For my first post, I am exceptionally proud to be interviewing my dear bestie, Rose Brown. She and I have been friends for over a year but she's a huge part of my life. She loves Queen, cats, reading, board games, shopping, and is getting a degree in art history. She's also an atheist and that's what she is going to be talking about today.
Rose, how would you describe your religious (or nonreligious) belief?
There’s this common misconception that there are 3 basic types of religious viewpoints, which look like this:
The
general idea is that you can plot yourself on this chart in order to
indicate the stage you’re at, or the stages that you are in between.
However, when you take all the possibilities into account, the chart
looks more like this:
Gnostic
means certainty, where as agnostic means lack of certainty, or lack of
knowledge. Theism means belief in a god, where as atheism means lack of
belief in a god. You can use this chart to match up your levels of
gnosticism and theism in order to show exactly where you stand. If I had
to plot myself on this chart, I’d be in the bottom right corner. I’m an
agnostic atheist, meaning that I believe very, very strongly
that God doesn’t exist, but I acknowledge that there really isn’t any
way to prove God’s non-existence. (In the same way that I can’t prove
that Will Smith isn’t the reincarnation of Voltaire, or that there isn’t
a fourth season of Arrested Development that only Barack Obama knows
about. Not being able to prove that these things aren’t real doesn’t
make them any more probable.)
Most
atheists probably fit into the agnostic atheism bracket, since it fits
so well with scientific reasoning, so they’ll very rarely go out of
their way to identify themselves this way. But I try to make it clear
that I’m an agnostic atheist because I think it sounds a bit less
frightening. People can be very quick to judge someone by
their religious beliefs, especially when it comes to something as
drastic as atheism, which has some pretty scary connotations attached to
it. But by saying that I’m an agnostic atheist, I make myself sound a
little less daunting and scary to someone who thinks that atheists are
bad people. By using a term that a lot of people aren’t familiar with, I
also try to make people curious enough to ask me what agnostic atheism
means, initiate religion discussion, and clear up any negative ideas
they might have about my lot.
What was your journey to becoming an atheist?
This
is a really difficult question for me to answer, because I became an
atheist very slowly, over a long period of time. I was raised in a very
devout Christian family, but I think the first bits of doubt appeared 3
or 4 years ago, when I was in grades 10 and 11. It was around this time
that I had a massive epiphany. I believed in God, I was more than happy
to worship and pray to him, and definitely feared of him, just like the
bible said I should. But I didn’t love him, which made me feel
alienated in the Christian community. While people at church were
calling out Jesus’ name in the middle of a prayer, or while kids at
bible camp were sobbing on the floor as they worshiped God, I remained
utterly stoic.
There
was a part of me that was terrified at this tiny flaw in my otherwise
perfect religious life. What did this mean for my future with the
church? A life without religion seemed frightening, like the idea of
stepping away from the edge of a cliff and plunging into a dark abyss.
But there was another part of me that was curious. Why didn’t I love
God? So after this had been going on for a while, I couldn’t help but
try to figure out why I wasn’t the perfect Christian that my upbringing
had taught me to be. And when I finally let myself question my love for
God, the answer to my question appeared.
I
didn’t love God because of Christianity. Throughout history,
Christianity has been responsible for some of the most horrible
monstrosities to have ever taken place. The Crusades. The Inquisition.
Westboro. I felt disgusted by these things, and wanted nothing to do
with them. And once I accepted this, I realized that I wanted nothing to
do with God either. I suddenly saw God as this furious tyrant, ready to
lash out at anyone who dared to defy him, and felt that I had been
right to fear him. And, following the same logic as before, the
realization that I thought this terrified me. So I stashed these
feelings away, and continued to go to church, pray, and be a Christian,
all the while hoping that I wouldn’t be found out. But this repulsion
continued to boil away beneath the surface, and it was obvious that I’d
have to face it sooner or later.
