My road to atheism Part 3

My son was born during finals week of my last semester of college. My husband's parents, my mom, and my grandma all traveled across the mountains to Missoula to greet my son when he was born. It was an exciting, unforgettable day. We moved back to Spokane two weeks later and I settled in as a stay at home mom. Eighteen months later, my daughter was born and we had another celebration at the hospital with all of the family. Even my son came in the middle of the night with Grandma to meet his new sister.

As a mom, I've experienced every emotion: love, fear, happiness, sadness, worry, pride...the list goes on. It's an indescribable feeling to realize that your baby is totally dependent on you. I was confident I could take care of my kids' physical needs. As they've gotten older if I have questions about parenting, I'll do some research and look for the best methods for my kids. If something doesn't work, I'll look for something that might. I just wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing for my kids....I did not want to screw them up:) It didn't take long to realize that nobody is a perfect parent. However, I promised myself I would do my best.

I know that many people turn to religion when they have children. But, I honestly don't know exactly why this is. Perhaps people who went to church when they were little feel that church is a requirement in childhood. Or maybe some people correlate church with a moral upbringing. I don't know what the feeling is because I never experienced it. In fact, I had quite the opposite experience.

My instinct was to shelter my children from church. Not because I had terrible church experiences when I was little, I didn't. I have fond memories of going to church on Sundays and seeing my friends. Rather, I wanted to shelter them from the ideas that church puts in young minds. Our belief system is right.....everybody else's belief system is wrong......you are a sinner.....if you are not saved by Jesus, god will torture you forever in hell. I wanted my kids to grow up to be tolerant of everyone....and church tends to do the opposite. As one Christian told me, "tolerance is bad".

By this time in my life, I didn't accept a literal translation of the Bible. I had learned enough to realize that many of the stories just didn't make sense logically or scientifically. I thought that maybe everybody in the world was worshipping the same god....we just didn't know it :) That allowed me to account for the different belief systems in the world, and in my mind it exonerated everyone from hell....except for the really bad people of course. This didn't quite add up though. If we all worshipped the same god, why were so many wars fought over religion? Why was everyone so hateful towards people who believed something different? Not to mention the many discrepancies one finds between different religions....if we all worshipped the same god, I think there'd be more similarities than differences.

Then, when my son was 9 months old to the day, we woke up to a phone call from my in-laws. They told us to turn on our TV. The United States was being attacked. I remember feeling numb that day. We had a doctor's appointment for my son and the lobby was silent. Everyone was focused on the TV. It turned out that some commercial planes had been hi-jacked and flown into the World Trade Center. The pilots were Muslims and thought that they were doing what god wanted them to do....they believed they would be rewarded in heaven.

Until that point, I don't think I realized how strongly people believe in other religions. These men truly believed that Allah wanted them to do this terrible thing. Their belief was so strong, that they died because of it. I recalled being told some time ago that this was one of the evidences for Christianity....the early martyrs would not have died for a false belief. Well, if that were true, did that make Islam true? They couldn't both be true because they had teachings that contradicted one another.

OK, well it was time to delve back into the research I had started in high school. After reading Josh McDowell's book, I had not dug deeper even though I had not been satisfied. I think I had been a little scared of what I would find when I was in high school. I just needed to decide where to start. I had two young kids and my time for reading adult literature was extremely limited....almost non-existent. Well, in every other situation, I would examine both sides of a story and see which side made sense and had evidence to back up the claims. If I had not been exposed to new religions, cultures and ideas, I may not have thought to do the research. But, I knew that there were many religions in the world and one's beliefs tend to be highly correlated with their location of birth.

Since I had been raised as a Christian, I knew what the basic beliefs of Christianity are. (I say basic beliefs because there are many different denominations and each has its differences.) So, I decided to look into why people did not believe in the Christian god. Luckily, we live in the age of the internet where information can be found at our fingertips. I quickly found The Secular Web and its library along with many other sites....some good, some not so good.

My first shock came when I found out that some people were not certain whether Jesus even existed! As my heart raced, I thought to myself that this was totally ridiculous, but then I looked at their arguments. The Jesus I had read about in the gospels had many followers...wouldn't there be some other record besides the gospels to account for his existence? Then the shocks kept coming....The gospels authors are not known? The gospels were written decades after Jesus' death....how could they be eyewitness accounts? Wait a second....there were other gods with stories similar to Jesus? There were other "miracle workers" in Jesus time? The more I learned, the more I was blown away. Nobody had told me this in Sunday school!

