For you what made accepting your atheism the most difficult?

Question

I know as an atheist I struggled with it on and off for a while. It was mainly the feeling that I was somehow letting God down by not believing in it like it was a test that I failed or something

I know it was just left over damage from the brainwashing but did you have a similar thing that you had to deal with. The final puppet-string that you had to clip?

Answer 1

You bet I did. I've probably been atheistic in my beliefs for 10-15 years, but only managed to truly embrace it this year.

I struggled off and on with my doubts fo years, too, since I was a teenager. I grew up in a small Midwestern town of less than 1500 people. Everybody knew everybody else and everybody was either Lutheran or Catholic. Growing up, I didn't know ANYBODY who wasn't either, let alone didn't believe at all. Kids made FUN of those who didn't go to church every week. No, I wasn't one of them, I just knew kids who did.

The atmosphere here is still, in a way, like things were back in the 50s. People are generally polite, friendly, and trusting, honest folk, God-fearing. People unfortunately also keep some of those lingering prejudices from those days, even those that are my age. For example, my best friend in high school is a devout Catholic. Nothing wrong with that, was never an issue. However, within a year or two of graduation, she was pregnant out of wedlock. This was a gal who, as a teenager, denounced her own parents to me because they had her older brother out of wedlock. She loved her son and the father stayed with her and they eventually married.

But the point is, they didn't have much money to get married right away. When I saw her maybe 6-9 months after her first son was born and she showed me her engagement band, she told me that her son "would now have a father". Didn't outright use the b-word, but you know damn well what she meant. I don't know ANYONE my age who would still call a child of theirs born out of wedlock a b-strd, nor insinuate it. But she did. So that's an example of some of the outdated things people still have around here and it's worse for atheists.

Growing up, having another faith besides Christianity was bad enough, it was worse to NOT have faith at all. There was a stigma(and still is to a point) that atheists are selfish, sinful people who like to drink, smoke, do drugs, sleep around, etc. They also have the lovely stigma that atheists are Commies(more proof that people still think like it's 1954 around here at times), worship Satan, sacrifice babies, and burn Bibles.

To a point, I grew up thinking that atheists were angry, dark, evil, frightening people. When I started doubting, I fought it and I fought it hard. I didn't want to be associated with that sort of stereotype. I didn't want people to think I did those things because there's no WAY I'd do any of it. I'm not that kind of person.

So I doubted and desperately tried to find faith, find any reason at all to believe in God and like what I was taught. Didn't find it. So, seeing as how I was grown up, in college, had lots of friends from bigger cities who were of different faiths, I tried that. I tried looking into Buddhism and Wicca, hoping that if I couldn't find God in Christianity, I could find it somewhere else. Didn't work either. I was scared of being stereotyped, scared of letting the family down, scared of letting God down if he existed, wondering at times why I was made to doubt if God created me and wanted me to believe in him. The usual stuff.

After several years of it, I just gave up caring and trying. I figured I'd let religion find me instead of exhausting myself trying to find it. Figured that sooner or later, if there was a religion for me, I'd find it. Lots of fights with the family, lots of humiliation and strife over me being "not Christian".

The final "puppet string" as it were, I suppose, was my cousin. Up until this February, I kept it quiet, just didn't care or worry about it. I've dealt with lots of nastiness in the family about being not "good enough", even when I WAS a believer and my cousin and his mother were the two biggest instigators. They were the ones who kept attacking and demonizing and humiliating me in front of the family.

My aunt, I'm used to. I shouldn't be, but I am. She's done it to me all my life, so as much as I can't stand the woman, that's just how she is and I know she's full of crap so as much as it hurts, I can more or less ignore her. My cousin, however, when he emailed me this February, that was the last straw. It's one thing for my aunt to go after me for no reason, but then he started in, too. It hurt and it hurt BAD to see a cousin I used to get along with parrot along with his mother.

