Post by Blessed Devil on May 21, 2009 10:54:40 GMT 7
My Short-Lived Atheistic Life
by Joboy M. Villena
This isn’t a rant on how God is bad, how your religion is bringing harm to society, and other things I said about religion before. Rather, this is an explanation of some things about me which you don’t understand.
Before I get on with this piece of writing, I just need you to do two things. One, please remove any and all thoughts of me being bad and you having to correct me. I know you have your own sophisticated theology to prove that my thoughts about God is mistaken, but right now, imagine that no one is wrong and no one is right. I want you to keep an open mind, and I want you to listen to what I am trying to tell you. This is not an argument; this is an explanation.
Two, please don’t look at this as a Christian who wants to save my soul. Look at this as my friend/sibling/parent. Look at this as someone who wants to get to know me better, or someone who wants to understand me, because it’s exactly what I am asking for right now.
You remember when I ranted about God? About how He hates animals, does cruel things, and is generally an unpleasant character? I said many satirical things before about how God is selfish, how religion is stupid, and how smart I am for not believing. I was childish and insulting. I have one thing to say about all of it:
I’m sorry.
I have probably come across as somebody arrogant and condescending. I also acted like I was angry with God and I was so sure of everything. Right now, atheists probably come across to you as angry, conceited people who just love to insult religious beliefs. And yes, lots of other atheists are just as angry and conceited as me during that time (the young atheists, most notably).
But not all atheists are like them. Lots of atheists, and I mean lots of them (Richard Dawkins, Greta Christina, Ellen Johnson, Marilyn Manson) are smart, rational, calm, good people who are happy with their life. And I’m very proud to have shared their beliefs. And do you know what I think about the young, childish, conceited atheists? Whenever I see some people like them, my heart breaks.
I know that when they say “God is a cruel dictator” you see something terrible that’s being said about your belief (and probably you yourself, indirectly). But do you want to know what I see? I see someone who has been taught cruel, confusing, untrue things, and was told that to even question these things would send him to be burned in hell for eternity, and he’s just now coming to realize just how fucked up that was, and just how much he’s full of rage about it.
If you don’t understand how that feels, then imagine that you’ve had a relationship with someone. You spend three years together believing that the other person loves you so much he or she would gladly spend the rest of their life with you. You devote yourself to this person, spending time and money, making extreme sacrifices, but one day you find out that this person never really loved you. All the things he or she said all these years were lies. And after breaking up with him or her, you would come to realize just how terrible this person really was, and would be prone to saying things like, “I can’t believe I let that disgusting person touch me!”
You’d feel cheated and lied to if it happened to you, right? These nonbelievers feel the same. They feel that they’ve been lied to all these years. You might see that what they’re saying are insults, but all I see is anger, trauma, and the need to do something to express all the frustration.
You know what? It was the same for me. Let me tell you the story of how I became an atheist.
Just like your average Christian, I was born into a Christian family, which is typical because children always believe the particular religion that their parents believe in. Who could blame me? Children’s brains are hard-wired to think of their parents as credible, reliable, and crucial sources of information. I’m sure that even you inherited the religion you were taught as a child. As early as age four, I was taught that bad people go to hell where they will be punished forever and ever. I imagined terrible things: making me kneel on hot burning coal, keeping me in a windowless, door-less room with no electric fan (lol), burning me forever and ever. It was pretty traumatizing for me. And it was a belief which I grew up with.
Call me a worry-wart, but for more than fifteen years I had been worrying about going to hell. For that long time span, every time I did something wrong, all those images of horrible punishments flashed before my eyes again and again, and at the same time I also felt guilty for what I did. I think my mental stress back then doubled my mental stress right now.
But I want to make one thing clear. I loved God, and I was thankful for everything I believed He did for me. I loved God especially during the years when I was under the guidance of Mr. Fil Guna of Saint Bridget College. He was the only religion teacher to ever paint my heart with love for God. But I just didn’t give priests or religion teachers my full trust, because I believed that no human should ever claim to be any sort of “messenger of God.”
There was this particular belief which practically drove me crazy at some point in my life: The belief in a “greater plan” or as others like to put it, “everything happens for a reason.” You see, I used to be very prayerful. No one would have noticed, but whenever I was alone, I always remembered God. Whether it was in the jeep, or in my room, I always used to have an imaginary conversation with God. I always checked on Him, to make sure He was still doing fine. I talked to Him in my mind as I would talk to a friend.
There were quite a few times in my life when I reached the point where any true believer in God would begin to ask, “Why is this happening to me?” Usually, they were times when I had an uncomfortably long string of bad luck. I wish I could remember what happened in any of those strings, but I’m sorry. You’ll just have to take my word for it that I, in fact, had a long string of bad luck (it happens to everyone). And whenever it would happen, one question always pops up in my mind: “Why?”
But then, whenever I asked that question, I felt extremely guilty about it. Why? Because my mother taught me that it was sinful to question God. It wasn’t only my mother, in fact. EVERYONE said so. “You dare question God when He works so hard just to give you a good and meaningful life ahead of you? How could you? You should be ashamed of yourself!” Cue me getting a horrifying mental image of eternal punishment yet again.
But there was still a part of me that craved for truth. And whenever I had such strings of bad luck, I would try to figure out, to the best of my ability, what God was trying to tell me. I figured that it was okay to try and ask questions as long as my faith in Him didn’t waver. And so, I rationalized everything that ever happened to me in a way that favored the idea of God having a good intention for me. Now that I think about it, rationalizing God’s intentions might have added even more stress to me.
Speaking of rationalization, I remember the time when I used to pray to God for many things. The first person to ever tell me that prayers do work was my mother. She also told me that I can’t just wish for a PlayStation or a new computer and expect it to be answered immediately. There were a few factors that affected prayers getting answered. You had to be a good Christian, and your wishes have to not just be a selfish wish. During my childhood, she emphasized that I had to be a good person so that my prayers would be answered.
[This is the part where I begin to lose my faith in God. It contains very controversial thoughts, and I can understand if you think you’re going to feel uncomfortable reading it. Out of respect for you and your faith in God, you can skip to the part labeled as “LIFE AS AN ATHEIST” if you want.]
I remember when I prayed for my family to be closer together. And it wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment thing. I literally kept on praying for it until I graduated high school. I was so passionate about that prayer. I think it started when I became jealous that some of the people I knew could always count on their brothers or sisters or parents for help, while I’m always too intimidated to ask for help (I had always felt that my family didn’t like me very much). But the more we aged, the more I felt that the family was drifting apart. And the more I felt that my prayer wasn’t going to be answered. That prayer was never granted to me (along with many other prayers, of course). During this time, I was trying to figure out what exactly I did wrong. Did I not pray right? Did I not deserve to have my prayer answered? Was I a bad person?
Religion teachers and priests had always told me that when your prayer doesn’t get answered, it meant that God has something greater to offer you in the future. But that only served to make me even more confused about everything. What the hell is better than my family getting closer? It wasn’t a materialistic wish, nor was it selfish. I think that by society’s standards, it was a very noble wish. Oh scratch that, what was wrong with my other prayers? When I learned that selfish prayers don’t get answered, I tried to make sure my prayers benefitted others.
Another rationalization, also from teachers and priests, was that sometimes prayers don’t get answered because you don’t remember God enough. “He spends ALL His precious time taking care of the human race, while humans are too busy swimming in their own blessings that they forget to thank God. I should learn to remember God more often because He remembers me all the time.” This proved to be... even more confusing. I remembered God whenever I was alone. I almost always attended the Sunday mass. I praise Him everyday. My teachers always said that things like those were “all He ever wanted,” but what the hell was I doing wrong?
And so it was back to my first rationalization: Everything happens for a reason. If ever God lets anything bad happen to me, He does so because He loves me. He has a plan. A greater plan.
The next time I prayed, well, it wasn’t the usual “God may I please ask for this?” type of prayer. It went something like, “Lord, I’m asking for something-something, but if you wanted something else to happen, then go ahead and stick to your great plan.”
But then, the skeptical mind inside me decided to ask a question. What is the point of praying for something if God has some sort of plan for everything?
I think it was the first time I started to doubt. Because after that came a series of other questions. If God planned everything, then He probably planned whether or not I’m going to hell from the day I was born, didn’t He? If God is the cause of your success because He gave you talent/wisdom/blessings, then why do we blame failures on ourselves and not God (for giving you lack of talent/wisdom/blessings)?
