Conversation on Atheism, Part 1: Personal Background and Conversion
Today we begin a conversation about atheism. Atheism is burdened by being an idea focused on negation — it doesn’t state what exists but rather what doesn’t. It is an unlikely foundation for community, ideology, or political activism to grow from, yet it seems to have become just that. While freethought has a deep tradition in philosophy, the direct connection between the personal rejection of the divine and social and political change are rarely investigated. In this series Todd and Nathan discuss how they found atheism, what they found when they began to connect with other atheists, and what they think the role of atheism ought to be in the future.
Dr. Nathan Alexander received his Ph.D. in history from the University of St Andrews (UK) where his research focused on the intersection of freethought and the construction of race. His latest book is Race in a Godless World: Atheism, Race, and Civilization, 1850–1914.
In part one the conversation begins by focusing on religious backgrounds and conversions to atheism.
Todd: You and I first met several years ago while we were both living in Seoul, South Korea through mutual friends in the Atheist community there. I don’t think we knew each other’s religious backgrounds though. I am sure you noticed that there was a weird bifurcation in our community along the lines of those who were raised with a religion and those who weren’t. I was raised religious but lost faith pretty early.
I don’t think you would call it a very religious upbringing, but I was raised Catholic. We had all the holidays and rituals, like Ash Wednesday, and attended mass regularly. My mother was actually a Catechism teacher for a while — it is like Sunday school — but the Church and faith weren’t a dominant aspect of our lives. Overall, I would say I came up in a culturally Catholic household in the sense that it gave us a very specific set of knowledge and shaped behavior and expectations, but we never really worried about what Jesus wanted or what God had planned for us.
Up to a certain point I did everything I needed to perform as a Catholic. Growing up I would eat fish on Friday and give up something for Lent. I went to confession, took communion, and went through confirmation, so I am a Catholic.
What about you? Were you raised religious?
Nathan: I was also raised religious, in particular as an Anglican. We went to church most Sundays and both my parents were involved in Sunday School at some point or another. My mom was also the secretary at our church for a number of years. I didn’t necessarily like church but I was definitely a Christian and believed in God and Jesus, etc. I was also quite involved in youth activities in the church.
At some point when I was a teenager and had moved to a different city, I had stopped attending church, but nonetheless I still considered myself a believer. In some ways, then, this later stage was more about the belief itself rather than any sort of cultural belonging, since this was absent for me.
What led you to give up your faith? Was it a dramatic event or something that happened gradually?
Todd: I don’t think it was anything dramatic. It is tough to remember now because I was relatively young, probably around 10 or 12. Generally, I would connect it to the disenchantment of the world that comes around that time and the general lack of any convincing evidence. Finding out about Santa and the Easter Bunny might have opened the door. If there was anything dramatic that caused it it would have been little tests that I had run with my toys when I was little. I think an adult had told me that toys come to life at night and move around, so I started leaving them in particular arrangements at night and then checking them in the morning. They were always in the same place, so I stopped thinking that was real. I know I did something similar with prayer and not getting results. (The Catholic explanation is that God answers all prayers but the answer is usually “no”.) Around the same time there were a few shows about UFOs and the supernatural on television and they always had footage. With Jesus and God there was no footage. I definitely held onto belief in aliens and ghosts longer than God because there was more evidence.
Writing it out like this makes me realize how unemotional it was. I don’t ever remember having an emotional investment in God or a powerful sense of faith. I did know that not believing was something that needed to be kept secret. What was it like for you? Was there one thing that changed your mind?
Nathan: That’s really interesting. I think the analogy of finding out that Santa and the Easter Bunny aren’t real is actually pretty good for the way the process is for most people who give up belief in God. My understanding is that it’s most common for people to stop believing in God around the time you did — early teens.
For me, I held on to the belief for longer. It was a gradual change for me. I think at some point when I was a teenager I realized that the Bible couldn’t be literally true (i.e., there was no literal Adam and Eve, etc.), but I retained a belief in God and the afterlife into my early 20s. In my case, there was an emotional investment in God being real. How else would we get meaning in our lives, if not through God? It was reassuring to me to know that there was an ultimate plan for me and an ultimate purpose for my life, especially during difficult times.
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For this reason, I was somewhat reluctant to explore atheism in any detail since if God didn’t exist, all of this would come crashing down. I figured there were good arguments for God’s existence, but I was hesitant to research them since I might find them wanting.
When I was around 21 or 22, someone mentioned Richard Dawkins to me. I knew that Dawkins was a famous atheist, but otherwise didn’t know much about him. I resolved to grasp the nettle and watch him debate a Christian. The funny thing is that I was really hoping the Christian would win, but I came to see that Dawkins had solid arguments for atheism.
