God on Ice (Let's Start...part 4)

(photo by Tom Dempsey, photoseek.com)

In the last installment of the LSATVB series (I feel like I'm writing for a soap opera), I had just graduated from college. I was headed down to Arizona for graduate studies, and at that point in my life I was very conflicted about my spirituality. I considered myself an agnostic who really *wanted* to believe, if for no other reason than to fit in with society.

Once I left North Dakota, I entered a crazy and exciting time in my life. Any thoughts of religious belief were more-or-less put on the back burner, I suppose, because I don't remember even thinking about religion then. I was starting a challenging PhD program, moving across the country (thousands of miles from my family), and moving in with my boyfriend. To top it off, I was given the opportunity of a lifetime...to study in Antarctica. It remains one of the most exciting and transformative experiences of my life (next to becoming a parent).

In the beginning of November 1997, I traveled with two of my colleagues through Chile and Argentina. Flying over the Andes in a small twin otter was the first of many breathtaking moments. We boarded a ship that would take us almost 700 miles from the nearest civilization to Palmer Station...too small and remote to go by plane, and a 3-day voyage by sea in good weather. For all intents and purposes, we were isolated from the rest of the world.

This blog isn't the place for a full description of all we did there or what life was like, but the isolation was key. For almost three months, I lived on a small outcrop of rock at the edge of glacier-covered Anvers island just off the Antarctic Peninsula. At the peak of the season, there were 38 of us living there, and ships would come every few weeks to re-stock the station with "freshies" (fresh fruits and vegetables) and change out crew members. There were no TV or radio stations, no regular telephone, and a satellite Internet connection that only came online for 30 minutes, twice a day.

When you find yourself in a place of true silence...no man-made noises save the ones made by yourself and your 30+ colleagues (no traffic; no planes flying overhead; nothing)...it lends itself to a lot of introspection. The three members of my field research team spent our days studying plant growth on a tiny island about 2 miles from the station. We'd suit up, pack our lunches, load up our gear, and (weather permitting), head out in our Zodiac. My favorite time of day was the break we took after lunch. We'd sit in silence on the rocks facing Anvers Island...feeling the sunshine on our faces and watching the glacier calving off into the water. Occasionally a minke whale would pass by, or we'd be visited by a brown skua (we called one of them Yogi, since she was always trying to steal the remnants of our "picnic" lunch), or a curious elephant seal or a penguin or two. Sometimes the silence was broken by the cry of a giant petrel (huge birds related to the albatross) that nested on our small island.

There were close encounters with humpback whales and huge icebergs while we were on our way to and from the station, and I had the incredible experience of looking into the eye of a 40-foot humpback...and realizing it was looking at me, too. I can remember looking down into the icy water, and watching penguins zipping along below the surface...showing off their underwater "flying" and acrobatics skills. As much as they seemed like awkward little comedians on land, they were the most graceful creatures beneath the waves.

I can honestly say I have felt more connected to "all that there is" (what I think religious people call "God") while on the ice than I have ever felt before or since. My head was clear, and I made some monumental decisions while I was there. First, I realized that for every amazing thing I did and saw there, I wished I could share it with my boyfriend, C. It just wasn't complete without him there. I was on the ice when I realized I was ready to be married and share the rest of my life with one person. Second, I decided to leave the PhD program (a decision I was struggling with before heading down to Antarctica). I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in an office writing grant proposals and trying to survive in a "publish-or-perish" academic world.

These are the kinds of decisions that I've heard my religious friends say they "pray about" to find answers. It seems to me that praying in this sense plays a similar role in the lives of people of faith as quiet introspection plays in the lives of non-theists. I think the biggest distinction is that when theists make a decision they believe that it comes from God, whereas we see the answers coming from within ourselves after giving ourselves time and space to relax and contemplate. They see these feelings of profound wonder and clarity as being divine in origin, whereas we see them as part of a completely natural, completely human experience. I think that this speaks more to our similarities than it does our differences...we feel primarily the same things, but where we hear the "voice" coming from within ourselves, they believe it's emanating from a supernatural entity.