I was horrified when I asked those questions. How dare I doubt the greatness and lovingness of God? Questioning His plan again... I must be possessed by a demon or something (I learned from elementary school that people who don’t believe in God are giving in to their inner demons). I think I’m being tested by God, to see if my faith in Him is strong enough for me to be worthy of being in heaven. Wait, what? I am so arrogant claiming that I am going to heaven just by having enough faith! Arrogance is a sin! I should do good deeds to make up for me doubting God’s greatness so that I could go to heaven. But wait! I can’t just do good deeds because I want to go to heaven. I should do good deeds because I just want to make people happy. Good deeds done for my own good is still just a selfish good deed. If I practice making people happy just for the sake of it, I’ll be going to heaven. But wait! If I’m thinking that I’m going to practice making people happy to go to heaven, then that already means I’m doing this for myself! Oh, can’t I do anything right?
As you can see, I was a stressed out again by my moral dilemmas when I started doubting God. So at that point, I just stopped thinking about God. Because thinking made me lose faith in God.
Months passed. More unanswered prayers, more confusion, more stress. But the more I tried to stop thinking, the stupider I felt. What most people don’t understand about me is this: Once the whisper of skepticism begins in me, I can ignore it, I can shake it off like a dog bothered by a flea, but it will never stop biting. And the more I struggled, the more my faith receded. And the problem here is that I’ve always prided myself as someone who can face reality for what it is. When I decided not to think, I just felt that... that it wasn’t me.
So I decided to find information on religion from the internet. It seemed to be the only way I could be at peace.
I found a website called “Skeptics Annotated Bible.” It’s a list of absurdities, cruelties, intolerance, sexism, and contradictions in the Bible. I decided to check it out despite the fact that it might make me lose faith in God even more, because -- like I said before -- I wasn’t afraid of reality. I figured that if these people just took everything in the Bible out of context just to make it look bad, then I would totally notice it and my faith in God wouldn’t weaken one bit. But if everything they say about the Bible is true and not out of context, then I’m going to have to try and live with the fact that the Bible contains absurd things.
You can say that it was the most important part of this story. That website is what started it all. You can check it out if you like. I read a lot of the verses and I didn’t see verses being taken out of context. Wait, yeah, I did see a few that, in my opinion, were out of context, but mostly I saw horrible, horrible things I’ve never seen before which I can’t seem to make sense of. I literally went, “HEY! These guys are right! That God of the Bible IS a cruel, unjust, abusive maniac!”
And that was when I became interested in atheism. Not really converted, but interested. I searched for information about them, I read their arguments, and I tried to see things in their perspective.
Before, I thought that people needed God in their lives. I thought I needed God. I thought that if there was no God, then the whole world would be ensued into chaos. But then I saw these words: “Look around you. Atheists aren’t killing, stealing, raping, or cheating at any greater rate than believers.” And it made sense.
Maybe I’ve always been skeptical of religion all these years. Maybe I’ve just been trying to rationalize everything bad about it because I thought I needed it. Maybe deep inside, I’ve always been an atheist. But after reading numerous articles about atheism, I found myself agreeing with the authors. And I saw a new opportunity for myself. I found myself saying “I don’t want to have to devote my life to God anymore. I don’t want to have to pray five times a day. I don’t want to feel pressured by hell and eternal damnation. I don’t want to think about why my prayers are never answered. I don’t want to have to rationalize everything bad that God is doing so He would look good. I don’t want to feel guilty whenever I doubt. I want out. I want out! I want out!”
So I had to make a choice.
LIFE AS AN ATHEIST:
This is what my choice looked like when I was on the verge of atheism (many thanks to “The Matrix”):
“You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”
I remember that one night all too well. The night when I decided to face what I believed was the reality that I’m not going anywhere when I die, no divine power is looking after me, nobody can help anyone in the hospital through prayer, and that there is no divine/demonic or outside force controlling me. But despite all this realization, when I decided to take the red pill, I felt as though a great weight has been lifted off of me.
It was like being released from some sort of prison.
No longer did I burden myself with asking questions whenever I experienced long strings of bad luck. No longer did I get horrible mental images of eternal damnation whenever I think about questioning God’s greatness. No longer did I have to remember to talk to God five times a day. No longer did I have to feel guilty whenever I find it annoying that people are preaching God’s word in the streets and then asking me for a donation.
Does it sound selfish to you? If you’re a believer, then yeah, it probably does. You’d say “I never thought of how God feels and I only cared for myself.” But I want you to know something: I was still thankful for food and shelter, I was thankful for modern technology, I was thankful for joy, for love, for thrill, and I was thankful for life. If I find out that there is a God, then I would have applauded Him and said “I’m sorry, it was an honest mistake.” I didn’t underestimate His capacity for forgiveness (and neither should you). If God really was the perfectly moral and understanding God that Christians made him out to be, then I knew that it wouldn’t matter to Him if I didn’t believe, as long as I was a moral person.
But despite all those thoughts, I still kept my atheism to myself. It’s because I was living in a Christian world. People might shun me. I was afraid. But I did begin asking my friends some questions which confused me back in my religious days. They were confused as well, but then they just laughed about it and jokingly told me I was an atheist. Boy, they had no idea.
So I decided to study more about the lifestyle of atheists. What I’ve found out was that there really is no single lifestyle for all of them. They lived in their own way; however they wanted to live their lives. Of course, it doesn’t mean that there’s nothing stopping them from killing and maiming each other. On the contrary, they are quite moral, and most of them believed in freedom. Contrary to popular belief, atheism isn’t a sad, meaningless, immoral life without the guidance of God. This is what being an atheist truly means (thanks to ebonmusings.org):
Being an atheist means you don't have to be afraid of bumps and other noises in the night, secure in the knowledge that there are no ghosts, no evil spirits, no demons waiting to get us when we turn out the lights.
Being an atheist means you don't have to think of yourself as a sinful wretch who can never do anything right.
Being an atheist means you're not predestined or born into some particular social class or station in life, but can set your own path and make your own goals, limited only by your imagination and your willingness to apply your skills.
Being an atheist means you're free to experience the world as it is, not filtered through the preconceptions of a rigid, inflexible mindset.
Being an atheist means you can view the sunrise on a pink and blue dawn and know it represents the dark side of the Earth rotating towards the type G2 yellow star it orbits as it spins through space, or the distant snow-capped mountains and know they're the result of a fiery, slow-motion collision of two vast continental plates drifting on a sea of magma, or the gold-speckled green leaves of the trees of the forest and know they're photosynthetic organisms with many of the same genes as you feeding off sunlight and water to produce sugar and wood, and realize that knowing these things only makes these sights far more beautiful.
Being an atheist means freedom from ancient superstitions.
Being an atheist means a fearless outlook and a free intelligence.
Being an atheist means no one tells you how or what to think.
Being an atheist means there is no forbidden knowledge.
Being an atheist means you're not only allowed, but encouraged to question.
Being an atheist means you're free to form your own opinions, rather than having your outlook colored by a belief system that tells you what you should think.
Being an atheist means you accept the world as it is, not as you wish it to be.
That just about sums up my thoughts when I became an atheist. I believed that it isn’t about being sinful. What it meant to me is that it’s simply a freedom of thought. It’s something which I didn’t experience enough while tied to a religion, and the reason why I was more comfortable with atheism.
But it wasn’t just that. Atheism gave me a newfound appreciation of everything around me. I felt a bit like a child rediscovering this familiar, yet wonderful and strange world. When I became an atheist and saw houses, buildings, devices, and everything humans created, I thought, “Humans have the power to shape the environment. They’re aware of everything that happens around the world. That’s just freaking awesome.”
“Because of our brain cells, we humans are capable of understanding our environment and ourselves to the tiniest detail. We’re capable of understanding how things work and we are capable of not only adapting, but manipulating everything to benefit ourselves. And I know that humans will continue to grow and change.”
I looked at the plants. I thought, “These things -- these beautiful things -- are the products of photosynthesis and the heat and light of the sun.”
I looked around me. I thought, “These are made up of a bunch of molecules and atoms with proton, neuron, and electron.”
I looked at the night sky, stared at the starry infinity and thought, “Those little dots are as big -- or bigger -- than the sun. Even some others are entire galaxies.”
I looked at myself in the mirror and said to myself, “I exist!” and I felt transformed and excited, and the world seemed more special than I have ever thought before.
And that, for me, was just freaking awesome. I thought, “Wow, the universe is far greater than I have ever imagined. No, it’s far greater than I can imagine.”
