How I became an atheist

Growing up in a Christian family, I became a Christian at a young age. I attended church every Sunday and went to a private Christian school K-12^th and then attended a Christian College. Bible classes were mandatory throughout my 16 years of education and combine that with church every Sunday, I was very confident in my knowledge of the Bible. However, like most Christians, I still had questions about God, but I accepted I was not going to understand everything and that I needed to just put my faith in Him.

After a few years of being out of school, I found a church I really enjoyed going to. It was a young church and had an incredible worship band. It was like going to a Christian Coldplay concert every Sunday. The music was so powerful it gave me chills, and would reconfirm any doubts I had about God because of how it made me feel.

A few months after discovering this church, I stumbled upon a debate between a Christian and an atheist on YouTube. I decided to watch it and remember thinking to myself, "this should be interesting; how is this atheist going to possibly debate God doesn't exist." I was excited to see how the Christian would tear apart the atheist arguments. However, this never happened, turned out the atheist made better arguments than the Christian. He mentioned verses in the Bible I had never heard of before and they clearly did not fit it with my knowledge of who God was. The verses were about God giving rules for slavery; I had never come across these verses in my many years of studying the Bible. These were damaging verses, if God was moral, how could he condone these actions?

(Here are just a few of those verses: Lev 25:44-46, Deut 20:10-15, 1 Cor 14:34, 1 Tim 2:9-15, Duet 22:23-24, Duet 22:28-29, Exodus 21:7-11)

I was really confused about what I had just witnessed, but thought to myself it must have been a fluke; maybe the Christian was not an experienced debater. I was torn, should I just mark it down as a fluke and forget about it, or should I continue watching more debates? If I continue to question this I may not like what I find, was I willing to accept the results even if it meant me discovering I was wrong? I realized I rather know the truth rather than believe what makes me feel good, and if Christianity is right than I will know more about God than I did before and it will only strengthen my relationship with Him going forward. So I decided to watch more debates along with researching the verses that atheist were bringing up.

During this process I discovered a cable access television show called the Atheist Experience, where anyone can call in to discuss or debate why they believe what they do whether they are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu etc. Out of the hundreds of episodes I watched within a span of a few months, not once did I feel the theist caller won an argument. I had never thought about it before but I realized why there aren't Christian shows where viewers could call in to debate. If Christianity was correct, a show like that would help convert more to Christianity, but I realized it was because Christians didn't have valid reasons for their beliefs and when challenged they didn't have much to stand on. Christianity makes sense when the pastor can cherry pick the verses he preaches about and ignore those that are contradictory. It started to resemble more of a cult to me. Pastors I talked to seemed very interested in discussing these issues with me, however once we reached a certain point they were no longer available to continue the conversation. I realized I had to come to the conclusion that my beliefs were not valid.

Was I depressed after realizing that heaven was no longer in my future or that God was no longer going to be a part of my life? Yes, but only for a minute. Sixty seconds later, I realized I never had a chance to go to a place called heaven and God was never influencing my life in the first place. It was just an illusion. After realizing that, I was thankful I discovered this now so that I could live the rest of my life delusion free.

It was a hard but rewarding process of getting to the point where I knew my beliefs were false, but the hardest part was yet to come. I had many friends and family that were Christian and knowing what I did I didn't want them to continue living a delusion either, so I started telling them about the verses I had discovered and wanted to discuss the issues with them. I even wrote a 15 page paper on why I came to this conclusion to help get the conversations started. I thought they would be thankful I was exposing these issues and showing them that Christianity wasn't true. I was wrong! I didn't realized how emotionally attached people were to their beliefs; I was emotionally attached but I didn't let emotion overcome reason. I thought people followed their religion because they felt they had valid reasons for believing not because they were emotionally attached. I knew that not everyone I talked to about this would lose their faith, but I thought maybe a few would. Still to this day, no one has lost their faith due to me and that's fine. But I was amazed at how strong of a hold emotions have on people's beliefs, and realized this is how we can live in a world full of numerous religions yet everyone still claim theirs is correct. Discovering this was much harder for me than discovering that God didn't exist.

Losing my faith has made it awkward at times between friends and family, but I much rather live in reality than fantasy and this has made me a stronger person. I no longer pray for things to improve, I work to improve them myself. I see the world and life now for what it is and it is even more valuable to me now than before. I no longer see things as good and evil, but as rational and irrational. I wouldn't say I now follow atheism, as that makes it sound like atheism is its own religion; I actually don't like the word atheism because it means nothing and only describes what I'm not, not what I am. I am an atheist meaning I am not a theist and now free from religion and can make decisions for myself based on logic, reason, compassion etc. I am able to think for myself more now than I did before and for that I am very thankful.

