I guess I was born into the "christian by default" sort of thing that is common in US culture, particularly in Georgia and the rest of the Southeast. The first church I remember going to sent a bus through the local neighbourhoods to pick up kids, so my attendence probably amounted to a couple hours of free babysitting, in my parent's eyes. It was kinda fun to sing songs on the bus and Sunday school basically came down to stories and art, so that was interesting enough for me to go without complaint.
My parents got divorced, my dad eventually got custody, and eventually remarried to a pastor's daughter. I hadn't been going to a church regularly for a few years by then, but as you can imagine, she changed that. I was 12 by then, so my stepmom had already missed the prime indoctrination window (before age 8 or so) when a kid isn't very capable of critical thinking. I'd already learned the truth about Santa and read a few fantasy novels by then, which may have inoculated me against being too credulous about magical claims such as talking snakes and an invisible entity listening to my thoughts. I was involved with youth group stuff because they did a decent job of making it fun, but the regular services were quite boring, and I hated the uncomfortable clothes (I still hate wearing khaki or navy blue, decades later). I did see that plenty of things didn't make sense - like the conflict of omniscience vs. free will - but I was baptised and tried to follow the format prescribed, thinking that it'd make sense eventually. I also looked into other religions, particularly Wicca and other Pagan stuff. As I got older, I questioned why I had to go to church and was told that if I chose not to, I would also be restricted from going out anywhere else for the rest of the week. I had a girlfriend by then, so I figured it was worth yawning my way through a few hymns each week in order to spend time with her. To get through the hymn-droning, I'd entertain myself by replacing "God", "Jesus", "Lord" etc. with names from older mythologies. I was 'singing' with such minimal volume that it's not like anyone noticed.
After high school, I went into the Air Force for four years. My original dog tags had "Southern Baptist", so I guess my parents wrote that on some paperwork or were watching me as I filled something out, I don't recall. After training, when I got to my first duty station, I got new tags that said "Wicca" instead. I guess I still had a lot of the underlying human assumptions that religion latches onto - the idea that the universe exists for a conscious purpose, the idea that there's an afterlife, etc. - and I still felt like I had to have 'something' for a religion. Wicca is about as unstructured as it gets, having just the rule of "if it harms none, do as you will" and a wide assortment of possible views on god(s) and other metaphysical concepts. I identified as Wiccan for quite a while and was even a member of a coven for a couple years, though I still thought of things like divination as pretty 'flaky' and didn't really base important decisions on such things or try to change my life with magic/prayer. I guess that again it came down to being interesting and having friends in it as the real underlying reasons for involvement.
I eventually moved back to the Southeast, and having been out of it for a while, ended up finding the assumption of everyone being christian to be pretty irritating. I tended to view supernatural things as unrealistic, but didn't spend much time seriously considering them. My brother, on the other hand, had apparently started taking religion more seriously, at least insofar as it supported his assumptions about various cultural topics. I remember asking him what would change if he could somehow know, for a fact, that there is no god. He said he'd just do anything he felt like, because nothing would really matter. I don't understand that, because if this is all there is, then this is all that matters. If there's a perfect world after death, or some superbeing that's going to swoop in and solve all our problems for us, then what's the point of trying to improve conditions here, for ourselves? At some point I began calling myself an agnostic, recognizing that there was no way I could ever know for certain that no god(s) or other supernatural things existed. Belief in such things really had no bearing on how I lived or looked at the world in either case.
My stepmom and father got divorced a few years ago, and for some reason, I ended up becoming a prime source of emotional support for her. During that time, I said I was an agnostic, and she seemed to accept that. However, as she started recovering, she started putting on conversion pressure, mostly through her choice of gifts. First there was a box of books like "The Purpose-Driven Life", but I'm visually impaired (due to optic nerve damage from multiple sclerosis), and I used that as an excuse for not reading them, though I suppose I could have endured the headaches induced by spending hours squinting through a magnifying glass if I'd been interested enough in the first place. Then for christmas of 2009, she switched to DVDs, giving me one of a guy that attempted to 'prove' that the star of Bethlehem was real, (using astrology, of all things). I was visiting with my brother at the time, and had no DVD player at home, so I just left it with him. A year later, she gave me a copy of Ben Stein's 'Expelled', which is basically a lame attack on evolution, trying to present creationism as a legitimate 'theory' that was being shunned by a conspiracy of scientists. I didn't even watch that one at my brother's place, I just 'forgot' it there and looked it up later at home.
Ironically, my stepmom's 'pushing' only pushed me into spending time looking at the question of religious belief, and I came to realize that I'm an atheist. The term 'agnostic' still applies, in the sense that I do not know if god(s) exist, but that applies to everyone, and is thus not a very useful descriptor. If someone claims to have faith, they're admitting to agnosticism, since faith is belief without evidence, but to know a thing you need evidence. Most of the time, people are asking what you BELIEVE, not what you KNOW. Like anyone, I do not KNOW, but I don't substitute faith in lieu of evidence, so I do not BELIEVE. One who doesn't believe in god(s) is an atheist. I'm a skeptic, in the sense that I think belief should be based upon evidence, not wishful thinking or faith. I'm a humanist, in the sense that I care about the well-being of others and believe it's up to us to solve our own problems to improve the conditions of life. While there is a large amount of overlap between those to whom the term 'atheist' applies, and those who are skeptics and/or humanists, but the only thing that the term 'atheist' addresses is whether or not one believes in god(s).
I realize that identifying myself as an atheist is similar to calling myself a non-astrologer, in some ways. However, there isn't a huge cultural bias toward assuming astrology is true, basing policies on it, or judging others by it. Newspaper horoscopes and such are common enough in our culture, but people tend to view that as entertainment, not reality. If most people took astrology seriously, it would be culturally relevant to call myself a non-astrologer. When religion fades in relevance to the same extent that astrology has, then I'll be happy to be what I like to call an 'apatheist'. I'll still be an atheist, but it won't matter. For now, there are still enough people trying to push their religion onto others through law, or otherwise using their faith as an excuse to mistreat others, so I'll openly declare myself an atheist as a way of saying I do not agree with that.
Thanks for reading,
Kevin