It’s like watching a painter stroke his brush for hours and hours and hours. At first, all you can see are a bunch of mixed colors, but then, after a while, you’ll see a beautiful picture. It just blew me away how the universe is like this. And thinking that these are possible without a god only made it more amazing for me. It might not be that amazing to you, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not. There will always be people who will sneer at me for thinking such things, not because they have any understanding of what I went through, but because their inflexible religious faith demands it. During the whole span of my atheism, no believer has ever understood this feeling. You can call it an atheist’s “spirituality.”
This “spirituality” feeling is something that Christians experience through their religion and their so-called “miracles”, I guess, but I never had that same experience. I only felt this sense of wonder when I became an atheist. I think that this sort of realization is far more powerful than the religious view that, in the whole expansion of the universe, the life of Jesus was the most important thing that ever happened in the history of the cosmos, and our life is just something that’s made to keep us busy while we “wait for the Kingdom of God.” I felt that, in the religious view of things, our lives and the cosmos are experiments. Test runs. We have about the same value as rats trapped in a maze. And it just degrades the value of everything around us.
Which brings me to my other inspiration, I found myself appreciating life itself. My value of human life doubled because I believed that this was the only life anyone ever has. When I’m gone, I’m gone forever. My life expectancy had gone from infinity down to a few decades. And so I got a newfound determination to do something that will change the world. I wanted my name to be remembered, not necessarily by everyone on the earth, but by numerous people around me. I wanted to change people’s lives like Socrates, Plato, Darwin, Elvis Presley, Ferdinand Magellan, Jose Rizal, and so many others who had made an impact, so that when I’m gone forever, I’ll leave a legacy. For the first time in my life, I felt the need to live this life to the fullest.
Also, I felt like I could brag about my morality. You see, I was quite happy to realize that I’m sure I’m not doing good deeds just to go to heaven. I’m doing good deeds because I believed it’s the right thing to do. So my morality felt a little more mature.
It was really amazing. Christians keep talking about the liberation of ‘being saved’ but nothing can compare to the liberating feeling of tossing aside the shackles of religion. I really felt like I was soaring through the clouds.
Of course, the good things weren’t the only things I found out.
It shocked me when I found out that according to a Gallup poll, only 44% of all Americans would vote for an atheist president. It shocked me when I found out that atheists weren’t allowed to testify in court before. Did people think that the only thing keeping people from doing bad things is the belief that a deity is watching them? I wonder how Europe is doing now that a lot of people are atheists -- Oh wait, that’s right, Europe is prosperous. Europe is not chaotic and full of evil, and it has the same crime rate as any other religious country. How about you, reader? Is the only thing keeping you from killing people the belief that God will punish you? (Just in case your answer is yes, then please see a counselor. No, not your nearest bishop/priest who studied more theology than psychology. See a real, professional counselor. Someone with a degree.)
Those are just two examples. I have a lot more to share about the injustice that atheism received but that would take up too much of your time in reading this. See gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2007/10/atheists-and-an.html for more information if you want. It’s a nice compilation of everything that atheists are angry about.
Anyways, after a few days of living my new secret life (which was a lot less stressful), I found out about the goth subculture. Goths are what you call people who see the beauty of the darker side of life. They dress mostly in a fashion that doesn’t conform to normal standards, and thus sometimes people would call them freaks, but they don’t really care. Part of being goth is not being brought down by the opinion of others.
It amazed me that they don’t care what other people think of them. They’d rather hang out with the freaks than be cool and popular, and you can see that there’s a real depth in their personality. This is precisely what inspired me to come out of my Christian disguise and be proud of my atheism.
That was when I became an ‘out-of-the-closet’ atheist, happier than I had ever been before.
It came as a shock to my friends when I told them I really did become an atheist, but they were just fine with it. It also came as a shock to my classmates, but like my friends, they were fine with it. It came as a shock to my teachers, and some of them were rather impressed to hear how much I’ve thought about my religion. Both my friends, my classmates, and my teachers knew that my being an atheist was no joke. They saw that I gave it much thought and consideration.
But like every stereotype, some people have some common misconceptions about me. Here are some of the most common of those misconceptions:
1. I hate God.
2. I’m a sad, wounded victim who doesn’t understand that God loves me.
3. I’m 100% sure that God doesn’t exist.
I don’t hate God, considering that for me to hate Him, well, He has to exist. What I hate, actually, are the twisted beliefs of some Christians when they’re influenced by religious texts. For example, gay sex is an abomination (intolerant fundamentalists), staying in an abusive marriage is encouraged (anti-divorce proponents), the theory of evolution isn’t true (people trying to act like religion is science), God gives horrible, HORRIBLE punishments to people who can’t help but give in to temptation (surprisingly, a whole lot of believers), Filipinos praying to God makes Manny Pacquaio’s opponents lose (Christians being snarky to non-believers), the attack on the World Trade Center was caused by pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians (Jerry Falwell). I have a lot more reasons to be angry, and I barely scratched the surface (again, I suggest seeing gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2007/10/atheists-and-an.html for more on this subject).
I might have made fun of the God of the Bible (especially the God of the Old Testament), but that’s just because He’s such an easy target, what with the Old Testament stories being so filled with massacres and God’s wrath. Plus, I was at my early, angry stages of atheism and I think it’s perfectly normal. Like I explained before, I was in my ‘angry’ stage; I was just then coming to realize how fucked up some of my beliefs used to be (I’m sure you’ve read in the first part how much I was stressed out by my religion). I was also angry about all the unjust comments people have about us:
First example (I found out about this on Greta Christina’s blog. You can Google it.), commenting on a shooting at the New Life Church (and on the bravery of one person who helped stop the shooter), someone said, “What would the atheist do in this situation but run away and scream, “Hey, survival of the fittest! See ya later suckers!” And when confronted by the atheists about how this isn’t remotely what an atheist thinks or believes, he replied, “The atheist can save a life if they want, but according to the atheist worldview man is nothing more than matter and motion - saving a human life is no more better than saving protoplasm.”
Second example, I received a text message back then saying “Atheists are just a bunch of fucktards who are following a trend and don’t know damn shit about what they’re talking about!”
Third and most common example, said by absolutely fucking everyone: “Joboy is the one who helped me with my studies, he’s very smart, very compassionate, and he’s a shoulder you can lean on... But he doesn’t believe in God, and that makes him a bad person.”
ROOOOOOOOOAAAAAR!!!! Okay, deep breath, Joboy. Think calm, blue, and peaceful ocean. Calm, blue, peaceful.
Anyways, I was angry and I wanted to vent my frustration. I wanted to say “HEY! I’m an atheist, I have a good reason to be one, and I’m not evil! Stop telling lies about me, and stop treating me like I’m psychotic!” I wish I could’ve expressed myself differently back then, and I wish I didn’t take it out on people who weren’t involved. I know what wrong I did now, and I’m sorry for that.
But still, I wanted to stop being treated like a sad, wounded victim who doesn’t understand that God loves me. You need to look at me with a more open eye. You may think I was not appreciative of everything God has ever done for me. But considering that something has to exist in order for me to appreciate it, I don’t think it’s fair of you to accuse me of anything. Yes, I’m thankful for life, for joy, for love, and every beautiful thing that ever existed in this reality. And if God really did exist, I would thank Him quite dearly. But I didn’t become an atheist because I didn’t appreciate God. I especially didn’t become an atheist because I was angry with religion (it’s the other way around, actually. I was angry with religion because I became an atheist).
No atheist I know has ever left religion because they were angry. People who are angry with religion but still believe? They tend to gravitate towards another religion. People don’t leave religion because they’re angry. They leave because they’re convinced that religion doesn’t make any sense. And it’s the same for me.
Of course, the third misconception suggests that I’m just as close-minded as the Christians who are 100% sure of their God. I beg to differ. Atheism isn’t about being sure of God’s nonexistence. It just means being sure enough. Enough that you can comfortably live your life as though there’s no God.
Anyways, there was still one person who needed to know about my disbelief. And that was my mother. My very religious mother who would go batshit crazy if she found out my little secret.
I made a mistake in my timing of telling her I didn’t believe. It was during the time I was into Marilyn Manson’s music (yes, mister elitist goth, I know that Marilyn Manson isn’t goth, but I found out about him when he was mentioned in the goth scene, and I happened to like his music). My mother didn’t know Marilyn Manson; all she knew was that he looked freaky as shit and that he was bad news. She probably thought I was worshipping or was influenced by a devil or something. But I was assured, seeing me watching Marilyn Manson videos only made me look worse in her eyes.