Short Conversation with Dr. James Merritt author of “God, I’ve Got A Question”

This is a short conversation I had with Dr. James Merritt on his Facebook page for his book. He is the author of “God, I’ve Got A Question” subtitled, “Biblical truths for Our Deepest Concerns” The conversation started with me commenting on his post, which was…"Any claim from Jesus has validity only if He was who He said He was--the Son of God." --Dr. Merritt

Remember the Facebook page is named after his book, “God, I’ve Got A Question”, and I have some deep concerns.

Ted Musk) My question would be, why didn't Jesus at least write a book in the New Testament when he was here? Instead the New Testament wasn't written until 50-80 years after his death and we know how good people's memory can be just after a week...think how different the stories must have changed 50-80 years later.

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God, I've Got a Question) Archeologists have more than 5,600 original texts from which the Bible came, making it more accurate in terms of written history than any other document ever written. It was written by more than 40 men over a period of 1,500+ years. Christians believe the Bible itself, as God-inspired, is a living testament, and miraculous in its teachings and its origin.

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Ted Musk) How do they know those original 5,600 texts were accurate? Does that mean that verses such as Deuteronomy 22:28-29 is also accurate? It says, “If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father.  Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.”

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God, I've Got a Question) It's always dangerous to take verses in the Bible out of context. You must know not only language, but the culture of the time, the author and what God is trying to teach through the particular passage. Christians spend a lifetime studying the Bible and learn from it each and every day, more and more, over and over again. Christians believe the Bible is wholly accurate and without error. We place great trust in the Bible as God's Holy Word. But it is a difficult book that can rarely be taken at "face value". Your questions have to do with the origin and trustworthiness of the Bible. So, to explore how the Bible we have came to be, I'd recommend reading "The Word of God in English" by Leland Ryken or "How the Bible Came to Be" by John Barton. Both books are good primers that give perspective on how the Bible got from an oral history to an authoritative written word.

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Ted Musk) Are you saying I took that verse out of context? All I did was quote a verse just like we would quote John 3:16. If I took it out of context can you please clarify it for me? If God is never changing and is the same back then as he is now than should we still be living by that law? God doesn’t care about culture, and no matter what culture we live in his morals would not change.

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God, I've Got a Question) The context is that the five books of the law (Genesis through Deuteronomy) lay out rules specific to the ancient Hebrew culture. God does care about culture--He created all of them at Babel. I think it would really help to understand how the Bible came to be, as that would help you to understand why some verses seem odd or even cruel. The Old Testament is law, poetry, history, prophecy. The Bible says it will in itself seem foolish to those who do not believe it when they read it. Belief comes hand in hand with understanding what you are reading in Gods Word.

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Ted Musk) If God's goal is for everyone to follow him, why would he create the Bible to seem foolish to those who do not believe? Why not make it seem moral and wise so that people will want to believe... that seems like the smarter thing to do. And if God is the one who created culture, and it is our intolerance of others culture that creates many of the wars... does that mean God was the cause of those wars? Sorry for all the questions but your answers are causing me to have even more questions. But you make it seem like God created different morals for different cultures... and morals should be the same no matter what culture or time in history you live, especially if God is the one who determines these morals.

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Dr. James Merritt then deleted me from his page and deleted this conversation. I always try to keep an open-mind and am willing to discuss these topics with anyone, and am always being encouraged by my family to keep looking for answers for the many questions and concerns I have for a belief in God. But it is these types of conversations that confirm that my lack of belief in God is the correct one. I’m continually being let down by those who claim to be experts and knowledgeable about God.

After he deleted me from his page, I can’t help but wonder if he knows he is selling lies, but is continuing to sell them since they are lies people want to believe. Afterall, they are extremely easy to sell and become very profitable (it is no different then someone going to a psychic/medium and being told things they want to hear). Although I’ll assume he believes it to be true, but I still wonder if he comes away from the conversation asking himself "Could my beliefs about God really be true", or does he just try to forget the conversation ever happened? If you delete someone for asking a question shouldn't that be a sign that you don't know as much as you think you do? The reasonable and logical reaction is to at least question or have some doubt, right? It is easy to seem like an expert around people that listen and agree with everything you say.

I think the most disturbing part is that he is a pastor and deleted someone who was asking some serious questions about God. He didn't just stop the conversation by not responding back, but went even further by deleting me from the page - which could possibly mean (in his view) me going to hell. And for what, so he wouldn't look bad and could sell more books? If so, that doesn’t seem very moral to me. Dr. James Merritt is a pastor and his job is to lead unbelievers to God and I was giving him this opportunity. I guess his real job is to sell lies that make people feel good and in return collect 10% of his church members hard earned money each Sunday.  

I wouldn't normally call out a pastor for not being able to answer a question about God (that would make for way too many posts), but because of the way this pastor cowardly deleted me from his page when I was simply asking questions, I felt the need to post my experience.