To Make A Long Story Short

[seeboh]

A fair warning to all who read this:

I'm not exactly firing on all mental cylinders while writing this, nor have I prepared anything. So here's an apology in advance if this ends up being incoherent nonsense. So here it goes...

 

I'm currently about to turn 17 years old and am a Junior in a Catholic High School. Don't get me wrong, I love everything about my school except for the prayers, the 45 minutes a day of religion class, and the occasional mass. I grew up in a Roman Catholic household and continue to go to Church every week. I guess you could say I started having doubts at about 7 or 8 years old, but not really serious doubts (as if any 8 year old really cared that much about religion). I asked my grandmother while we were talking about evolution very briefly, "Well don't we ultimately have to choose between science and faith eventually?" She responded with, "No, science and faith can work together to reveal God's beauty." I took the answer as it was and never really thought about it after that until recently.

 

I started grounding my faith in logic (yeah, you know how this is going to end) about a year and a half ago in English class when learning about the Deists. I justified my beliefs with the beauty of the world and the first cause argument. I've always been a logical person and never really caught on the the whole "faith" thing. It just took a few people to point out how BS it was.

 

About 8 or 9 months ago, I learned about the great Dr. Sagan. I've always been a big fan of science and new and interesting ideas. I'm a complete nerd when it comes to science . Anyway, I watched Dr. Sagan's "Cosmos" series on YouTube and Hulu for months without even calling into question that the universe is so vast and beautiful, that it's really inefficient of God to even have other galaxies. Eventually this question popped into my head and luckily, there was a video by a user called Thunderf00t in the "suggestions" section of YouTube after watching a clip of Dr. Sagan. I can't recall the exact video, but whatever it was, it put some serious doubts into my head. I am what truly a YouTube deconvert . To all of you who make videos on YT about the subject of god, you're doing the world a great service.

 

After watching a few of Thunderf00t's videos and some other users such as EdwardCurrent, AndromedasWake, and Nonstampcollector; I was thoroughly in denial that I had been proven wrong about my faith. This is happening around June 2010. I spent most of my free time during the summer looking up arguments both for and against god. Naturally, I found arguments such as Kalam, TAG, The Ontological Argument, and the Argument from Design. I also found thorough refutations to all theist arguments I've encountered and problems with the god concept itself. The concept of a just god and hell also provided a serious point of doubt. What could anybody do to deserve eternal torment? All of our actions are finite. Needless to say, I remained in denial for about 2 months. The first thing I would have called myself other than Christian was Agnostic, which lasted for a week. I called myself a Pantheist for about an hour. After that hour I had a good laugh at myself. Then I officially declared myself an Atheist.

 

Now to switch gears and talk about my family. My mom and my dad are both pretty devout Catholics. My mom converted from Presbyterianism about 6 years ago. My sister is also pretty engulfed by the faith, making me the black sheep. They're all pretty reasonable people, they accept science with the exception of climate change. They all hold the belief that apostates deserve hell, and when a good question about Christianity comes up, they "leave it up to faith".

 

My situation as it is now is that I live with my parents, devout Catholics, and virtually everybody around me is Catholic. I still haven't told anybody about my atheism, and wonder whether I should just wait until I have some distance from my family to break the news. It's extremely frustrating not being honest with everybody and I don't know how much longer I can keep it in. It's great to know that there are people out there who think like me . To sum up this whole testimony, I thought about my faith for the first time in my life. So here I am, trapped and frustrated with being dishonest at home with about two years to go before I move out.

[Guest I Love Dog]

No one has to justify their belief or non-belief to anyone. It's totally personal.

 

I'm hoping that your parents are as reasonable as you say they are, and they probably are. Is it possible for you to sit down with them and just tell them of your non-belief? You would need to tell them that you really don't want to listen to reasons why you SHOULD believe because you have given it a lot of thought and you have reached your own decision that you no longer believe in a god

 

Tell them that you are sincere in telling them and that you're finding it hard prolonging the dishonesty that you are still a believer and want to be honest and frank with them.

[DrummerScott]

I know how you feel. My family is Roman Catholic, my mother quite devout. Though I didn't go to any catholic schools, I still went to church every week. I guess I have been skeptic for a while like you. I challenged the idea of santa one year by getting in a bunch of trouble at the start of the year hoping to find a lump of coal in my stocking (this would prove his existence). When seeing that it didn't effect the amount of gifts, I decided to challenge him again by being extra nice...same amount of gifts. A year before that I only told santas at the mall what to get me for christmas (I didn't make a list) and left my parents guessing...yeah that wasn't a good year for gifts .

