As I aged, I became more openly skeptical of Christianity. A couple years ago, the church I attended got a new youth pastor. I asked him, “Did God make cancer?” He said, “The devil made cancer.” I asked, “Why does God allow the devil to have so much dominion over something that He made?” He replied, “God has mercy on the devil.” Unsatisfied, I asked, “What happens when a Christian gets cancer? Does that happen because they don’t believe in God enough?” He said, “No, getting cancer just happens sometimes.” I said, “If you look in the Bible, it says that if you pray, then your prayers will be answered. What if someone’s praying to be cured of cancer and then they die of cancer?” He couldn’t answer that question.
I began trying to look up answers to those hard questions on the internet and in books. I started researching the arguments of theists and atheists, and it always seemed to me that atheists had better arguments, better explanations. In secrecy, I bought The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I told my mom that I was going to go to church one Wednesday and drove to a neighboring town to purchase it. I had to hide the book while I was reading it, as it was viewed as evil propaganda in my community. I found the arguments within it very compelling.
I came out as an atheist in October of 2010. While I wouldn’t run around saying that I didn’t believe in God, if someone asked me, I would tell the truth. When people found out, they would often ask if I worshipped Satan. I would reply by saying, “If I don’t believe in your imaginary friend, that doesn’t mean I worship your imaginary friend’s enemy.” Being an atheist is virtually unheard of in Bastrop. My real friends tried to be understanding.
I began to become more comfortable with my identity. I started putting bizarre but largely unknown Bible verses on Facebook. One that I put up was Ezekiel 23:20: “There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.” Somebody asked, “Where did you get that? That’s not in the Bible.” I said, “Go look it up.” They did, and they became angry.
When my parents finally found out that I was an atheist, my mom wouldn’t talk to me. My step-dad yelled at me and said, “I thought I told you not to become too smart for God.” They punished me by cutting off my phone and grounding me until I apologized. Then, to try to reconvert me, they forced me to go to a weeklong Christian retreat called The Ramp in Alabama.
I was a full-blown atheist at this point. While I was at the retreat, I had a “Matrix” feeling, like I was the only person who was actually awake, that everyone else was living in a widespread delusion. The leader there was very anti-gay. He made people come to the front and pray if they had ever had one homosexual thought. From what I saw, the true objective of The Ramp seemed to be trying to make people apologize for being human. It was a more offensive version of what I had seen in the documentary Jesus Camp. That experience was the death of anything religious that I had left in me. I knew that I didn’t believe in God, and I became very hostile toward religion.
After I got home, my mom and I would frequently get into religious arguments. She gave me a book, Why God Is Real. I knew that that was a desperate attempt by her to try to make me Christian again. It didn’t work.
Around this time, I remembered that there had been a prayer at my sister’s high school graduation. We attended the same school. The prayer had been a part of the ceremony for a long time. I was aware of a law that stated that there can only be a brief moment of silence at graduation, not a state-sponsored prayer. I decided to tell the school that the prayer was unconstitutional. I wrote an e-mail to my superintendent and said, “I am an atheist, but that has nothing to do with this issue.” I made my point by stating that the prayer was wrong and illegal, that not everyone is of the Christian religion or believes in the Christian God. I told him that I would call the ACLU if a prayer was read. He forwarded the e-mail to all the school’s teachers, and because I had included my name in the e-mail, any teacher that I had ever had in that high school knew that I was trying to stop the prayer. I’m pretty sure that drastically changed their opinion of me. Up to that point, I don’t think any of them knew that I was an atheist.
The school did agree to stop the prayer. When people found out that I was the one responsible for it, some people began to talk about me, saying that they were going to beat me up. I received indirect death threats. My family thought that I was mentally unstable for doing what I did.
As the day of graduation approached, the local newspaper wrote, hilariously, that there would be increased security due to the outrage of atheists across the nation. At the ceremony, a lot of people were looking at me as if I was evil, and I was scared. I took my place in line, and the person in front of me was hinting that there would be a fight after the ceremony. When I received my diploma, a person in the bleachers yelled, “Jesus still loves you!” and was escorted away by police.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, which I communicated with during this whole ordeal, was a big help. They asked the school to have increased security for me. At the ceremony, we were supposed to be lined up in alphabetical order, but school administrators decided that I should graduate last because I had missed a graduation practice due to threats of violence that had been made against me. The FFRF helped me regain my alphabetical place in line. They advised me to leave graduation as soon as I could. As soon as I was allowed to leave, I did.
The day after graduation, I came home and found that my parents had thrown all of my personal belongings outside of my house. Some of my things had been stolen, and the house was locked. I took what I could, put everything in a car, and drove to my brother’s house in Texas. What they did — kicking me out, abandoning me — was the worst thing that they could have done. Before this, I had ambitions and goals that I had set. I wanted to do something with art. I was planning to go to college and study animation. What happened shattered everything.
Now, I’m living with my oldest brother. I feel guilty, and I get depressed a lot. I really don’t have any friends. I lost the majority of my family, and I only have a couple sisters and a brother left who actually want to be a part of my life. While I feel badly sometimes, I figure that if some of my friends and family just dropped me because I tried to make them obey the law, I don’t need them in my life.
I have, however, received a lot of support from people through the internet. I posted something on Reddit.com about my experience to get a little encouragement, a little support. It blew up into something that I didn’t expect. Dozens of bloggers began writing about me. “The Friendly Atheist,” Hemant Mehta, organized a college scholarship fund for me, which raised $31,000. I’m very grateful to him. That has really helped me through a lot.
I have also been able to attend the CFI Student Leadership Conference in Amherst, NY. It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. There were people there who shared my beliefs on a variety of issues. I had a lot in common with the people there, who were close to me in age. It just felt right.
I know that there are other people like me who are experiencing similar hardships. I would let anyone going through something similar know that there is a huge atheist community out there. While they might feel alone, they have the support of a large number of people around the world. Even with everything that’s happened, I don’t regret standing up to fight the prayer at my graduation. It had to be done. If I hadn’t said anything, nothing would have changed.