A Portrait Of the Atheist As A Young Man

PZ Myers at Pharyngula linked to an article by Ricky Gervais about his Deconversion Story. It’s a fantastic read and highly recommended but it reminded me that for all the Atheism talk on the blog, I’ve never gotten around to telling my own Deconverson Story.

I realized a couple of years ago that I never really believed in God or anything supernatural. This will come as a surprise to anyone who knew me during my Pagan period, when I would burn incense and wear lots of rings and talked to all my finds about spirit animals and a Universe built on the Anthropic Principle. Looking back, I’m slightly embarrassed about my behavior then. Not that it was odd, which it was but because it was so very forced. Odd behavior in a teenager is something to be expected. A teenager who isn’t just a little odd will grow up to be the world’s most boring adult. Count on it.

When I say my odd behavior was forced I mean it was theatrical in a way that I even knew was a bit of a put on. See, when I was thirteen, I realized that the Bible was just a book of stories. God and Jesus and Moses and all of those characters where no more real than the other mythology I liked to read. Jesus, Hercules, about the same minus a few surface details. Exchange hydras for money changers and you have the same moralistic story, complete with platitudes buried in the soft mud of late bronze age fantasy. But conventional wisdom says that a good person believe sin something. Which is true. That most people latch on to the first religion at hand is just lazy. So, I knew I needed to believe in something spiritual, but what?

So I went looking. I read everything I could get my hands on. Religion, Philosophy, Physics, Mythology. I still have a soft spot for Joseph Campbell, who better than anyone before him, could explain in lucid terms why these ancient myths were important, that it was all psychological, about a need to connect with community on a level that is more than just following the rules. Still, I was under the impression that ritual and belief were a necessity. But none of the organized religions appealed to me. So I chose the disorganized ones.

The Neo-Pagan religions like Wicca are appealing specifically because they are customizable. They are Open Source. You can start with a basic package of Gardnarian Witchcraft, import a little Crowlian Ceremonial Magik and plug in as many or as few Greco-Roman God Widgets as you like. And just like Open Source Evangelists, listening to Neo-Pagans talk about their chakras and spirit guides gets old, real fast. Their is also a danger of going off the deep end and becoming a fanatic or a weirdo, making truth claims just as batty as any Creationist or Demon Haunted victim of Possession, or undiagnosed schizophrenia. Take your pick.

And this is the part that I’m most embarrassed about. I did become a weirdo. I’m not going to go into the specifics, but to anyone out there who knew me circa 1997-98, I’m sorry about that crazy kook you had to put up with. Joe and Amy, if you ever read this, I apologize, especially. I know it’s not enough to make up for the odd behavior or any of the unintended consequences of it but it’s the best I can do.

I fell out of this kooky world of Mystery and magic round about the time I met my wife. This is not a coincidence. I realized that if I was going to be a stable person, a husband who could be relied on, I needed to be grounded in the real world. I took a hard look at my life and discarded what no longer and to be honest, never did make any sense.

There was no great epiphany, just a slow realization that my previous way of looking at the world didn’t work. It was built on way too many assumptions for which there not only was no evidence but could be none. After deconstructing what it was I no longer believed in I was left with plenty of gaps that were being filled with only cursory knowledge. So, like I had always done, I read. And it turns out, we humans are surprisingly good at solving problems and since the beginning of the industrial revolution and the birth of the scientific method, had found out that a surprising number of our ancient assumptions and ideas where not really based on anything but wishful thinking and a longing for an ordered Universe that isn’t as harsh as it appears to be. I read Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins and Bertrand Russel and Charles Darwin and a hundred other great thinkers. People who had questions, just like mine and weren’t satisfied by the old fashioned answers. They applied reason, logic, wit and imagination to the problem of our lack of knowledge and by doing so, found out a great deal about the world and the universe around us. I discovered quickly that the natural world was just even more full of wonder and beauty because it was all real. You can reach out and touch it, sense it and admire it for simply being.

After we had been married a year or two and it had become plain to Elvira that I no longer believed in anything spiritual she asked me what I did believe in. Because– and this is true and important– you do need to believe in something. I thought for a good while about this. And what I discovered was that I believed in a lot of things. Art, literature, the power of the human mind to solve problems, create and imagine. But most of all, I believed in her.

And not just her but people. I believe in people and our ingenuity and our ability to muck things up pretty good but also in our ability to fix them, when we realize there is a problem that needs fixing. We can do the hard work necessary to make this a better world, here and now, but not until we put aside the fantasies about a happy fantasy world and learn to appreciate the world for what it is. When this is the only life you have or will ever have, making it a good one becomes the only real reason to live.