 

Anyway, all I have to say is that It gets a little easier when you get out of the house. In college its easier to find people who accept the fact that you are not christian/religious/whatever you call yourself. As for my family situation, well I think there is a better time and place than the present. I don't want to tell people because, well that could just end badly. I wish I could find it again but there is a decent thread on this site about telling family and other people. Just look around and you will find some good stuff.

[seeboh]

No one has to justify their belief or non-belief to anyone. It's totally personal.

 

I think people's beliefs should be justified. I agree that you shouldn't let anybody else tell you whether your beliefs are justified or not though, that is personal.

 

I'm hoping that your parents are as reasonable as you say they are, and they probably are. Is it possible for you to sit down with them and just tell them of your non-belief? You would need to tell them that you really don't want to listen to reasons why you SHOULD believe because you have given it a lot of thought and you have reached your own decision that you no longer believe in a god

 

Tell them that you are sincere in telling them and that you're finding it hard prolonging the dishonesty that you are still a believer and want to be honest and frank with them.

 

Thanks for the advice . I'm more of a fan of the insert it quietly in a conversation then talk it out though. I'll take this into consideration.

 

I know how you feel. My family is Roman Catholic, my mother quite devout. Though I didn't go to any catholic schools, I still went to church every week. I guess I have been skeptic for a while like you. I challenged the idea of santa one year by getting in a bunch of trouble at the start of the year hoping to find a lump of coal in my stocking (this would prove his existence). When seeing that it didn't effect the amount of gifts, I decided to challenge him again by being extra nice...same amount of gifts. A year before that I only told santas at the mall what to get me for christmas (I didn't make a list) and left my parents guessing...yeah that wasn't a good year for gifts .

 

Scientific method FTW

 

Anyway, all I have to say is that It gets a little easier when you get out of the house. In college its easier to find people who accept the fact that you are not christian/religious/whatever you call yourself. As for my family situation, well I think there is a better time and place than the present. I don't want to tell people because, well that could just end badly. I wish I could find it again but there is a decent thread on this site about telling family and other people. Just look around and you will find some good stuff.

 

I hope it does. I have the same fears about telling my family. I'll look for it. Thanks for your reply

[Overcame Faith]

When I was almost your exact age, I decided that I no longer wanted to go to church. I had a talk with my mother and explained to her that church was doing me no good and that, therefore, it didn't make sense for me to continue to go. She looked at me and said, "As long as you're a minor and live in this house, you will go to church. When you're on your own, then you can make your own decisions." My response was a polite, "Yes, ma'am." And that was that until I moved out a few years later. As I've thought about that over the years, I have come to the conclusion that my mother was correct in this sense: when we are minors living at home, we are subject to our parents' authority.

 

Now, that does not mean that you must think and believe the religious dogma as they instruct you. In fact, one job of parents is to teach their children to think and become independent adults. But it may mean that you may want to think carefully before you tell them that you have rejected their religion. I say this especially because of this quote of yours:

 

They all hold the belief that apostates deserve hell....

 

In their eyes, you will be that apostate since you will be disclosing to them that you have rejected their religion. My advice is for you carefully to think through the implications of disclosing your religious beliefs to them while you are still under their control and in their home. I don't know your parents and so I have no idea how they will react. But you know them and should be able to think this issue through based on that knowledge. But anyone who believes that apostates deserve hell does not sound like a person receptive to their child abandoning their religion.

[seeboh]

As I've thought about that over the years, I have come to the conclusion that my mother was correct in this sense: when we are minors living at home, we are subject to our parents' authority.

 

My advice is for you carefully to think through the implications of disclosing your religious beliefs to them while you are still under their control and in their home. I don't know your parents and so I have no idea how they will react. But you know them and should be able to think this issue through based on that knowledge. But anyone who believes that apostates deserve hell does not sound like a person receptive to their child abandoning their religion.

 

Unfortunately, I am still under their authority. That's part of the reason I haven't told them yet. I do think that my parents are reasonable, but at the same time I think you're correct in saying that they won't like it when I do break the news. I honestly don't think their reaction will be half as bad as some of the other testimonies I've read on here. I consider myself lucky. It feels so damn terrible to live a lie in front of them though. I'll definitely think about the implications of telling them now and weigh the pros with the cons. Thanks for your reply .

[DrummerScott]

Heh I know what you mean about living a lie. Going to xmas mass this year will be an interesting experience.