About the Author: My Personal Story
Introduction
This page is provided to let you know a little bit about me (the author and developer of this website). It may help some readers to know a little more about my background.
My Roots
I was born in the hills of Tennessee during the early 1960’s to a poor working family. My grandfather and his father were well known fundamentalist ministers among the Baptists and Pentecostals back in the hills, so I came from a long line of southern Gospel preachers. My father did get up in church and talk a bit “as the spirit moved him” but never made the leap into the minister limelight like my grand pappy. Instead he did hard labor as a lumberjack, miner and later as a factory worker.
Needless to say, I grew up with religious influence in everything we did and was intensely interested in it at a very early age. I had little interest in playing with other children, preferring to sit and discuss scripture with adults. At the age of eleven I was such an insufferable know-it-all that I was given special permission to move from the youth Sunday-School class to the adult class, because I kept interrupting (and usually correcting) the youth teacher.
My first formal sermon was delivered at the age of fourteen and I was ordained as a minister that same year. Of course, I had no real life experience to draw on at such an earlier age, but I made up for it in passion and could quote chapter and verse from just about anywhere in the Bible. These churches looked as preachers as mere vessels, they believed that it was actually the Holy Ghost that was doing the speaking. So in their mind, it was totally irrelevant if the “vessel” was only fourteen. To make a long story short, by the time I was nineteen I was a pastor of my own little fundamentalist church; a fourth generation Pentecostal following firmly in the family tradition.
My parents (and most of the church people I knew) were good people, kind and gentle natured. They may have believed some very odd things and were certain that they were right, but they only meant to help others avoid eternal damnation.
Neither of my parents had an opportunity to get a good education, but I feel they were wise nonetheless. My mother was only allowed to go to three months of school in the first grade because her parents believed that educating a girl robbed her of virtue and didn’t want her to become a whore. If you met her on the street you would have never known this though, she taught herself to read using a King James Bible and could read as well as anyone I have known. Reading the Bible was important because to everybody we knew it was the literal breath-of-god, every word inarguably true.
My dad faired little better, he was allowed to attend school until the 5th grade, but was forced to drop-out in order to work the fields and feed his six brothers and sisters. In spite of the fact that he attended school for a longer period of time, my dad couldn’t read nearly as well as my mother.
My Spiritual Inheritance
In spite of my current philosophical persuasion, the man I am now was formed by my parents’ belief system. They saw the world in terms of good vs. bad, right and wrong, black and white; and today I still catch myself thinking in these terms. However, they also taught me that any excepted truth must be testable and if it cannot be verified then it is not true. Mom always said that the best way you can know you have the truth is to try to prove it wrong with all your might. If you can’t, then you know you are right. Without knowing what it was, they taught me philosophical empiricism.
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Finally, the lack of formal education caused them to value learning, especially self-study. As a child I was an extreme loner. So without other children as a distraction I buried myself in books and this was strongly encouraged. There were no video games or an Internet in those days so all I had was reading. I was fascinated by science, history, philosophy and religion reading everything I could get my hands on that had anything to do with these topics. I felt like it was a waste of time to read fiction and usually read college text books or biographies. |
More than any other sin, they found hypocrisy to be the most abominable because it is dishonesty of the deepest internal order. You are actually lying about who you are to your inner self as well as to the rest of the universe. So above all other things, I learned to be truthful to myself and those I love. Even today, I value honesty and truthfulness above all other things.NOTE: Reading my website, I am sure that you have noticed that I do not have the education I would like to have had, but I have done the best I could with no money. We were very poor, sometimes the poorest of the poor, but I believe in work and I have studied hard. So, please forgive any obvious shortcomings in my work.
As a teenager I read several books on philosophy and books from various religious writers. I read several books by Ellen G. White, one of the founders of the Seventh day Adventists, the book of Mormon, English translations of the Koran and Hindu scriptures.
You might think that my parents would have forbid me reading such books, but they believed that I would not be able to disprove “the truth” as they knew it, so I wouldn’t go astray.
So they instilled the two personality traits that I feel are fundamental in making me the man I am today. First of all, I followed the evidence as I saw it to its logical conclusion, and I did not fear to go there no matter what the outcome. Once I saw evidence to convince me that there was no God, I was willing to listen. Secondly, they gave me the courage (some might say arrogance) to ask the hard questions in the first place. Finally my value of truthfulness and honesty forced me to pursue the questions until I had an answer, and made me steadfast in my current beliefs until I see adequate evidence that I am wrong. I am still an atheist so it should be obvious that I haven’t seen any evidence yet.