Enough
time passed for me to contemplate God a little more. Now that I’d
opened the floodgates, everything was starting to disappear. First had
been my love for God, then my respect for Christianity, and now I was
losing my belief. Looking back, it was the best thing I’ve ever done,
but at the time I was unbelievably scared. If you tell someone, for
their entire life, that not loving God, that thinking nasty things about
religion, and that considering that people like Darwin might have been
right will earn them a one-way ticket to hell, of course they’re going
to be emotionally scarred when they finally start to feel that way.
But
I fought against the fear, and I finally started to give in. I did a
bit of research about Christianity. I pottered about the religion
section of Yahoo Answers. (Something I do not recommend one bit. That
entire website is just somewhere for the shallowest atheists to go to
bully anyone with religious beliefs.) I googled ‘how to tell your
parents you’re agnostic.’ Agnostic. Not atheist. If there was one
thing I didn’t want to be, it was an atheist. The only atheist I’d ever
known personally was a girl I knew in grade 8, but she’d also claimed
to have been to hell during near-death experiences, and decorated her
bedroom with black paint and chains. Not exactly the best of role
models.
After
3 years of dodging the bullet, I realized that I’d have to tell my
parents. I was about to go to university, and my dad kept talking about
all the Christian clubs he wanted me to join. Finally, during a
particularly emotional time in my life, I told my mum that I wasn’t a
Christian. I said that I didn’t know what I was, but I didn’t want to
continue going to church, and I didn’t want to hide my beliefs anymore.
She told my dad, and it wasn’t really talked about anymore. For a while,
I felt like I was walking on eggshells, but then I began to feel
relieved. The worst of it-the emotional turmoil, the fear, the
secrecy-was all over, and I was suddenly at this new part of my life
where I could be who I wanted to be, not who God wanted me to be. I felt
free. And, for the first time in my life, I felt genuinely happy.
And
then, the best thing happened. I got online. I joined several
communities, and started to look even deeper into who I was, and the
sort of people I belonged to. That’s when I came across the idea of
agnostic atheism, and suddenly what I believed had a name, and there
were other people who felt the same way I did. And once agnostic atheism
came into the picture, atheism itself seemed a lot less scary.
I
can still remember the first day I said the A word. It was May 21st,
2011, and I was leaving the store where I worked. According to Harold
Camping, I was going to be cast into a pit of fire that very afternoon
for my heathen ways, but for the first time, I wasn’t scared one bit. I
was buying a chocolate bar, which I was going to eat when Mr. Camping’s
prediction didn’t come true. I was chatting to my supervisor, and
telling her about the chocolate-fest I had planned, when she said,
“Aren’t you religious?”
And
I looked her square in the eyes and said, “No, my parents are, but I’m
an atheist.” And then I went home and I ate my chocolate and I listened
to We Are the Champions and I didn’t go to hell. (Although I did get a
nasty shock when my Dad turned on the lawnmower at the exact moment of
Camping’s supposed apocalypse.)
Would you say it was more of an emotional response, or logical?
It’s
a bit of both, really. Like I said before, it all started with a lack
of emotion, specifically love. That eventually turned into fear, but I
feel like in the end it was logic that won out. I’m not saying that a
theist can’t be logical, but it was researching theology and deciding
for a fact that God didn’t exist that helped me beat the terror.
It’s
definitely been emotional since then, but in a good way. Through
atheism I’ve found a way of looking at the world in a way that gives me
joy. Once I got over the idea that we’re alone in this universe, (I’m
talking about God, by the way, not aliens. I’m pretty gnostic about
extraterrestrial life.) it wasn’t half as scary as I thought it would
be.
The
fear was almost paralyzing near the start, though. Like I mentioned
before, if you tell someone that not believing in God will result in
them going to hell, they’re going to panic the moment they realize that
they aren’t religious. It’s basic indoctrination, and it’s present in
any part of life, but most of all in religion.