I read the arguments from the side of the non-believers and I understood why they didn't believe. So, then I needed to look at what Christians answers to these questions were. There had to be some good explanations, maybe some of the claims of these non-believers were not accurate. Surely, the Christian answer would include some good evidence. However, none of the rebuttals I found did that. OK, this was getting scary. My curiosity was overtaking me and I wanted to learn more....but the more I learned, the more my beliefs in god were fading away. Things that I had thought were proven truths....were nothing but stories.

I finally came to the conclusion that the best I could say was, "I don't know if any of it is true". This terrified me...I like to be in control and know exactly what is right and true. But, the evidence just wasn't there. Oh. My. God.(figuratively speaking :))!!!! What was I going to do? It seemed like everyone had a religion. I needed to find a religion to hold on to. I couldn't follow Islam or Mormonism because their stories seemed silly. Wait a second, every religion I looked at seemed silly. Of course, some seemed sillier than others, but I didn't find any that offered me anything that I couldn't have without religion.

Pause....do I needreligion? What would I be if I didn't have a religion? What box would I mark on the surveys when they ask for your religion? I had been marking the Christian box all my life....even when I stopped going to church and didn't believe in the literal Bible. My identity was falling apart....could I be an atheist? NO...I couldn't be!

I searched the term atheism for the first time. As I typed it, it felt like I was doing something wrong. Atheism had been ingrained in my brain as a bad word....those were bad people. Well, the only way to find out was to see what atheists had to say. And it turned out that the atheists I found, felt the same way I did about religion! They just didn't believe that any of the religions were true. They weren't Satan worshippers, they weren't claiming that there was absolutely no god....they just didn't believe in any of the gods that other people believe in. And it hit me.....I was an atheist! I couldn't put my finger on an exact moment when it had happened, but it had happened.

I was free!! Free from a stifling belief in a god who watches everything you do and listens to every thought in your head. I no longer needed to wonder what god's reason was for allowing things to happen in my life....it was just life. And life was so much more precious because it was the only one I'd have. Wow....what a feeling!


***Disclaimer****

Given that this is written in story form, it may seem that events occurred more closely together than they actually did. However, my searching did not take days or even months. This was a very long process because I wanted to look at all angles. I was searching for truth and that is not something that I take lightly. I continue to educate myself about these things today and read articles and books about all different religions. My mind has not been closed....it was opened when I began to consider that my religion may not be true.

Dilemma?

First, I do realize I haven't finished my de-conversion story. I will get to that soon....things are just a little crazy right now.

As I am nearing the end of nursing school, everyone is asking where I want to work. It seems that the standard place to start is in a hospital, but I'm not sure that that is where I want to be. My ideal job would be at a Planned Parenthood or free clinic. However, I'm looking in to local hospitals, simply because I know they hire new grads and that may be the place I need to start.

I thought I had decided which hospitals to apply to...until I saw one of their websites today. The first thing one is assaulted with on the website is a box entitled Death with Dignity?. For those of you who are not from Washington, voters recently passed a Death with Dignity initiative by a large margin. It is almost identical to Oregon's in its stipulations. The person who seeks a lethal prescription must be deemed terminally ill with less than 6 months to live. I believe that this has to be determined by a minimum of 2 doctors....but I'm not positive. Then, if they choose, they can request a lethal prescription from their doctor which the patient would have to administer if and when they choose to. Doctors are not required to prescribe these prescriptions if they choose not to.

Ok, so I went on to read the article on the hospital's website. It says, "Providence Health & Services will not support physician-assisted suicide within its ministries. Our ministries will not provide lethal prescriptions to patients." It's not really surprising because it's a Catholic hospital. (I wonder if they allow their physicians to prescribe birth control?)

But, now I have a dilemma. Do I really want to work for a company that will not allow their doctors to make their own choices on this matter? I think it should be up to each individual doctor. I admit...I do not know what type of contract these doctors are under with the hospital. I know many of them have their own practices...would this hospital be upset if they prescribed a lethal prescription in their private practice? I really don't know enough about the politics of the hospital to understand the ramifications. But...now I'm really not sure I would want to work at either of the two hospitals in our city that are run by Providence. That puts a huge limitation on my choices.


What to do, what to do......





Oh, and just for fun, you can go to the hospital's website and take their online poll about whether the death with dignity initiative is ethical :)

My road to atheism Part 2

Our church search eventually led to no church. I just wanted to worship god my own way and not have to deal with the politics of the church. I did my daily devotionals, read books by Christian authors, listened to Christian music and enjoyed nature.