She didn’t exactly know why I appreciated the guy. I’ll tell you in Manson’s own words. When Bill O’Reilly asked Manson what his messages were in his songs, he responded, “It’s always about being yourself and not being ashamed of being different, of thinking different. I try and take everyone’s ideals, common morals, flip them around, and make people look at them differently, question them so that you’re not always taking things for granted.”
There was this other misconception she had. She thought that the reason I became an atheist was just to be unique. I beg to differ. I just shared my deconversion story. If you skipped it, then I assure you that I didn’t become an atheist to be unique.
I made another mistake back then. When she was trying to argue with me into believing in God again, I focused on the bad things about religion. I didn’t focus so much on the good things about atheism. I didn’t tell her about my newfound appreciation for everything. I didn’t tell her about my newfound moral maturity. I didn’t tell her about the great weight that’s been lifted off of me.
After failing to reconvert me into believing, my mother pulled out her secret weapon. She texted my girlfriend (let’s just call her “GF” for now). She asked GF to tell me to believe in God because perhaps I would listen to her.
It turns out that GF had wanted to reconvert me a long time ago because she was getting very uncomfortable with my disbelief. I didn’t know why. I can’t remember if I asked her why or not. If I did, then it’s either I didn’t understand, or she didn’t answer. I don’t know, I can’t remember. But I assume it’s either because people treated her differently, or it’s because she felt herself losing faith in God because of me (Well, I was a little hysterical back then when talking about God. I might have given atheists a bad name for her. I’m sorry, atheists).
Anyway, she and my mother worked together to try and reconvert me. My mother tried to rationalize the existence of God for me, and told me how immoral not believing in God was. It didn’t work (if you’re a believer in God, well, let me tell you, it won’t work on any atheist at all).
GF tried a more practical approach. She told me that if I believed in God, no one would judge me anymore. And I wouldn’t experience any of the injustice I found out on the internet. Of course, I was too much of a dignified atheist to even consider believing just so I would look good in society.
They were both hurt every time they failed. I knew that. But still, I had my dignity.
Yeah, I had my dignity until that one night. That one night when GF was trying to convince me again, but I was getting tired of defending myself from her and my mother. That one night when I burst. I told her all about how fucked up, selfish, and cruel God was. And it was the biggest mistake in my atheist years. Never have I offended a Christian so much. She burst into tears and flew into rage.
She also threatened to leave me.
I felt my dignity slowly fading away. I didn’t see this coming. I mean, what the hell? What happened to love? What happened to acceptance?
Despite this, I gave in. I told her I was going to believe in God.
You could probably say that I’m a failure as an atheist. I didn’t defend myself well enough, I was manipulated by my emotions, I made too many mistakes... And you wouldn’t be wrong. Yes, I admit to being a complete failure. But you see, I valued GF way more than I valued my beliefs. And at this point, I really had no choice.
From that point on, I tried insistently to believe in God again. Even until today, I’m still trying to believe. It’s been one year in my relentless pursuit of God. But I could never convince myself to live the way I did before. My belief is currently half-assed since I was threatened into it. But I’ll try to believe forever if it meant that I wouldn’t lose GF.
I’m not sure if it seemed like it, but I was hurt terribly when all this happened. Of course I was hurt when two of the most important people of my life didn’t accept me. Of course I was hurt when I found out that they were ashamed of me. Of course I was hurt when I found out that they would only love me if I had the same opinion as they did. I just ignored all the pain because I didn’t want to sound insincere when I said that I would believe in God.
Don’t think that deciding to believe in God again was easy too. Do you know the feeling of being an atheist? It’s as exhilarating as breaking through barriers, of feeling no limitation. I felt like I was soaring through the clouds and seeing the sunny vista outside, but when I decided to try to believe in God again, it was like going back into a windowless room.
That said, I want you to see what my disbelief has done to the people around me. First off, a lot of people in my school had their thoughts provoked. They began to really think about what they truly believed in. Whether their faith weakened or not, thinking and knowing your faith is always a good thing. Second, people who judged atheism as depressing, joyless, terrifying, and nihilistic (they make up about 90% of the Philippines, just to inform you) were enlightened to the fact that atheists are humans too, and they can also live a happy and moral life like Christians, as I was the prime example. They generally became more open-minded and understanding about non-believers.
You see, when you don’t spend any time talking with an atheist, you only know about them from the monstrous and pathetic picture your pastors and/or your religious teachers have painted for you. But when you hear me half a dozen times saying “Of COURSE I treasure human life, of COURSE I believe in ethics, of COURSE I’m not immoral or joyless,” then you begin to understand people like us a lot more.
My rejection of religious beliefs had brought a little more understanding. If it didn’t bring any to you, then it brought it to other people around me (in my school, especially). Do you know how important “understanding” is? It is the first step to world peace.
I didn’t do this only for myself. I’m an atheist among Christians, and I also did this for all the people out there who think differently but are afraid to come out. The other atheists, the homosexuals, the nerds, the weirdoes, the generally uncool people... I want to inspire them to make a stand. To come out and be proud of who they are, and I want them to know that they are not alone. I want them to know that people are not as callous as they seem to be. That acceptance and understanding is possible.
And you can be the start of bringing more understanding in the world.
I said to my girlfriend that I wanted to change the world. Just being an atheist and telling people how we aren’t really bad, telling people to think more rationally; not just based on how they feel, telling people to form their own opinion and not just copy the opinion of your teachers or your parents, telling people to accept the reality that shit can happen without any purpose whatsoever... Those were what I found were simple ways for me to do that. I wanted to contribute to the betterment of the world before I die. And do you know why this was so important to me? It’s because I believed that this is the only life I have, and I wanted it to be significant.
Of course, now that I’m trying to stay away from my atheism, I can’t quite do so anymore. I’ll just have to think of another way to change the world, then.
***
And now, for dedications.
Mother, this article was written because of you, mostly. You knew very little about this lifestyle or philosophy of mine. And since you’re so fixated to religion, I imagine that your image of an atheist is like any other normal religious person; you must think that atheists are “Godless abominations who threaten the Christian civilization!” The notion that anyone has a reason for doubting God must be intolerable and frightening to you. I think I failed to give you the impression that atheism is not bad at all. Consider this as a second attempt. There is nothing frightening about what I went through. Atheists are just like you. No, they’re not selfish. No, they don’t hate God (If it seems that they do, they’re just at the stage where they are angry). Yes, they appreciate life. I spent more than ten pages explaining it to you. I don’t think I have to repeat myself.
Also, atheism isn’t an idea that you decide one dreary afternoon while reading the Da Vinci Code. Atheism takes some deep thought and careful consideration, especially of your morality. And since atheists are good people, I’m quite sure God will forgive them for making such a trivial mistake of just not believing. After all, He isn’t a selfish and revenge-driven being, right?
Right. So I’m telling you right now. If you see a non-believer, do not wallow in disgust. And remember: “Do not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
GF, I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m making you read this. It’s not because I want you to let me be an atheist again. It’s not because I want to prove anything to you (other than the fact that atheism isn’t bad, which I’m sure you’ve heard from me time and again before). In a way, this is actually a sort of apology letter to you. I’m really sorry for how I acted in the past. I let my anger get the best of me. I think I didn’t quite give atheists a good name like I intended. And I want this piece to clear their names for you.
Other than that, I wanted you to know that I pray, I go to Church, and I try believing. This is all for you, and you alone. Because, like I said, you are -- and you will always be -- more important to me than my philosophy.
My friends, I can’t thank you enough for accepting me despite our difference and my shockingness. You guys made this article possible. In the event that the world did change, in the event that atheists become freely accepted here in our place, you are the ones who would have made it possible.
Other atheists who happened to stumble upon this article: I’m sorry that I failed as an atheist. I can’t really help our cause right now, but even if I’m trying to convert myself into Christianity again, I still want you to fight the good fight. Go out there and fight for our cause, fight for equality with religion, fight for our rights, fight for the downfall of that stupid Hollywood cult “Scientology”, fight for evolution to be taught instead of Intelligent Design, fight for the separation of the state and the church, fight for our reputation. I might lack the ability for any major contribution, but I’ll be supporting you all the way.