I didn’t convert right away, but I thought about things more and watched more debates featuring Dawkins and other “New Atheists,” like Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens, and over a period of probably a few months, I gradually accepted I was an atheist. However, even though I was emotionally invested in God, I don’t recall the break to be particularly emotionally jarring. There was no crying in agony at the loss of God, for example.
It seemed like your conversion (or “de-conversion”) was not a big deal for you personally. But you mentioned that you knew not believing in God was something that should be kept secret. So was there any effect on your life in the aftermath of your de-conversion?
Todd: It would be really difficult to summarize all the effects. Religion is a very totalizing force, so every aspect of life is affected, but the immediate stuff was limited to church and home. Not believing didn’t impact my schooling or social life. I think they were times I needed to bluff it — Boy Scouts required a professed faith, but even there I remember it wasn’t a big problem. If you ever read anything about North Korean escapees they all report feeling dislike towards the leadership but feel pressure to pretend to love them and carry on like everyone else. It was the same thing for me but on a smaller scale with far fewer stakes. Certainly at mass I had to go through the motions. When I had to go to confession I just said what I thought the priest would expect to hear. I would kneel during silent prayer time and think about sports or movies instead of actually praying. Of course the pressure at home and at Sunday school got more intense as confirmation approached so I just said and did what was necessary (eventually) no matter how much I disagreed. It was pretty obvious I was not a believer.
There were definitely squabbles at home and Sundays were pretty lonely. There was a sense of not belonging at Sunday school and at the retreats before confirmation, but since I left the church immediately afterwards it didn’t have a long term impact.
I do remember that my perspective on church authorities changed pretty drastically. I definitely lost all respect for them. I have a very clear memory of being taken to a midnight Easter mass at the shrine in the diocese cathedral where the priest came out and opened with “You’re here tonight because you are all sinners…” and I felt repulsed. I looked around and saw lots of old people nodding along as the priest denigrated everyone and all I could think was it was a load of bullshit and the best thing for me would be to never listen to a priest again. That sense expanded to all religious authorities within reason. I will accept them as scholars on holy books able to cite chapter and verse and give explanations of their theology, but for a guide to living or the difference between right and wrong I have totally rejected since I recognized there is no God. Once you get rid of God, their authority is simply arbitrary. Becoming atheist pointed me towards liberatory forms of thinking.
What was it like for you? I am also curious about what arguments really connected with you? I can’t find the author now, but I remember reading an atheist who argued that religious hatred of atheists is really just a reflection of how weak their faith is. The existence of non-believers is enough to get people to question their faith. Did the existence of the New Atheists have much of an impact on you?
Nathan: Ohhh, that’s really interesting. I guess I had assumed that you stopped attending church at the same time as you became an atheist, but clearly that wasn’t the case. For me, I didn’t really like attending church, but I still believed in its doctrines, so I can imagine how awful it would have been to attend while not believing what everyone else said they did.
In fact, I didn’t really have any particularly bad feelings about the church community or the priest, etc. I guess Anglicans are fairly inoffensive in general. I mean, there were no fiery sermons about all of us burning in hell for our sins, for example.
For me, in the aftermath of my “conversion,” things continued pretty much as before. There is this idea of the three Bs of religion: belief, belonging, and behaviour. So in my case, my religion was mostly about belief, and there wasn’t really any community (belonging) or rituals (behaviour), so this meant that only the belief changed. I was still mostly the same person and had the same values for the most part. So in some ways, my life didn’t change dramatically, but in other ways, obviously atheism had a huge impact on my life.
There wasn’t a big moment when I told my family and I don’t even remember when I told them I had changed my beliefs, but in any case they were fine with it.
As for the specific atheist arguments that connected with me, it’s difficult to identify particular ones. I wish I had kept a journal or something at the time so I could get a better sense of my thought process. One thing was the idea that if I had been born in a different culture, my beliefs would also be different. If I was born in Saudi Arabia, for example, I would be a Muslim, and would strongly believe that Islam was right. But really I guess the thing that struck me was the absence of good arguments in favour of God, or the ways in which atheists could pick them apart, like the argument that the universe requires a designer.
I think you’re right that the very existence of doubters can be a cause for others to doubt as well. I’m not sure if the actual existence of the New Atheists had that effect on me exactly, but more that their arguments gave me the courage to imagine that atheism could be true, and more than that, that it wasn’t so scary to imagine a world without God.
Todd: I am really struck by both how different and how similar our experiences were. On the one hand, it is clear that being raised in different faiths has different consequences. But on the other hand, the conversion seems to run the same course and is essentially done in isolation. It isn’t something I had thought about before, that this sort of deconversion is very personal. Even when we watch others making the arguments it seems to be the internal debate in our heads — not a group of friends or family or proselytizing community — that pushes us to a conclusion. It is very individual and that is completely different from joining a church or a cult. I wonder if that is how it is for most other atheists who left a faith. That may also explain the desire to find atheist communities. Let’s talk more about that next time.
