deconversion

I have recently become interested in defining myself.  As a middle aged woman who is just starting to find myself again after years of raising little children, I am going through a process of figuring out who the hell I am. 

My search for the truth began about 30 years ago.  I was raised in a home without religion of any kind.  I was the weird teen who actually wanted to go to church.  All of my friends went to church and I wanted to experience what they had - friends, youth group, parties, and a sense of belonging to something.  I was beginning to question the world and then, the idea of a creator made sense to me.  I was happy for awhile until I became disillsioned with "the church."  Why couldn't I have communion while visiting a Catholic church?  Why was there so much infighting within the major denominations and why did some churches choose to fight against the rights of others?   I eventually stopped going to church and just put my quest for truth on the back burner.

In my 20's, I got married.  The religion question came up again as we needed to get married and raise our children.  My husband, a Catholic, was a big proponent of raising our kids in the Roman Catholic tradition.  I later found out that his only reason for doing so was the tradition aspect, but I converted anyway.

The one problem with all of this was that the words I recited were empty.  I honestly didn't believe in the god of the bible and though I thought Jesus was pretty cool, I didn't believe in the ressurection or most of the happenings in the bible.  My faith was shaken as I began to read the bible for the first time and felt like it was all some kind of mythology, fraught with contradictions. 

I tried to strengthen my lack of faith by immersing myself in a evangelical church and furthering my study of the bible.  I tried to pray and I even thought that listening only to christian music would help my faith. 

Of course, I wouldn't be here if I could have rectified all of that within myself.  The concept of a loving God who possesses omnipotence just doesn't make sense to me.  If there is a God who is supposedly in control, I have chosen not to worship him.  I used to try to figure out those who claimed that God did this or that for them.  Now I just laugh and wonder how could someone be so selfish?  Do they really think that this God they worship has the power to control whether or not you find a library book but cannot do a thing to stop the spread of AIDS?  Is your God like a magic fairy who yields his wand in some kind of sick and twisted way?

My churchgoing has ended and so has the futile bible reading.  Praying is also out. 
There is a very small part of me that feels sad about defining myself as an atheist.  All of those years searching for something or someone seems like a fraud. 

My hope is that someday soon I will be able to feel good about my decision to call myself an atheist.  I guess I'm still in the mourning process.

Can I be a good person without religion? Many religious people do not seem to think so. I once connected my morality with religion too, believing that apart from religion there was no way to define morality. However, the longer I live the more I realize there are bad people who claim to be religious and there good people who do not believe in the existence of a god. To go one step further, some of the meanest and most depraved of mind that I have known in my life were religious. Moreover, I know a man who is one of the most honorable humans I have ever met – and he is an agnostic atheist. This fact alone breaks down the argument that humans need religion to be moral.

In fact, although we very seldom have this choice, I would rather choose leaders without any religious affiliation. Just look at what George Bush has done to the world with his brand of Christianity. Look at what Osama bin Laden has done with his version of Islam.

There are some who believe religion could help rid the world of its moral ills. However, I cannot help but wonder if religion is not what helped to usher in these moral ills in the first place.

I grew up in a very conservative Christian home in Middle America. The church I attended was so strict that women were not allowed to wear pants, makeup or jewelery. Those in my church were not allowed to go to the movies, drink any type of alcohol or dance to music. As I said, it was a very strict church.

The fear of hell was preached from the pulpit should I stray from living “right.” Of course, anyone who rejected this very narrow way of thinking would never make it to paradise. This is quite a guilt trip to put on a young woman growing up in a big city.

As the years passed, I moved further and further away from that conservative stance and that framework of morality, which was near to impossible for any human to maintain. I do not know that I ever truly believed this staunch dogma in the first place, but it was imposed on me from infancy so it was all I knew for decades.

Even as I came to the end of my religious journey because my mind rejected the logic of the existence of a god, I feared whether my moral compass would fail because I was always taught that my religion defined my morality. My fears were seriously misplaced. After stepping outside of religion, I took on far more responsibility for my actions.