The Young Preacher Who Was Full Of Himself
Through all this reading of the Bible I began to notice a few things, like the fact that no one in church appeared to know what it said. It began to look to me as though all the church people around me were reading the verses like magic incantations and not paying attention to what the words actually said. Very few of them lived as the scriptures taught and they didn’t seem to want to know what it was really saying. Obviously it was my calling to let them know about it, so at the age of 12 or 13 I began to pop up in church during testimonies and letting everyone hear what I had to say.
I had a passion that was undeniable and (thanks to all that reading) appeared to know what I was talking about. Early on, I got a lot of encouragement. I took a very strict literalist interpretation of the scripture which gave me an old-school tone that the older more orthodox fundamentalists loved. It was a fire and brimstone dose of that old-time religion. At first all this study was invigorating, it gave my sermons fire and a depth of knowledge that seemed to awe the crowds.
But there was a dark side to learning the actual content of the Bible…
The problem was that I began to find things in the Bible that could not possibly be literally true, even worse I found that it contradicted itself, several times! Don’t forget, I was a Pentecostal, and Pentecostals believe that every single word from the King James Version of the Bible is literally and completely true. Yet… I was finding several places where it was obviously wrong! (In this article you can find a large collection of these biblical errors.)
For a while I tried to avoid the inevitable by putting these contradictions on a mental shelf for consideration at a later time; feeling that there was more to it, but beyond my current understanding. I tried to focus on helping others and upholding the positive principles I saw in Christianity. I tried hard, but couldn’t go on this way forever. Following such a path was dead against my upbringing, in that it was ignoring the facts and common sense in favor of what I wanted to believe. I was beginning to be torn apart inside.
It is difficult to put into words the pain of this struggle that I went through for years. Seeing things that proved what I had my whole life based on was wrong and struggling to hold on to a faith that my insides told me was a lie.
In Chapter 11 of my book Defining Christian Fundamentalism I discuss another battle I had over the charismatic experience. Most of my fellow church members were most persuaded by their feeling that they were touched daily by the hand-of-God. The charismatic feelings meant less and less to me over time to the point that I felt like an outsider looking in on the way others were carrying on.
An Intellectual Search For God
I decided to look into the Bible and find my faith again between it’s pages. I found several scriptures that in my mind could be used to test God’s existence. My religion was what made me who I was, and now it was as though everything I had was being taken away. I was getting desperate. The following scriptures came to my mind:
(John 14:13-14)
(John 15:16)
(John 16:23)
Don’t forget, I was a fundamentalist, which meant that I was taught from a child that everything in the Bible was literally true, therefore it was obvious, I would ask for something in Jesus’ name, and God would be obligated to do it. He would answer, I would know that he was real and then I could rebuild my life.
I carefully considered what I would to pray for. I took an example from the Old Testament story of Gideon (Judges 6:36-40) and then decided on something trivial that could not possibly counter ‘God’s will.’ I left a shirt outside expecting it to be dry while the ground around it to be soaked. I tried it several times, but nothing like what I expected ever happened. Later I tried praying for a chair to fall under its own power, but nothing happened. I realize how stupid this must sound (it does to me now), but everything my life was based on was in jeopardy! I got desperate!
I slipped and mentioned my tests of faith to a friend, who said my problem was that I had already lost my faith and these things are only promised to those who believed. That sounded silly to me, what would be the use to show divine power only to those who already believed, kind of like a doctor only treating patients who are already well, it defeats the whole purpose of a miracle in the first place. He pointed me to these scriptures:
(Mark 16:15-18)
(Matthew 17:20)
(Luke 17:6)
While the first group of scriptures I considered made no mention of already having faith, these scriptures did seem to indicate that faith was required before the supernatural events would be manifested. Even though I had to admit that I didn’t have faith any longer it looked to me as though I could still use these scriptures to test God’s existence because I knew several people who did have faith beyond question, and several of them were right in my own little church.
Conversion
Within my church were several members who were sick, some of them critically. So based on these and other scriptures I had no doubt that if God was real, we would see one of these critically ill individuals get miraculously healed. I set upon a holy quest to get these people healed. I would fast and pray for weeks on end, studying to build belief, preparing myself to offer the “Prayer of Faith”. I was working feverishly to get myself on a spiritual high so that I could lay hands on them in total confidence, certain in the knowledge that they would be healed… still nothing happened. I went into a sick cycle of stamping out doubt, building myself up to get them healed only to have come rush back at me when nothing happened.
Thinking I could not possibly be the only person who experienced this paradox, I asked for advice from elder ministers I trusted.
