During the summer before I went to college, I found The God Delusion in Borders. At that point I didn’t know anything about Richard Dawkins or the atheist movement. I thought, “The God Delusion? Who would write such a thing?” I opened it up, and I flipped around the summary. I thought, “Oh my goodness, this is how I feel. I should really buy this book. I’ve never been exposed to anyone who’s felt this way.” I bought it on a whim and brought it with me to school. Reading that book made me realize that I am an atheist, that I shouldn’t be afraid to use the word, that I should try to erase the stigma that’s associated with that word. It made me become a lot more vocal. I realized that I have the right to voice my opinion, too.
As I was establishing this self-confidence, I enrolled at Purdue University for my freshman year. I experienced some culture shock. While Purdue is a secular institution, it’s known in Indiana for being the conservative, religious public university. When I arrived, there were roughly 50 Christian groups on campus. The Christian groups commonly put flyers in everyone’s mailboxes in the dorms. I couldn’t walk through the school grounds without getting stopped by someone asking me to join their religious group. I felt really alone for a while, like I was the only atheist. That was a really weird experience for me because I grew up having so many friends.
I lived in the honors science floor. Most of the students in the dorm were at least skeptical of religion. We began to ask, “Why don’t we have a group? Every religion on campus has a group. Why isn’t there a group for people who aren’t, for people who don’t think religion’s a good thing?” I didn’t know how to start a club, but the idea was of interest to me. Then, an incoming freshman the summer before my sophomore year made a Facebook group called “Purdue Atheists.” A friend found it and pointed it out to me. I messaged the group’s creator, and that summer, we wrote up a constitution and turned in all the necessary forms. When we had our first meeting, I booked a room for 40 seats because I didn’t think anyone would care about it. Over 100 people showed up, and dozens were spilling out into the hallways. That made me realize that our group was really important, and I became very active after that.
Our group meant a lot to its members. Perhaps our best event was a simple public forum that we held, titled “Why I’m an atheist.” People were so relieved to be able to finally talk about why they don’t believe.
There were, however, parts of the student body who didn’t like the group. Many angry letters to the editor were written, saying, “The atheist group members obviously can’t be good people because they’re Godless” and “Why is the atheist group forcing their beliefs on people?” Our flyers were torn down all the time. On a few occasions, people walked by our meetings and yelled, “You’re going to hell!” I got used to this stuff, and it never got me down. Because we were organized, if someone wrote a demeaning letter stating that we were immoral or evil, 10 others were written that said, “No, we’re not, and here’s the evidence.” That had a huge impact on campus.
On the whole, the criticism was outweighed by all the people, including professors, who were supportive of what we were doing. Many times, random people would come up to people in the group and say, “Thank you so much for doing this.” A lot of our supporters never came to the meetings, but I think knowing that we existed made them feel so much better. I received many e-mails expressing that sentiment.
By the time I graduated, the group had over 400 people on its mailing list; we became one of the largest student groups on campus, bigger than most of the religious ones. We were in the local newspaper a lot and even got on the local news a couple of times. The media really liked us. I know some atheist groups have had problems with the media using weasel words or framing them in a negative way, but our local media always gave us really positive coverage. The group was pretty well-known by the time I left.
Outside of my group, my college education only reinforced my atheism. The more I studied, the better I understood evolution. I was able to educate myself past the point of thinking, “This is what scientists believe, so I’m going to trust them.” I know many people say that understanding evolution isn’t what turns people into firm atheists, but that’s exactly what happened to me. For me, being able to look at the world in an informed way and know that all of life exists because of a natural process was the final nail in the supernatural coffin.
My interest in evolution is so great that I decided to become an evolutionary biologist. While I really enjoy explaining how evolution works to anyone, including creationists, I’ve found that I can only reach people who approach the subject with an open mind. A lot of people don’t want to change their mind; they just want to reinforce the belief that they’re right, without truly listening to arguments that might be against their position. It’s most enjoyable to talk to people who are attempting to legitimately examine evolution. I can explain the truth if I’m asked a typical evolutionary question like “Why are there still monkeys if we evolved from monkeys?” I can explain that we didn’t evolve from monkeys, but rather have common ancestors with monkeys and draw a tree showing how the process works. Teaching takes patience because, like any other science, evolutionary biology is not necessarily easy to understand.
Working in science has given me a lot of meaning because I think the field is so important. Through the history of mankind, science has continuously replaced supernatural explanations with natural explanations. I don’t expect that that’s going to be any different in the next 100 years. There are still a lot of big questions that need to be answered, probably most pressingly regarding how the brain actually works. We still really don’t know what’s going on in there. Largely because of our ignorance, the idea that there is some sort of supernatural otherness, a soul that acts like a puppeteer in our brain, has been perpetuated in our culture. We now know that what is happening in all of our brains is a natural process; we just don’t understand many of the specific details. Working out those details will be a huge advance in our understanding of what makes us human, what consciousness is, and what makes us alive. I think that’s super cool. That knowledge will have a huge impact on medicine, especially for those suffering from mental illness. Right now, if someone’s depressed, doctors basically throw drugs at them with a limited understanding of what those drugs are actually doing. We just hope that they work. Our ignorance fuels the stigma of mental disorders. Advances in these areas will help people a lot.
Other areas of scientific inquiry interest me as well. As a biologist, I’m particularly interested in how life first arose on Earth. There are a lot of hypotheses and theories out there, some more supported by evidence than others, but at this point, we really don’t know the full answer. I think that’s a question that scientists can potentially answer. I would love to understand how the first cells or the first organic molecules came to be.
A few years ago, as my scientific and atheistic interests evolved, I started a blog. I have always loved to write. Before I did, I was reading a lot of other blogs that I really enjoyed and thought, “Why not try my own blog? I’m opinionated. I can write these things down.” I started it on a whim, assuming that it would be something that my friends might read. I kept it public just in case anyone else might be interested.