In light of feeling a sense of spirituality, or "God," being in Antarctica is like nothing I'd experienced before or have experienced since. I've come close, though, while sitting on the rocks next to the ocean on the Oregon coast, or while hiking in a forest in the Cascades...or being in the clear air in the desert or mountains, looking up at a night sky that is filled with an unfathomable number of stars. Being secluded and close to nature reminds many of us, I think, of how we are truly a part of it all. We are tiny and insignificant (certainly not the center of "creation"), and still we are a part of something much greater than ourselves. What's more, we are cognizant of our place in it; we ponder the Universe and the meaning of our lives...and that is awe-inspiring. As Sagan said, "the Cosmos is also within us. We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself."

Looking back on my experience on the ice, with nearly 13 more years of life experience under my belt, I can recognize how truly amazing it was. I realize now that having awe-inspiring moments in the natural world is my personal connection to my sense of spirituality. Those are feelings and sensations I've never experienced in a church, though I explored that thoroughly, too (more on my church experiences in a later LSATVB installment). It has nothing to do with a deity...and everything to do with just being human. And contemplating what it means to be human can be an amazing, awe-inspiring, intesely spiritual thing.

The Choices We Make (or Not)

When it comes to the things that we believe to be true, to what extent does conscious choice play a role? Does a person choose to believe in a god or gods? Does a person choose to be an atheist? For that matter, does a person make a conscious choice to believe that anything is true...or is truth just self-evident?

Hemant Mehta, in his 2007 book, made a remark about this that I found interesting. In a section where he discussed how Christians have a lack of sensitivity toward non-religious people, he said of his atheism:

I didn't become an atheist by accident. I considered the alternatives and weighed the options carefully. I chose not to believe in God because atheism made the most sense to me. I would hope pastors and other Christians would recognize that for atheists like me, choosing not to believe was not some random circumstance but the result of a deliberate process. I would hope that someone who chooses to become a Christian does so after careful investigation, and only after considering the alternatives to belief. I did my own investigation and chose nonbelief. Please don't be angry because I chose the "wrong" answer.

While I think this is well-written, and I can understand and relate to where he's coming from (particularly with respect to making Christians understand we are not some blank slate waiting to be written upon or some unfulfilled, lost soul seeking something we are missing), I disagree with his use of the word choice. I mentioned in a previous post that being an atheist is NOT the result of a conscious choice, and I stand by that. To me, saying that I chose to be an atheist implies that I think any of a multitude of possibilities regarding the existence of supernatural beings could be true, but I chose disbelief because I liked it better. I think it also opens atheists up to the common criticism given out by believers: that atheists are choosing to deny God, ignore God, or choosing to live a hedonistic lifestyle "away from God." So have we really made a choice?

Quite frankly, I think the opposite is true. I say this because, for most of my life, I desperately wanted to believe. I've studied most of the major world religions, in part, because I was hoping to find some shred of evidence that would turn the tide for me. Something that would convince me to believe. I even spent several years becoming very involved in a Christian church with an open heart and mind, wishing to believe and to belong.

The thought that there is some all-powerful, infinitely benevolent creator watching over us is very comforting. All you have to do is believe in the Abrahamic god, in Jesus' divinity and the ascension...and you are saved by grace and faith. You never really say goodbye to loved ones when they die, because you know you'll see them again. You never have to die, but live eternally in paradise surrounded by love. And if you don't believe? Well, it's fire and brimstone and eternal torture. Not to mention assigning yourself "membership" in a little-respected minority group; one of the least-understood and most reviled minority groups in the country.

If someone were truly capable of making a conscious choice about these matters, one would have to be insane (or at the very least infinitely masochistic) to choose the latter instead of the former. The problem with the "just choose to believe" mindset is that it doesn't work. For most of us atheists, the Abrahamic view of god is no more realistic than the ancient Greek Olympians or the Nordic gods. They are all human inventions that were useful to the people who invented them. They explained the unexplainable, created rules for a civil society, and they offered comfort in times of conflict and uncertainty. But that doesn't make them real to a person who is unable to suspend logic and reason and let faith take over. Our brains just don't work that way. I could choose to say I believe or pretend that I believe in order to fit in, but that is certainly not the same thing.

The extent to which I think choice has played a role in my being an atheist is this...I allowed myself to think critically and weigh all the options...and to accept the nonbelief that came about as a process of that exploration. And with that acceptance the world suddenly made sense to me; I felt complete and whole for the first time.