To
this day, even though I don’t have any major problems with religion,
the one thing I cannot stand is indoctrination. I went to church for the
first time in months with my parents last Christmas. For most of it, I
was okay. I really enjoyed singing Christmas carols, and even managed to
grit my teeth and play ‘spot the logical fallacy’ during the sermon.
But there was one part where I felt a little bit sick and, had I not
been there with family and friends, probably would have left. It was the
bit where children were brought up on to the stage to read aloud from
the bible. I couldn’t help but think that raising children in this kind
of environment, where you expect them to be devout and decide their
religious preferences for them, cannot possibly be healthy. Sure, a lot
of them are probably going to fantastic Christians, and lovely people.
But a few of them will be like me. They’ll have been indoctrinated to
believe that not loving God is a sin for which they’ll be punished, and
when their beliefs finally start to slip away, they’re going to be
absolutely terrified, and are going to feel totally alone. Losing my
religion is the most painful thing that has ever happened to me, and I
wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
How have the people in your life reacted to that?
On
the whole, it’s been much, much better than I thought it would be. My
mum’s first reaction was that she and my dad had suspected that
something was wrong. (Although she’d thought I was gay.) A little while
later, after I’d moved out, I explained agnostic atheism to my dad, and
he responded by lending me The God Delusion, which he’d bought in order
to challenge his faith. I kept everything to myself while I was still
home. I didn’t really tell any of my friends, until quite recently and
people didn’t comment on the fact that I wasn’t going to church anymore.
If religion came up, I changed the subject.
But
then I went to university, and everything changed. I suddenly had a
chance to start over, and was suddenly surrounded by people who were a
lot more open minded than in my hometown. I had a philosophy lecture,
where nearly every single student was an atheist. I still remember the
outrage when we studied the Ontological Argument. It was absolutely
insane.
Funnily
enough, I didn’t become friends with any other atheists. I think a lot
of people my age aren’t very strongly convicted, so even people who were
religious weren’t very loud about it. If anything, university is a
chance for people to get away from their religious families for a while,
and figure out who they are.
There
were a few religious people there, however, and I ended becoming
friends with some of them. While they were talking about their churches
or synagogues, or how their religion made them feel about something, I’d
respond with “I’m an atheist, so I think [insert statement here]. This
is when things stopped being freaky, and just got hilarious. I’d watch
them out of the corner of my eye, and see them turn quickly towards me,
as if they thought I was going to grow devil’s horns and tackle them to
the ground.
But once I made them realize that I was a nice atheist, everyone was okay with it. Not just most people. Everyone.
I eventually started a philosophy study group with two girls-one
Catholic, one Jewish. We’d start off chatting about Kant or Bentham or
whoever, but we’d always end up talking about religion. And you know
what? Apart from the obvious stuff, like abortion or the existence of
heaven, we had pretty much the same opinions. It made me realize that
sometimes, religion doesn’t shape who you are. Some people are jerks,
and some people are cool. Whether or not you’re religious doesn’t have
as much to do with it as a lot of people think.
How has atheism changed your everyday views?
Atheism
isn’t the only part of me. I think that’s a very important thing to
remember. There is a bit of a trend in humanity (encouraged by both
theists and atheists) to look at someone only through a religious scope.
So I think it’s important to remember that any changes to my everyday
views are due to my development as a person, not just as an atheist.
But
of course atheism’s contributed to my views. It would be hard for it
not to. Obviously, I now believe in evolution, and don’t believe that
there’s such thing as God’s ‘chosen people’. I don’t see any human as
superior to another, because any biblical premise that would have made
me think that in the past is now completely invalid in my eyes.
I
think the biggest changes haven’t been made by atheism directly, but by
the communities that I’ve taken part in since becoming an atheist. Most
atheists are quite liberal. They oppose bigotry and support same-sex
marriage. They believe in the separation of the church and the state.