Now, before I continue, I must say that none of these events occurred in any certain order. Everything was happening in the same time frame when I was in my sophomore and junior years at high school. So, in random order, these are some other things that were going on in my life.

I was curious about yoga and meditation. I was warned that these things were satanic, but my curiosity overcame my fear. I went to the public library and started reading some books about yoga. (The library was my FAVORITE place when I was a kid).

I wanted to be an effective witness to other people. So, I read Josh McDowell's Evidence that Demands a Verdict. I struggled with it because much of it just wasn't logical. I felt that he wanted me to believe something simply because he said it or provided a quote from someone else. There wasn't much evidence presented. That just wasn't good enough for me....I wanted the evidence. So, if Josh wasn't going to present it, I guess I'd have to look for it myself.

I read a book about Mormonism. My heart raced every time I took it out. I'd look around to make sure my mom and sisters didn't notice what I was reading. Why? Because everyone knew that Mormonism was a cult...it might be dangerous to read about it. But, I found it intriguing. We had a church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints right next to my high school and I had many friends who would leave during the day to go and take a class at the church. Hey, they couldn't be all that bad. I mean, they believed in Jesus too.

In my senior year of high school, I didn't really think about religion much. I was having fun with my friends and had just started dating my boyfriend (now my husband :)). I graduated as one of the valedictorians of my high school and something I overheard one of my religious uncles say at my graduation party will never be forgotten: "She's a valedictorian, but it's at a public school. She couldn't have done it at local Christian school." This hateful statement hit me like a brick. It was one of my first glimpses of Christian hate and it opened my eyes to many other hateful things done in the name of Christianity. I had been naive enough to believe that all people who go to church are good, loving people. This was a rude awakening.

I had given up on the idea of Bible college sometime after our visit to the school in Montana. It just wasn't for me. I had big dreams...I wanted to help people who had family members with mental illnesses. I had been lucky to have support from friends, teachers, school counselors and my mom's family. But, I knew that many people didn't have that support. A Bible school that was not accredited wouldn't help me attain those goals. So, I had applied at a local university and was accepted into their Honor's program.

The Honor's program laid out my first year of college. The advanced courses I took focused my studies on philosophy and the modern sciences. I was also allowed to be part of a research group in my selected area of psychology. I went on to take more science and philosophy courses...I loved them. My high school education had not exposed me to the works that I was reading by Plato, Epictetus, Kant, Euripides, Aristotle and Darwin....just to name a few.

At this point, I may have still called myself a Christian...but I was a very liberal Christian. My husband and I got married after my second year of college. We did not want to get married in a church, so we found a beautiful place for an outdoor wedding. We didn't want to be married by a pastor, but didn't know any other options. So, we found one of the most liberal pastors we could find :) I remember catching my breath when he said shit one time :) I distinctly remember my wedding day as being the first time I kept my eyes open during prayer. I know that sounds silly, but when you're raised from birth as a Christian...you just don't do that. It was very liberating :)

Another random memory I have from this time period is about Noah's ark. Someone told me very excitedly that "they" had found Noah's ark. (I don't recall which "they" this was...it was sometime in the late 1990's). When I was younger, I probably would have been really excited. But, it was at that moment that I realized...I didn't believe the story. I had been raised to believe that everything in the Bible was literally true....but come on, it just didn't add up. So, I just smiled, but knew that nothing would come of it.

My husband had been accepted into pharmacy school, so we moved to Montana after we were married. I ended up taking classes in Buddhism, Anthropology, Literature, Biology, Art and various other subjects. My anthropology class focused on belief systems around the world. I had never dreamed that there could be so many! My sheltered life was being blown away by my education. I helped out at the Sunday school of a UU church once in awhile while we lived in Montana and found it to be very interesting. I was being exposed more and more to different points of view and my curiosity just kept growing.

Then....I got pregnant.

My road to atheism Part 1

I hadn't really thought about writing my de-conversion story until a couple of readers asked about it. There is not one specific point where I could say I became an atheist. It was an accumulation of life experiences that led to it. So, I'll start from the beginning and go from there. I'll try not to make it too boring, but I also don't want to leave anything out :)

I was raised in a Christian home. My parents started out as Lutherans and baptized me in the Lutheran church when I was a few months old. Three years later my middle sister was born and 13 months after that my baby sister was born. I do not recall them being baptized in the church, but I'm not sure why. We moved around a lot when I was little....I lived in 7 houses by the time I was 8! The only church I actually remember from that period in my life was a little Baptist church in Pinehurst, ID.

