The Deconversion of Alex, from Atheist Jesus
Used with permission: The shortened deconversion story of Alex from the Atheist Jesus facebook page.
A year ago, I realized that my preconceived notions of religion were bogus. Not long ago, I was a bible believing Christian. That is, until I got into college, and took a class in comparative mythology. In that class, we discussed about the major Indo-European myths, from Mesopotamian mythos to the Rig Vedas.
It was during the analysis of the Rig Vedas and other Hindu scriptures that I realized that Hinduism was still a currently practiced religion. I then looked at the various mythos and saw that they all had a very similar skeletal structure:
- Most of them had anthropomorphic deities, who have either directly or indirectly created the universe and all that is in it.
- Most of these deities proposed the purposes of life for humanity to be to worship them, so that they can get into some sort of positive afterlife of sorts.
- Most of them also claimed that disbelief in them would cause you great turmoil in this life and, worse than that, in the next life.
I then put two and two together, and I realized that my Christian beliefs were really not that different from these ancient beliefs, and I would be but a fool to believe that my beliefs were more valid than these people [that’s why you usually see me asking to theists the moment that they say that God exists 2 simple questions:
- Which God?
- Why that God?
For a while though, I was still a believer in the Christian God, since it was the faith that my parents raised me into. Though, I still felt like that was an act of dishonesty, since I didn’t really believe. I didn’t even know that the atheist position was even POSSIBLE, UNTIL I stumbled on the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham on YouTube. In the suggested videos, I have found many videos from The Amazing Atheist, Phil Mason, Seth Andrews’ The Thinking Atheist, and a whole bunch more. I then decided to finally look at the bible with and open mind, and, sure enough, at the end of that painstaking ordeal, I became an atheist.
Once that happened, I had a sort of need for catharsis. I wanted to lash out against religion altogether, since I felt lied to my entire life. And I did. And with that came the consequences.
I lost many connections with good friends, family members, mentors and teachers, due to my outspoken atheism. And while that hurt me, I felt like I had to continue. I felt a compulsive need to tell everybody that I could that non-belief is not that bad at all. So I started joining atheist group forums online, and in one of them I met Gary (the OG admin of the facebook page Atheist Jesus). He and I then became friends almost instantly. It was a sort of connection, the kind where both of you just click and act like you’ve been friends your entire life. Anyhow, Gary told me to follow his page, and I liked it. I loved the voracious responses to the religious. I loved how this page got every theist’s pants in a knot. But better than ALL OF THAT, I loved the community that was growing. I loved the sympathy that I saw between fellow atheists, and I loved the general connection that the fans of this page had with each other.
A couple of months after I met Gary, he pitched to me to help him admin this page, and here I am.
I cannot be more thankful for that.
