Every person has an emotional side and a rational side, and neither side cares about the other.
Religion is a realm of human experience dominated by emotions. Western Christianity in particular thrives on human emotions, particularly fear. I spent many years trying to break the emotional bondage my Christian faith had on me. I understand the mindset: Fear of oblivion drives us to take refuge in thoughts of an afterlife. Fear of what awaits us beyond the veil of death spurs us toward thoughts of endless bliss in heaven. Fear of losing loved ones adds the joyful condition that we will be reunited in this celestial paradise, and the circle will be unbroken. Above all else, the fear of eternal damnation in hell, arguably the most influential motivator, makes sure we tow the party line. Sheep go to heaven. Goats go to hell. We hear this over and over until it's branded in our minds.
Fear of hell kept me tethered to faith, and I couldn't just cut the cord. I had to pull myself away from the faith, stretching the emotional cord over time until it eventually snapped. The first step away from Christian faith was when I abandoned the label "Christian." This was an attempt to distance myself from modern Christian culture. "Christian" carries a lot of baggage in our society with which I didn't (and don't) want to be associated; moreover, casting aside the label was my way of telling the world that I was done with ministry, done with churchgoing, and done with the subculture of the Christian bubble.
My worldview had not changed much at this point. The significant change in my thinking - and the other reason I abandoned the "Christian" label - was the realization that I don't really know what I should believe. My time studying Christian apologetics and playing the part of defender of the faith on the Internet brought me to the conclusion that Christian apologists are full of shit.
I'm sorry, but if William Lane Craig is the best the world of Christian apologetics has to offer, well, I'm not impressed. In fact, both the writings and arguments of Bill Craig served as a detriment to my faith rather than providing grounds for a "reasonable faith."
This made me angry. This isn't how it's supposed to be. God is real, right? That means our evidence should be solid, right? "God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (Romans 1:20).
Right?
As a Christian apologist, I believed that the evidence was strong enough to warrant belief; so strong, in fact, that to not believe meant a person either didn't want to see the evidence, or she didn't care to look. Either way, according to my view, the non-believer was indeed "without excuse." However, the more I studied and the more I learned, the more I saw that the evidence isn't quite as solid as I had hoped.
Nevertheless, I could not give up my beliefs entirely. I was still making the wager à la Blaise Pascal. But Pascal's Wager nurtures fear - it needs fear in order to even appear reasonable - but faith based on fear isn't faith, even though a lot of religious folk sure do use fear as a motivator, and many religious persons remain faithful only because they fear hell too much to question or abandon their faith. Wouldn't god see that such a "faith" is a ruse?
After dropping the "Christian" label, my next step away from faith was to discard theology. I have always been suspicious of systematic theology, and never quite comfortable with the idea of boiling down orthodoxy and orthopraxy to convenient lists of tenets and maxims. I hated the idea of putting god in a box. Giving up the trappings of theology meant I could still hold on to a "bare bones" theism, which caused a shift in my soteriology from inclusivism to full-on pluralism. The "doctrines" to which I adhered consisted of love, grace, forgiveness and tolerance, because we don't know a damn thing about anything, so why fight about it?
Eventually, though, I became uneasy even with the idea of "bare bones" theism. I believed in a god I couldn't define, understand, name, or prove. What the hell did I actually believe in? I may as well have said that I believed in "Smaggletipper the Elepantalumpus," because to me the word "god" had about as much meaning. I had to take yet another step away from the faith, pulling the cord even tighter till it reached its breaking point.
I have said before that my belief in god is better described as an inclination or a proclivity, but all that means is that belief in god comes easily for me - it always has - and my emotional side prefers the thought of "something beyond," something greater, something lasting and eternal. I think about my dad. I think about my best friend Steve. I think about my grandfather who recently passed away. I wish more than anything that the circle will be unbroken, that one day I will see these men again.
But in a moment of clarity, when my rational side spoke louder than my emotional side, I realized that, while I have never said and would never say "There is no god," I have no reason to believe in any god, according to any definition of "god" given by anyone in the history of humanity, and I give no assent to any of these defined gods. Doesn't that, by definition, make me an atheist?
Dead-Logic.com
Next: The Journey to Atheism, Part Four: "The Funeral"
The Journey to Atheism, Part Three
The Journey to Atheism, Part Three
"The Wager"
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