My best friend at that time was a girl whose parents were missionaries in Papua New Guinea. My family went to church every Sunday and we were also involved in the youth group at the church. I also remember being a part of the Primroses, a Christian version of Campfire girls :) Church was just a part of life.

When I was eight years old, my family moved back to Spokane. From that point on, we attended a non-denominational church. Basically, the church believed the Bible to be literally true and didn't want to define itself by any denomination. Now, we went to Sunday School, morning church service, sometimes evening church service and AWANA on Wednesday nights. I was up to my neck in church stuff :)

Honestly, I think my mom needed church to get away from things. She was raising three young girls, basically on her own. Our home life was crazy because my dad has schizophrenia. We never knew when he'd have a bad day. I can remember being scared for our lives. Unfortunately, I think the beliefs of our church encouraged my mom to stay with him longer than she should have. Divorce is wrong....god won't give us anything we can't handle...there's always a reason for everything god does....god made dad the way he is, we need to accept that.

I only mention this because my early experiences had a strong influence on my personality. I was angry with my mom for cowering when my dad would hurt her. I wanted her to stand up for herself and fight back. As I became older, I started to stand up to him and tried to protect her. If she wasn't going to stand up for us or herself, then I would. I made some vows to myself at a very young age: 1) I would never feel obligated to marry someone, 2) I would never allow anyone to treat me poorly and 3) I would fight back whenever someone tried to intimidate me.

When I was 14, my mom finally left my dad. He had tried to hurt me and that was the final straw for her. Up until that point, I think I went to church because it was a way for me to get out of the house and go to a place where I was always accepted. I was the little girl who asked everyone at school to go to AWANA with me on Wednesdays. I rarely had friends over to our house and church was the next best place to play with my friends. I memorized my assigned Bible verses and did my devotionals every day. I asked Jesus into my heart whenever it was offered. I think that deep down, I hoped that god would make everything better if only I was good enough.

Once my dad moved out, I became even more religious. Maybe I felt that I owed god something...I'm not sure. I went to church as often as I could and I also met with my Sunday school teacher for a Bible study on Saturday mornings. I had read all the Bible stories that I was told to read and flipped from verse to verse during sermons, always highlighting and making notes in the margins of my Bible. Sometimes, as I was reading, I could feel god talking to me. I'd be overcome with emotion that somebody actually loved me. I decided to get baptized by submersion in front of the whole church to recommit my life to Christ and I felt everything get washed away when I did it. I also started looking at Bible colleges between my freshman and sophomore years and my mom planned an entire spring break vacation around visiting a Bible college in Montana.

But, then I decided to read the Bible from cover to cover. I was about 15 at this point and wanted to know everything about God and the Bible. Groan....I even tried to calculate the age of the earth by using the genealogies in the Old Testament. As I read on, I came across some really terrible things. At first, I'd try to tell myself that God did these terrible things because he had to...he knew what was best. But, eventually I wasn't buying that explanation.

It was also at this time that I started to notice some things about my church that I didn't like.
Observation 1: One of my aunts also attended the church. She had divorced the father of her children many years before because he had cheated on her. When I was 15, she had met someone else and they had become engaged. When they approached our pastor, he refused to marry them because she had been divorced. I guess she wasn't allowed to get married again.

Observation 2: My church had a special showing one night of a movie (I can't remember the name) about the rapture. They encouraged kids to come. So, I went to the movie and it scared the crap out of me! It was terrible! It didn't seem to bother any of the adults around me, though. I was confused because I didn't remember reading some of those details in the Bible....but I was at church, my pastor wouldn't show something unless it he knew it was true. Would he?

Observation 3: My church was constantly asking for money...I swear we'd pass the plate at least 2 times per service. At home, I saw my mom working on her budget stretching every last penny to make ends meet. Yet, the church never offered to help....they were saving to build a new gym. As I thought about this, I realized that the people at church had never offered to help us when my dad was living with us. It was the pink elephant in the room that everybody pretended wasn't there. I came to the conclusion that everyone at church has to pretend to be happy even when they're not.


By this time, I was 16 and had my driver's license. My best friend and I decided that we didn't care for this church anymore and went searching for a new one. We church hopped for awhile, but never found a church that we liked. I wondered why it was so hard to find a good church....

(I had originally intended to make this one post, but it's just getting too long. So, I'm going to break this down into parts.)

Join the Protest!!!