So...tell me what you think. Are you an atheist? An agnostic? A Christian? A Hindu? A Wiccan? Whatever it is that you believe...is the truth self-evident to you, or do you feel you have made a conscious choice to believe what you do? Do you think it's possible for a person to choose?

Growing out in the real world (Let's Start...part 3)

Making a start as a new adult is an interesting and exciting time in everyone's life. For me, it began with a rite of passage...my first airplane flight, and my first real venture outside my home state. For all intents and purposes, that first foray into the "real world" was my first exposure to real diversity.

Shortly after my 18th birthday, I packed a suitcase and rode the three airplanes it took to transport me to Charleston, West Virginia. I was a delegate to National Youth Science Camp, a 4-week program for young scientists from around the U.S. It was a transformative experience for me in more ways than I can enumerate here, but for the purposes of this blog, one thing stands out in my mind...my introduction to peers who came from diverse backgrounds: culturally, racially, and economically. It was a far cry from where I'd grown up, where everyone was white (or part-Native American), Christian, conservative, and middle- to lower-middle class. One of my closest friends there was Navajo and still practiced her native religion (the Native Americans where I grew up were all Catholics, so this was new to me). Another girl made mention of the fact that she was raised in an agnostic family, and yet other campers were Jewish, Buddhist, or Hindu. It was refreshing...and for the first time, I felt like I really belonged somewhere. It was a place where there was no cultural standard to try to fit into, because everyone was different...and that was TRULY okay.

When I returned and finished out the summer at home, I was excited to start college; to move to a bigger city and really be out on my own. I was expecting an environment more like what I'd experienced at NYSC, but it turned out a little differently. While the population of the college I attended was slightly more diverse than in my home town (particularly among the faculty), I was still surrounded by mostly white, conservative, middle-class Christians.

A minor detour here, as I make a few comments about North Dakotans (lest I sound like I'm being overly critical of my home state). Generally speaking, people there are mostly good. The population is still small enough that people feel a connection with one another, and are ready and willing to lend a helping hand whenever they can. I remember telling a former coworker in Arizona about North Dakotans, and I gave this example: If you were standing at a cash register in a store and realized you were a couple dollars short for what you were purchasing, the three strangers in line behind you would be digging in their pockets to offer you their spare change and make up the difference. That's just the way people are back there (or at least that's the way the were when I left 14 years ago). North Dakotans are also very tolerant people. They tolerate people who aren't like them...you wouldn't have to worry, for example, if you were a Jewish family moving into a Christian neighborhood to have anti-semitic graffiti spray-painted on the side of your house or something. HOWEVER...they also would probably not embrace you.

While differences are TOLERATED there, they are not truly ACCEPTED. There is a big difference between tolerance and acceptance. If you don't fit into the preconceived notion of what is "normal" there, you are never truly accepted. Since the vast majority of people in the state are conservative and Christian, you have a very narrow cubbyhole in which to cram yourself if you want to be "one of them." While the people of the state have a lot of great qualities, true acceptance of diversity is not one of them (I should probably note that I am generalizing, if it's not already obvious, and that not EVERYONE in the state fits this description...lest I offend someone I know and love who still lives there).

Back to my college experience, with respect to my spiritual growth...there are a few things that stand out in my mind.

My first college boyfriend, R, was a conservative Christian. He once told me that "Rush is God" (i.e. Rush Limbaugh), and had a bumper sticker on his truck that read, "I Am the NRA." I went to church with him a couple of times, and I found it interesting (he was U.C.C., a denomination I had never encountered before...the service wasn't much different from the few United Methodist services I'd been to as a kid/teen). During my sophomore year, when R asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I told him sincerely that I wanted a Bible. I'd never actually read the whole Bible, was interested in doing so, and I didn't have one of my own.

He obliged happily, and gave me a KJV "Life Application" Bible. It was very cool in that it contained tons of maps of the areas discussed, as well as historical timelines of events occurring in other areas of the world while Biblical events were taking place. On the down side (I say this in retrospect), at the bottom of each page is an interpretation of the scripture...telling you what it means, and how a good Christian can apply it to their daily lives. I honestly believe that if you have ONLY read the Bible with someone else's interpretation guiding you (either through Bible study classes or the kind of Bible I was given), you aren't really reading the Bible. You're reading someone else's interpretation and critique of the book. NOT the same. More on that in a later post...

