My University Studies Liberated Me

[Droptail]

I’ve been here on this forum for about a month now, and I feel I should share how I ended up leaving Christianity. It’s happened quite recently, and I’m still trying to figure out more precisely what happened that led me to this point, but I can present a fairly-detailed account here.

 

I was born and raised in Idaho by two Christian parents, one having been raised in a quite conservative family and the other having converted during his college years. Throughout my childhood, we attended a small “Bible-believing” church regularly. I went to a fundie school from the start of my formal education. I was also exposed to other Christian activities such as AWANAs and the Mailbox Club. My mother, who actually volunteered for the latter organization, ‘helped’ me when I was 5 or 6 to ask Jesus into my heart, and thus I was saved. I guess the weight of all that involvement from birth onward would make me a native Christian, if that makes any sense.

 

My identity as a Christian was established early on, but I kept it largely in the background, instead focusing on activities and friends. I got heavy doses of religion, but I was also encouraged and aided by my parents to develop my own interests and ideas. I loved going to a local school supply bookstore to get books on mathematics when I was young. At the local library, I checked out books mostly at liberty (I wasn’t allowed to read anything by Carl Sagan, despite my intense interest in astronomy – a damn shame).

 

As the roaring nineties gave way to the new millennium, I was getting activity fatigue. Every night seemed to involve at least a couple hours of a sport or other things, and it all had become simply too tiring and tedious. In very short order, I quit baseball, piano lessons, AWANAs, etc. I was left with more free time. The downside was that I then had fewer friends outside school and church at a time when I might have been better off being able to draw from more perspectives, particularly non-Christian ones. The 9/11 terror attacks hit at the beginning of my 8^th grade school year. Prior to that day, Christianity was important, but not the ultimate thing for me. From then on, the door was open for Christian nationalism to begin infecting my life even more than it had been.

 

I have to admit I was not very devout much of the time. I could have been characterized as a Sunday Christian, not involved beyond what was necessary. I don’t say this to cast doubt on the authenticity of my belief, because I was truly a Christian. However, I never got very deeply involved in the church structure, and that helped to contribute to my fairly-rapid deconversion after high school. But before that, I underwent a severe brainwashing in a variety of ways.

 

Fundie high school was a pretty surreal experience, looking back. Our U.S. history teacher could get away with calling liberalism “a mental disease”, a totally inappropriate bias for the educational setting. Debates between evolution and creationism were boringly one-sided (3 guesses who was winning *there*); no one I knew there had any good concept of what biological evolution actually was. There was a worldviews class even, which basically compared conservative Christianity and straw man versions of “secular humanism” and 4 other ‘worldviews’. Teachers had no qualms about openly preferring certain political candidates (*cough* Dubya).

 

I picked up a bad strain of Christian nationalism there, and the concern for the nation’s “moral values” hijacked my mind and caused me to do some acts I now utterly regret: rooting for George W. Bush’s re-election, voting to help outlaw gay marriage in Idaho, supporting the meddling in the affairs of people all across the nation whose lives were really not my business (like Terry Schiavo – I remember that same U.S. history teacher of mine considered flying down to Florida to break in and re-insert her feeding tube, in all seriousness). Still, there was hope for me despite my religious indoctrination.

 

I was a fairly-independent and intelligent thinker in some respects. For example, I found it bizarre when people proclaimed the Bible to be the only source of truth or knowledge that was needed. Were they actually claiming it to have anything important to say about mathematics and linguistics (both being huge interests of mine at the time)? I believed that alongside the inspired revelation of Scripture there was also natural revelation that had to be discovered in nature and through reason. Things still had to correspond to reality for me; it was just that my perspective of reality had been seriously distorted. Here’s part of what I wrote to be put next to my picture in my senior yearbook: “The truth is nothing to be afraid of. My lifelong goal will be the pursuit of truth, and I thank (fundie hs) and all the teachers there for giving me the Christian foundation of my education.” This, at the time, wasn’t me being open-minded to other points of view. I believed everything I had been taught there, but I had a nagging feeling that my brand of Christianity did not have the whole story straight yet.

 

Diploma in hand (graduated from there in May 2006), I went to the local Christian university. By this time, I had altogether stopped going to church. I suspect that was important to my eventual deconversion, because after high school ended, fundamentalism didn’t continue to be crammed into my brain by any other sources except a few old friends I sporadically visited with. My mind was beginning to clear itself from the putrid substance of that way of thinking, and university was more than helpful in that regard, although I wouldn’t realize that until late in the process.

