I was a believer

I was born and raised in a small mid-western town (still live there) to two very loving Christian parents. My childhood was typical; you know, school, friends, family outings, and of course - church. We went to mostly pentecostal churches, and occasionally Baptist as well. I didn't think much of it; in fact, It was just a normal part of my childhood. We were, I guess you could say, "fundies" (Slang term for Fundamentalist Christians).

I have two uncles who are pastors. One, my dad's brother, pastors an Assembly of God church. The other is married to my mother's sister (my aunt) and pastors in the Church of God denomination. My dad has been occasionally active in the ministry, giving sermons at various churches we were members of in his earlier days, and served briefly as a youth minister at an Assembly of God church more recently.

I was "saved" when I was five and baptised when I was eight. I prayed, read my Bible on occasion, attended youth Bible classes, and when I was a little older, was even a "counselor" for a Bible school program for young kids.

During all of this I never questioned the validity of what I believed. Why would I? I sincerely believed that what I had was the truth. Since the time I was old enough to understand what was being said to me I was told that the Bible was the inerrant, infallible, true, literal, unquestionable word of God. To believe otherwise was unacceptable. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would ever doubt my belief in God.

The downfall of my faith

As I got older I began to think more deeply about my beliefs. I had questions; questions like: Why do I believe what I do? Are those reasons valid? How do I know that what I've been told is accurate? All of these questions began to vex me and I just had to get to the bottom of it all. I began to study, not just things that preached to the choir, but things that challenged my preconceptions. What followed was unexpected and unsettling. Disillusionment is the most accurate word to describe what happened to me at that point. After that, there was no going back. The damage was done and I would never believe the same way again.

What am I?

After I lost my faith, I was unsure about what to call myself. To me, labels aren't important, but surely, If someone were to ask, I need to call myself something. Atheist, agnostic, deist, pantheist, all of these labels on the label buffet to chose from and yet, I was unsure, uncertain as to what I was. At one point, I still believed in a "creator", but I didn't subscribe to the Christian conception of the creator, so I figured I was a deist. After some time and further study in the areas of science and philosophy, I was uncertain if one could even conclude that there were a "creator." It seemed that the more I researched, the more unsure of a god's existence I was.

I began calling myself an agnostic; that is, until I learned the true definition of the word. I learned that agnosticism is the position one holds regarding claims which one does not claim to definitively know for sure to be true or false. However, agnosticism is not a middle ground between theism and atheism as some believe it is. Most agnostics are really atheists. Agnosticism isn't mutually exclusive to atheism; they go hand in hand. I am, in essence, an agnostic and an atheist. Some prefer to call this form of atheism "weak atheism" or "implicit atheism" (some might be surprised to know that this is the most common form of atheism). I don't like to complicate things, so when people ask me what my position is on god, I just say "I'm an atheist." For further information on atheism and agnosticism read my hub http://hubpages.com/hub/Of-Gods-And-Teapots

What changed my mind?

It wasn't any a single aspect of Christianity that led me to question it; it was really a combination of things. I can't explain what initially caused me to question my beliefs, but I can say with the utmost honesty that it did not come from any external influences; the questioning came from within. Only after I had those initial doubts did I go searching for answers to the nagging questions that plagued me.

Basically, what I discovered is that Christianity has absolutely no evidential basis whatsoever and a considerable amount of evidence that shows it to be just another bronze age mythos. I actually thought about how silly and impossible some of the stories were and how unreasonable it is to accept that reality was somehow turned on its head centuries ago without any evidence whatsoever. As a Christian, I used to laugh at some of the beliefs of other religions, but when I finally turned my beam of criticism at my own religion, it was no different.

I truly cared about whether or not my beliefs were true, and when I examined them in an unbiased light, I found them to be untenable. Given the opportunity to present what I believe to be the most powerful arguments against Christianity, they would be the following:

• The combined sciences of biology, geology, archaeology, and anthropology have demonstrated that most of what is contained in the Old Testament of the Bible is utterly false. Man has been in existence far longer than six thousand years and evolutionary biology indicates that organisms have evolved over millions of years into what they are today. Living organisms certainly were not created in their present forms in an instantaneous creation event some six thousand years ago.
• Jesus Christ may have been a real individual who was born in Bethlehem, had disciples, was an itinerant preacher, and was ultimately crucified. However, even if future evidence establishes all of these things to be fact, it does not demonstrate that he, was born of a virgin, turned water into wine, walked on water or rose from the dead. History is replete with examples of individuals of great renown who were said to have done amazing or impossible things but these stories are now regarded by historians to be mostly myths and legends. As an example, a very popular story in American culture is the one about a young George Washington who was said to have "chopped down his fathers cherry tree" and upon being questioned as to whether or not he was the responsible party, he replied "I cannot tell a lie", thus demonstrating his impeccable honesty. If historians are doubtful about the authenticity of a story like this, a plausible story mind you, how much more should we question stories that claim that a man walked on water or rose from the dead?
• In one of his epistles, Paul of Tarsus made the statement that "God is not the author of confusion" (1Corinthians 14:33). However, the Bible is quite arguably the most confusing, contradictory, and ridiculously implausible book ever written. No one can seem to agree on what it says, and every denomination claims to have "the truth" and each can defend their interpretations equally well. It is the obscure nature of the Bible that makes it so malleable to anyone's interpretation. For this reason, I find it highly doubtful that a supposedly limitless being wrote a book that is so vague in its meaning that it can be interpreted to mean whatever its reader wants it to.
• The Bible describes a god who advocates genocide, infanticide, slavery, genital mutilation (circumcision), animal sacrifice and a plethora of other primitive bronze age practices. This, in my opinion, would be unbecoming of a supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being. The Bible is more indicative of a book that was written by human authors living in a time when these primitive practices where commonplace.
• The idea of an eternal place of torture (Hell) for sinners and unbelievers and an eternal paradise (Heaven) for the righteous seems like blackmail coupled with a bribe. To believe that a being that is supposed to be the paragon of perfection and justice finds it reasonable to torture people for all eternity often for petty finite offenses is utterly absurd. Hell is obviously a scare tactic used to coerce and maintain adherents. The Biblical description of Heaven as having golden streets, pearl gates, and personal mansions for every believer sounds like a fictitious selling point designed to entice potential converts.

