I had no one to talk to about these new ideas. When I was a little kid, I remember being taught who atheists were. I remember thinking, “I don’t care what I end up being. I might be a Christian, I might be a Wiccan, but I will never ever be an atheist because how can an atheist ever be happy in this life? How can anyone be happy without believing that there’s a God?” I didn’t have any Godless role models, and I was terrified. It would have been much easier if I had known that it’s okay to be an atheist, that it’s normal, and that atheists can be happy. Because I didn’t, I pushed the idea that perhaps God doesn’t exist out of my mind.
I went through a very, very long journey. I continued searching and looking for answers. Before my senior year of high school, I lived in Japan for a year. My second host family lived at a Buddhist temple. They practiced Mahayana, Japanese Buddhism. I learned that in some forms of Buddhism, the practitioners do indeed believe in many different Gods. Some believe in a heaven and a hell, a terrible, torturous hell. I saw pictures of a version of Buddhist hell in the temple in which I lived. People were being boiled alive and getting pitchforks stabbed into them, their intestines being ripped out. It was really intense, maybe more intense than the Christian hell that I was familiar with. After that, I realized that the one religious philosophy that I had believed was peaceful and pure, Buddhism, could still be tainted with ideas of a horrendous afterlife, sin, and retribution.
The next year, my senior year of high school, I came back to Tennessee, and I went to school in Nashville. My parents had moved there right before I went as an exchange student to Japan. That year, I took an AP Environmental Studies class. The teacher of that class changed my life.
One day I came into class, and I looked behind me. On the back of the room there was a gigantic map of the world, about five feet long, attached to the wall upside down. I asked my teacher, “Mr. Roberts, why is this map like that? Do you want me to fix it? Did somebody come in here?” He said, “What makes you think that it’s upside down? The way we perceive the world is due to the fact that we live in North America, and we have designed our maps to show north as north and south as south. But there’s really no objective reason to think that. It’s not like the universe has an up and a down and a north and a south.” His goal, more than anything else, was to teach critical thinking. I was taught, for the first time, that what I believe should be backed up by evidence. I started to once again wonder, “What beliefs do I have that I continue to fail to look at with a critical eye?”
I began mentally preparing myself, understanding that it was quite possible that one day I would not believe in God. I was slowly and subconsciously making that transition. After I graduated from high school, I took a gap year. I really wanted to improve my Japanese before I started college. Even though I had previously lived in Japan, my Japanese was really rusty. I also wanted to work on a farm. I knew about a program called WWOF, Willing Workers on Organic Farms. I decided to participate in that program. Once I did, I quickly learned that it was extremely challenging. When I had gone to Japan when I was 16, everything was so new and comfortable. I had to go to school every day, but I wasn’t doing manual labor. I came to this farm and began working 11 hours a day. I was expected to get up at 6:00 in the morning and help with breakfast. I wouldn’t be done with work until 10:00 at night.
Before I went there, I had imagined that I’d work about three or four hours a day. I thought it’d be really hot, and I’d be riding a bike around the Japanese countryside, going to temples, having fun. I brought Thoreau’s Walden to read. I thought that I’d have a relaxing adventure. That was not to be. The work was demanding, it was really cold outside, and I was miserable. During the first two weeks, I wanted to go home. I stuck with it, though. Then, suddenly, something changed. I began to love the work that I was doing, and I began to feel very strong, both mentally and emotionally. About that same time, my then-boyfriend sent me a copy of The God Delusion. He knew that I was thinking about atheism. I started reading it and began to see how being an atheist can actually be a source of strength. I read 30 pages, shut it, and thought, “This is it! I’m an atheist. This is who I am now.” I’ve been an atheist ever since.
I realized that I had no evidence to believe in God. I loved the stories of the Bible. I loved reading about religion. I loved the stories of Buddhism, the stories from the Koran. But I had no reason to believe that there truly is a God somewhere out there. I began to have no problem creating my own purpose in life, relying on myself and my family to get through hardship. I started to realize that I didn’t need a God for what I wanted from life.
Since I first admitted that I’m an atheist, I’ve never doubted that belief, not in any way, shape, or form. When I was a Christian, I was constantly doubting my Christianity. When I was a pagan, I was constantly doubting my paganism. I was always wondering, “Is this really right? Do I really believe these things?” In thinking about what it was like to become an atheist, I’m reminded of the song “I Can See Clearly Now, The Rain Has Gone” by Johnny Nash. I’m completely happy and secure in my beliefs.
Armed with this new worldview, I was extremely excited to hit the ground running when I started at my university. I wanted to make as much of an impact as I possibly could, take advantage of as many opportunities as I could, and finally be the person who I wanted to be. The summer before I started my freshmen year, I took a leadership class. It lasted for two days, with a couple of seminars. In the book we received for that class, it detailed what to do if you wanted to start an organization on campus. Before I met anyone from the University of Oregon, I had written the mission statement and worked on the bylaws of the group that I wanted to form. I started working to create an atheist club, The Alliance of Happy Atheists, or AHA! for short. I started proactively connecting with people for the first time. The group became extremely successful. By the first week of spring term, we had our very first meeting, and over 100 people showed up.
When people first become atheists, they often have a lot of anger toward religion, especially if their introduction to atheism comes from reading, for example, The God Delusion. That was certainly true for me. When I first became an atheist, my then-boyfriend and I were newly Godless. We listened to the secular podcasts Point of Inquiry and Freethought Radio every day. We would talk to each other about how much we hated religion. I got that out of my system rather quickly; I realized that that isn’t really the person who I am. I love religious people. I get religion. I understand why people want to be religious. In thinking about the group that I wanted to start, I knew that I personally didn’t care if a single person on my campus left religion. I simply wanted there to be a community for atheists. There didn’t seem to be a lack of atheists who bashed religion in the world, and there wasn’t a lack of books in the world telling people why there is no God. But there did seem to be a lack of community for nonreligious people.
I grew up in the South where people’s churches are their communities. Everyone goes to church barbecues. People go to other people’s communions and confirmations. Socially, it’s everything. There is a ready-made community for religious people of any denomination. That became a hurdle for me because I love to meet people. I love communities, and I love being a part of one. I realized that there wasn’t going to be a community like that for me at college, so I decided that I needed to create one. Luckily, I found, by and large, a group of people who agreed with me. We wanted a community of atheists where we could all get together, share our stories, and have a place to make friends with people who are like-minded.