except soap operas and luckily for me PBS. Which, at that time, had the best shows on physics and chemistry and I just ate them up.
At that time I was also watching shows on
Bigfoot the Loch Ness monster and the
It wasn’t till my last girlfriend introduced me to things I had never heard of like homeopathy, iridology, reflexology, and applied kinesiology and when I asked what any one of these were, she couldn’t give me a straight answer. Even after spending a week at a seminar with her, that the family guru convinced her to spend three thousand dollars on, she couldn’t help me understand what this stuff was or how it was supposed to work.
So I did my own research and after many arguments and attempts to appeal to reason she finely broke up with me. Her excuse, because I believed in science.
So, if asked today what do I believe in I will say science, what do I worship? Truth. Who do I pray to? Google.
Goodnight and good luck,
Chris
New Mexico
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MikeB
Recipe for Atheism
OK I’m an atheist. I didn’t start out that way, but life has a way of shaping us in unexpected ways. As the oldest of three children, I pretty much got to pioneer childhood for all three of us. I was fortunate in that respect, because the rules weren’t anywhere near entrenched in my household. This also meant that I was punished for actions that my folks didn’t have the foresight to tell me not to do. More likely they just didn’t want to add more fuel for my imagination. Either way, my environment encouraged me to think about what I was doing and what my reasons were for each action. I guess you could say that my folks had unwittingly sowed the seeds of atheism in me.
I vaguely remember attending church about one or two times a month before attending school. I went to a Lutheran service with my mom and her parents and would have fun about half of the time in the children’s youth group. I will tell you now that the main service is the most boring thing for a preschool child to endure. Sitting still on those hard benches was definitely not my idea of fun. In spite of my dislike of church service, I still acquired a belief in God. It is hard not to when you see that many adults endure the same idiotic hardship for the sake of that same belief. Yes, I did notice that the adults weren’t all that comfortable. And the ones with kids would appear tired and profoundly relieved at the end of service. This pattern continued up through the end of kindergarten.
In the first grade I experienced the first major change of my life. My parents thought it would be a good idea for me to attend a catholic school. They were concerned enough about the public school district that we lived in to shell out the money for me to attend private school. This was an exceptionally good idea. Had they not made this decision, I would probably have a greater contempt for humanity than my present acerbic level. At the private school, I was allowed to work ahead of the class in many of the subjects (particularly math and science). We also had religious study. I enjoyed this part of class because we did get to openly discuss topics like evolution and morality. To this day, I still don’t know what Father Mack’s or Father Michael’s views on evolution were. The priest there had the good sense to leave the answers to the big questions up to the students. Had they not, I would have definitely dropped my belief in God like a bad habit. At this time, I had a voracious appetite for science both natural and physical. I had already finished reading my folk’s encyclopedia set from the front of “A” to the end of “Z”. The evidence for evolution was very compelling. I also loved reading about different countries and their cultures and beliefs. This was the only part of childhood that I would even consider going back to if I could. During this time, my faith in God grew like a weed. I had the impression that everyone had the freedom to tailor their beliefs around what we see in the present world and shape their morality around well reasoned argument. I was impressed enough with the clergy that I wanted to join the priesthood my self. Life is always changing. And, my life changed as well when the tuition changed.
We moved to another school district just before the beginning of the sixth grade. Little did I know, I was going to attend a different school that year. This was my first exposure to Christians of a different sect. It is very ironic that while attending a catholic school that the only time I hear about God is during our class for religious instruction which was held twice weekly. When I got to the new school, I heard more about God from fellow classmates than I ever did at the private school I was attending. It was during this time that I firsthand witnessed hypocrisy and experienced the devastating fallout. I later learned that in some of the other sects, instead of focusing on how the young members can develop to become better people, the youth ministers would squander the time instructing kids in how to recruit. Morality was a set of rules handed down with no discussion on why those rules would be in place. And my favorite of all, if you didn’t follow their faith and attend their church you were going to hell. I can tell you right now that my thought to this day is still the same. If those self righteous hypocrites are going to heaven, I would rather burn in hell for all eternity than share the company of those unthinking beast! It was this immense dislike of what I found out were most Christians that made me research all of the faiths in a more comprehensive manner. From my research I discovered that our greatest atrocities were committed in the name of one monotheistic faith or another. By the end of the sixth grade, I no longer questioned my belief. I was dead certain that there was no such thing as God. If humanity was really created in his image, God must have been hideous indeed to behold and definitely not worthy of either my worship or respect.
