COLUMN: What it meant for me to stop believing in God
Years ago, I found a book at my local library that changed how I thought about religion forever.
“The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins is a book with ideas that had once been forbidden for people to even consider. It forced me to evaluate why I believed in a god for the first time in my life.
In the book, Dawkins declares that religion has failed to offer proof to its claims of an afterlife, of salvation, of any spiritual existence outside of the physical world. It was a book my parents wouldn't tolerate; an idea I could be damned for even considering. Dawkins anticipated this fear, and points out how convenient it is for religious leaders to keep believers away from contradictory arguments with fear of eternal damnation.
Over the span of a week, I read the book in private, consuming the arguments against my understanding of reality. Since finishing the book, I've heard arguments for the existence of God that made me stop and reconsider, but I have never been able to return to my faith. It's one thing to make someone think, but it's another thing to completely overwhelm their belief system.
I remember feeling sick the first day I stopped believing in God.
I was certainty sick about the world. My place in it was seemingly gone. Suddenly, there was no basis for morality, no assurance that my life had a purpose or that all the people I care about who have died are waiting in heaven — or hell.
Inevitably, some nihilism set in. There was an uncanny feeling to the world around me. There was no guiding authority to lead me to truth or what I must do.
That feeling lasted about two days.
Among all these realizations, I found a new guiding principle: Freedom — true, unadulterated freedom.
I could decide for myself what was right or wrong without fearing damnation. There was no guiding authority to tell me the truth or what I must do.
In time, I moved away from Dawkins. The atheist movement built around his book came to resemble the religious institutions it criticized more every year. I saw groupthink take hold of people who prided themselves on independence. While I still have no belief in any god or supernatural existence, I no longer like to use the term atheist, which has seemingly come to mean opposition to religion rather than a lack of belief. I've since taken a more tolerant approach to religion than in my younger years where I would debate believers in arguments that had more to do with attrition than intellectual triumph.
Even so, I’ll always be glad I read that book.
For the first time, I could live my own life with no gods and no masters. I have found that to be more valuable than any sense of purpose religion had ever given me.
