I’d like to tell you the story of how I became an atheist. It’s kind of a long one, so strap in for the ride.
My story starts when I was a kid. I was born and raised Catholic. I received all of the sacraments up to and including Confirmation. I was a devout Catholic. I believed in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. I prayed everyday, both out loud and to myself. I went to Catholic school from grade school all the way to high school. I was pretty religious. My family and I weren’t big on going to church, however. We preferred to practice our faith at home amongst ourselves. We also didn’t believe everything that the Bible, the Pope, and Catholicism told us. Besides that, we all had a strong belief in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit; especially me.
I would worry everyday about the things I said or did. I also worried about the things my friends and family said and did. I was worried that if my friends, family, or I had said or did things that God did not approve of, we would be sent to Hell. Hell scared me a lot. I was terrified of it. The thought of being tortured in a place of fire and brimstone for all eternity would give me nightmares as a child. Even now, as an atheist, I still occasionally fear the possibility that Hell is real and that I would be sent to it.
That’s how things were for most of my life; that is, until I was about to start senior year of high school. It was the summer between junior year and senior year. Junior year had just ended, and senior year was well on its way. I was excited, because that meant I was about to graduate, become an adult, and head off to college in another year! One day, sometime around the beginning of July of 2013, a friend of mine had showed me a video by the YouTuber “The Amazing Atheist.” I had vaguely heard of him before my friend had showed me the video, but this was the first time I had ever seen a video by “The Amazing Atheist” for myself. Immediately, I felt drawn to his personality. His cynical personality, abrasive humor, and straightforward bluntness had intrigued me. I wanted to watch more of his videos. As soon as I had gone home, I immediately searched up Amazing Atheist’s YouTube channel. From there, I had spent the night watching a bunch of Amazing Atheist videos. Every video by Amazing Atheist that I had watched, my perception of religion started to change. I started to doubt my faith more and more. When it was time for me to go to sleep, my mind had felt as though it had a lot of knowledge dropped onto it at once! It was intense. I felt nervous and uneasy going to sleep that night. I had a fear that God saw what I did, and that I would be severely punished for my transgressions. I fervently prayed that night to make sure that I would not go to Hell for my actions, and that I was just starting to have a lot of doubts about my belief in Him. I had told God that no matter what happened, I would always try to be a good person, and that I wanted to be judged by my character, and not my belief in Him.
The next morning, after a good night’s sleep, I had felt more at ease. With a clearer mind, I decided to look up evidence to prove God’s existence. However, I did not want to use religious sources. All I found, however, were Bible quotes, faith websites, religious blogs, etc. I scoured the Internet far and wide to find evidence of God. I wanted to find something; anything. I wanted to find something that could give me reason to believe in God. I was not ready to let my faith go; not yet. I wanted to be absolutely sure that I did everything I could to prove to myself that there was indeed a God. After hours of researching, I came up with nothing. It was at that point that I realized that God may not be real, and that religion was man-made. Even though there was no way to prove or disprove God’s existence, from what I have seen so far, there was no point in believing in a God at all if there was no definitive way to prove or disprove His existence. It was at that point I had officially become an atheist.
Later on that day, and in the next couple of weeks, I had started to watch a couple of atheist YouTubers other than just the Amazing Atheist. The next atheist YouTuber I had discovered after Amazing Atheist was CultofDusty. He was also pretty funny. Soon after discovering him, I had found Secular Talk, Jaclyn Glenn, and Thunderf00t, just to name a few. I had listened to all of their stories and videos regarding atheism, politics, the world, etc. They had so many interesting stories and perspectives that I had found informative and relatable. My entire belief system, worldview, personality, and philosophy were starting to change. No longer did I feel closed-minded and sheltered. I now was discovering that there was a vast world that was in my grasp. There were so many people, places, things, events, and issues going on in the world, that the world did not revolve around me. Nothing revolved around me, nor any one individual, for that matter. There were problems bigger than any one of us combined. In order to tackle them, we, as people, had to work together. We couldn’t wait for God to fix these problems. We had to take action and do it ourselves! In fact, we were the ones who created our own problems; not God. God wasn’t responsible for any of the things that we did. It didn’t make any sense for God to have been. Why would God give us free will, only to know ahead of time that our fates were sealed the moment He created us, and that we were just on borrowed time before we were judged. If we truly had free will, there would have to be situations that God Himself could not predict. However, if God is omniscient, He should know everything, and should not be surprised by any of the choices we make in life, and if He is surprised, that means that He isn’t omniscient. And that’s how the thoughts in my mind went for other aspects of God, as well, such as His omnipotence, his benevolence, and his omnipresence. The more rigorously I thought about His characteristics, the harder it was for me to believe that God was real. After that, I had found it hard for me to believe any of the other things that were presented in the Bible. From there, everything came down like a house of cards.
It has now been over 6 and a half years since I had stopped believing in religion, and it was one of the most liberating things I had ever done! No longer did I feel the need to worry about someone constantly judging me and watching me. I was now able to be who I truly wanted to be. In hindsight, religion, to me, felt like a restraint; a hindrance. It felt like a way to control me through the use of fear; through the use of Hell. Looking back, Hell was used as a concept to scare young kids into believing religion unquestionably, or else there would be consequences for our actions. It was indoctrination, and it was very manipulative. In my opinion, religion should not be introduced to children. They do not have the faculties to understand anything about their religion. All they know is what they are told from their parents, their schools, their churches, etc. If you want to teach religion to your children, at least wait until they become a teenager, so that way, they would have experienced the world for themselves and seen what it was like. To introduce a scary concept like Hell to young children has the potential to traumatize children and scar them for life. I know that for me, personally, I still find myself to occasionally dread the possibility of Hell, even though it has been years since I have become an atheist. That is from the constant drilling into my mind the vivid depictions of Hell, and the dire consequences that would result if one were to go to Hell. It was all of that BS being shoved down my throat as a young child that causes me to still fear Hell, even as an atheist, and I don’t think that fear will ever go away completely. It will always be there, somewhere in the far reaches of my mind, occasionally popping up out of the blue. Regardless, I feel like I have now found my truest self, and I don’t think I would have if I was still a believer. As an atheist, I had found that I had become more empathetic. I can empathize and understand people better, and I find myself treating others with care and kindness. I don’t think I would have reached the level of empathy that I have for others if I was still religious. I am more open-minded, and I can find myself to relate to people of a variety of different backgrounds, including those who are believers! For me, it does not matter if a person is religious or not. To me, what matters most is whether a person is kind or not. That’s what matters most. If a person is kind and caring, then I have no problem with them whatsoever, even if they may have religious beliefs. I personally don’t find it worth it to get into religious arguments and debates with people. If people want to learn about atheism, they will do it on their own accord, just like I did. No one forced atheism onto me. I wanted to learn more about it. By doing so, I started to question and doubt my faith, and eventually became a full-fledged atheist. I did it all on my own, and in hindsight, it was the best decision of my life. I have no regrets for becoming a skeptic.
