I would like the reader to know that this is the first time I have ever put into writing that I am, in fact, an atheist. This is the first time I have decided to put it onto the internet that I am not a believer in any religion, and there are still those who know me very well that do not know about my views in this aspect. If you are looking for hate on religion, you will not find it here. If you are looking to spread hate, then I can only say I will pray for you.
I never was someone who held religion in high personal regard. I went to church on Sundays for the free food and the music. But I loved the Bible. I remember, very clearly, owning an illustrated bible and reading it all the time. The Sermon on the Mount was my favorite. To this day, the Sermon on the Mount still is something I hold in high regard. The Beatitudes are sayings that I believe every single person should know. Outside of church, I lived my life. I was set on being a scientist, specifically an astrophysicist. I owned many books on science and space, written by people like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins. I was infatuated by the cosmic scale of the universe.
I never considered science and religion as opposites, as I did not really care too much about growing a relationship with a God. Sometimes, I would pray with my mother, or when I was with my grandmother, but never by myself. Over the years, my family stopped going to church; we just did not have the time. Religion became less and less important in my life. Still wanting to be a scientist, I versed myself in that world. While I focused on microbiology, the rest of the world still amazed me. I naturally had my doubts about God’s existence during that time, but I never gave them too much thought. For me, there were more important things that I was thinking about.
Some of my atheist comrades have stated that there have been exact moments when they became an atheist, but I did not have that. That religiously grey area I lived in so long eventually grew into no religion, and then grew into a completely secular belief. I do remember thinking, maybe God exists, but honestly, I don’t care. My non-religion made some of my friends feel like they had a duty to “convert me.” I remember very vividly having a friend in middle school who lived every day by the Bible, nothing at all was free from his religion, everything he did he had to say something about God. To him, I was his project. That constant presence and attempt to force me to be something I wasn’t made me start thinking. I wanted to prove him wrong. I fell into a rabbit hole of trying to prove that God didn’t exist, that religion was just a construct, a cultural hallucination, and while I was never able to convince him, I found myself becoming more comfortable with not believing in God, and joining the atheist community.
In high school, I found something better than being an atheist. Being a human. One of the biggest things that us atheists have been attacked with is the preconceived notion that without God, you can’t be a good person. While that’s 10000% false, it doesn’t mean that it’s easy to live without the comfort of a god. I remember sitting awake at night, having panic attacks thinking about the future, and feeling an overwhelming fear of death. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t sleep without a light on. That, to this day, is still my most terrible fear: death. Thinking about how my life is finite, while a beautiful concept that I will eventually not exist, still triggers my self-preservation. But I found comfort, and a community, and a purpose in life. In humanity.
If you haven’t caught my drift yet, I’m talking about Humanism. While I don’t identify with the Humanists, I do have to say that I accept many of their ideals, and I use it as a guiding moral philosophy. Humanists believe in many things depending on their own chapter, but the overarching principle is the idea that humans are individuals, and should work towards building a society in which there is a universal brotherhood of man, and work towards finding truth and unity in science and reasoning. They believe in autonomy, and natural rights, and being good. “Being Good Without A God” is their motto. While I may not be a good person, I still work towards it. And in my opinion…there’s something beautiful about that.
I can’t write about my relationship with religion without including Buddhism. It’s maybe unexpected, but Buddhism has been a very impactful belief on my own. To this day, I still meditate, my family has as many Buddha statues as a monastery, and you can’t go anywhere in my home’s library without finding some book on Buddhism and the Dalai Lama. My father identifies as a Secular Buddhist, I don’t, but I have adopted many of the Buddhist beliefs into my life. The idea that suffering is not necessarily a bad thing, and that everybody feels suffering at some point in their lives, meaning there is a bond between everyone, was amazing.
All in all, I am an atheist with humanist and Buddhist characteristics. Difficult to say, even more difficult to accept. I hope that I have helped at least one person to understand another perspective, or maybe understand their own better. In the words of Dan Barker: “I’m proud to be an atheist, it helps me stand for so much more.”