I know this is a little late, but I just found out about this protest today. On Saturday, November 15, every state has a location for protesting the recent passage of Proposition 8 in California. Here's an excerpt from the mission statement of JoinTheImpact.com:

"Our movement seeks to encourage the LGBTQ community not to look towards the past and place blame, but instead to look forward toward what needs to be done now to achieve one goal: Full equality for ALL. We stand for reaching out across all communities. We do not stand for bigotry, for scapegoating, or using anger as our driving force. Our mission is to encourage our community to engage our opposition in a conversation about full equality and to do this with respect, dignity, and an attitude of outreach and education."

Click on the link above for a listing of all the scheduled protests. I'm not going to be able to make it to the one in Spokane because I don't have a babysitter....but I fully support it and hope there is a good turnout! If you are free tomorrow, consider joining a protest near you and help get the word out.

Yeah, it's a week late...but WHOOOOHOOOOOOO

I know....the election is old news. But, I had to write a post about my excitement over how the election went. I was excited that Obama won...along with most of the other people and issues I voted for. But, it was also exciting because my kids are getting to the ages where they can begin to understand the democratic process. They watched the debates with us this year...and did they have some fun comments!

With the first debate, my son spoke up early in the debate and declared that he would vote for the dark skinned man. When asked why, his reply was classic. "That other guy looks really old....mom what happens if a president dies?" After laughing a little to the side, my husband and I explained the Vice President's role to him. My daughter was more curious about why someone so pretty would marry such an old guy :)

After each debate, we'd ask the kids who they would vote for (if they could) and why they chose that candidate. It's very interesting to hear the reasons young kids give. At one point, my son wanted to vote for McCain because from his perspective Obama kept talking about war and "mom, I don't like war." My daughter thought she might vote for McCain at one point too, but then decided he just looked way too old.

When it came time to vote, my husband and I laid out our ballots and voter's pamphlet on the kitchen counter and invited the kids to join us. They found this to be very exciting. With each candidate or issue, we discussed both sides and asked our kids how they would vote. Then, we'd tell them who we were planning on voting for and the reasons we chose to vote that way. This led to some great conversations.

One issue on the Washington Ballot this year was a death with dignity law. (Quick background: When my son was 5, he cried because he broke a worm in half. He knew the worm's mom and dad would be looking for him, so he put the two pieces back where he had initially found the worm. This summer, a fly found it's way into our car on vacation. My kids decided he would be a good pet and saved some of their trail mix to feed to the fly so he wouldn't die.) My son's first reaction to this was that he would vote against it. My daughter was unsure and wanted more information.

In our state's case, only terminally ill people who have 6 months or less to live are qualified to get a lethal prescription from their doctors which they would self administer. A couple of years ago, one of our cats became very ill and was in a lot of pain. We used this example to help explain the law to our kids. We loved Kita soooo much that we didn't want her to suffer. We knew she was going to die and we were sad, but we didn't want her to be in pain if she didn't need to be. This helped the kids understand why we voted yes. We don't let our pets suffer, why would we want people to suffer?

That was just one of many interesting conversations that night. We reminded our kids that it's OK for them to disagree with us. That's what makes life interesting :) How boring would it be if we all agreed about everything all the time!

On election night, my kids and I watched as the results came in (my husband had to work). I thought that they would get bored of watching it after awhile, but they stuck with it and actually asked to stay up late so that they could watch more. We cheered together when it was announced that Obama was our new president! We also watched McCain's speech together. I thought McCain was very humble and thought his speech was one of the best I've heard through this entire election process. But, the kids were concerned with all the booing amongst McCain supporters when he mentioned Obama. I was too....I told them that sometimes people just don't think before they do or say something.

They missed Obama's speech because it was getting too late for a school night. But, as I watched it...I actually felt that this country could turn around. It was a nice feeling :) That was a great night....Obama won and I was able to enjoy the experience with my kids. None of us will ever forget it.

Oops...let me clarify

Instead of studying this morning while my kids are at school, I began to read some of my previous posts. I am a terrible procrastinator and any excuse to continue my procrastination is eagerly met by me :) Thus, a new blog post.

I noticed in my last post I spoke of "atheist-parenting." That term is very misleading and I apologize. The only thing that could be meant by that is that I am both an atheist and a parent. After all, the only thing atheists necessarily have in common is our absence of beliefs in god or gods. There is not a special dogma we all follow in regards to how we live our lives.

I should have said secular parenting instead of atheist parenting. This would be a more accurate description of my parenting techniques. My parenting methods are not based on any religion.

I'm going to claim that I had a brain fart when I wrote that last post :) Hopefully this will clear that up. I didn't want people to start claiming that there is some atheist parenting agendaLOL.