One told me, “yes, I’ve seen what you are talking about, but I just don’t think about it.” You just don’t think about it??? How can you possibly get up in a pulpit every week and proclaim loudly that every word of the Bible is true when you know that may be lying? He just answered that some questions should never get asked and that we are better off not thinking about them and that I should just forget about it and move on.
Another minister told me that I was lost for asking such questions and that I should pray for forgiveness because asking such questions is a sure ticket to split hell wide open.
Finally a third minister told me that he knew the Bible contained errors that came about because parts were corrupted in translation. But it was not a problem because the spirit told him which parts were messed up and which were safe to use. When I asked him how he could still tell his congregation that it was all true, he replied that such things were too complex and deep for the average Christian to understand. So he only tells them what they can “bear to hear.”
As you can tell, they were no help at all. My questions demanded answers, and I had no way to find them. Here were just a few of the many questions that now were running through my mind:
- If every literal word of the Bible isn’t true then how much of it (if any) is?
- How can you identify which part is true and which isn’t?
- Once you decide which part is right, how can you be sure that you are correct?
- How would you even know the difference if none of it were true?
- If he has infinite power, why didn’t God bother to make the entire Bible true?
- Was God intentionally hiding truth from us? If so, why would he do that?
All this was bearing heavy on me. I had many in my congregation who were very sick, good people who I knew should healed if only I was close enough to God to pray the right prayer. I would fast for days, sometime weeks to get to a place where I could get these people healed. (By “fast” I mean I would no food of any sort, only drink water for up to 14 days at a time.) But nothing seemed to help. The cancers were worsening, the heart conditions were getting more serious, and I could do nothing that mattered.
We had a prayer room set aside in our large garage where we could go out alone and pray. I was out there one day praying about this issue. I had been fasting for about a week and was down on my knees with my face in the floor, pounding my fist into the floor with tear flowing, begging to God. In my deep anguish I yelled out loud, “Why don’t you hear me???”
And then, in the back of my mind came a thought that I had not ever dared to think before. It was as though a small, still, calm voice spoke plainly, “Because there is no one there to hear you.”
I stopped, dumfounded in total silence. I was blown away by the implications of that thought. It was the only answer that made sense in my situation. It was not because I wasn’t a good enough person. It was not because the people I was praying for were evil or undeserving. It was because there was nobody there to answer my prayers. My whole life was built on my religion, I could not jump to such a drastic conclusion without a lot of study and thought. I now had questions I had never contemplated before and I had to answer them.
At this point, I had no choice but to temporarily resign as pastor until I could find satisfactory answers. In my eyes I would have been a hypocrite to stand in a pulpit and tell everyone else what to believe when I no longer knew what I believed. I decided to find out what I could believe in, prove my faith and then I would return ready to fulfill my calling.
I spent about a year looking for answers. I read the works of several philosophers and Christian apologists including C. S. Lewis, Blaise Pascal and several others who claimed that there was a logical justification for religious faith. None of their claims held up to serious examination. In fact, the only way you could call their pitiful evidence convincing is if you already had decided that you did believe and wanted to pretend it was a logical decision. It is not.
Thought Experiments
As a child I thoroughly enjoyed reading biographies and works of great scientists. Of all the scientists I read about, I enjoyed reading about Albert Einstein the most. Physics was one of my favorite subjects in school and I identified with him because of it, and the fact that he could penetrate the deepest mysteries with no tools beyond his brilliant mind. I read the stories about Albert Einstein formulated his theories using thought experiments. He would postulate an idea and then think about the possibilities to see where his idea would lead using his vast understanding of physics and the universe.
Inspired by the great success he had using this method; I decided to do a few thought experiments of my own. I realize that I am no genius like Einstein, but I thought that I could at least try. Here are the results of my thought experiments…
Thought Experiment 1: Is there order?
First I thought about the world I had known with all its confusion and turmoil. I decided to ignore the teaching of my youth and imagine a universe with no God. What if blind chance were actually ruling all that happened? What if the things that happened to everyone occurred at random and not driven by any ‘unseen-hand;’ could I tell the difference?
After long and careful deliberation, I decided that there would be no difference at all between a universe run entirely by chance and what I was actually seeing. The wicked prevail and good deeds are punished just as often as rewarded. Good people die young and evil people live to be old equally often. Crooks often get away with crimes and the innocent are accused falsely.
It was not just the societies of humanity that appeared to be ruled by chaotic forces. Nature shows no sign of design by a loving, caring creator either; instead, it is cruel following the law of “the survival of the fittest.”
How did everything come into existence if there was no creator? I had no idea, but I was sure that creation as taught in the Bible could not possibly be true.