We used to have a lot of fun telling jokes and playing video games and now he was trying to reconvert me, acting even more arrogantly than his mother towards people of a different faith, and acting like because I didn't talk about my life and brag about my accomplishments, my life was down the drain. He also talked VERY poorly about the people he missioned to in Nicaragua, saying things that I refuse to repeat on this board as they're borderline racist and anti-poor, hiding behind his beliefs claiming that their lives were so terrible because they "enjoyed" sin.

He has the right to his belief, no matter how wrong I might feel he is, but that was what did it for me. I figure if heaven is going to let a nasty soul like him and his mother in, I'd gladly take up lava-swimming lessons in Hell. I resisted for years, but when I saw my favorite cousin who was like a BROTHER to me(only child here, btw) act so offensively in the name of religion, I knew it wasn't worth it. Religion wasn't worth it if a guy like that could claim he was going to heaven.

Funny thing was, I fought turning atheist for ten years, afraid of prejudice and stereotypes, looking for a religion that suited me best, that would find me instead of me finding it, and in that moment, seeing how cruel he was, stereotypes and what others thought didn't matter. It all just clicked in that moment of my disgust in seeing that email and being so judgemental. A "religion" found me and it wasn't what I expected.

After that, I felt pretty damn free. Not so much free to do what I "wanted", but free of dogma and herd mentality, free to acknowledge what I'd felt in my heart for a very long time. I could be honest with myself and it felt pretty damn good to stop pretending. I still have difficulties(my family doesn't know and if they did, I'd be disowned in a hurry), but I'm true to myself and that matters more than trying to "fit in".

Answer 2

You don't "turn to atheism". You were either raised without religion or you reverted to atheism. All babies are atheists until someone taught them to believe in things without evidence. For me, I wanted to be a priest when I was in my second decade of life. As such, I read the Bible to get more of an understanding of God and Jesus. That brought some questions and I've always heard that to get answers, you should go to the Bible. So I read it again - cover to cover. Even more questions and some absurdities. A year later, a third reading, and less questions but many more absurdities. At that point, I realized that the book was nothing but a collection of somewhat interesting fictional stories. If the stories were fiction, then the characters must be fiction - and two of those characters were "God" and "Jesus". No evidence exists of anything supernatural. Give me actual evidence and I'll follow whatever religion it came from. Until then, I live my life as best as I can, knowing that there is almost certainly nothing after this one for me.

Answer 3

The main problem for me was with love. It can be quite difficult to find a good woman who is interested in being with someone who is an atheist.

I didn't want to restrict dating to only atheists, especially because the woman I fell in love with was a Christian. I feel sometimes that I let her down somehow, because she probably is afraid that she will go to heaven, and I will go to hell and what not.

There is no way to force myself to believe, however, as I went through that in the past and it just doesn't work.

Basically I just ultimately have had to accept that my wife loves me the way I am, I love her the way she is, and our beliefs just have to be put aside. We have a wonderful relationship, and even though I sometimes feel bad about how my beliefs might make her feel, I know that we will continue to love each other and that will never fail.

~Kyle

Answer 4

I slipped into atheism quite easily being brought up in the roots of the new age movement in the 50 and 60's, just was pretty much what many I knew were doing and the college profs they all pitched in with their ideas, bein in Wisconsin there were not many Christians going around witnessing and having bumper stickers and the like. Do not remember ever being bothered by Christians much, I'm sure there were plenty but I just figured cool let them do their thing. There was this one young lady I was very taken with in HS who had something her name was Cathy Chupa and when I asked her out she very nicely told me that because of her beliefs she could not date me. She stayed nice to me and asked that I honk when I passed her house so she could say hi when I drove by.

Other than not getting that one girl at the tme I had no regrets and there were lotsa other girls.

Always found religions just interesting though. Took college level "world Religions Course" fro 5 universities in an assortment of states and countries. Talked and listened about the subject intently until 1978 so 31 tears.
You have my permission to take your fist down now not that I think you want it.

