[This is a letter I am sending to a close family member of mine who is a Christian and discovered recently that I am an atheist.]
Dear _________________,
I know that when you found out I was an atheist, that news came not only as a shock to you, but it also had a strong effect on you emotionally. I understand completely why you reacted as you did. I'm neither angry nor hurt, because I know you love me and want what's best for me. You fear for my eternal soul, and I understand why. I held those same fears for a long time. My purpose in this letter is not to change your beliefs. I am not an evangelist attempting to convert you. All I hope for is understanding and acceptance. I think the best way to achieve this is to do my best to help you understand my journey, so that you may know how I ended up as who I am today.
I need you to understand how difficult all this has been for me, and that I spent years agonizing over my faith, my struggles with doubt, and my desire to do the right thing. All I want is to know the truth, or get as close as I can to knowing it. If the closest I can get to the truth is realizing I can't know much of anything for certain, then so be it. I at least want to know that much truth. I need you to understand how much I wrestled with my faith. I tried for years to have faith make sense to me. I wanted Christianity to make sense, because that's what I had always believed and it was comfortable to me. I wanted to keep believing, but I couldn't. I can only speak for myself. I can't speak for you or anyone else. I don't care what you believe. Each of us has to walk the path each of us thinks is best. For me, I cannot with a clear conscience say I believe in Christianity.
I have always wanted to know the truth, and live my life accordingly. When I was younger, I believed in the God of the Bible, the God of Christianity. I had my first real encounter with doubt when I was 16 years old. I didn't say anything about it because I feared how my Christian friends and family members would react. I confided in Randy, who was our part-time youth minister back then. He introduced me to the world of Christian apologetics, and, for a while, my faith had been restored. Randy gave me a few books on apologetics, and that's really where my love for logic and philosophy began.
Later on, in the early days of the Internet, I discovered a new world full of different ideas, ideologies, and belief systems. I experienced culture shock to say the least, but I pressed onward in this virtual world, determined to win it for Christ by utilizing logic and reason - and the arguments I read in those books Randy gave me. What I discovered in this new world shocked me: there were people out there in cyberspace who actually had answers - even good objections - to every single argument I threw out there. This shook me down to my naive core, scared me even. I felt those doubts creeping back in that bothered me so much when I was 16, but I kept telling myself that my faith had to be right. I just needed to find the answers so I could demonstrate it rationally. After all, if Christianity is correct, then I should be able to defend it.
I continued to struggle, mostly internally because I didn't really have anyone I felt I could talk to about this. When I went back to Lincoln to finish my undergraduate studies, I grew more and more depressed. I listened to the professors' lectures, and, as I looked around to see everyone's head nodding in acceptance, I was just left with more questions. I felt so alone. Yes, I graduated with a theology degree from Lincoln, but by the time I left there I knew I as an agnostic. Lincoln only confirmed what I had suspected for years: I don't know enough - I don't have enough of a reason - to accept Christianity.
A lot has happened to me in the years since college - not all of it good, but not all of it bad either - and in those subsequent years I kept trying to make myself believe. You called me a Bible scholar, and I would say that I am. The more I learned, the more I read, the more I studied, the more I realized just how completely ignorant I am. The more I studied the Bible, the more questions I had. The more I studied history, philosophy, science, literature, and art, the more I came to realize that humans in general tend to think they know way more than they actually do. I didn't want to continue that trend.
I look both ways before crossing the street. I don't take it on faith that the road will be clear. In every other aspect of life, it's not only acceptable to "look before you leap," it's recommended, and in most cases, even necessary. But when it comes to religion, all of that gets tossed out the window. Why must we accept God on faith? Why must we leap without looking? That's my biggest point of contention. I just can't do that any more. I would think of myself as irresponsible if I just accepted something as true without having a good reason.
I'm not angry at God. I can't be angry at someone about whose existence I am uncertain. When Steve died, I didn't get angry at God; on the contrary, Steve's death led to a very emotional decision on my part to become more religious. That's why I started preaching again. That's why I had thoughts of moving back north to be a part of the church Steve started. I wanted Christianity to be true, and tried once again - out of grief, out of sorrow and pain - to believe it was true. I wanted to hold on to what part of Steve remained on earth, which was the church he started. When my emotional side calmed down and my rational side regained control, I knew I couldn't do it any more. I simply could not believe.
My atheism doesn't mean I am anti-god; on the contrary, I would love to discover that there is a loving god, a joyful afterlife, and everything that goes with it. My atheism doesn't mean I deny that there is or could be a god. I don't know whether such a being exists that could rightly be called "god." Atheism simply means "without god" (a - theos), and that's as far as it goes for me. I can't believe in something if I don't have good reason to warrant belief. I refuse to believe something out of fear or blind faith. I won't assume I know more than I do, or make up unjustified answers to my questions to try to make myself feel better.
I love you, and I want you to understand that my decision is based on my desire to do what is right, and what is best. I'm not rebelling. I'm not angry. The best I (or anyone else, for that matter) can do is the right thing to do. And I can only do what I think is right.
What if I'm wrong? Then I hope God or whoever/whatever is out there is intelligent and rational and compassionate and empathic enough to understand the limits of human understanding, that I and many others like me would have believed if we had only seen reason to believe, that many of us used to believe, and didn't step away from faith because we wanted to, but because we saw it was the right thing to do.
- Bud
