Why, How & When I Became an Atheist
Seems I’ve been asked to write something about the why, how, & when I became an atheist. I’ve mulled these questions in my mind repeatedly over the years. The why is the easiest and I’ll cover it first.
Why did I become an atheist? Even more so than most teenagers I was enamored with the question of “why?” I’ve aggravated my class mates from middle school all the way through college with my obsession. I just can’t leave it alone. This inability to leave well enough alone lead me as a teenager to start asking those questions that all parents hate. Why am I here? What’s the meaning to all this? If everyone is special then just how unique is any individual? How does “life” work? As I exhausted my parents’ ability to answer these questions they of course referred me to the pastors and preachers. As I questioned those in turn I always kept coming back to: “How do you know God is testing us?” or “Why is he testing us?” and “Why do all these bad things happen to good people if god is a fair and a just being?” I kept asking and frustrating those around me with my inability to leave the unanswered and the unknown alone. I just couldn’t accept platitudes like “Faith is a virtue”, “You have to have faith” or my all time favorite “Surrender it to god.” How are any of these answers to anything?
What I remember most about church in my younger years is a repetitive message of how evil, broken, sinful and damned I was. How I had been created in a flawed state by an omniscient, all powerful being. How screwed I already was. How it’s impossible to deserve salvation but that I can receive it as a gift from the very person that cursed, created, damned and SCREWED me to begin with!
How did I become an atheist? After all of the above I had to go find some answers and I was amazed when I got to junior high Earth Science. They knew where rocks came from, how they were created and when they were created. They answered my questions with grinding monotony. All of my “whys” were not only answered but the questions these answers brought forth were answered with the same grinding monotony. Introductions made to each branch of science revealed one epiphany after another. Here were the answers that I had long sought! These people knew what they knew and with exacting precision knew what they did not know and never made excuses. This is when I discovered the “I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer. In high school, biology, chemistry, and physics came and horizons were thrown as far as the eye could imagine. Even the mystery and miracle of sex was reduced to mechanics and mitosis. Was there nothing that couldn’t be answered by study, time and experiment!? All this lead me to eventually believe; No, not believe, know, there are NO GODS!
Now comes the hard part.
When did I become an atheist? As I look back on my life I can see many places where I stopped believing in one magic belief or another. At each event I would often have thoughts of how it applied to a god and even would figure it did apply. I just never committed, never could take that last step for either lack of motivation or lack of critical thinking. Everyone I knew in my life that had authority knew there was a god and told me so at every turn or question. How could I question? How could my parents be wrong? How could all the other adults in my life be wrong? HOW!?!?!
I remember the exact moment I knew that Santa Clause was false. I had had my suspicions since gifts from Mom & Dad were always present before Christmas night, but there were always additional gifts that showed up on Christmas day. On an early day in December, when I was ten my parents came home from a day of shopping and I remember my parents making me leave the garage and go to my room. All questions were diverted and soon it was verboten to ask. I was no dummy though, I knew there was only one place to hide anything in the garage and I soon found myself home alone. Being the inquisitive child that I was, I made it quickly to the hidden closet and found all my presents, which I promptly played with repeatedly for weeks before Christmas Day. I remember thinking then that if Santa wasn’t real what did that mean about things like tooth fairies, bogey men, scary movies and god? I just as quickly remembered that I had a closet full of Star Wars toys and had more exciting things to think about.
Fast forward through the junior high science introductions and numerous “AHH HAA” moments followed up and overshadowed by the discovery of sports and then girls. I knew that something wasn’t right but I had better things to think about after all. I had stopped going to church on any kind of a routine basis in my junior year of high school after I had moved in with my father. I then started to make allowances for the discrepancies I found in god. Surely all these other gods couldn’t all be wrong? Maybe god presented himself to others in a manner that would be palatable for them. This was followed by, surely there can only be one truth and a divine god wouldn’t present himself to just one people? WHY!?!?! When these questions again frustrated me I just quit thinking about it. I had football and girls, so I had ample more important things to think about. Repeat this process through high school and into college and I was nowhere significantly different than I was when I was ten years old. I knew something was up but….???
I got married in 1990 to a wonderful girl and the love of my life as much then as now. Twenty plus years later we are still together. All couples have disagreements but there was one specific argument between the two of us that brought my atheism to an almost explosive awakening. At some point after 1990 a very good friend of mine and I got back in touch. We were famous in our younger days for our “pacing the carpet” (sorry Mom!) debates that would last all night and cover the most important things in life like Star War vs. Star Trek. When we got back together we discussed mundane things and eventually broached those topics of deities and faith. He was a believer at this time based mostly on Pascal’s Wager. As my doubts continued to grow I took the side of doubt and my doubts grew by leaps and bounds due to this. I moved from a placating attitude toward god to a serious doubt about god. During this time I was going to church on a semi routine basis. I figured I was willing to trade a few hours a week to make my wife happy. What could be the harm? Little did I know that this would be the single most pivotal motivator for the emergence of my atheism. I would go and sit in the pew and listen, arguing with the speaker in my head. Each service became more and more difficult to sit quietly through, until I just couldn’t do it anymore. I began to use any excuse I could not to attend. As my excuses grew thinner and thinner and more and more prevalent, it of course caused friction with my wife. This eventually led to a morning where the issue came to head where my wife in an angry tone asked “Why won’t you go to church with us?!” I responded before I really thought with “Because I don’t believe!”
At that moment I had finally ceased to make excuses for a god that just wasn’t divine. I knew it. Not long after this I began to read about atheism. Unlike a lot of my fellow atheists I didn’t read myself into atheism. By the time I started to read I had already made that determination. I started with some Bart D. Ehrman books and discovered all the discrepancies in the New Testament, followed by Richard Dawkins who taught me that it was right and just to question, and tips on how to question. Then came Christopher Hitchens. He was an unflappable, unashamed and arrogant atheist who was willing to answer any question and never shied away from a confrontation. He taught me that I didn’t have to be ashamed or hide my atheism, that I could, and should be angry and arrogant about it. That I had no reason to be ashamed of what I knew to be true. I’ve never looked back since those days.
John Willimon
December 2011
