belief in nothing.

I grew up in a town with more churches than pizza parlors, more pizza parlors than nail salons and more nail salons than dry cleaners. And there were a lot of dry cleaners. Needless to say, not being a Christian, even a once-a-year-on-Christmas Christian, was pretty rare. Catholic’s kids went to either one of the two Catholic schools in town or went to CCD class on Monday nights (myself included in the latter). Other Christian denominations sent their kids to Sunday school or bible study.

As a kid, you just accept these kinds of things as what you’re supposed to do. Most kids don’t think twice about why. Sure they complain that they don’t want to go but for no other reason than why they try to get out out of going to regular school. Cough, cough, Mom I’m sick.

I can remember my favorite part about going to church, which my family did every sunday for a really long time, was singing. I loved to sing, loved to pretend that I could read those music notes in the bright red hymn book. But I wasn’t very good at singing and I certainly couldn’t read music. The beauty of singing with a whole room full of other people is that you gain a once-a-week chance to anonymously belt out loud in public. Church, to me, was all about the red song book, getting to wear high-heels for an hour and maybe, if I was extra holy that week, god would reward me with a cute boy to oogle.

Nothing about my experience in church ever hit me on a deeper level than this. Sure I got to pick my own name for Confirmation (Julien, LOL), but there were no revelations, god never spoke to me like he did to Moses and as I often demanded him to do, and he just never seemed tangible.

In CCD class, we used to get a text book where you read paraphrased biblical stories about Jesus and his cronies and then answered deep philosophical questions about how to relate Jesus’ teachings to your own life, yada, yada. What stands out from these memories is that none of this clicked for me. Specifically, I remember these text books being jam packed with stories about miracles; Jesus magically healing sick and suffering children; Moses parting a fucking huge sea with a stick; a 600 something year old man building a boat for 2 of every animal on earth, and the list goes on. I was probably in the seventh grade when I decided Hey, this just doesn’t make sense.

I asked my teacher why all of these mystical and amazing things happened “back then” and pretty much haven’t happened since then. I’m not talking about the virgin Mary face appearing in somebody’s grilled cheese, I’m talking miracles taken as fact, just as they were written to have happened undoubtedly in the great book. I wanted to know why god was around for all those people in the bible like Moses and Jesus but he is so absent from modernity. Because Catholics don’t usually ask questions, she wasn’t prepared for this. Surely she would have had a better answer if she were prepared for this. She came back with something that wasn’t an answer at all - she said that god chose to work through those people because they were chosen to do his work. Miracles do happen today, she said, there are modern day saints (Mother Theresa?). PAH!

As a seventh grader, I could grasp that two times two is four. Arithmetic is indisputable, I could count and touch this kind of learning. Religion, I had decided, was for people that had the fantastic propensity to wrap their mind around these stories and call them fact. And although there was never any proof like two times two is four, they believe it so because of a dangerous little bitch called Faith. And if you pray hard enough there will be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

I was an atheist in training. At that time I gradually stopped believing in anything that had to do with religion, I informally changed the spelling of my first name by removing the H so that it no longer meant “like Christ.” But to doubt the existence of a creator was still not something I was comfortable with. Also, when you see so many people in your life that you respect (at least) say they believe in the all mighty, you sort of think these are smart people, how can they all be wrong?

So I went on a few years as what I would call an agnostic. In high school, my family stopped attending church due to (what I believe to be from) my parents living in sin. Believe me, I was completely fine with my parents having too much self-shame to show their face in god’s house. God’s house had become too small for me.

Enter college. Enter studying the Old Testament as a work of literature. Exit every ounce of respect I could have had for the Judeo-Christian religions. As I said, I was a Catholic, they are not exactly known for reading the bible. 9 years of CCD and I had only actually read paraphrased, cherry-picked stories from the bible. I had never actually the bible itself, and this is not uncommon. I was shocked and appalled at so many things, but I’ll just share my initial reactions.

First of all, after reading a few books in the OT I couldn’t believe that humans, with such enormous brain capacity, could actually believe these things to be real-life historical occurrences. Flashback to 10 year old Cristine asking her CCD teacher why these mystical things happened in the days of Abraham, Moses and friends, but absolutely have not happened since then. Millions of Jews and Christians believe this to be literal truth. This is so ridiculous that, to me, it has nothing to do with faith, it’s a simple question of logic.

Logically, none of this could have happened. Factually, most of this did not happen, thanks to what we call evidence and modern science. People no longer believe in Zeus, like the Romans did during the time of Jesus. This happened for two reasons, pure chance and the fantastic marketability of Christianity as opposed to the alternatives. It is, by definition, the lazy religion.

Secondly, we don’t know who wrote some of this stuff (who reads books from anonymous authors, anyway). Third, how was it possible for people in biblical times to live so long? C’mon people... 1,000 year olds? Most don’t even reach 100 today even with the help of modern medicine. Ha!

Soon after, a series of personal events led me to my abandonment of any type of superstition concerning a creator of the Earth. 100% disbelief. I know that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so it’s very arrogant of me to say that a creator absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, does not exist. No one can prove that god doesn’t exist, just like no one can prove that god does exist (but they really try, don’t they?).

For the years that I watched my mother drink herself to death, her parents could only “pray for her.” They sat back and put faith in a superstition to save their daughter’s life all because my grandfather made a deal with god concerning alcohol in his young life and hadn’t drank since. Since I knew god wasn’t going to save my mother’s life, I fought to do god’s work. Faith in god is such a self-deprecating crutch for people, it allows them to take on this horrible self esteem complex where god is to thank for all their accomplishments. People can’t believe in themselves enough to think that they are responsible for getting a better job, beating addiction or winning a Grammy (you know they always thank G-O-D). However, if they fail, god is seldom responsible. Quite frankly, it’s sickening.

I guess you could say that that’s when I put god on my hit list. Since then, living through the GWB bible administration, not having human freedoms because of what people think god thinks is right and the religious de-emphasis on fact based practices (err, science?), I can’t see myself being anything but an atheist. And although I already strongly believe in nothing, I am constantly seeking more proof of my belief in nothing. Shame I can’t say the same for them religious folk.