Tell this to all the religious people who undermine atheists: "We exist, damn it! Stop ignoring us, stop telling lies about us, and stop treating us as second-class citizens!"
by Joboy M. Villena
This isn’t a rant on how God is bad, how your religion is bringing harm to society, and other things I said about religion before. Rather, this is an explanation of some things about me which you don’t understand.
Before I get on with this piece of writing, I just need you to do two things. One, please remove any and all thoughts of me being bad and you having to correct me. I know you have your own sophisticated theology to prove that my thoughts about God is mistaken, but right now, imagine that no one is wrong and no one is right. I want you to keep an open mind, and I want you to listen to what I am trying to tell you. This is not an argument; this is an explanation.
Two, please don’t look at this as a Christian who wants to save my soul. Look at this as my friend/sibling/parent. Look at this as someone who wants to get to know me better, or someone who wants to understand me, because it’s exactly what I am asking for right now.
You remember when I ranted about God? About how He hates animals, does cruel things, and is generally an unpleasant character? I said many satirical things before about how God is selfish, how religion is stupid, and how smart I am for not believing. I was childish and insulting. I have one thing to say about all of it:
I’m sorry.
I have probably come across as somebody arrogant and condescending. I also acted like I was angry with God and I was so sure of everything. Right now, atheists probably come across to you as angry, conceited people who just love to insult religious beliefs. And yes, lots of other atheists are just as angry and conceited as me during that time (the young atheists, most notably).
But not all atheists are like them. Lots of atheists, and I mean lots of them (Richard Dawkins, Greta Christina, Ellen Johnson, Marilyn Manson) are smart, rational, calm, good people who are happy with their life. And I’m very proud to have shared their beliefs. And do you know what I think about the young, childish, conceited atheists? Whenever I see some people like them, my heart breaks.
I know that when they say “God is a cruel dictator” you see something terrible that’s being said about your belief (and probably you yourself, indirectly). But do you want to know what I see? I see someone who has been taught cruel, confusing, untrue things, and was told that to even question these things would send him to be burned in hell for eternity, and he’s just now coming to realize just how fucked up that was, and just how much he’s full of rage about it.
If you don’t understand how that feels, then imagine that you’ve had a relationship with someone. You spend three years together believing that the other person loves you so much he or she would gladly spend the rest of their life with you. You devote yourself to this person, spending time and money, making extreme sacrifices, but one day you find out that this person never really loved you. All the things he or she said all these years were lies. And after breaking up with him or her, you would come to realize just how terrible this person really was, and would be prone to saying things like, “I can’t believe I let that disgusting person touch me!”
You’d feel cheated and lied to if it happened to you, right? These nonbelievers feel the same. They feel that they’ve been lied to all these years. You might see that what they’re saying are insults, but all I see is anger, trauma, and the need to do something to express all the frustration.
You know what? It was the same for me. Let me tell you the story of how I became an atheist.
Just like your average Christian, I was born into a Christian family, which is typical because children always believe the particular religion that their parents believe in. Who could blame me? Children’s brains are hard-wired to think of their parents as credible, reliable, and crucial sources of information. I’m sure that even you inherited the religion you were taught as a child. As early as age four, I was taught that bad people go to hell where they will be punished forever and ever. I imagined terrible things: making me kneel on hot burning coal, keeping me in a windowless, door-less room with no electric fan (lol), burning me forever and ever. It was pretty traumatizing for me. And it was a belief which I grew up with.
Call me a worry-wart, but for more than fifteen years I had been worrying about going to hell. For that long time span, every time I did something wrong, all those images of horrible punishments flashed before my eyes again and again, and at the same time I also felt guilty for what I did. I think my mental stress back then doubled my mental stress right now.
But I want to make one thing clear. I loved God, and I was thankful for everything I believed He did for me. I loved God especially during the years when I was under the guidance of Mr. Fil Guna of Saint Bridget College. He was the only religion teacher to ever paint my heart with love for God. But I just didn’t give priests or religion teachers my full trust, because I believed that no human should ever claim to be any sort of “messenger of God.”
There was this particular belief which practically drove me crazy at some point in my life: The belief in a “greater plan” or as others like to put it, “everything happens for a reason.” You see, I used to be very prayerful. No one would have noticed, but whenever I was alone, I always remembered God. Whether it was in the jeep, or in my room, I always used to have an imaginary conversation with God. I always checked on Him, to make sure He was still doing fine. I talked to Him in my mind as I would talk to a friend.
There were quite a few times in my life when I reached the point where any true believer in God would begin to ask, “Why is this happening to me?” Usually, they were times when I had an uncomfortably long string of bad luck. I wish I could remember what happened in any of those strings, but I’m sorry. You’ll just have to take my word for it that I, in fact, had a long string of bad luck (it happens to everyone). And whenever it would happen, one question always pops up in my mind: “Why?”
But then, whenever I asked that question, I felt extremely guilty about it. Why? Because my mother taught me that it was sinful to question God. It wasn’t only my mother, in fact. EVERYONE said so. “You dare question God when He works so hard just to give you a good and meaningful life ahead of you? How could you? You should be ashamed of yourself!” Cue me getting a horrifying mental image of eternal punishment yet again.
But there was still a part of me that craved for truth. And whenever I had such strings of bad luck, I would try to figure out, to the best of my ability, what God was trying to tell me. I figured that it was okay to try and ask questions as long as my faith in Him didn’t waver. And so, I rationalized everything that ever happened to me in a way that favored the idea of God having a good intention for me. Now that I think about it, rationalizing God’s intentions might have added even more stress to me.
Speaking of rationalization, I remember the time when I used to pray to God for many things. The first person to ever tell me that prayers do work was my mother. She also told me that I can’t just wish for a PlayStation or a new computer and expect it to be answered immediately. There were a few factors that affected prayers getting answered. You had to be a good Christian, and your wishes have to not just be a selfish wish. During my childhood, she emphasized that I had to be a good person so that my prayers would be answered.
[This is the part where I begin to lose my faith in God. It contains very controversial thoughts, and I can understand if you think you’re going to feel uncomfortable reading it. Out of respect for you and your faith in God, you can skip to the part labeled as “LIFE AS AN ATHEIST” if you want.]
I remember when I prayed for my family to be closer together. And it wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment thing. I literally kept on praying for it until I graduated high school. I was so passionate about that prayer. I think it started when I became jealous that some of the people I knew could always count on their brothers or sisters or parents for help, while I’m always too intimidated to ask for help (I had always felt that my family didn’t like me very much). But the more we aged, the more I felt that the family was drifting apart. And the more I felt that my prayer wasn’t going to be answered. That prayer was never granted to me (along with many other prayers, of course). During this time, I was trying to figure out what exactly I did wrong. Did I not pray right? Did I not deserve to have my prayer answered? Was I a bad person?
Religion teachers and priests had always told me that when your prayer doesn’t get answered, it meant that God has something greater to offer you in the future. But that only served to make me even more confused about everything. What the hell is better than my family getting closer? It wasn’t a materialistic wish, nor was it selfish. I think that by society’s standards, it was a very noble wish. Oh scratch that, what was wrong with my other prayers? When I learned that selfish prayers don’t get answered, I tried to make sure my prayers benefitted others.
Another rationalization, also from teachers and priests, was that sometimes prayers don’t get answered because you don’t remember God enough. “He spends ALL His precious time taking care of the human race, while humans are too busy swimming in their own blessings that they forget to thank God. I should learn to remember God more often because He remembers me all the time.” This proved to be... even more confusing. I remembered God whenever I was alone. I almost always attended the Sunday mass. I praise Him everyday. My teachers always said that things like those were “all He ever wanted,” but what the hell was I doing wrong?
And so it was back to my first rationalization: Everything happens for a reason. If ever God lets anything bad happen to me, He does so because He loves me. He has a plan. A greater plan.
The next time I prayed, well, it wasn’t the usual “God may I please ask for this?” type of prayer. It went something like, “Lord, I’m asking for something-something, but if you wanted something else to happen, then go ahead and stick to your great plan.”
But then, the skeptical mind inside me decided to ask a question. What is the point of praying for something if God has some sort of plan for everything?
I think it was the first time I started to doubt. Because after that came a series of other questions. If God planned everything, then He probably planned whether or not I’m going to hell from the day I was born, didn’t He? If God is the cause of your success because He gave you talent/wisdom/blessings, then why do we blame failures on ourselves and not God (for giving you lack of talent/wisdom/blessings)?