I distinctly remember the day I "came out" to R about my agnosticism. I told him that I wasn't sure I believed any of it. His response to me is crystal-clear in my memory. He smiled the most patronizing smile, drew me close to him and said with a little chuckle, "Oh, honey, you BELIEVE! You just don't KNOW yet that you believe!" That was really the beginning of the end of our relationship (certainly not the deciding factor, or even the most significant one...but it's significant enough to deserve mention).

During my college years, I experienced the deaths of two family members. This is significant because I think that, above everything else, death is a huge motivator in faith. Death is scary. The concept of not existing is really scary for a human being. It's no wonder to me that people often turn to a higher power in difficult situations; when we have no control over what is happening, I think that even IMAGINED control (like believing in prayer and an afterlife) can offer great comfort. And I didn't have that.

One thing that I think PoF's can't conceive of is that someone would deny that kind of comfort. The reality is that (and this goes back to the "choice" debate again), I cannot CHOOSE to believe in something. I could TRY to believe or even PRETEND to believe in something, but that wouldn't be the same thing. Not by a long shot. In more recent years, I've tended to gravitate more toward acceptance; something that was expressed really well by the late, great Carl Sagan:

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring

It's hard for me to remember that I didn't always feel the same sense of being comfortable in my own atheist skin as I am now. At the time, I was desperately wishing that I could be a Person of Faith. To fit in, to find comfort...to feel like I was okay. Case in point:

Late in my freshman year in college, and early in my sophomore year, within a few months of each other, I lost both my grandmother (after a 17-year battle with non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma) and my 4-year-old cousin (after her battle with widespread cancer, diagnosed with a brain tumor when she was just 18 months old). At that time I remember writing a poem about my feelings. I don't remember the whole thing, but it started out:

I want so badly to believe

There's more to life than what we see

To have the faith that some men do

Believe that God made me and you...

I was seeking...something. I was struggling to resolve the discrepancy between what I believed and what I felt I SHOULD believe. I entered a phase in my life where, while I was still agnostic, I desperately WANTED to believe. I wanted to fit in with society. I was tired of being so different. I wanted to find the comfort that so many PoF's seemed to find in their faith. I think I continued to feel that way through the rest of my college years and into graduate school...having doubts, but wanting to believe; somehow seeking proof that God *could* exist, in spite of my serious doubts.

A couple of other significant things happened during my college years. First, I met my future husband, C. While he was raised a devout Lutheran, we didn't really talk about religion. He hadn't attended church since his mother died (she was very religious, and he had attended for her sake), and it wasn't really an issue. We were both science majors (I studied Biosciences and Chemistry with a focus on ecology and evolution; he was a graduate student in the Microbiology department...a match made in "science-geek heaven"!), and were really just best friends hanging out for the next two years. I had no idea at the time that he would end up being the person I'd want to spend the rest of my life with.

The other item of note was something I saw in most of my college science classes: the apparent need professors had to resolve the "science vs. religion" issue. It boggles my mind now, as I didn't experience any of that in graduate school. In conservative, Christian North Dakota however, it seemed like it was an issue that had to be resolved at the very beginning of class before students could open their minds to accepting the curriculum. In my Zoology class, Dr. G spent an entire lecture on how science (specifically taxonomy/evolution) did not contradict the Bible, and that they could go hand-in-hand with one another. At the beginning of my Human Evolution class, I remember Dr. C spending a significant amount of time explaining how "science doesn't EXCLUDE God, it just doesn't INCLUDE one"...making the distinction that science is a study of the natural world, so it doesn't deal with the existence or nonexistence of gods; it says nothing either way. The only professor I had who didn't mince words or apologize for his curriculum was my Evolutionary Biology instructor. Dr. F even held a debate with some creationists, and told us about it in class. He definitely wasn't my favorite instructor (and I was often bored to tears by his horrible lecture style), but I have to say I respected him for that...even more so with an additional 14 years of maturity and life experience to my credit.

When I completed my degree, I had acceptance letters from two great Biology departments in two different graduate schools. One was in Iowa, and the other in Arizona. I'd personally had more than my fair share of snow and sub-zero winters...and I'd fallen in love with the desert when C and I took a road trip to Arizona the summer after my Junior year.

So I was off on my next big adventure, as I headed south for graduate school that fall...

