This is an ongoing series featuring your stories of how you came to identify as an atheist. If you want to send me your story, you can submit it here. To read past stories, click here.
The first one this week is from MikeMoeller1, a former Jehovah’s Witness:
I was brought up in a Jehovah witness family. I always questioned why we didn’t have Christmas trees or celebrated anything the other kids did at school. When I was 15 I started asking questions about the bible and actually my fathers faith. It got to such a heated battle one night I decided to commit suicide to actually see if there was a god. I didn’t succeed. I did however see my father basically leave the church. I still seek any truth. We still talk and I think he has questioned a lot of his beliefs that he had believed in. I don’t recommend this kind of experiment now being 40 with 3 kids. I actually wanted to see if it was true I was risking my life. I never really knew why he joined a church like that. I remember seeing a kid in a wheelchair for whom a simple surgery would make him walk. He couldn’t have it because he couldn’t have a blood transfusion, thinking this is not God’s will. We have medicine for him. After all of it. I have awaited the coming. And it ain’t coming. So I proudly call myself atheist. This is just a crib note of the whole story. I hope it helps.
I think I speak for every last atheist when I say, I am so glad you didn’t succeed, Mike. I am happy to be able to publish your story here.
The next story comes from, @The_Antistatist:
I spent my childhood perpetually moving from one location to another but always to a next parochial school as my father’s line of work relied on 1-3 year long contracts and my parents believed in the higher standard of education along with a strong religious instruction such as they had grown up with. It didn’t take many moves to realize that my classmates and their parents were predominately yuppy-ish hypocrites who’d go through the motions, never miss a church service or church service practice (how does one practice for worship 3-4 times per week?)and behave like mean spirited snobs for the rest. Many of the lay teachers could be equally as nasty although to be fair, there were occasional gems in the rough, pupils and teachers. At least they meant well… Pretty soon I began going through the motions as if praying out loud, genuflecting, saying certain parts of mass at certain precise times, or singing hymns were part of a mandatory and bizarre yoga session on the grounds of a spiritually run prison complex.
Equally off putting were the religious instructions burned into my mind. Unbaptized babies would go to a celestial prison called Limbo while those of us who sinned on this Earth and didn’t receive Penance or Last Rights before death could burn or suffer in Purgatory before a loving overlord possibly decided to stop the suffering. There were numerous other bits and pieces but I’ve done my best to unlearn and forget most of it. Now I’m content to find out what happens (if anything at all)upon death. I have a gut feeling that there may be some type of continuance of existence but as to what form, method, or composition, I don’t know and may not ever know. It’s just a gut feeling like guessing the right set of lottery numbers in a lifetime. It could happen, no? Does it make me an Agnostic or Deist rather than an Atheist? Possibly. Although ultimately having nothing more concrete than the certainty of death is good enough for me. If there is something greater out there, it will make its presence known. If there is nothing beyond death, I’ll be none the wiser than I am now.
And finally, a brief story from, @d_iaman:
I was born to a Muslim parents, as a child ( a child born to a Muslim parents) I attended Islamic school that a child born to a Muslim parents supposed to attend. I started to question my Islamic belief when I was in university ( thanks to a particular bookshelf in my university’s library). After reading quran thoroughly, and compare it with scientific fact, I abandon Islam though still maintain non-believing Muslim status quo.
If you want to send me your story, you can submit it here. To read past stories, click here
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