HOW I BECAME AN ATHEIST

This is my story, as I remember it, of how I became an atheist. Bear in mind that I'm 42 years old, and the memories I'm relating go back to elementary school. It was a long time ago, but I feel that what I recall is very accurate. I'll give a little background information first.

 I come from a Roman Catholic family. My father's family was very Catholic, with many priests and nuns on his side of the family, including two Monsignors. One of them, whose last name was the same as mine, was the head of the local seminary in St. Francis, Wisconsin, a suburb which borders Milwaukee. For decades, up until a few years ago, a large meeting hall at the Seminary bore my last name.

I was brought up to go to church every Sunday. I remember these masses from my earliest childhood. When I started elementary school, which was a Catholic school, it became an every school day occurrence. I attended this school from first through eighth grade. Plus I still had to go to church every Sunday and Catholic Holy Day. Our First Confession and First Communion were considered very important milestones in life, with family gatherings to celebrate these events. Confession became a required duty every week, and Communion became an everyday event at church. It's worth noting that for seven of those eight years of elementary school, we were taught by nuns, and I'm talking about a time frame of the 1960's.

My memories of first and second grade are pretty sketchy, although I remember being considered a troublemaker at times. I don't remember anyone being beaten during those two years. In third grade things changed dramatically. We had a very old nun, who must've decided it was her God-given duty to beat the shit out of anyone who got out of line. I remember being beaten regularly, along with many of my classmates. I'm not talking about rulers being slapped against your hands either. Her favorite thing, when she got really mad at someone, would be to pull your ears, hold them tight, and bang your head into the blackboard. Plus the usual spankings, slaps across the face, etc. I remember fourth grade as being worse. We had another old nun, who was always slapping or spanking, and once I recall a pointer being broken over a kid's head. She also loved to have people kneel on the hardwood floors for up to an hour when they did something she didn't like. I took more than my share of these beatings, as I was always considered one of the troublemakers. Note that I don't deny being one of the troublemakers. Things improved drastically after fourth grade. The beatings stopped after that year. My fondest memories of this school were in fifth grade, the only year we had a teacher who wasn't a nun. I think most of the kids respected, and certainly liked, this caring lady far more than the sadistic old hags we had to deal with for the two previous years.

Before you get the impression that beatings and punishment are what made me an atheist, let me say that I don't think it was all that much of a factor, although it may have had some influence. From my point of view it wasn't the beatings, it was what we were taught that made me question. When I say what we were taught, I'm referring to the religious part of our education. I remember the normal academic part of our education as being quite good.

As a kid at home, I remember being allowed to read pretty much whatever I wanted. My interests from early on were things like dinosaurs, stars and rocks. I also had the advantage of going on car trips for a couple of weeks every summer with my parents and sister. I had the chance to see most of the US before most kids I knew had ever left town. I remember visiting attractions such as Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon and Dinosaur National Monument, and learning the scientific history of places like these. The questioning of religion came early, when we were taught by one nun that dinosaurs didn't exist because the earth wasn't old enough. It became apparent to me that these nuns weren't people with a direct line to any god, they were people who made mistakes like everyone else. And it wasn't all of the nuns who taught these things. Each nun had her own opinions, and presented them to us. I thought it interesting that even the nuns couldn't agree with each other on what their own religion taught. One would tell us the earth is 6,000 years old and the next would say it's billions of years old. Obviously they couldn't all be right. Instead I got my real information from books at home, and occasionally brought up these facts at school when they didn't agree with what we were being taught.

I not only questioned the science we were taught, I also began questioning the religion. When I started asking the tougher questions, probably around sixth or seventh grade, we had some small debates. The nuns would usually end up giving the lame explanation that "it all comes down to faith". This didn't seem acceptable to me at all. Even then, I didn't want speculation about things nobody seemed to know, I wanted facts. And in the realm of religion, the facts just didn't add up to reality in my mind. I've often wondered whether I helped plant any seeds of doubt about religion in the minds of my classmates.

In seventh grade it was time for us to go through Confirmation. As I remember it, I didn't believe much about what I was supposed to be learning. I went through the motions just to get it over with and to please my family, who thought Confirmation was important. I can't honestly remember anything about what we were supposed to be learning. The only thing I can remember about the confirmation ceremony was that each one of us had to ritually wash the Bishop's feet, and kiss the feet of Jesus on a crucifix. I thought this was pretty silly at the time, and now I find it totally disgusting.

One incident which still comes to mind, happened in one of our daily masses. One of my classmates, after receiving communion, somehow let the communion wafer fall onto the floor. The reaction from the nuns was as if he murdered his own grandmother! They screamed that he committed a "Mortal Sin", then threatened to have him expelled from school! I kept my mouth shut, all the while thinking: "Big deal. It's just a piece of bread". I don't remember what grade I was in when this happened, but I couldn't understand how these nuns could actually believe that this piece of bread was actually the body of a long dead person. Now, as an adult, the whole idea of people willingly eating and drinking what they believe to be the body and blood of someone seems more than nauseating, it seems downright barbaric.

I think what finally did it for me was when I got into some trouble in seventh grade. My punishment was to go to the bible and copy some pages from it. Which pages I copied were my choice, as long as I copied the required amount of pages. Catholics don't put much emphasis on the bible, at least as far as the members reading it. They'd relate bible stories in church and school, but nobody ever made us sit down and read it. Having to copy pages from this book really opened my eyes. I started finding some very strange stories in there. It seemed that every time I flipped through the book to a different section, I'd find another completely unbelievable story. I remember reading stories of war, murder, incest, rape, you name it. I don't remember which story I copied for my punishment, but I remember it was a gross one. I was never told to read from the bible again, but on occasion I would read parts on my own. When I read Genesis from the beginning, it was completely obvious to me that it was a fairy tale or a myth. It was around this time (seventh or eighth grade) that I heard or read the word "atheist" for the first time. It seemed right to me, but I didn't make a big deal about it. It didn't seem that important in the overall scheme of things.