Answer 5

I had built my life on the predicate of striving for the Roman Catholic Priesthood. I was taking college level divinity and bible study courses when I was 15 and 16 to prepare for it. By 15, I had read the ENTIRE Summa Theologicae by St Thomas Aquinas and The Confessions by St. Augustine. I had immersed myself in the Latin Rites as well as the post-Vatican 2 rites, having started as an altar server when I was eight, and continued until I was 19 (The oldest EVER at my parish, by nearly four years)!

The most significant moment of my pre-loss life was a trip I took to Holy Trinity Seminary at the University of Texas at Dallas. The local Dioscese's director of vocations took a number of young men pondering the priesthood down to see the place. While we were there, we stayed with the seminarians, participating in all prayers. At one point, everyone was told to disperse and find a place to be alone and spend the time in silent contemplation of God. The chapel had these side altars between the main room and the sacristry (sp), and for whatever reason, I felt drawn to one, so I quietly stepped in and stood behind the altar, my hands resting upon the cool, stone surface. As I was standing there, my eyes closed, one of the priests was walking past. He stopped and very very quietly whispered, "I know it is a time for silence, but you need to hear it -- you look RIGHT behind the altar, more than any of the seminarians here." He then walked off without another word and I returned to my meditation on God.

It's not easy walking away from that. It's not easy to let go of that deep sense of peace and purpose. It's a big step out into the abyss.

Funny thing is, once I let go and let myself fall... I realized that the peace and purpose were inside myself, not an external deity. I realized that I could make it through this life without needing faith. I felt like Odhinn on the tree, hung as a sacrifice to himself, only to fall and stumble, and in doing so, finding wisdom.

I felt at peace.

Answer 6

The social cost. I'd been an active, committed Christian for many years.
My church provided a better social life than I had ever had and the great majority of my friends were Christians.

Most could not handle my coming out as an atheist. I'd expected it, and from their perspective I can understand it.
I knew of others within the congregation who did not believe but valued the community too much to up and leave. I understood them, too, but it wasn't something I could do.

Compared to that, the theological/philosophical problems were appreciably less painful.

Answer 7

I was raised Catholic, attended Catholic schools all my life, even kindergarten. I left Catholicism and messed around in fundementalist Christianity. I wandered back to Catholicism, went back and studied Philosophy at a Catholic college. I finally sat down one day and realized I was forcing myself to believe a lot of stuff I KNEW wasn't true. At that point it was over. I still think about god from time to time, force of habit I guess, but I know its not true. I get a lot of peace from that.

I remember one night being far out in the country. I was looking at the milky way and seeing just how incredibly vast it was. I had this huge surge of joy and thought "This is why I dont believe in god!"

Answer 8

If it weren't for Humanism, I might never have stepped out of my life of faith into the light. While my mind told me that atheism was right, I didn't want to be associated with the kind of people I saw around me who were atheists. They all seemed like arrogant, self-important, pee-on-the-birthday-cake killjoys, and boasted about how many pages they'd torn out of hotel Gideon Bibles. I knew that wasn't me. It just made me sick, and very angry, as I respect the right of others to be religious if they choose. Yet I agreed with these atheists about the god-question. I felt like I didn't belong in either world. It was a very lonely, confusing time.

Then I read more about secular humanism, and I found that it described what I felt was true and noble all along. It allowed me to express what I was for, not just what I was against. That opened the door.

Answer 9

You surprise me. Atheism is the most liberating set of ideas about our existence there is. I don't think I had any particularly Sartrean moment of angst when I realized that there was no purpose to life and death was final. I just got on with things. Perhaps I took it in very gradually (I was never a believer)Interesting question though.

Answer 10

I felt mostly how you did, yet I don't think my upbringing was quite that strict. There was no brainwashing, we really only went to church on Christmas and Easter, and even that was sporadic. Any way I figure if God did exist he would want me to be true to what I felt than to fake a religion.

Answer 11

i was an atheist for a very long time and i never had any feelings of guilt. it didn't bother me at all. i did not feel like i had abandoned G-d since i didn't believe in him in the first place. so i don't know where all this so-called "brainwashing" comes from.