For the next twelve years, my views against Christianity and Islam have softened. I no longer see the ugliness prevalent in mankind as a manifestation of faith. It is just part of the human animal. Faith is just one manifestation of our many flaws. There will always be some ridiculous religion present until mankind learns to use that most amazing organ sitting on top of their shoulders. Remember this; faith is accepting something without evidence and sometimes in spite of contrary evidence. This pattern of not using critical thinking is extremely harmful. How else are we to navigate our present surroundings if we don’t utilize our senses fully?
Don't pray for me. Just THINK!!!
Michael Black
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Jynx
I never bought the tall-tales of the major monotheistic faiths. Even before I could accurately call myself an atheist, I eschewed organized religion of all forms. I recognized blind obedience in others when I saw it...I just didn't recognize it in myself until I was much older.
Still, I held a number of absurd supernatural beliefs cobbled together from various and sundry sources. My quest for the timeless truths of life and the universe led me to mythology and ancient religious philosophy, sprinkled with just a touch of New Age pseudoscience for good measure. A sickening concoction barely resembling reality at all.
Irony prevailed when I ordered and read a book by Dan Barker entitled "Losing Faith in Faith". My interest in it was initially fed by my growing concern with religious fundamentalism and its role in shaping our world today. I poured over Mr. Barker's book in almost one sitting, stopping only occasionally to reflect on his tale of leaving his post as a traveling evangelical minister to become an outspoken atheist and head of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Although I had hoped to find within its pages methods of confronting and debating evangelical Christians, I also found something I wasn't looking for: A direct challenge to my own faith.
I finished the book somewhere around midday and forced myself to put it down as a feeling of absolute dread swept over me. At the time I had no idea why I felt that way. I remember feeling frozen in time and awash with sensations of doubt and confusion. Fleeing my apartment, I hoped for fresh air and perhaps a distraction to ease my distress.
All of my beliefs, my carefully constructed worldview...had faded to nothing. I realized the incredible amount of effort I had expended over the years to rationalize my beliefs. The mental gymnastics I was required to perform on a daily basis to maintain those views had become utterly exhausting. Yet without them...what did I have? If I did not know them to be true, what did I know to be true?
I looked around and noticed for the first time in a long time the sheer beauty and complexity of the universe. A bird flew overhead and I vaguely recalled the principles of aerodynamics and evolution which allowed such a thing to exist. A car drove by and I thought of the thousands of inventors, engineers and scientists necessary to bring such a thing into existence. Truth was all around me. To this day I can recall in perfect detail the feeling of absolute awe and wonder which flooded me as my mind grasped for the first time the achievements of mankind and how incredible it is that we are capable of such things. All of these things were achieved not by those of us waiting around for a god or spirit or demon or "universal consciousness" to give them to us, but by those of us willing and able to discover truth ourselves and re-shape nature to suit our needs.
I looked down at my watch and noted the time: I had become an atheist at exactly 4:02 on a warm August afternoon in Fort Worth, Texas. I have never regretted it.
Jamie Farren (Jynx)
Texas Panhandle
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Rodney
I spent the first 15 years of my life attending
church everyday the doors were open.
Over the next several years, attendance was sporadic and then
I was drafted by the United States Army in the fall of 1972.
I remember well the exciting aura of the Holy Roller,
Pentecostal, evangelical, speaking in tongues worship services.
There were several revival crusades each year that helped to
boost attendance and keep the congregation from wandering too far
from the flock. I gave
my life to
July 2, 1979 is the day I decided to read the bible from cover to cover, Old Testament and New Testament. My sister, still trying to save my soul, had bought for me a really nice leather bound, zip-up case, The New International Version of The Holy Bible. Over the next several weeks, I pored over the pages reading many of the stories I had heard in Sunday school. But the surprising thing is that there were a lot of other stories in the bible that had never been mentioned or were told quite differently from the many sermons of my childhood.
Reading the bible was the one defining moment that turned me forever away from the religious indoctrination of my younger gullible years. The one thing that absolutely bothered me the most was the fact that God was so cruel in the Old Testament and supposedly so loving and compassionate in the New Testament. I thought that there is no way that a God can have multiple personalities, no way, can’t happen, if it does then they are not a GOD. PERIOD.
How can a god make so many mistakes; how can a god be so cruel; how can a god create such fallible creatures; how can a god be fallible themselves? If the God of the Holy Bible exists, he is one cruel #$%g#&1* and I want nothing to do with that entity. I have since found hundreds of other reasons to support my position of disbelief and can never see myself returning to the religious flock. It has taken thirty years from that defining moment in 1979 for me to really feel free and unburdened. In the year 2009, I can finally speak freely about my beliefs and am leading a happy, healthy and spiritually fulfilling life without the religious crutch. J
Rodney Hinds
Amarillo, Texas
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