I was horrified when I asked those questions. How dare I doubt the greatness and lovingness of God? Questioning His plan again... I must be possessed by a demon or something (I learned from elementary school that people who don’t believe in God are giving in to their inner demons). I think I’m being tested by God, to see if my faith in Him is strong enough for me to be worthy of being in heaven. Wait, what? I am so arrogant claiming that I am going to heaven just by having enough faith! Arrogance is a sin! I should do good deeds to make up for me doubting God’s greatness so that I could go to heaven. But wait! I can’t just do good deeds because I want to go to heaven. I should do good deeds because I just want to make people happy. Good deeds done for my own good is still just a selfish good deed. If I practice making people happy just for the sake of it, I’ll be going to heaven. But wait! If I’m thinking that I’m going to practice making people happy to go to heaven, then that already means I’m doing this for myself! Oh, can’t I do anything right?
As you can see, I was a stressed out again by my moral dilemmas when I started doubting God. So at that point, I just stopped thinking about God. Because thinking made me lose faith in God.
Months passed. More unanswered prayers, more confusion, more stress. But the more I tried to stop thinking, the stupider I felt. What most people don’t understand about me is this: Once the whisper of skepticism begins in me, I can ignore it, I can shake it off like a dog bothered by a flea, but it will never stop biting. And the more I struggled, the more my faith receded. And the problem here is that I’ve always prided myself as someone who can face reality for what it is. When I decided not to think, I just felt that... that it wasn’t me.
So I decided to find information on religion from the internet. It seemed to be the only way I could be at peace.
I found a website called “Skeptics Annotated Bible.” It’s a list of absurdities, cruelties, intolerance, sexism, and contradictions in the Bible. I decided to check it out despite the fact that it might make me lose faith in God even more, because -- like I said before -- I wasn’t afraid of reality. I figured that if these people just took everything in the Bible out of context just to make it look bad, then I would totally notice it and my faith in God wouldn’t weaken one bit. But if everything they say about the Bible is true and not out of context, then I’m going to have to try and live with the fact that the Bible contains absurd things.
You can say that it was the most important part of this story. That website is what started it all. You can check it out if you like. I read a lot of the verses and I didn’t see verses being taken out of context. Wait, yeah, I did see a few that, in my opinion, were out of context, but mostly I saw horrible, horrible things I’ve never seen before which I can’t seem to make sense of. I literally went, “HEY! These guys are right! That God of the Bible IS a cruel, unjust, abusive maniac!”
And that was when I became interested in atheism. Not really converted, but interested. I searched for information about them, I read their arguments, and I tried to see things in their perspective.
Before, I thought that people needed God in their lives. I thought I needed God. I thought that if there was no God, then the whole world would be ensued into chaos. But then I saw these words: “Look around you. Atheists aren’t killing, stealing, raping, or cheating at any greater rate than believers.” And it made sense.
Maybe I’ve always been skeptical of religion all these years. Maybe I’ve just been trying to rationalize everything bad about it because I thought I needed it. Maybe deep inside, I’ve always been an atheist. But after reading numerous articles about atheism, I found myself agreeing with the authors. And I saw a new opportunity for myself. I found myself saying “I don’t want to have to devote my life to God anymore. I don’t want to have to pray five times a day. I don’t want to feel pressured by hell and eternal damnation. I don’t want to think about why my prayers are never answered. I don’t want to have to rationalize everything bad that God is doing so He would look good. I don’t want to feel guilty whenever I doubt. I want out. I want out! I want out!”
So I had to make a choice.
LIFE AS AN ATHEIST:
This is what my choice looked like when I was on the verge of atheism (many thanks to “The Matrix”):
“You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”
I remember that one night all too well. The night when I decided to face what I believed was the reality that I’m not going anywhere when I die, no divine power is looking after me, nobody can help anyone in the hospital through prayer, and that there is no divine/demonic or outside force controlling me. But despite all this realization, when I decided to take the red pill, I felt as though a great weight has been lifted off of me.
It was like being released from some sort of prison.
No longer did I burden myself with asking questions whenever I experienced long strings of bad luck. No longer did I get horrible mental images of eternal damnation whenever I think about questioning God’s greatness. No longer did I have to remember to talk to God five times a day. No longer did I have to feel guilty whenever I find it annoying that people are preaching God’s word in the streets and then asking me for a donation.
Does it sound selfish to you? If you’re a believer, then yeah, it probably does. You’d say “I never thought of how God feels and I only cared for myself.” But I want you to know something: I was still thankful for food and shelter, I was thankful for modern technology, I was thankful for joy, for love, for thrill, and I was thankful for life. If I find out that there is a God, then I would have applauded Him and said “I’m sorry, it was an honest mistake.” I didn’t underestimate His capacity for forgiveness (and neither should you). If God really was the perfectly moral and understanding God that Christians made him out to be, then I knew that it wouldn’t matter to Him if I didn’t believe, as long as I was a moral person.
But despite all those thoughts, I still kept my atheism to myself. It’s because I was living in a Christian world. People might shun me. I was afraid. But I did begin asking my friends some questions which confused me back in my religious days. They were confused as well, but then they just laughed about it and jokingly told me I was an atheist. Boy, they had no idea.
So I decided to study more about the lifestyle of atheists. What I’ve found out was that there really is no single lifestyle for all of them. They lived in their own way; however they wanted to live their lives. Of course, it doesn’t mean that there’s nothing stopping them from killing and maiming each other. On the contrary, they are quite moral, and most of them believed in freedom. Contrary to popular belief, atheism isn’t a sad, meaningless, immoral life without the guidance of God. This is what being an atheist truly means (thanks to ebonmusings.org):
Being an atheist means you don't have to be afraid of bumps and other noises in the night, secure in the knowledge that there are no ghosts, no evil spirits, no demons waiting to get us when we turn out the lights.
Being an atheist means you don't have to think of yourself as a sinful wretch who can never do anything right.
Being an atheist means you're not predestined or born into some particular social class or station in life, but can set your own path and make your own goals, limited only by your imagination and your willingness to apply your skills.
Being an atheist means you're free to experience the world as it is, not filtered through the preconceptions of a rigid, inflexible mindset.
Being an atheist means you can view the sunrise on a pink and blue dawn and know it represents the dark side of the Earth rotating towards the type G2 yellow star it orbits as it spins through space, or the distant snow-capped mountains and know they're the result of a fiery, slow-motion collision of two vast continental plates drifting on a sea of magma, or the gold-speckled green leaves of the trees of the forest and know they're photosynthetic organisms with many of the same genes as you feeding off sunlight and water to produce sugar and wood, and realize that knowing these things only makes these sights far more beautiful.
Being an atheist means freedom from ancient superstitions.
Being an atheist means a fearless outlook and a free intelligence.
Being an atheist means no one tells you how or what to think.
Being an atheist means there is no forbidden knowledge.
Being an atheist means you're not only allowed, but encouraged to question.
Being an atheist means you're free to form your own opinions, rather than having your outlook colored by a belief system that tells you what you should think.
Being an atheist means you accept the world as it is, not as you wish it to be.
That just about sums up my thoughts when I became an atheist. I believed that it isn’t about being sinful. What it meant to me is that it’s simply a freedom of thought. It’s something which I didn’t experience enough while tied to a religion, and the reason why I was more comfortable with atheism.
But it wasn’t just that. Atheism gave me a newfound appreciation of everything around me. I felt a bit like a child rediscovering this familiar, yet wonderful and strange world. When I became an atheist and saw houses, buildings, devices, and everything humans created, I thought, “Humans have the power to shape the environment. They’re aware of everything that happens around the world. That’s just freaking awesome.”
“Because of our brain cells, we humans are capable of understanding our environment and ourselves to the tiniest detail. We’re capable of understanding how things work and we are capable of not only adapting, but manipulating everything to benefit ourselves. And I know that humans will continue to grow and change.”
I looked at the plants. I thought, “These things -- these beautiful things -- are the products of photosynthesis and the heat and light of the sun.”
I looked around me. I thought, “These are made up of a bunch of molecules and atoms with proton, neuron, and electron.”
I looked at the night sky, stared at the starry infinity and thought, “Those little dots are as big -- or bigger -- than the sun. Even some others are entire galaxies.”
I looked at myself in the mirror and said to myself, “I exist!” and I felt transformed and excited, and the world seemed more special than I have ever thought before.
And that, for me, was just freaking awesome. I thought, “Wow, the universe is far greater than I have ever imagined. No, it’s far greater than I can imagine.”
