I was raised in a very conservative and religious household. We went to church every Sunday and either every Tuesday or Wednesday depending on age. I first accepted Jesus at the age of seven, I still remember this event today (and I have a terrible memory). I remember being in the living room at my Dad's house and sitting on the couch looking out the window when I prayed the "sinners prayer". I never questioned my beliefs until after high school. Ironically ever since high school I have always felt "called" to challenge peoples belief systems. Again I struggle to remember the correct order of events but these are a few of the things that spurred my quest for additional knowledge. The following events happened between the ages of 20-25
- The Daily Show - I watched The Daily show since its inception, back when Craig Kilborn was the host and it wasn't political at all. Had I tried to watch after Stewart took over I think my cognitive dissonance would have kicked in and I would have tuned out. The one episode that led me to start questioning my conservative values was with Jim Wallis as guest. He was on to promote his book God's Politics. I found it very interesting so I had to pick it up.
- God's Politics - Reading this book challenged many of the things I thought I believed. It was more of a liberal christian viewpoint of the bible. Challenging my notion of capital punishment, war, poverty/charity etc... This was my first real exposure to differing Christian views.
- Christian music/P.O.D.- I was very into the Christian rock scene (don't judge me) P.O.D. being at the forefront of this movement (to me at least) as such I was a frequent visitor to their forum boards where I would lurk onto the religious discussion thread. This was the first time I had ever encountered non believers and the dreaded atheists
- Small group part 1- I was a member of a small group at church called College and Career, a group for 18-26 year old "young adults". In this group we discussed many issues of the day. In one meeting the question came up "If a friend gave you a book on eastern religions, would you read it?" I was the only one that answered yes (apparently the correct answer was no) My reply then was "If my faith can be shaken by a book, then I don't have strong enough faith"
- College - I had decided as part of my "calling" to convert those of other religions, I needed to have at least a basic understanding of other religions. I took a World Religions course where I learned the basics about the major world religions and most importantly more about my own.
- Small group part 2 - My parents also had their own small group meeting at our house and I don't remember exactly the topic but I know during the discussion I asked one of the associate pastors " If tomorrow a study came out undeniably refuting the God of the Bible as being true, would you still believe" the answer was "Of course I would!" This is when I realized that these people were not interested in truth.
These things all contributed in awakening my critical thinking skills, but none of them "made" me an atheist. For a few years I was what I can best now describe as a Christian Deist. I believed Jesus was the son of God and came to "save" us. I just no longer believed that God really interacted with the world and I accepted the Bible had many historical and contextual inaccuracies. It was around this time a friend with similar worldview handed me a copy of Dawkins' "God Delusion". Even after reading it I still didn't identify as an atheist but I did slowly migrate into what is best described as a pantheist or as I identified Jedi.
It probably took another year or two of reading various things that I finally realized and accepted that I no longer believed in any sort of deities or supernatural entities. Even then I wasn't immediately open about it, but I had a twitter account and through Ricky Gervais I found @MrOZAtheist and @gspellchecker. For months I lurked and read their tweets/posts and finally felt ready to "come out" to friends and family. I lost a few friends and have become the black sheep of my family (I'm not shunned, but things are different) It was probably close to another year before I decided I wanted to try and help others through their own transition and created the @UnicornOnMoon account you all know me as now, but that story will come another time.
Again sorry for the weird format of this post, but I really struggled with the timeline and this was a way to get out a few of the "reasons"
I may post my rough, unfinished, draft in the comments if anyone cares to read that
Thanks for reading