Book Review: I Sold My Soul on eBay: Viewing Faith through an Atheist's Eyes by Hemant Mehta

As an avid reader of Hemant's blog for the past year or so, I thought it was about time I read the book that catapulted him to semi-celebrity status. I checked it out of the local library a couple days ago, and it was a surprisingly quick read. It was not at all what I expected (somehow I expected a humorous, slightly irreverent book directed toward an atheist audience...I was wrong), but I enjoyed it much more than I anticipated. The book is actually published by a distributor of Christian books, and the text and tone makes it obvious that the intended audience is a Christian one.

Hemant's journey began when he, an atheist and former Jainist, expressed his curiosity about the Christian faith. He wondered if there was something he was missing; questions about God that could be answered through a worldview he had not yet explored. He decided to visit churches and document the process so that others could view and comment on what he was doing. He knew that, in order to get the feedback he was looking for, he would need to publicize his activity. To this end, he advertised on eBay: "Send an atheist to his local church!" For each $10 bid by the winner, Hemant promised to attend one church service. The eventual winner was Christian author and former pastor, Jim Henderson. They agreed that Hemant would attend 15 church services, blog about his observations on Henderson's website, and participate in any publicity opportunities that arose from the agreement (click here for details on the auction and its outcome).

I Sold My Soul on eBay arose from this experience. In the first section of the book, Hemant describes his own religious upbringing, as well as his journey to being an atheist. Then he describes (in general) what nonreligious people *do* believe in an attempt to help readers better understand his perspective before giving his impressions of the various church services. What interested me most about his writing was

(1) the striking similarity between Hemant's journey to unbelief and my own. At times I felt as though *I* could have written, verbatim, his description. It makes me wonder if all atheists (or at least most of them) go through similar phases of doubt and questioning at similar ages.

(2) the accuracy with which he describes, in nonthreatening terms (i.e. not saying "we atheists think you Christians are wrong because..."), what most nonreligious people believe. I think he does a pretty good job of showing that nonreligious people actually have more in common with most religious people (particularly in terms of values and a moral compass) than we have differences.

(3) that at a similar age (I was 24), I also started seeking answers and decided to explore Christianity. I actually became very deeply involved in one church at that time (but more on that in a later blog post in the "Let's Start at the Very Beginning..." series). My reasons were exactly the same as his, or at least as the way he presents them when he writes:

When I launched this experiment, I wanted to know if I may have missed any sign of God in my path to atheism. I thought that by visiting churches I might see hints of God that I had missed before. I was looking for compelling evidence that would change my thinking.

In the next section of the book, Hemant goes on to describe his observations at each of the church services he attended, pointing out both positive and negative aspects of each. The goal of this, as described in the book, is to help Christians to see themselves through the eyes of an outsider. It is also meant to help them understand how to make their church services more effective, particularly with respect to appealing to those who are questioning their faith or seeking answers through religion. I found his observations fascinating, as I made many of the same observations when I first became involved in the church.

Hemant ends the book by summarizing the good and bad points of Christian worship (as he observed them), and gives a pretty good discussion of what it would take to convert him to a person of faith (I agreed with his points, and I think it gives a window into how we "freethinkers" view religious belief in general). Chapters 9 and 10 are ones I wish every Christian would read. The first is subtitled "Suggestions to help you reach out to non-Christians" and the second is titled "What it would take to convert me."

The conclusion of the book has a good message, I think. It goes hand-in-hand with my biggest beef regarding my relationships with Christians: the "US versus THEM" mentality that pervades so many of our interactions. Hemant says:

Now that my experiment is over, I realize I didn't find God, but I saw the incredible power a church can have. I hope that power is used to benefit society instead of hurting it through creating unnecessary divisions between Christians and non-Christians. I hope what I've said will help you, if you are a Christian, to think differently about those who don't share your beliefs.

I have set out on a mission of my own, if you will, to show the world the friendly face of atheism. I would love to meet more friendly Christians. And so would every atheist I know.

Atheists and other religious outsiders are all around you. We work at the same places, live in the same neighborhoods, go to the same movies, and walk our dogs in the same parks. Don't you think it's time we got to know one another?

I couldn't have said it better.

Me, too!

Just a quickie, since I read something today that struck a chord with me. It's from another blog, written by a woman who joined "A Week" on Facebook. I could have written this myself (and kinda wish I had)!

Her full blog can be found at: My knitting has gone to the dogs...