I don't want to sound as though I don't think that the Bible has any redeeming qualities within it. There are gems of wisdom in the Bible as well as inspirational and poetic aspects that shouldn't go unnoticed. However, one still cannot ignore very obvious things in the Bible that point to an all too human origin.

Is there a God?

Just because I find it unlikely that the Bible was produced by a deity, that does not mean that a deity doesn't exist, right? Well, that is true; it doesn't mean that a deity doesn't exist. Admittedly, I cannot prove that there is not a god, but that is really not the point. The burden of proof is not on me, it is on the claimant. No one has proven that the Loch Ness Monster doesn't exist; does that mean that we should all believe in it until someone can prove that it doesn't? I don't believe that there is any valid reason to believe that a god is necessary to explain our existence. But, how can I manage to be an atheist if I don't claim to know that a god doesn't exist? The answer is simple; atheism is simply the absence or lack of belief in a god. I don't claim that the existence of a god is dis-proven; I simply claim that the existence of a god is unproven. Until conclusive evidence can be presented to me that I find convincing proof that a god exists, I cannot believe that one does. It's that simple.

Things that cast doubt on the God hypothesis

The universe has been in existence for approximately 14 billion years. The Solar system formed some five billion years ago. Humans have been in existence for approximately two hundred thousand years. This is a strange time-frame given that we are supposed to be the focal point of the entire cosmos and yet, we have only been in existence for a tiny fraction of its existence.

We occupy a small planet orbiting a medium sized star that is among billions of other stars in a galaxy that is just one among as many as two hundred billion. How is it possible to believe that this universe was created with only us in mind?

History has demonstrated time and time again that natural phenomenon that were once attributed to a god were, with painstaking research, explained and ultimately attributed to natural causes. We have evidence that early in the life of our planet complex chemistry was taking place in the oceans that we know could have produce amino acids, the constituent elements of DNA. We know, for a fact, that evolution by natural selection is a real and demonstrable process. As the forward march of science continues, the faithful are becoming increasingly hard pressed to find a reason why a god had anything to do with the creation of the universe.

There is also the issue of poor design in nature. The world and its organisms are full of horrible flaws that would cast a would be designer as either cruel or inept. If a god created the cosmos and used evolution as a means to produce us, this implies that the designer is limited in power and certainly not omnipotent. If a designer wanted to make its existence known through its creation, it chose the most unconvincing way to do so.

Perhaps the most convincing argument that has led me to the atheist point-of-view is Richard Dawkins' Ultimate Boeing 747 counter-argument to the argument from design (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Boeing_747_gambit). It's really just a more sophisticated version of the question "Who Made God?"

Intelligent design exponents are always claiming that life is too complex to be the product of natural causes, and therefore, a super-intelligent designer is necessary to explain our existence. The famous astronomer Fred Hoyle, believing that life was too improbable to have happened by chance, made the following analogy to demonstrate that point :

"A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing-747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there?"

The Boeing 747 counter-argument turns the question back on the questioner by stating that anything that is complex enough to have created life, must be at least as complex if not more so. If complexity implies a designer, who designed the designer? Therefore, god is, as Dawkins puts it, "the ultimate Boeing 747."

It is illogical to believe that a being as complex and intelligent as a god could just pop into existence or have just always been there. To argue that the only thing that didn't have to be designed is the thing that you are arguing for is to frame an argument that is dishonest.

All of our observations tell us that complexity is a property that is accumulated through a process that starts from simpler beginnings. So, even if it is posited that an intelligent designer evolved, then this would defeat the original premise that the intelligent designer is necessary to explain our existence. If an intelligent designer could have evolved, then we could have too, rendering a designer unnecessary to explain our existence.

If there is a god, it doesn't appear that it has made any effort to communicate its intentions with humanity. How would we know what it wants of us, if anything? Does it care about us? How could we even be sure if there were an afterlife? About the most that could be said if one finds design the most likely explanation for our existence is that - well - we were designed. Aside from that, there is nothing else that could be known about the designer based solely on what it has created. Perhaps we are just an experiment in the laboratory of extra-dimensional creatures - who knows? The most humble and honest thing that one can say is "I don't know."

Where I am today

The arduous journey from believer to non-believer was not easy or painless. It can be a disappointing revelation when you have been promised pie in the sky from the time you were a small child only to find out later in life that there was never any pie. I chose to face my doubt head on because I was not willing to sacrifice the truth for comfort. Today I am doing well. I have a family and a full time job that lends me plenty of time to pursue my hobbies, namely writing.

I have no malice for Christians or believers of other faiths; I believe in the phrase "live and let live."

I am not ashamed to be an atheist. To me, atheists are independent people who find it unacceptable to take someone's word for something. An atheist is someone who searches for their own answers. It can be a difficult journey from believer to non-believer, but if one has the courage to pursue the truth to its logical conclusion it is a worthwhile journey.