 

I progressed a great deal intellectually in my four years at university, having my consciousness raised on particular issues. In my freshman philosophy class (with a Christian bent), we had to write a paper about the fall of mankind, and for me, that meant an invitation to talk about Genesis 3 as if it had been actual history. Wrong answer. That drivel earned me a chat with the professor, who showed me how the matters we grappled with in that class were more complex than fundamentalism made them seem. That was the first epiphany: other Christians had good reasons for believing things that were out of step with my fundamentalism. Being agreeable and wanting to maintain a good grade, I began to adjust my work accordingly.

 

I continued becoming more aware, passing the narrow borders of the fundamentalist thought universe. A freshman Bible professor broke the news that it didn’t make sense to interpret Genesis 1 as a factual account of the origins of the world. As I worked through the class textbook and the evidence she presented, I came to the understanding that it was just another creation myth, similar in content to other cultures of the time period. An astronomy professor believed the universe was billions of years old, not thousands, and when he showed us that planets were being discovered beyond the solar system, some implications struck me immediately. I wondered why God would have wasted his time with creating trillions of solar systems throughout the universe if he just needed one. I didn’t yet question his existence at the time. I just thought either he was being very inane (I didn’t think it was supremely skillful to put a plethora of empty worlds out there) or there were other sentient beings in the universe, and their understanding of God would be hugely-different from ours.

 

My biggest leap occurred when I began to see the conservative wing of Christianity for what it represented politically: bigotry, moronic fixation on trivial issues, slavish bondage to the GOP. I don’t mean to offend anyone’s political sensibilities; this was just the road I traveled in my particular deconversion. As I began studying Spanish (I made it my major early in sophomore year), the illegal alien from Mexico (and sometimes Central America) became gradually less alien. I came to the point that I could no longer support any political candidate who used divisive language toward immigrants in general. I was breaking with many Republicans and making myself receptive to some Democrats, and coming from a background as an “American fascist” (as Chris Hedges puts in the title of his book on right-wing Christianity), I was taking a huge cognitive step here.

 

During the early months of 2008, I was intrigued by the Democratic presidential primary race. Liberals weren’t evil anymore for me; they were just another segment of the political spectrum. As Obama accepted the Democratic nomination in August of that year, I decided I would vote for him, a scenario that wouldn’t have been possible for me just 2 years before that. My support for him as presidential candidate came with a growing awareness of the vitriol that conservatives were expressing about him.

 

I got to see the true colors of my former political community with an outside perspective. As I looked across the landscape at people purporting to be Christians and holding “love your neighbor as yourself” as their supposed basic command from their God, I knew that belief couldn’t at all be reconciled with the hateful backlash I witnessed from these same folks. I’ve never seen such a pathetic display of humanity. I was shocked and irate when my best friend called Obama the n-word to my face in front of his own entire family and told me I would be responsible for destroying the country by voting for him. I issued a plea on my Facebook page to all my friends to quit the insults and character attacks and start focusing on the substance of the issues of the campaign…no responses. None of my conservative friends were interested in real, impartial dialogue; their worlds were white-and-black. I swore off conservative Christianity then and there.

 

I want to reiterate that I don’t mean to say that one has to become liberal if they deconvert; it was just the path I took out of an extremely-conservative and politically-charged Christianity. I had gone from a Christian right-wing nationalist to a Christian liberal-moderate in a couple years and a half between my high school graduation and the 2008 presidential election. I recognized that much of the Bible had been constructed out of texts from various sources, and that the New Testament hadn’t really been established until a few centuries after the purported life of Christ. The change in my thinking had been abrupt, but it had also felt seamless; it was like a particular section of the house of cards had been knocked down. I was more skeptical than before and less inclined to antagonistic thinking.

 

A full deconversion from Christianity didn’t come until 2010. Throughout 2009, I’d go to the university chapel to pray, sing worship songs, and listen to some over-promoted speaker. I didn’t go very often though, and I felt rage at many of my fellow believers on that campus. Their ways of thinking were too simplistic, with a lack of reflection I found disturbing. I agreed with a challenge a friend made to others there: say that you would not be professing a different creed right now if you had been born elsewhere on our pale blue dot. I thought if there was a deity, they chose a funny way to reveal themselves to humanity, letting us all create our own independent, contradictory religions. I maintained for awhile that perhaps all religions had some understanding of the one deity, but that view became untenable in short order.