I’m finding it difficult to find the words to describe what I was going through. An analogy that might work: Do you remember when you stopped believing in Santa Claus? It didn’t happen all at once. When I was little, I believed in Santa with all my heart. Then I started getting little clues that something wasn’t quite right. I still believed, but there was an underlying feeling that it wasn’t real. The more that I learned, the more the belief just slipped away. Eventually, I finally admitted to myself that I no longer believed in Santa Claus.

This is the same feeling I had with God. The more that I learned, the more the belief just slipped away. I finally admitted to myself that I no longer believed in God, the same way I no longer believed in the Santa, or the Tooth Fairy, or leprechauns, or unicorns. There is an utter lack of evidence for any of them. There are “feelings” and “belief”, but no actual hard evidence. I have as much proof for the Christian god as I do for the Norse gods or the Greek gods. Lots of stories, but nothing else.

Why haven’t I made this post before? Because “coming out” as an atheist is scary. I’ve had friends lose their families over it. People who’ve been completely cut off from their family because they happen to believe in something as “wrong” as atheism. It’s intimidating. There is a whole community of atheists online, because sometimes that’s the only place we can go to be with other people who understand us. There are atheists in some countries who don’t dare tell a soul because it could mean imprisonment or death, and others who don’t understand why we Americans make such a big deal over the whole thing.

Germinating the seeds of doubt (Let's Start...part 2)

(image from Vivio World)

The teenage years are confusing and difficult for everyone, but I think mine were compounded by my struggles with a lack of religious identity. I guess I would have characterized myself as agnostic back then (or at least my understanding of the word at the time...that I had serious questions about the existence of God, but I just wasn't sure). I spent most of my teen years thinking I was one of very few people in the world who felt this way...I felt very isolated and alone in the community (even if much of that feeling was caused by my own perceptions).

One of the many things I am grateful to my parents for is that we were raised in an environment where it was okay to ask questions about ANYTHING. Even the existence of God. We had Bibles in our house, alongside books of Zen-inspired poetry and Yoga texts; crosses next to miniature Buddha statues and ankh pendants. We listed to Ravi Shankar records alongside Genesis, Neil Diamond, and The Beatles. We didn't have money for a lot of vacations, but when we DID go places, they were focused on venues like The Museum of Man and Nature in Winnipeg, various zoos, tours of historical sites, planetariums, and the like. My parents made our home environment a very rich one, and great value was placed on learning and asking questions.

It stood in stark contrast to what I felt and learned in school. Remember the Bible school teacher I mentioned before? She taught me there were certain questions that were "not nice" to ask. And I was a good kid--a really good kid. I prided myself on being nice and doing what my teachers and other adults told me to do. I remember feeling completely humiliated and embarrassed because I had, in my innocence, just asked a question that was "not nice."

Something similar happened when I was in High School. I was in a home economics class, and our teacher, Mrs. B, was talking about heaven and the afterlife, etc. I asked an honest question, wondering how we know these things. She grew visibly agitated, and sounded angry as she snapped an answer back at me. I realize now that she was responding from emotion, as she told me about how she refuses to believe that her mother, who died before her kids were born, didn't get a chance to meet her own grandsons. She let me know, both verbally and with nonverbal cues, that I had just asked another one of those questions that was "not nice"; not okay. I remember feeling embarrassed and shocked...I didn't think my innocent question deserved an angry, hurt response and complete shutdown.

Talking to my dad was a huge help for me. Knowing that he felt much the same way as I did, and was willing to talk about it, was really my saving grace (for lack of better terminology)! My home was my intellectual safe haven; the place where it was okay to ask questions and explore. The one other place I felt like that was in Mr. T's classroom (no, not THAT Mr. T!).

Mr. T was my 7th and 10th grade Biology teacher, as well as my 12th grade Physics teacher. I looked forward to his class every day. He encouraged us to explore and learn outside of what the book had to say. EVERY question was okay to ask. His room was filled with jars of dead things and aquariums whose walls were so covered in algae you couldn't see what was inside them. They were just asking to be scraped and viewed under a microscope (which we did often), to explore a tiny universe of protozoans in a jungle of seaweed. There were sunny days in the spring where he'd declare we were having class outside. Some days we'd walk to a nearby slough and just spend the hour exploring. I was filled with wonder, and I felt completely in my element. He was the kind of teacher I'd wish for my kids to have (but the kind of teacher that, sadly, is going extinct thanks to "standards-based education" and "No Child Left Behind"). Mr. T's classes were like a refuge to me in an otherwise boring school day.

