I began to be committed to believing in things only if they stood on their own merits. I didn’t know how I could be a Christian and laugh at the medicine men in African tribes. How could I chuckle at Wiccans? It was a powerful moment for me when I let go of mysticism while maintaining my curiosity and staying humble. It was such a liberating feeling, such a powerfully elegant solution to how to look at the world. I began to apply that mindset to all areas of my life, to my relationships with my family and friends and to my academic and research career too. I started to realize that there are facts in this world that are just waiting to be uncovered once I get smarter and discover their truth.
Still, for a while, I did have a hard time accepting that I was starting to lose my faith because so many things that I had done in life were centered around my religious beliefs. As a black man, once I say, “I’m an atheist, I don’t believe in God,” I’ve cut myself off from 95% of the black female population. That was a hard thing to accept at age 21. It was scary, and I had no idea what was going to happen. At the same time, I felt awesome. I was on an absolute thrill ride and, in a way, I’m still on it.
Like many of the things that I had been taught as a child, I realized that I had to let go of certain beliefs; I had to grow up. I needed to find my own voice and my own identity. I craved my newfound reality-based, evidenced-based thinking and was able to pursue it without losing a sense of awe and a sense of spirituality. Over time, I realized that I wasn’t alone, that I wasn’t a bad person for losing my faith, that there was still a lot of love in the world without a divine supreme being. In fact, I now feel even more capable of giving and receiving love because I don’t have a middleman. I know that the love that I get from others is not the result of a divine being who allows me to receive that love. I receive love because the people I love love me back. It’s their fault that I’m loved so much. I’ve come to view the people around me as my Gods and my Goddesses. They are my saviors. They are the ones who keep me when I need them. They are there for me when something’s wrong. And when nobody’s around and I get through difficult situations by myself, that gives me a renewed sense of confidence in who I am and what I’m capable of doing.
Eventually, I became more comfortable with my atheism. I came out to my mom, which I had been scared to do. I sat down with her and simply said, “I don’t believe in God.” She asked, “You don’t believe in anything?” I replied, “The whole Jesus, God, heaven, and hell thing, no, I don’t really believe in it.” I had thought that my mom was incredibly Catholic when I was growing up. I expected hellfire and brimstone to rain down upon me when I told her that I was an atheist. To my surprise, she turned to me and she said, “You know, I don’t really buy half of that stuff either.”
I had known her, at that point, for 27 years, my entire life, and in reality, I didn’t really know how she actually felt about religion. She told me, “When your father died, I didn’t think he went to heaven or hell. I think his body is in a hole in the ground.” While she is spiritual and wouldn’t consider herself an atheist, she’s not into organized religion. After coming out to my mom, I started to become even more vocal about the subject with my friends and my family.
It’s interesting how my new worldview has influenced the way that I think about history. Because of evolution, I know that my ancestors got through this world alone without any divine help. I know that I have descended from people who made it, the survivors, the winners. In fact, we all come from survivors; we all come from winners. That truth strikes me as a much more powerful idea than the idea that a benevolent God has allowed our ancestors to survive, keeping us on life support. If anyone doesn’t think of the thousands of generations of human beings who have survived against incredible odds as an inspiring fact, then I don’t know where their heart is. That idea puts a smile on my face when I wake up in the morning. I have the bravery and will of my ancestors to thank for putting me here, not a God. I have gratitude for my true heroes: the people who developed asthma medication so that I can breathe and the people who have built reliable shelter so that I’m not freezing on cold nights.
Being an atheist has had its challenges, though. I have had relationships that were completely sidetracked simply because I am not religious. A few times, when I’ve been talking to a girl, and we’d both become quite interested in each other, eventually she would ask me, “Do you want to come to church with me and praise the Lord?” I would reply, “I’m not really into the ‘praise the Lord’ thing.” Her response is usually the same: “Well, okay, that’s great. Nice talking to you.”
It’s tough. It’s difficult to find a nonreligious black woman. It has taken its toll on me. I get lonely. The stigma of being an atheist is one of the worst parts about living in a predominantly Christian country in a predominantly Christian region in a predominantly Christian culture. I don’t feel that I would date only nonbelievers. In my recent experience, though, dating nonreligious girls has been what’s worked best for me.
In fact, my current girlfriend is as nonreligious as I am. I look at nonreligious couples, and I see a level of connection, of love, of cherishing life that I don’t generally see with couples who are supposedly joined under God. Many religious couples get married because they want to have sex. They believe that their union is something that needs to be preserved because it is ordained by a third-party. I believe people lose a lot of freedom in those relationships. My girlfriend and I, for example, know that we can get married. But if, over time, we don’t like each other, we shouldn’t be with each other. We shouldn’t feel any pressure to get married because we want to have a healthy physical relationship. We shouldn’t be following anybody else’s rules except for the ones that we create for ourselves. A lot of the nonreligious relationships that I see are absolutely beautiful because they get to follow their own path, set their own goals. It makes their relationships, I think, a lot more fulfilling.
In the black community, I’m Bigfoot. I’m the unicorn. I’m the Loch Ness monster. People like me are not supposed to exist. Atheism isn’t discussed in the black community. I’m in graduate school now, and I helped to start the Secular Students at Howard University. One of the reasons why I wanted to start the group was because when I got to Howard, I looked on the event bulletin and only saw Christian groups. Every group discussing religion viewed the subject from a faith-affirming point of view. There was no outlet to discuss religion from a secular angle. I wanted to bring that conversation to my university.
Because of my involvement in the secular group, there are people at my school who won’t talk to me anymore. They think that the devil is trying to get them to fall away from the Lord, that the devil is speaking through me, that the devil is trying his best to convince the world that he doesn’t exist. I don’t want to demonize black people in general, but the vast majority of blacks are not responsive to my perspective, and they generally don’t want to be involved with me.
To a degree, I understand their point of view. As blacks came up in America and developed their own culture, religion was a central component of African American life. Black people don’t have babysitters. They don’t do Kaplan programs for their kids. They don’t do psychologists. They do the church. They do Bible study and tutoring in math and science. When they’re having marriage problems, they go to the pastor and ask him how to fix the problem. Everything comes out of the church, everything.
Even with some feelings of isolation, I feel much happier with how I now approach the planet, people, my issues, my problems, and my education. The world makes so much more sense to me. I value the relationships that I have in the secular community through my secular friends, through secular organizations, perhaps more than I did through churches and pastors and deacons and bishops. I feel as though my new community appreciates the love that we have for each other much more than did the people who thought that love was coming from up-on-high as opposed to coming from you, from me.