I stopped going to church except for weddings and funerals, as soon as I finished eighth grade. For the first few Sundays it was a fight with my parents about going to church, but they finally gave up. They knew they were fighting a losing battle. After graduating from eighth grade I went on to a public trade and technical high school, where religion was almost never mentioned by anyone. I'm sure that most of the kids and teachers had their religious beliefs, but at that time, the early 1970's, it wasn't a big deal. It was a private thing. I can't imagine what it must be like today, with kids regularly rallying around the flagpole, carrying bibles and preaching to fellow students. I often wonder how I would have reacted had these things happened when I was in high school. Would I have been a rebellious Satanist? Would I have been in a lot of fights? Who knows, but I'm sure it would have been a completely different experience than I had.

The only instance I recall in high school of any religious fundamentalism, was a drafting teacher who would on occasion spout off with his beliefs. I remember him coming out of nowhere, when we were all busy drawing, with a statement to the effect that maybe some people's ancestors were monkeys, but not his. He was obviously looking for a reaction from the class, so I gave him one. I told him something about the truth being the truth, whether he likes it or not. That was the end of the discussion as I remember it.

Although I pretty much considered myself an atheist as a teenager, I didn't give it much thought. After high school, when I joined the US Air Force, I put "Catholic" on the form where it asked for my religion. It was almost an automatic reaction, and I didn't think about it. Probably because we were taught that once you were baptized a Catholic, you were always a Catholic, unless you were excommunicated. Not that it mattered much to me. I knew then that God was a myth, and heaven and hell were fantasies created by primitive minds. I just didn't feel it was important enough to challenge. Again, at that time, religion wasn't something people discussed or made a big deal about (at least in my experience), so I didn't bother thinking much about it.

This was until I was hospitalized for a couple of days because of a bad case of stomach flu. Someone woke me up out of a deep sleep, and when I opened my eyes, I saw a priest standing over my bed. This scared the shit out of me, and I said something to the effect of "Damn, I thought I just had the flu!" He reassured me that I did, and he was just there because he saw my records, which indicated I was a Catholic, and he wanted to drop off some literature. Well the scare didn't wear off fast enough, and with my weakened stomach, I promptly threw up on him! My finest moment in the presence of a clergy person, don't you think?

While in the Air Force, stationed in Alabama, a friend insisted I go with him to a religious Crusade, held in a stadium filled with a few thousand people. The preacher was a guy named James Robison. I didn't want to go, but I finally went just to shut my friend up . It was an amazing experience to me. What amazed me was Robison's ability to fill all these people with so much guilt that they were hanging on his every word. "Amen!" and "Hallelujah!" repeatedly filled the stadium. All the while I sat there with only one word going through my mind. The word was "bullshit". And when it came time to pass the collection plate, it amazed me even more that this mostly young crowd was throwing twenty, fifty, and even one hundred dollar bills into the plate. I'm proud to say I gave a grand total of zero.

Alabama was also the first time I encountered large numbers of fundamentalist believers. This is where I first saw those ridiculous comic books put out by the creationists, which try to prove that people and dinosaurs lived at the same time, and that the earth is 6,000 to 10,000 years old. But at this time, I still thought that only a tiny minority of people believed this crap.

After leaving the military and coming back to Milwaukee, I quickly found a job with the company I still work for, and a few months later I got married. I didn't think much about religion one way or another for many years. In fact I didn't get married in a church, I got married in a tavern. This seemed better than the courthouse, and the thought of being married in a church didn't appeal to me at all. I was grateful that the woman I married felt pretty much the same way. The marriage ended about four years later. When my parents found out about my impending divorce, I clearly remember my mother saying, "Well you weren't married in the church, so it's not like you were really married." I told her to tell it to the judge.

Most of my observations regarding religion during the 1980's consisted of how inane Jerry Falwell and other televangelists like him were. Occasionally I'd see parts of television shows such as The 700 Club, and would get a good laugh out of them. But I thought only a small number of little old ladies took any of that seriously. I couldn't believe that large numbers of seemingly ordinary people even watched things like that, let alone believed any of it. I was concerned about the direction the country was turning due to the influence of these people, but I didn't worry too much about it. I realize now that I should have. I admit that I voted for Ronald Reagan (twice!), mostly because I work in the defense industry and I felt that he'd be good for my employment. Up here in Milwaukee you don't run into a lot of fundamentalists, and I didn't realize how many there were in so many other areas of the country. Later I found out that fundamentalism is downright oppressive in many parts of the country.

As for my family, my parents still go to church every week. They don't say much to me about my lack of belief, but I can tell they're disappointed. They probably think I'm still going through a "phase". Well it's been a long phase, lasting close to 30 years now. I had an anti-religion Letter To The Editor printed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in July of 1997 and another defending the teaching of evolution in the schools in August of 1999; click Here to read this. My parents weren't too happy about that either. My sister is a believer, but not of the type that goes to church unless there's a special occasion for it. I'm happy to say that while my family consists of believers, they haven't disowned or shunned me because of my unbelief. I've heard plenty of stories about atheists whose fundamentalist families haven't treated them so well. Some have been completely shunned by their "Good Christian" families. I find that kind of behavior inexcusable.