Unfortunately, not many kids had the same love for Mr. T's class as I had. They thought his classes were "too hard," and they thought he was "really weird." When a student would ask him a question, he wouldn't just answer...he'd make the student talk it through until she found the answer herself. I found that approach challenging and empowering (he often told us, "See? You know...you just don't KNOW you know!"...something I found myself echoing to my own students when I taught science years later). Other students felt like he was ridiculing them by putting them on the spot instead of just giving them the answer.

Mr. T was also an outspoken religious skeptic...and that made him pretty unpopular, too. I remember the kids talking about it. And I remember making a mental note to keep my mouth shut about my own beliefs. At the same time, I was silently his biggest fan (I told him so years later, just a year before he tragically died of a heart attack and complications from bypass surgery at age 56). I still miss him and think of him with admiration as my first scientific mentor.

I graduated Valedictorian of my senior class, gave a speech that a "nice girl" would give, and bit my tongue as we sat through the sermon during Baccalaureate/Commencement (I attended a public school, but it was standard to hold a church service during high school graduation). I couldn't wait to move on to the next phase of my life...I felt like I was escaping! I couldn't wait to explore the world, and I had a great springboard for it. I had been accepted to a 4-week summer program called National Youth Science Camp in West Virginia (more on that later). I was about to board a plane for the first time in my life, and see something other than the plains of North Dakota and Manitoba. I had no idea what to expect, but I was excited and ready!

feeling out the setup for this blog...

I'm still experimenting with some of the features of this blog, but I've discovered I can make more permanent pages (yay!) that are linked at the side of the main blog layout. I've added a page that outlines the basic tenets of "what I believe" in light of the fact that atheists can be, and most often ARE, good people without the influence of god(s) in their lives. You'll find it here (or just click the link on the side bar entitled "Pages"):

What an atheist believes

Unfortunately, I think one of the biggest misconceptions about atheists is that we don't believe in anything, and that we have no basis for morality. I hope the credo on the page linked above can help dispel that myth.

I'll be adding other pages, like notable quotes I've stumbled upon, a list of common misconceptions about atheists/agnostics, as well as a page for famous atheists, agnostics, and religious skeptics. Any other suggestions? I'm happy to hear them!

Let's start at the very beginning... (part 1)

It is, after all (as Julie Andrews sang), a very good place to start. I think sometimes people wonder how an atheist becomes an atheist. This is my personal journey.

Many religious people seem to think that atheists have "decided to turn their back on God" for one reason or another. Perhaps something bad happened, so they "gave up on God." Or maybe they want to live a carefree, hedonistic lifestyle, so they "deny God." The reality is that, for most of us, being an atheist is NOT A CHOICE. The concept of God just doesn't seem real to us. A Person of Faith (heretoafter referred to as a PoF) telling me that I have made a choice to become an atheist would be like me telling them they made a choice to NOT believe in Zeus. Or unicorns. Or the fairies that live under the flowers in my garden.

At the risk of sounding harsh or patronizing, the concept of a personal God seems a little absurd to many of us (as absurd as a belief in flying unicorns might seem to a PoF), and we find it hard to understand how any thinking person could believe such nonsense. Yet, we know that many thinking people DO believe. And while some atheists write PoF's off as absurd or silly, many of us make an honest effort to empathize and try to understand a different viewpoint. In my experience in both social circles, atheists/agnostics/humanists tend to be much more accepting of PoF's than vice versa. Maybe because many of us, at some point in our lives, were PoF's ourselves.

First a bit about my "religious genealogy." My mom grew up with a Presbyterian dad and a Catholic mom, neither of whom were involved in their churches. As a kid, Mom went to church occasionally (not regularly) with her grandparents. She was baptized as an adult when my Grandfather (her dad) had a crisis of conscience and decided all his kids and upbaptized grandkids needed to be baptized (so, incidentally, I was baptized on the same day as my mom, when I was about 3 years old). Dad grew up in a much more religious household, with a dad who was an Evangelical United Bretheren minister (if you're up on your United States church history, you'll know the EUB eventually joined with the Methodists to become the United Methodists).

