XVI.
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Yerret J. Maclovich: My Father’s I’s
“It is only in our decisions that we are important.”
A dad’s influence over his son is incalculable. When the father of Yerret J. Maclovich (a pseudonym) was growing up, he was dedicated to Zen Buddhism. Later in life, when diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder, Yerret’s father, terrified of his illness, decided to give his life over to Jesus. Yerret watched as his dad, confronting possible death, begged and cried for his life. This had a profound influence on Yerret, and he decided that he never wanted to face life’s end with desperation.
Although he was afraid of falling out of favor with both God and his father while he was considering atheism, Yerret was inspired by his former boss, an entrepreneurial atheist, who attempted to link his fate to his own will. Yerret’s secular worldview has motivated him to change his priorities. A poor student in his youth — who often thought that perhaps Jesus would come and fix his life for him — he’s motivated by the idea that our lives are in our own hands.
I was born in New Orleans, but I spent the majority of my childhood in Chattanooga Valley, Tennessee, right in the heart of the Bible Belt. My mother was a member of the Unitarian Church. She is a theist but never became particularly religious. In his 20s, my dad studied Zen Buddhism at a monastery in Georgia. For a time, Buddhism had a profound influence on him. Growing up, whenever I’d have trouble in my life, he would always say, “Be in the here and now.”
The influence of religion was always present in Tennessee. I remember people would often say, “God has a plan for you.” When I was in the first grade, in my public elementary school, for the first two months of school, my class held Bible study. I often got kicked out of that class because I asked too many questions. One day, the teacher came into class and said, “I don’t necessarily agree with it, but the school board has told me that I’m no longer allowed to teach the Bible.” For those first couple of months, the teacher had been glorifying God, telling the class that we should want to go to heaven and not to hell.
My parents eventually separated, and when they did, my dad began to make sure that I went to church. Later in life, he explained to me that he took me there because of religion’s social benefits, that he was a single dad trying to do the right thing for his child. Plus, there was free food on Wednesday nights.
I didn’t realize how religious Chattanooga Valley truly was until I got outside of the South. We moved to Pickering, Ontario, in Canada, when I was 14. I immediately realized how much more secular that community was than the one in which I had been living. Church and prayer didn’t seem to be a central theme in people’s lives. In school, no one prayed before class.
When I was in high school, my dad developed an immune system deficiency, a disorder where one’s body thinks that it’s constantly under attack. His body would constantly swell up and itch everywhere. Even though he went to the Mayo Clinic, for about five years, doctors had no idea what was wrong with him. Eventually, he received the correct diagnosis and learned that he’s one of seven people in the world who has his specific syndrome.
As he began to receive his treatment, he started to change. He was in a lot of pain and was scared for his life. He started to become incredibly religious. Prior to his illness, we would have conversations on any number of subjects, and he would give very analytical insights. After he was diagnosed, in response to questions, he often began to say, “That’s just the way God made the world.” I grew up receiving thorough, thought-out answers from my father. To see that switch was quite difficult to watch.
His religiosity only grew as time passed. About two years after high school, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. My dad called me and told me to come to our house. I got on the bus and went over. There were two people there. They introduced themselves and said that they were spiritual healers who were going to cure my father of his immune system disorder. Then, they went up to my dad and asked, “Do you want to be healed? Do you want Jesus to enter your life?” He cried out, “Yes, yes!” They started speaking in tongues. My dad was crying, screaming, “Jesus Christ, Lord, Savior of Men! Please save me! I don’t know what to do anymore!” He was begging for his life.
To this day, my dad continues to seek help from faith healers. He keeps a big picture of Jesus in his room and prays every night. Watching that event — and his overall transformation — had a huge impact on me. I decided that I didn’t ever want to beg for my life. When it’s time for me to pass, I want to be able to die knowing that this is it, knowing that I’ve lived a good life. I knew that I wanted to live a life free of superstition, but I wasn’t quite sure how I would ground my personal philosophy without religion.
The change in my overall outlook on life occurred very gradually. I remember at one point thinking, “What do I actually know? What actually exists?” Right around that time, I began working for an atheist. He always told me, “If you want something to happen, you’re going to have to go do it yourself.” The way that he lived inspired me. He didn’t rely on anyone else to get anything done for him. He was a human being, and he had the capacity within himself to run a demanding business.
Books also began to influence me. John-Paul Sartre’s thoughts on existentialism and humanism had a tremendous impact. I found his idea that, ultimately, we humans are responsible for everything, to be true. I agreed with his idea that we each should live to create the world as we think it should be.
These ideas changed me. When I was younger, I didn’t do very well in school, and I wasn’t particularly concerned with my future. I took life day to day. My new, nonreligious perspective motivated me to get the most out of myself. The realization that what happens in my life is up to me, that no one can do it for me, made me want to take control of my life.
I knew that, eventually, I would need to discuss my beliefs with my dad. One night while we were having dinner together, he started promulgating the idea that God is great. I finally said, “I think I’m an atheist.” He told me, “You know, that’s evil. It’s evil not to believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God.” We had a small fight, and he even kicked me out of his car. I’m afraid that if any religious person reads this, they’ll conclude that all atheists have father issues. In truth, over time, we’ve actually grown to have a really good relationship. We’ve agreed to disagree.
What gives me joy in my life is being able to try to change the world to the way that I want it to be. It makes me happy to influence the world with my will. As Sartre noted, you are how you live. In order to be true to yourself and helpful to the world, you must live your beliefs every day.
XVII.
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Jennifer McCreight: The Evolution of Atheism
“If I could give a prize for the single best idea anybody ever had, I’d give it to Darwin. Before Darwin, I think it just stood to reason for just about everybody that it takes a great, big, magnificent, wonderful, intelligent thing to make a lesser thing. You never see a pot making a potter, you never see a horseshoe making a blacksmith. It’s always big, fancy, smart things making stupid things.
And Darwin turned that just upside down. He said, ‘No, we can have an absolutely mindless, ignorant, mechanical process which generates minds.’ Then, we could begin to see how the sorts of things that minds do, that is to say, designing things, creating things, inventing things, could be done by matter.”