Outside of the context of religion, I could not lie, cheat or steal and think that some god would forgive the deed and thus make my sin not really count. I could no longer wait for some unseen hand to supernaturally feed the poor or to help the weak.

Moreover, I could not sit idle when I see others do evil because I no longer believed they would get their due in the next life or burn in hell. If anything, my religious upbringing held me back from being a truly moral person.

I am a far more moral human today than at any point in my life when I practiced religion. As such, I do not see a decline in religious practice as the cause of a moral decline in society.

On the contrary, as I have said before, even religious people do immoral things. I have spent so much time around very religious people that I have seen them use their theology as a way to justify their evil deeds – much like how George Bush justifies his war on Iraq.

If not justification, then humans can use their religion to dismiss their immoral actions by simply asking for forgiveness or paying penance. Moreover, even apathy concerning universal issues like global warming, AIDS in Africa and genocide in Darfur can be excused by a religious person if she/he believes that an all-powerful god will one day intervene.

Although fear of hell or desire of paradise might turn an immoral person around for a short period of time, fear and desire are fleeting emotions and not proven to be a long-term remedy for morality. Therefore, I do not believe the religious state of the world has anything whatsoever to do with the mankind’s dilemmas.

Our dilemmas are human problems that can and should be handled through human intervention. I believe with everything inside me that if humans were not so distracted by things such as religion, racism, sexism, petty rivalries and power struggles that we would be capable of accomplishing miracles.

We could feed every mouth, cure every disease and rid the world of war. I believe we could end racism. I believe we could end sexism. I believe every child could receive an adequate education. I also believe we are capable of instituting a moral system outside of the framework of religion.

I believe that if humans were capable of ridding themselves of its many distractions, they could do more good than any religion humans have ever created.

A common topic discussed on non-religious or post-religious sites is the subject of morality. Many religions, particularly those who consider Abraham the father of their faith – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – believe they have the corner on morality and that “God” though his “holy book” is the source of morality in the world.

For many, the 10 Commandments set the foundation on which morality is based. The 10 Commandments are found in Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. Depending on your religion or denomination, there are 12 commandments used to make up some version of the 10 Commandments. They are:

1. I am the Lord your God
2. You shall have no other gods before me
3. You shall not make for yourself an idol
4. You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain
5. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy
6. Honor your Father and Mother
7. You shall not kill
8. You shall not commit adultery
9. You shall not steal
10. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor
11. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house
12. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

To be inclusive of everyone, let’s assume that there are 12 Commandments and consider whether or not these commandments serve as a good base for morality.

The first 4 commandments provide nothing more than an egotistical nod to the supremacy of the Moses’ God and contain no guidance for morality. The 5th is really nothing more than a very strange ritual. Thank goodness Jesus, his disciples, and Paul decided that this ‘jot and tittle’ could pass away and that it is no longer relevant.

The remaining 6 (or 5 or 4 depending on how you’re counting), are a bit more relevant to morality. However, why was there an emphasis on bearing false witness and coveting and no mention of rape, bigotry, slavery, incest, torture, or abuse?

In addition, one has to question whether these are absolutes when the Bible itself condoned many acts of killing, lying, and stealing depending on the circumstance (Examples: The story of Jacob and Esau, etc.  For killings, see this link).

Jesus, the supposed God-man, openly violated the 10 commandments and definitely was not a big fan of the “honor your father and mother” commandment as evident by his thoughts about family values:

Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.”

Luke 9:59 He said to another man, “Follow me.” But the man replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father. Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

Matthew 12:46-50 While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.” He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Overall, I do not believe this list is a good basis for morality. If I had the pleasure of being the omniscient creator of the universe, I would spent time carving a different set of commandments in the stone for my creation to use as a basis for morality. You can bet it would include commands against terrible acts such as rape, torture, child abuse, slavery and bigotry.

- The de-Convert