I stopped believing in God while working at a church camp. I know, I know, it seems a little too conveniently ironic, but it’s true.
Ever since the age of eight I would attend church camp for two weeks during the summer, and every other night was chapel service. “Could everyone please open their prayer books to page 127,” the priest would say. So I’d lethargically open my book, flipping through pages with the precision of a [insert cheap joke here]; I figured that if some higher being did exist, She/He/It, or Shit for short, wasn’t going to smite me down for showing up late to the prayer party.
“Almighty God, our heavenly Father: we have sinned against you, What’s this ‘we’ thing? through our own fault, in thought, and word, and deed, My butt hurts. Damn you wooden pews! And in what we have left undone. For the sake of your Son our Lord Jesus Christ, I wonder if Jesus ever got a boner forgive us all our offenses I guess I’m sorry for thinking of Jesus’ boner; and grant that we may serve you in newness of life, to the glory of your Name. Amen.”
My religious A.D.D. worsened every year with every mass, every chapel service, every person telling me to open myself up to God and embrace the Holy Spirit so that I may lead a fulfilling life and make my way into heaven. Nothing ever seemed to really resonate with me, no matter how much I tried to reason that there is a God. By the age of 17, sporadic thoughts and ideas regarding the absence of a higher being became regular occurrences, so much so that I finally had to say to myself, “Alright, maybe this religious dogma that’s been a sizeable presence your entire life isn’t even true, regardless of the fact that virtually every person that has ever lived, every person you ever met, would disagree with, argue with, excommunicate, or even kill you for thinking it.”
So here I am, at the age of 18, a camp counselor at a church camp, realizing that my belief in God is as nonexistent as the divine presence everyone around me seems to have complete and total confidence in. Now what?
I decided to write about it; not to research logical atheistic arguments against believers so that I could stick it to those damn theists, but to simply get my ideas down on electrons (it’s the 21st century, keep up) as informally and organically as possible.
So here marks the start of what I intend to be an informal guide to the views of an atheist. I do not believe that I in any way represent atheists’ views, and every opinion that follows is mine and should not be forced upon other atheists simply because of our shared religious sect.
And please, religious people, do not take these words as an attack on your personal beliefs. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just saying that one of the most fundamental aspects of your existence sounds to me like a load of bullshit. Wait, that came out wrong. What I meant to say was that the countless hours of prayer and devotion you might have spent toward a given faith and the way your beliefs have shaped your lives may very well be based on fabrications that have been evolving since the dawn of human civilization, rendering everything you have ever held to be true as a product of the biggest rumor of all time. Ok, let’s just start this thing.
Disclaimer: I was brought up Catholic in a predominantly Christian and Jewish area, so my understanding of most other religions is minimal. The majority of the comparisons of religious practices and beliefs that I will touch upon will be with religions of the Book.
Thank you, and enjoy. Or don't. I wouldn't want to force anything upon you.