It’s like watching a painter stroke his brush for hours and hours and hours. At first, all you can see are a bunch of mixed colors, but then, after a while, you’ll see a beautiful picture. It just blew me away how the universe is like this. And thinking that these are possible without a god only made it more amazing for me. It might not be that amazing to you, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not. There will always be people who will sneer at me for thinking such things, not because they have any understanding of what I went through, but because their inflexible religious faith demands it. During the whole span of my atheism, no believer has ever understood this feeling. You can call it an atheist’s “spirituality.”
This “spirituality” feeling is something that Christians experience through their religion and their so-called “miracles”, I guess, but I never had that same experience. I only felt this sense of wonder when I became an atheist. I think that this sort of realization is far more powerful than the religious view that, in the whole expansion of the universe, the life of Jesus was the most important thing that ever happened in the history of the cosmos, and our life is just something that’s made to keep us busy while we “wait for the Kingdom of God.” I felt that, in the religious view of things, our lives and the cosmos are experiments. Test runs. We have about the same value as rats trapped in a maze. And it just degrades the value of everything around us.
Which brings me to my other inspiration, I found myself appreciating life itself. My value of human life doubled because I believed that this was the only life anyone ever has. When I’m gone, I’m gone forever. My life expectancy had gone from infinity down to a few decades. And so I got a newfound determination to do something that will change the world. I wanted my name to be remembered, not necessarily by everyone on the earth, but by numerous people around me. I wanted to change people’s lives like Socrates, Plato, Darwin, Elvis Presley, Ferdinand Magellan, Jose Rizal, and so many others who had made an impact, so that when I’m gone forever, I’ll leave a legacy. For the first time in my life, I felt the need to live this life to the fullest.
Also, I felt like I could brag about my morality. You see, I was quite happy to realize that I’m sure I’m not doing good deeds just to go to heaven. I’m doing good deeds because I believed it’s the right thing to do. So my morality felt a little more mature.
It was really amazing. Christians keep talking about the liberation of ‘being saved’ but nothing can compare to the liberating feeling of tossing aside the shackles of religion. I really felt like I was soaring through the clouds.
Of course, the good things weren’t the only things I found out.
It shocked me when I found out that according to a Gallup poll, only 44% of all Americans would vote for an atheist president. It shocked me when I found out that atheists weren’t allowed to testify in court before. Did people think that the only thing keeping people from doing bad things is the belief that a deity is watching them? I wonder how Europe is doing now that a lot of people are atheists -- Oh wait, that’s right, Europe is prosperous. Europe is not chaotic and full of evil, and it has the same crime rate as any other religious country. How about you, reader? Is the only thing keeping you from killing people the belief that God will punish you? (Just in case your answer is yes, then please see a counselor. No, not your nearest bishop/priest who studied more theology than psychology. See a real, professional counselor. Someone with a degree.)
Those are just two examples. I have a lot more to share about the injustice that atheism received but that would take up too much of your time in reading this. See gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2007/10/atheists-and-an.html for more information if you want. It’s a nice compilation of everything that atheists are angry about.
Anyways, after a few days of living my new secret life (which was a lot less stressful), I found out about the goth subculture. Goths are what you call people who see the beauty of the darker side of life. They dress mostly in a fashion that doesn’t conform to normal standards, and thus sometimes people would call them freaks, but they don’t really care. Part of being goth is not being brought down by the opinion of others.
It amazed me that they don’t care what other people think of them. They’d rather hang out with the freaks than be cool and popular, and you can see that there’s a real depth in their personality. This is precisely what inspired me to come out of my Christian disguise and be proud of my atheism.
That was when I became an ‘out-of-the-closet’ atheist, happier than I had ever been before.
It came as a shock to my friends when I told them I really did become an atheist, but they were just fine with it. It also came as a shock to my classmates, but like my friends, they were fine with it. It came as a shock to my teachers, and some of them were rather impressed to hear how much I’ve thought about my religion. Both my friends, my classmates, and my teachers knew that my being an atheist was no joke. They saw that I gave it much thought and consideration.
But like every stereotype, some people have some common misconceptions about me. Here are some of the most common of those misconceptions:
1. I hate God.
2. I’m a sad, wounded victim who doesn’t understand that God loves me.
3. I’m 100% sure that God doesn’t exist.
I don’t hate God, considering that for me to hate Him, well, He has to exist. What I hate, actually, are the twisted beliefs of some Christians when they’re influenced by religious texts. For example, gay sex is an abomination (intolerant fundamentalists), staying in an abusive marriage is encouraged (anti-divorce proponents), the theory of evolution isn’t true (people trying to act like religion is science), God gives horrible, HORRIBLE punishments to people who can’t help but give in to temptation (surprisingly, a whole lot of believers), Filipinos praying to God makes Manny Pacquaio’s opponents lose (Christians being snarky to non-believers), the attack on the World Trade Center was caused by pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians (Jerry Falwell). I have a lot more reasons to be angry, and I barely scratched the surface (again, I suggest seeing gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2007/10/atheists-and-an.html for more on this subject).
I might have made fun of the God of the Bible (especially the God of the Old Testament), but that’s just because He’s such an easy target, what with the Old Testament stories being so filled with massacres and God’s wrath. Plus, I was at my early, angry stages of atheism and I think it’s perfectly normal. Like I explained before, I was in my ‘angry’ stage; I was just then coming to realize how fucked up some of my beliefs used to be (I’m sure you’ve read in the first part how much I was stressed out by my religion). I was also angry about all the unjust comments people have about us:
First example (I found out about this on Greta Christina’s blog. You can Google it.), commenting on a shooting at the New Life Church (and on the bravery of one person who helped stop the shooter), someone said, “What would the atheist do in this situation but run away and scream, “Hey, survival of the fittest! See ya later suckers!” And when confronted by the atheists about how this isn’t remotely what an atheist thinks or believes, he replied, “The atheist can save a life if they want, but according to the atheist worldview man is nothing more than matter and motion - saving a human life is no more better than saving protoplasm.”
Second example, I received a text message back then saying “Atheists are just a bunch of fucktards who are following a trend and don’t know damn shit about what they’re talking about!”
Third and most common example, said by absolutely fucking everyone: “Joboy is the one who helped me with my studies, he’s very smart, very compassionate, and he’s a shoulder you can lean on... But he doesn’t believe in God, and that makes him a bad person.”
ROOOOOOOOOAAAAAR!!!! Okay, deep breath, Joboy. Think calm, blue, and peaceful ocean. Calm, blue, peaceful.
Anyways, I was angry and I wanted to vent my frustration. I wanted to say “HEY! I’m an atheist, I have a good reason to be one, and I’m not evil! Stop telling lies about me, and stop treating me like I’m psychotic!” I wish I could’ve expressed myself differently back then, and I wish I didn’t take it out on people who weren’t involved. I know what wrong I did now, and I’m sorry for that.
But still, I wanted to stop being treated like a sad, wounded victim who doesn’t understand that God loves me. You need to look at me with a more open eye. You may think I was not appreciative of everything God has ever done for me. But considering that something has to exist in order for me to appreciate it, I don’t think it’s fair of you to accuse me of anything. Yes, I’m thankful for life, for joy, for love, and every beautiful thing that ever existed in this reality. And if God really did exist, I would thank Him quite dearly. But I didn’t become an atheist because I didn’t appreciate God. I especially didn’t become an atheist because I was angry with religion (it’s the other way around, actually. I was angry with religion because I became an atheist).
No atheist I know has ever left religion because they were angry. People who are angry with religion but still believe? They tend to gravitate towards another religion. People don’t leave religion because they’re angry. They leave because they’re convinced that religion doesn’t make any sense. And it’s the same for me.
Of course, the third misconception suggests that I’m just as close-minded as the Christians who are 100% sure of their God. I beg to differ. Atheism isn’t about being sure of God’s nonexistence. It just means being sure enough. Enough that you can comfortably live your life as though there’s no God.
Anyways, there was still one person who needed to know about my disbelief. And that was my mother. My very religious mother who would go batshit crazy if she found out my little secret.
I made a mistake in my timing of telling her I didn’t believe. It was during the time I was into Marilyn Manson’s music (yes, mister elitist goth, I know that Marilyn Manson isn’t goth, but I found out about him when he was mentioned in the goth scene, and I happened to like his music). My mother didn’t know Marilyn Manson; all she knew was that he looked freaky as shit and that he was bad news. She probably thought I was worshipping or was influenced by a devil or something. But I was assured, seeing me watching Marilyn Manson videos only made me look worse in her eyes.
