I had to grow up and figure things out. One of things that I have learned is that just because I might be right about something, it doesn’t mean that I’m better than other people. I had anger at all religious people because I bought into the argument that the existence of moderate religion enables extreme religion. I was harshly judgmental of people who didn’t believe as I did.
I learned about the world and that people have real-life problems that are a great deal worse than anything I’ve ever faced. I no longer necessarily feel that one’s beliefs are the most important thing in the world. I think I was too focused on religion. I needed compassion and empathy for the common man.
When I graduated from college, I enrolled in law school. During my first year, I read many cases about terrible things that have happened to innocent people. This continued to reinforce my belief that my focusing solely on people’s religious beliefs when making a judgment about them was too limiting. If what I believe about the universe is true and I sit at home secure in the knowledge that I’m right while reading a book about logic and doing math puzzles, while what others believe about the universe isn’t true but their fake belief causes them to go out and help at a food pantry, I’m not the better person. Actions mean more than beliefs.
Even though I have a greater amount of empathy for religious people, I still think that my shift, going from religious to nonreligious, was a really good thing. Finding compassion and tolerance for religious people is not the same thing as thinking that it’s superior to be religious. It wasn’t easy for me to overcome all the guilt that I had when I was young. It took a long time.
When I was younger, I would feel guilt if I didn’t live up to Baptist school-imposed goals. Now, I feel guilt if I don’t live up to self-imposed goals. I have the ambition, for example, to be a good person, and I have an idea of what that means. I want to give back. I want to be nicer than is natural. In Baptist school, I was taught that if I had a critical thought about someone, if I thought that someone’s shoes were ugly, for example, then that was a sin. I was told that I needed to pray for forgiveness. Those aren’t attainable goals. I can be nice to people, and I can volunteer, but I can’t make sure that every single thought that I have conforms to a religious code. I now have a different, attainable standard for morality that is grounded in things that actually matter and that will truly impact the people around me.
Still, I understand the social dangers for people becoming atheists or nonreligious. My best friend is an atheist largely because I persuaded him. Then, he de-converted his mom. His mother is black. The reason that I mention her race is because prior to her de-conversion, she was very involved in a black community of churchgoers. When she lost her religion, it was as though she lost her identity, not just as a religious woman but also as a black person, as a black woman. She was rejected from her entire social group. She became extraordinarily depressed. Her switch to atheism has been a negative change for her. This has changed my view on the subject, too. I think that being religious may simply be better for some people. I know that that statement would probably make so many of my atheist friends angry, but I think that there’s a reason why religions have existed for so long.
I also, though, understand how religious differences can impact relationships. My ex-boyfriend was religious. We lived together and had been dating for two years. We were very close. He’s religious, and the differences in our worldview created conflict. I had never refused to date anyone because they’re religious, and I didn’t even know that he was religious until we had been dating for quite a while. His religiosity didn’t impact us at first, but it began to. He very clearly told me that he would not have kids with me, and I told him that I would never allow my children to be brought up in a religious environment. Understandably, this subject can make it or break it for couples. It did for us.
Despite my desire to be tolerant of religious people, I won’t budge on whether to send my children to religious schools and to church on Sunday. So often — and this was certainly true in my experience — churches teach guilt. Their lessons can be terrible. It’s been a long time since I went through my indoctrination, but I felt extraordinarily betrayed when I realized that what I had been taught wasn’t true, that I had been taught to feel guilty about ridiculous things. I was instilled with a morality that doesn’t correspond with how responsible human beings should operate within the world. On top of that, if my husband were religious and I was not, there’d be confusion for our kids. If mommy believes that there is no God and daddy believes that there is, if what daddy believes is true, then mommy is going to go to hell. I think that’s pretty terrible to teach to a kid. I would only allow my children to go to church if he or she wanted to, if he or she wanted to explore.
Overall, I think that the change in my beliefs from being religious to being an atheist was very good for me. I feel really indebted to people. I’ve had an extremely privileged life. My parents, my family, my community have all provided that to me. I feel a strong need to give back some of that goodwill. I think we should all enjoy life while we can. As an atheist, I can do so without religious blinders.
XXI.
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A.N.: From Bombay to Oklahoma
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
A.N. didn’t taste beef until he was 21 years old. When he did, he had just arrived in America following a childhood spent in his native India. Millions of Hindus abstain from eating their sacred cows. America, he quickly found, was different from his home country. The world’s most technologically advanced nation not only subsisted on Big Macs, it also had Christian evangelicals who asked strangers in college cafeterias if they had been saved by Christ.
Because he stopped believing in God at an early age, A.N. was not severely impacted by his conclusion that the universe is neither created nor governed by a celestial guider. To A.N., critical reasoning, the ability to use one’s own mind to discover facts about the world, is perhaps the most valuable personal skill. He’s grateful that he’s been able to foster that ability in himself.
I was born in Bombay, India and was raised in Hinduism, one of the world’s oldest religions. It has several branches, and no two are alike. While some Hindus only eat vegetarian food and other Hindus eat a lot of chicken and fish, they generally do not eat beef. A major reason why is because, in the past and the present, Indians have fed themselves from the milk of cows, which has made it difficult for Indians to kill them. There’s a Hindu analogy that a cow’s milk is similar to the milk that a child receives from its mother. Because of this, cows began to be revered and even worshipped, something that has spread from generation to generation.
Different sects of Hindus follow different Gods; it’s a polytheistic religion. Interestingly, there is also one branch of Hinduism that’s primarily atheistic. They do not believe in a God, even though they do believe in other superstitions like reincarnation. Many Hindus believe in reincarnation — literally being born again — and in the idea that people are born human and that if they do good deeds, they will be reborn as a human in their next life. If they do bad deeds, they believe that they will be born as a cockroach or some other unpleasant creature.