Hi, my name is Mark and I'm an atheist, a free thinker, a humanist and a skeptic. I unfortunately can not claim to have always been these things. This is my story on how and why I became all of those things. It was a long road for me, and took a lot of research and questions.
I was raised as a Presbyterian which I have always considered a fortuitous things as this particular denomination is in my opinion less in your face than many of the modern Christians religions. My mother was a Sunday school teacher and my father was a deacon of the church so even though my upbringing was very much centered around the church, at least it wasn't one of those evangelical indoctrinations. As a youth I was actually pretty into it to be honest. Not having been exposed to any other viewpoint, how could I have known any better? I was in the youth choir, went to summer bible school, our family always went to the Wednesday night potlucks, and on Sundays we went to Sunday school and once I was old enough, I got to go to church services with my parents. I officially joined the church and was baptised at the age of 13. The next summer I got to go to my first summer camp and of course it was a christian summer camp. That is pretty much how things went till I reached the age of 15 or so.
At the same time I think I have always also been a skeptic. Though my skepticism did not include my religion until I was in my mid teens, on almost any other subject I had to be convinced with positive proof and facts. This meant I did a lot of exploring and generally getting into things I wasn't supposed to. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I got bit, stung, scratched, cut, burned, or worse during my life due to my need for knowledge and proof of everything around me. I got into a lot of trouble with my parents because of this too.
Because of my insatiable curiosity science was a natural draw for me. I got my first microscope when I was 9 and got my first chemistry set at 10. I spent hours reading everything from Jacques Cousteau, who was always one of my favorites as a child, to astronomy books and chemistry and pretty much anything I could get my hands on. My favorite subject though has always been reptiles. I caught my first garter snake when I was 5 and from that moment on, I was hooked on these amazing creatures. Snakes just fascinated me, here was an animal that with no arms or legs could move with ease through it's environment and is a lethal hunter to boot. This love of snakes is what I credit for my eventual change to a nonbeliever.
The change was slow to come, but around the age of 15 I realized that the bible portrayed snakes as evil, this just didn't sit right with me. Here was an animal that I had spent 2 thirds of my life studying and researching and learning everything I could about being blamed for the sins of mankind! Now up until this point, I had not really read much of the bible other than specific verses that were assigned to me at Sunday school, but I decided I needed to read the whole thing so I could understand more fully this conflict of what I knew to be true about snakes and what I had been taught in church was supposedly also true about snakes.
I started reading the bible and I went from cover to cover. When I finished reading it, I was just shocked. I was not sure what to think at this time, there were so many confusing and conflicting ideas and stories and so many of them were so astounding it was kind of overwhelming. I decided to talk to my minister and see if he could clear things up for me. In a nutshell, what he told me was that though the bible is the word of god, every person who reads it is going to take from it something different. He told me that every person must find their belief in their own way. That the most important thing was to always try to be a good person and to be kind to others. Finally he quoted Mathew 7:12 to me, "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets", and he told me that this is the most important line in the whole of the bible.
I spent a lot of time thinking after that. I decided I would have to figure it out for myself. This is when I became an agnostic. I wasn't ready to say god doesn't exist, but now I needed to either find proof of god, or figure out what the truth was. I read lots of books on Christianity. Then I read lots of books on other religions which led to books on ancient alien theories, which led to even more books on even more theories. On and off, I spent years looking for the truth. I looked every where too, cults(though I never actually joined one), drugs(all to many of them), and meditation all had their shot. None of them brought me any closer to god, or truth although I do still meditate as I feel it helps me focus. In the end, I realized what I had sort of thought all along, there is no god, and I never really needed one any ways.
I have been an atheist now for well over 20 years, a skeptic for pretty much all my life, and the golden rule is what I have tried to live by which makes me a humanist. Free thinking almost comes naturally once you shed the bonds of religion and can look at things with an open mind. I am happy in my godless state, I am at peace with the knowledge that when I die, I am dead and gone forever. I rejoice in the simple random chance that allows me to have this one precious life to enjoy and make of what I will.
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