They are typically pro-choice, pro-birth control and support feminism.
And when you’re exposed to these sorts of people for lengthy periods,
you can’t help but begin to agree with them.
I
find that overall, the biggest change in my life has been
open-mindedness. When I was a Christian, everything that didn’t fit into
my idea of how the world should be was wrong. Islam. Atheism.
Homosexuality. Prostitution. Abortion. Anyone who was different from me
was inferior. And now that I’m no longer a Christian, things are
completely different. It’s not that I now accept that atheists are the
good guys. I feel much more open-minded in regards to everyone. I do not
believe that creationists or pro-life advocates are subordinate. If
someone is different than me, I now see them as an opportunity to learn
about their viewpoints, and expand my knowledge of humanity.
I
don’t think that any of this is to do with atheism itself. More than
anything, I think it’s due to changing from one very radical view to
another. It shakes up your entire world and, for a little bit, makes you
feel like an outsider. Part of me thinks that everyone should have to
go through this, just so you know what it’s like to be alienated.
What could theists and atheists be doing differently?
This.
Seriously,
exactly what this series of blogs is doing. Interaction between
religions is vital, and has been pretty much absent from up until now. I
think that the world would benefit greatly if everyone just got off
their high horses, and learned more about people with different beliefs
than theirs. Since leaving Christianity, I’ve seen a lot of attempts to
make a connection with other religions, and it’s given me a lot of hope.
But there needs to be more.
I
think that even chatting with one person who has different beliefs than
you is very healthy for your own beliefs, because it makes you doubt
them. If you can acknowledge your doubt, and then rebuild the foundation
of your belief despite it, your faith will turn out much stronger, and
you’ll probably learn a little bit more about it in the process.
What would you recommend for someone who wants to know more about atheism?
It
really depends. The best thing possible is to speak to like-minded
people. If you’re in say, a university town, great! Track down the
nearest philosophy department and have a field day. But if you come from
a predominantly Christian town like I am, the internet is your friend. I
seriously don’t think I would be half as confident in my beliefs if I
hadn’t had access to all the amazing atheist communities that I joined.
I’ve
mentioned these sites a few times throughout this blog, and I think
now’s a great time to name them. First off, the Friendly Atheist’s blog.
(http://www.patheos.com/blogs/
Another fantastic site that I found very helpful at the start is Think Atheist. (http://www.thinkatheist.com/)
This site is a combination of blogs and forums, and has a great mix of humor, theology, philosophy, and advice. It’s a great spot to go to for
support. It’s golden moment is from a year or two ago. A Christian
woman created an account, and asked for help dealing with her best
friend, who had just come out as an atheist. She wanted to know how to
make her friend feel loved, and make sure religion didn’t get in the way
of their friendship. The response was overwhelming. Every person who
commented was unbelievably nice, and didn’t once chide her for her
beliefs. If you’re thinking of becoming an atheist, I think that these
are the sorts of people you need to surround yourself with.
At the moment, the community that I’m most involved with the the atheist subreddit. (http://www.reddit.com/r/
I
think that above all, the best thing to do is research. The fact that
we’ve got the internet at our fingertips is fantastic for anyone who is
curious about atheism. Look up whatever you need to, and don’t think for
a second that researching this kind of thing means you’ll end up being
an atheist. If you end up needing it, FightingAtheist has a fantastic
video on how to tell your parents that you’re not religious. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?
What is your favourite food?
At
the moment...goat’s cheese. I have no idea how I lasted this long
without it in my life. I feel like my conversion from Christianity to
atheism would have been a lot less rocky if goat’s cheese had been
involved.
But failing that, you can never beat baked beans.
Thanks Rose for sharing!
If you or someone you know would like to be interviewed for this blog talking about their religion - please message me! Thanks for reading!
Thanks Rose for sharing!
If you or someone you know would like to be interviewed for this blog talking about their religion - please message me! Thanks for reading!
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