My parents were married in the local Presbyterian church in the same small town where I was born and raised. When I say small I mean SMALL. It was a Canadian-border town of about 1400 God-fearing people in rural North Dakota. It bordered an Indian reservation (on which almost everyone was Catholic), and the vast majority of people in my hometown were either Lutheran or Catholic (with a smattering of Methodists, Presbyterians, and Assembly of God). Literally EVERY family in town went to church.

Well...every family except ours.

And believe, me, it didn't go unnoticed.

I would categorize my upbringing as nondenominational Protestant. We read Bible stories, learned about Jesus, and we celebrated the Christian holidays. We learned about the Nativity at Christmas time and about Jesus' resurrection at Easter. We learned to say our prayers ("Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, Guide me through the coming night, Wake me with the morning light. God bless Mom, Dad, etc...."). We did not attend a church, however. Mom wasn't a member of any church, and Dad didn't believe in churches. Funny since his dad was a minister, but he had definite opinions on the way money was collected and used by churches. When I was a teenager, my Dad told me he was agnostic. He had a strong interest in learning about other religions and had a hard time with the concept that everyone had the "We're right and everyone else is wrong" attitude.

Because we didn't go to church, my sister and I were ridiculed and teased. We were told we were "Devil worshippers" (among other things). Our next-door neighbors were on a mission to save us...I remember sitting with my friend, J, next to her garage on a summer day when we were playing outside (we couldn't have been more than 7 or 8). She had me recite a version of the Sinner's Prayer, which I did, then we went back to roller skating. I never really thought it was weird at the time, but I remember thinking that it held more significance for her than it did for me. Their parents often invited us to church with them, and my sister and I occasionally went. I couldn't figure out why everyone thought there was something wrong with us that needed to be fixed. We believed in God. My parents were raising us with a good moral compass, and I think that, by and large, my sister and I (who were often the subjects of ridicule for being "different" in our small town) lived more faithfully by the Golden Rule than any of the church-going kids we knew.

This treatment early on spoke volumes to me about keeping my mouth shut about any doubts I might have. We were already being ostracized...why make it worse?

While I DID believe in God, I know I had questions about specifics (like why our religion was right and why other people believed differently if we were the right ones) at a very early age. Case in point: My parents sent me to Bible school once. I don't remember how old I was (maybe 7), but I remember asking a question that the teacher didn't approve of. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it had to do with Jesus dying and being resurrected. I think it was in the realm of "how do we know that for sure?" I was told, "It's not nice to ask questions like that." More confirmation to keep my mouth shut and try to conform as best I could. After all, I wanted to be a nice girl...and those types of questions aren't "nice."

A spiritual turning point in my childhood came when I was nine years old. We had a cat that I was very much in love with...his name was Rocky. He was a fat, teddy-bear of a cat with a big heart and not-so-big intellect. He was my buddy, who played with me, slept in my bed, and loved me unconditionally. When Rocky was about 2 years old, he fell very ill. He stopped eating, and grew thinner and thinner. After several visits to the local vet, Dad took him to a veterinarian in a larger town. This big-town vet did an x-ray and saw what appeared to be a swallowed obstruction, but made an offhand comment that there was a small possibility it could be a tumor. Surgery was scheduled to remove it.

I remember praying to God that he take care of my cat. I remember specifically asking God to make sure my cat didn't have Cancer, and that he'd be okay. The next day came, along with a devastating call from the veterinarian. Rocky was filled with tumors, and there was no hope for my kitty. He was euthanized without ever coming out of surgery. My poor little 9-year-old heart was broken...and for the first time I was wondering...why didn't God listen to me? Why would he torture this innocent little creature with such a horrible disease? Maybe...just maybe...there isn't a God. Maybe...just maybe...God is like Santa Claus. He's a story made up by people so that we do good things (you know, he's keeping track of who's naughty and who's nice).

Of course, I didn't become an atheist at 9 because my cat died. And I know what a PoF would say about unanswered prayers, "God's plan," and the like. My point in telling the Rocky story is this: It's my earliest memory of having true doubt in the existence of God. I had just never really thought about it before. Until that point, I had taken my parents' word at face value that God was real, without really thinking about it. Without question.

So, in looking back, I can pinpoint the moment when the seeds of doubt were planted. My ever-maturing critical thinking skills just allowed those seeds to germinate and grow...