She didn’t exactly know why I appreciated the guy. I’ll tell you in Manson’s own words. When Bill O’Reilly asked Manson what his messages were in his songs, he responded, “It’s always about being yourself and not being ashamed of being different, of thinking different. I try and take everyone’s ideals, common morals, flip them around, and make people look at them differently, question them so that you’re not always taking things for granted.”
There was this other misconception she had. She thought that the reason I became an atheist was just to be unique. I beg to differ. I just shared my deconversion story. If you skipped it, then I assure you that I didn’t become an atheist to be unique.
I made another mistake back then. When she was trying to argue with me into believing in God again, I focused on the bad things about religion. I didn’t focus so much on the good things about atheism. I didn’t tell her about my newfound appreciation for everything. I didn’t tell her about my newfound moral maturity. I didn’t tell her about the great weight that’s been lifted off of me.
After failing to reconvert me into believing, my mother pulled out her secret weapon. She texted my girlfriend (let’s just call her “GF” for now). She asked GF to tell me to believe in God because perhaps I would listen to her.
It turns out that GF had wanted to reconvert me a long time ago because she was getting very uncomfortable with my disbelief. I didn’t know why. I can’t remember if I asked her why or not. If I did, then it’s either I didn’t understand, or she didn’t answer. I don’t know, I can’t remember. But I assume it’s either because people treated her differently, or it’s because she felt herself losing faith in God because of me (Well, I was a little hysterical back then when talking about God. I might have given atheists a bad name for her. I’m sorry, atheists).
Anyway, she and my mother worked together to try and reconvert me. My mother tried to rationalize the existence of God for me, and told me how immoral not believing in God was. It didn’t work (if you’re a believer in God, well, let me tell you, it won’t work on any atheist at all).
GF tried a more practical approach. She told me that if I believed in God, no one would judge me anymore. And I wouldn’t experience any of the injustice I found out on the internet. Of course, I was too much of a dignified atheist to even consider believing just so I would look good in society.
They were both hurt every time they failed. I knew that. But still, I had my dignity.
Yeah, I had my dignity until that one night. That one night when GF was trying to convince me again, but I was getting tired of defending myself from her and my mother. That one night when I burst. I told her all about how fucked up, selfish, and cruel God was. And it was the biggest mistake in my atheist years. Never have I offended a Christian so much. She burst into tears and flew into rage.
She also threatened to leave me.
I felt my dignity slowly fading away. I didn’t see this coming. I mean, what the hell? What happened to love? What happened to acceptance?
Despite this, I gave in. I told her I was going to believe in God.
You could probably say that I’m a failure as an atheist. I didn’t defend myself well enough, I was manipulated by my emotions, I made too many mistakes... And you wouldn’t be wrong. Yes, I admit to being a complete failure. But you see, I valued GF way more than I valued my beliefs. And at this point, I really had no choice.
From that point on, I tried insistently to believe in God again. Even until today, I’m still trying to believe. It’s been one year in my relentless pursuit of God. But I could never convince myself to live the way I did before. My belief is currently half-assed since I was threatened into it. But I’ll try to believe forever if it meant that I wouldn’t lose GF.
I’m not sure if it seemed like it, but I was hurt terribly when all this happened. Of course I was hurt when two of the most important people of my life didn’t accept me. Of course I was hurt when I found out that they were ashamed of me. Of course I was hurt when I found out that they would only love me if I had the same opinion as they did. I just ignored all the pain because I didn’t want to sound insincere when I said that I would believe in God.
Don’t think that deciding to believe in God again was easy too. Do you know the feeling of being an atheist? It’s as exhilarating as breaking through barriers, of feeling no limitation. I felt like I was soaring through the clouds and seeing the sunny vista outside, but when I decided to try to believe in God again, it was like going back into a windowless room.
That said, I want you to see what my disbelief has done to the people around me. First off, a lot of people in my school had their thoughts provoked. They began to really think about what they truly believed in. Whether their faith weakened or not, thinking and knowing your faith is always a good thing. Second, people who judged atheism as depressing, joyless, terrifying, and nihilistic (they make up about 90% of the Philippines, just to inform you) were enlightened to the fact that atheists are humans too, and they can also live a happy and moral life like Christians, as I was the prime example. They generally became more open-minded and understanding about non-believers.
You see, when you don’t spend any time talking with an atheist, you only know about them from the monstrous and pathetic picture your pastors and/or your religious teachers have painted for you. But when you hear me half a dozen times saying “Of COURSE I treasure human life, of COURSE I believe in ethics, of COURSE I’m not immoral or joyless,” then you begin to understand people like us a lot more.
My rejection of religious beliefs had brought a little more understanding. If it didn’t bring any to you, then it brought it to other people around me (in my school, especially). Do you know how important “understanding” is? It is the first step to world peace.
I didn’t do this only for myself. I’m an atheist among Christians, and I also did this for all the people out there who think differently but are afraid to come out. The other atheists, the homosexuals, the nerds, the weirdoes, the generally uncool people... I want to inspire them to make a stand. To come out and be proud of who they are, and I want them to know that they are not alone. I want them to know that people are not as callous as they seem to be. That acceptance and understanding is possible.
And you can be the start of bringing more understanding in the world.
I said to my girlfriend that I wanted to change the world. Just being an atheist and telling people how we aren’t really bad, telling people to think more rationally; not just based on how they feel, telling people to form their own opinion and not just copy the opinion of your teachers or your parents, telling people to accept the reality that shit can happen without any purpose whatsoever... Those were what I found were simple ways for me to do that. I wanted to contribute to the betterment of the world before I die. And do you know why this was so important to me? It’s because I believed that this is the only life I have, and I wanted it to be significant.
Of course, now that I’m trying to stay away from my atheism, I can’t quite do so anymore. I’ll just have to think of another way to change the world, then.
***
And now, for dedications.
Mother, this article was written because of you, mostly. You knew very little about this lifestyle or philosophy of mine. And since you’re so fixated to religion, I imagine that your image of an atheist is like any other normal religious person; you must think that atheists are “Godless abominations who threaten the Christian civilization!” The notion that anyone has a reason for doubting God must be intolerable and frightening to you. I think I failed to give you the impression that atheism is not bad at all. Consider this as a second attempt. There is nothing frightening about what I went through. Atheists are just like you. No, they’re not selfish. No, they don’t hate God (If it seems that they do, they’re just at the stage where they are angry). Yes, they appreciate life. I spent more than ten pages explaining it to you. I don’t think I have to repeat myself.
Also, atheism isn’t an idea that you decide one dreary afternoon while reading the Da Vinci Code. Atheism takes some deep thought and careful consideration, especially of your morality. And since atheists are good people, I’m quite sure God will forgive them for making such a trivial mistake of just not believing. After all, He isn’t a selfish and revenge-driven being, right?
Right. So I’m telling you right now. If you see a non-believer, do not wallow in disgust. And remember: “Do not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
GF, I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m making you read this. It’s not because I want you to let me be an atheist again. It’s not because I want to prove anything to you (other than the fact that atheism isn’t bad, which I’m sure you’ve heard from me time and again before). In a way, this is actually a sort of apology letter to you. I’m really sorry for how I acted in the past. I let my anger get the best of me. I think I didn’t quite give atheists a good name like I intended. And I want this piece to clear their names for you.
Other than that, I wanted you to know that I pray, I go to Church, and I try believing. This is all for you, and you alone. Because, like I said, you are -- and you will always be -- more important to me than my philosophy.
My friends, I can’t thank you enough for accepting me despite our difference and my shockingness. You guys made this article possible. In the event that the world did change, in the event that atheists become freely accepted here in our place, you are the ones who would have made it possible.
Other atheists who happened to stumble upon this article: I’m sorry that I failed as an atheist. I can’t really help our cause right now, but even if I’m trying to convert myself into Christianity again, I still want you to fight the good fight. Go out there and fight for our cause, fight for equality with religion, fight for our rights, fight for the downfall of that stupid Hollywood cult “Scientology”, fight for evolution to be taught instead of Intelligent Design, fight for the separation of the state and the church, fight for our reputation. I might lack the ability for any major contribution, but I’ll be supporting you all the way.
Tell this to all the religious people who undermine atheists: "We exist, damn it! Stop ignoring us, stop telling lies about us, and stop treating us as second-class citizens!"