Why are you an atheist? This question is asked of me nearly every day and has become almost a constant in my life. Why am I an atheist? Well, I'll tell you in as simple a way as I possibly can.
I began life in the Bible Belt, South Carolina to be exact, and was the product of a very religious parent in my Mother, and a Father who's belief system was less clear to me than that of my Mother. My Mom was a devout Methodist, born and raised in that faith, and I call it a faith not a demonimation mainly because I think all denominations are by definition their own faith and not always part of a greater "Christian" faith as some would like us to believe. Anyway, my Mother's family had/has a long history of Methodism and many have been part of the clergy of that faith, so it is little wonder that I was indoctrinated into the Methodist faith early in life.
My father, well, he's another story. From what I have learned his path to faith was more indirect than my Mother's. He was raised in a Luthern home, but dabbled in the Catholic faith, and I believe he was more inclined to be agnostic than he would admit. (There isn't any real evidence of this beyond his lack of conviction toward faith where his children were concerned.) My Father accepted the Methodist religion when he married my Mother, which leads me to believe that his faith was less based on actual belief and more on the phenomenon of family and comfort. In short he believed because it comforted my Mother. I never saw my Father pray, I never saw my Father speak of religion outside of church. If he was a true believer, he never expressed such beliefs in his life or his words.
Now, you have to kind of understand my parents a little better to understand my exposure to faith as a child. My father has a brilliant mind, he loves math and reason, and I believe that he is more apt to have rejected much of the more far fetched notions of the bible. He and I never spoke of this, but my gut is that deep inside, my Father probably doubts the existance of a god, certainly NOT the one that my Mother believed in.
My Mother was a true believer. My Mother, however, was NOT a lover of math, science, or reason. Her entire belief system, both as a person and a parent, was based on her devout belief in god. This is never more evident than her oft claimed "spare the rod, spoil the child" method of discipline. I firmly believe that her faith came as a direct result of her upbringing at the hands of her Grandmother, Mama Hattie. Hattie was uneducated, though quite intelligent, but her faith was nothing short of the classic kindergarten variety faith. If it was in the bible, and the preacher said it was fact, she believed it - period. Hattie was also the most superstitious woman I have ever know, believing in ghosts, spririts, Satan, omens, angels, and the like. So, it is normal that my Mother would have a similar belief system.
This knowledge begins to beg the question, why then did I shrink away from this very strong Southern belief system? I have two brothers and a sister, all of whom claim some religious affiliation, though I have some doubts about my middle brother's so called "faith" and even though he and I have never been close, I suspect that we, as the only college educated of the four children, may have more in common than we would want to admit. My sister is the church secretary for a Methodist church that we all grew up in, so her faith is pretty much tied to her vocation and my youngest brother can only be described as someone who has had a long journey of self-realization. His wife is a devout Christian and a science teacher, and though we don't have a relationship at all, I wonder how she can be educated and an educator, particularly in science, and retain her faith. Obviously, she has the ability to ignore so much of the science that points away from a god, to hold on to her own faith. I suspect, however, that much of her faith is like much of the faith of those in our hometown, a faith of popularity. I'll touch on that a bit later.
On to MY history with faith. I fully admit that like most children of the faithful, I was caught up in the whole god and church thing growing up. Why not be, it was fun, the stories were phenomenal, and let's face it, children LOVE a good fairy tale. It wasn't long into my life that I began to doubt some of the stories, but faith as my Mother would point out, is based on believing what you doubt or can't see. As a child this was enough to give me comfort, if my Mother said it was true, then as a child I had an obligation to at least give her the benefit of the doubt. Besides, I liked going to some of the events at church like Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, MYF, and those church dinners where everyone brought food and I could eat all I wanted. I still miss that part of church today, I still have a love for potluck food dinners.
There was also a certain level of comfort in religion for me as a child. Here I had a magical man who looked after me all the time. I wondered sometimes if he was watching me when I went to the bathroom or when I masturbated, but I figured he respected me enough to give me my "private" time, so I was able to get past that pretty quickly. I wasn't yet indoctrinated into the god of the Old Testament, perhaps because I didn't pay much attention to the minister on Sunday mornings as he reminded us that we were all sinners and damned to hell, except by the grace of god and the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins. To me, it was enough to be comforted by the thought of eternal life and the occasional potluck dinner.
In spite of my doubts, which lingered on throughout my youth, I managed to fool myself and others in to thinking that I was truly a believer. I could pray out loud, sing hymns at family reunions with the loudest of them, and get caught up in the rapture. But, as I reached college age and somewhere in the first semester of my freshman year, things began to reshape for me in relation to my faith. I attended a Methodist college, which thrilled my Mother and pastor, but little did they know that the very thing they thought was helping me grow in my faith was the very thing that finally drove me away. I took a religion course, it was called Religions of the World, and though I can't remember the instructor's name, I can tell you he was an ordained Methodist minister who had a reputation of pushing his students to grow their faith beyond the Kindergarten stage and into the adult world. I'm not sure to this day that his intent was to create the pathway to atheism for me, or if he simply wanted us to think for ourselves, but he certainly opened my eyes to some of the issues of the bible and the relationship between Christianity and other religions of the world.
I remember one particular lecture when he was trying to get us to understand the difference between love for individuals and love of our species. More directly, the very lecture was based on the question, "If you were in a cave with a group of Christians, hiding from Indians (his words, not mine) and you had a baby in your arms who was starting to cry. Would you sufficate the child to save the entire group, or would you give up the group because you couldn't kill the child." While the question itself is philosophical in nature, you can imagine the reaction from the class. Nearly everyone, including myself, was appalled by the question. Surely no one would kill a child, even to save those around you. It challenged our understanding of right and wrong, it gave us what I call now, a third option, at least it did in my mind. I remember asking this question, and I think it impressed the guy because I got an A in the class, but I asked him, "Why would God allow such a situation to even happen? I understand (though I know now that I didn't really understand at all) free-will, but isn't there something wrong with a religion or a god that would have the power to save a child, and yet allow it to perish in such a manner?"
I won't say that one class or one difficult question caused me to be an atheist, but if I had to point to ONE moment when my doubt took on a form, a solid base, it was that moment and certainly that class. My Mother's pride in my getting an "A" in religion was kind of ironic when I think about it now because education actually managed to replace my faith with reason. I now understood why the Christian church kept so many people ignorant, illiterate, and uneducated for all those centuries. One other class in religion while in college, also caused me to think about the validity of the bible and it was a class in the Old Testament. This same instructor showed us a lot of the incongruities of the Old Testament, and though he tried to "explain" them in a Christian slant, I wasn't swayed by his explainations. Instead, I began to read and research, and find more and more about the bible that just either didn't make sense or contradictory in and unto itself.
At this time, I have to explain that I began to date a Southern Baptist minister's daughter, who would become my first wife, and often in order to spend time with her on the weekends I was forced to attend her father's church. Again, while this made my Mother happy, at least I was going to church, it served the opposite affect in that being exposed to the almost fanatical world of the rural, Southern Baptist religion, drove me even further away from faith and closer to the realization of reason.