 

I decided I was an agnostic sometime in early 2010, and in November, swayed by Richard Dawkins’ argument that the existence of a deity is highly improbable, I adopted the atheist label. I like to treat that as a basic operating principle for my life; I don’t believe any supernatural entity exists due to the lack of evidence for any, but I remain a free-thinker and am open to any evidence of good quality for the existence of the supernatural.

 

What consequences have come since my proclamation of atheism some two months ago? There have been relatively few so far, to be honest. My family’s church attendance declined dramatically throughout my teenage years, and my parents stopped expecting me to go to church quite a few years ago, so it is nice for me in that regard. Sundays have never been better! I put “atheist” on my Facebook page (de hecho dice “ateo”, mi página está en español), and the only Christian people I know who aren’t on there are my parents and maternal grandparents, so they don’t know yet.

 

About my atheism, so far I’ve only heard from my fundie baptist kjv-thumping aunt and my frustrating but still fun best friend. My aunt says she loves me but then will call me a fool by quoting a verse, which makes it less bad for her sin meter I suppose. Oh well. I just affirm my intelligence to her and inform her how sincere doubts and irresolvable problems have compelled me to leave behind my old beliefs.

 

My best friend (we’ve known each other for over 10 years now) has pestered me quite a bit to the extent that our relationship is extremely strained right now. He tells me that I actually ‘helped’ him with Christianity when he was having doubts about faith when we were younger, so I can understand my change threatens him in a very personal way. Nevertheless, his methods of trying to bring me back into the fold are very questionable: accusing me of lying to myself, inserting random snide remarks to cut me down (“There’s no atheists in foxholes!”), dismissing my explanation of evolution as the “stupidest thing” he’s ever heard from me without addressing my arguments. It’s very hard for me to want to hang out with him when he doesn’t respect my right to hold whatever creed I wish. He apparently still wants to be close friends with me, but I’m wary of his overtures when he continually and intentionally offends and proselytizes me. Time will tell whether this relationship can be salvaged…

 

Well, that’s plenty for now. I found ex-c while searching for some resources for former believers back in November, and I’m glad to have encountered such a supportive and reasonable group of people. Thanks for listening.

 

 

[JadedAtheist]

Thanks for your testimony

[jlw1980]

Wow, we have a lot in common! I was raised in a fundie (foursquare and AG) home, too. I went to a Xtian high school. Thankfully I went to public university, where I learned to think for myself! You write beautifully. Welcome to the site!

[pitchu]

Glad you found us, Hokun.

 

I, too, am very distressed at the high rate of U. S. hostility shown to our Latino neighbors. But then, hostility in general seems to be a hallmark of this "Christian Nation."

[Droptail]

Thanks, everyone, for the comments and taking the time to read my story.

 

Wow, we have a lot in common! I was raised in a fundie (foursquare and AG) home, too. I went to a Xtian high school. Thankfully I went to public university, where I learned to think for myself! You write beautifully. Welcome to the site!

 

Thanks, I did re-work quite a few sentences so I'm glad that paid off. Moreover, I hope the whole piece was understandable and clearly-written.

 

Good thing you got to go to public university; I'm sure you found out much there like I did at my uni...I'm just glad I didn't go to a fundie university; there were possibilities of that!

 

Glad you found us, Hokun.

 

I, too, am very distressed at the high rate of U. S. hostility shown to our Latino neighbors. But then, hostility in general seems to be a hallmark of this "Christian Nation."

 

Thanks, pitchu. Yeah, I guess I discovered, in a perhaps less-personal way than others here, that "Christian" isn't synonymous with "loving" or even "respectful of others"...

[Vigile]

I progressed a great deal intellectually in my four years at university,

 

NNU? I have quite a few friends that went there since I grew up in that town. It was NNC at the time though.

[Droptail]

I progressed a great deal intellectually in my four years at university,

 

NNU? I have quite a few friends that went there since I grew up in that town. It was NNC at the time though.

 

Yep. It's a beautiful campus & town. Maybe I have low standards though...

[melonies]

My story is similar in many respects, but I couldn't have written it so beautifully.

 

I continued becoming more aware, passing the narrow borders of the fundamentalist thought universe.

In my experience, once you've passed those borders you can't believe how narrow they really were and that you were stuck inside for such a long time.

 

Thanks for sharing.

[Wizened Sage]

Hokun,

Your story was very well told. You are not merely articulate, you have a genuine gift for communication. I hope you will continue to use that gift to help others escape from superstition. Thanks for posting.

[Surrounded]

This reminds me so much of my situation except you are far better writer than I

The "straw man POV's of secular humanism" and "one sided creation/evolution debates" are huge at my school. That's basically my "religion" textbook in a nutshell.