Thought Experiment 2: The Thoughtful Creator
Now I did another thought experiment. I imagined that I was an automobile manufacturer, but an all knowing manufacturer who could see into the future, knowing the ultimate fate of each car I produced. I am busily going about my business making cars and I pick up my hammer to make my next car, only to realize that it will be defective, that a critical component will cause it to go off a cliff one day killing an entire family with it. What would I do? The simple answer, I would skip making this car and move on to the next one. Would not an all-knowing creator have just as much insight?
What I am talking about is not as so many theologians have put it “taking away free will.” The Christian God is supposed to be able to foresee the future. As God, I would just choose not to make the people who doomed to end up in hell, without forcing anyone to do what I wanted. I would not be forcing anyone to make the right choice, just not make the people who I know would make the wrong one.
Many Christians misinterpret this kind of question as some type of “God Hate.” They think that I am using this line of reasoning to blame God for the destruction of his creations. This is not at all the point of this thought experiment. It is just trying to test and see if the claim that the God of the Bible made the universe is consistent with reason and the world as it is. You cannot hate or be angry at someone who does not exist. I feel no anger or hatred.
Thought Experiment 3: The Hoax
I did one more thought experiment. Let us imagine that I made up some great hoax that I wanted to use to gain power and milk people for money. How would my messages, claims and warnings be different from those in established religion?
I came to the conclusion that they would sound exactly the same as the messages in the Bible and well known religious leaders. There was absolutely nothing in their messages that would be any different if Christianity or any other religion I could think of were a complete hoax. The reactions of the theists to unbelievers are exactly what one would expect if it were all a made-up fairy tale. Looking at other religions, they looked exactly like Christianity, myths and fairy tales, only the names are changed.
All my thought experiments came to the same result. The only solution that made sense of the world as I saw it was to conclude that the Christian God does not exist and never did. It was the only answer that explains a world that works as this one does.
So in spite of all the “angry atheists” you see in movies and on television, and all the urban legends you hear whispered in church. I am not now nor have I ever been “angry with God.” Neither have I gone through some traumatic event that “shook my faith.” It came about primarily through examination of the scriptures that proved to me more than anything else that atheism is the only rational reaction to the universe.
After my time of study was up, I dismissed religion and the idea of God from my mind. I began to discover and explore what life meant beyond the need for a giant daddy-figure-in-the-sky. Initially it was frightening, I didn’t know what to believe in or do with myself. I had never been to a bowling alley or a movie theater before. I had never tasted alcohol or even been on a formal date. It as though I had never lived before. In the middle of my 23rd year of life, I truly began to live.
A Personal Tragedy
Several years after I left church, my mother faced her own terrible struggle with the results of religious faith. All my life, I remember her being fearful of cancer. She used to sit and worry what she would do if she were ever diagnosed with this disease.
Almost as though she knew the future, the day came when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. For several years, she never let anyone know that something was wrong. Instead of going to a doctor, she tried to pray the cancer away. She went to faith healers (some of them very well known) in hope of getting her miracle; and nothing ever happened.
My mother clung to the promise that she would be healed of cancer right up to the day that she died. She did go to a doctor once her condition was impossible to hide, but by then it was too late. No one can for a moment tell me that she didn’t have faith, I know without a shred of doubt that she did. If she didn’t have REAL faith then no one does and it’s a waste of time talking about it anyway. By the time this tragedy occurred I had already been an atheist for several years.
I cannot help but think that had she sought help far earlier, then she would still be here with us. There is no doubt in my mind that her religious faith killed her just as certain as it a gun had been held to her head. Actually the gunshot would have been a lot less painful and would have been over in a few minutes. Her suffering went on for years.
Fast-Forward To Today
Over the 20+ years since the day I left Christianity I have slowly and steadily learned how to live and face each day in a new way. At first it was frightening, but now it is very liberating. Several Christians have offered me pity, saying that I have nothing to live for. But I have everything to live for, the world is a wonderful place and I enjoy every minute of it, free of self-doubt and oppressive guilt over nonexistent sin.
I feel that I am very moral, more moral than most Christians. Why? I do the morally right thing because I feel it is right, because I want to, not out of fear of some eternal sadist. I tell the truth because I value my word, my integrity, and my self-respect, not because some sheep-herders myths tell me to. What morality can be higher than that?
So there you have it, I hope my story will inspire others to throw off the shackles of religious slavery for the freedom of atheism. I also hope that it makes my website and my writing reveal a deeper meaning now that you know my past.
Enjoy life and go without god,
Site administrator.