by EJ Englin

Created on: December 21, 2008

I grew up in a Apostolic/Pentecostal home. My parents are both ministers and most of my siblings agree with what they have been raised to believe. I have one brother who is Wiccan, and still believes in the teachings of Jesus Christ, but that is as far afield as anyone has been willing to go. I am the only Atheist in my immediate family and the difficulties are only surpassed by the joy of viewing the world in rational light.

I attended a fundamentalist Christian church for most of my life
twenty years or so, and went to church seven days a week. (People think I'm exaggerating when I say that, but they have no idea.) I was raised with the notion that the bible was the inerrant word of God and that to question the pastor or the bible was to question God. A big no-no in my family. You didn't point out the conundrums, the fallacies, the contradictions, the sexism, the racism, and the barbarism in the bible, you just took it as the word of God and kept your eyes on the prize. Heaven.

I started asking questions about the "inerrancy" of the bible when I was about 9 years old. Or as my mom likes to say, "You have never been a real saint" (I don't tell her, but I take that as a compliment), or "You've always been full of the devil" or my personal favorite, "You're too analytical". Well, in my opinion people are not analytical enough.

Scene: Nine year old asks mother "When Cain was banished by God who did he marry?" , "Why are there two stories of creation?" or "Why did God make light before he made the sun?".

As you can imagine there was no forthcoming answer to these or any other questions that doubted the truth of the bible and our way of life. Answers from unthinking fundamentalist or worse biblical apologetics are either scary or pure drivel. No one seems to see the problems in their own religion (but ask them about another view, and they have all the answers).

Atheism to me is not believing anything on authority or personal experience without quantifiable or objective evidence. Atheism is about not accepting something written in a book over 2,000 years ago before the advent of the scientific method. It's about believing in the world around us and not relying on mysticism for our answers.

But I don't just call myself an Atheist. I am a Secular Humanist, a Freethinker, a Realist, and a Scientist. I believe that human experience can give us the answers on ethical and moral questions, that science can give us the information needed to help better our lives and that thinking rationally will have the greatest effect for the most good for the greatest number of people.

As noted evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins likes to say,"You don't stay awake worried about Isis, or Osiris, or Thor, or Woton. You aren't concerned with Zeus or Apollo or Baal. You're an atheist about all these religions, you only believe in one god. Well, the Atheist just takes it one god further, because if it's better to believe in one god, how much better would it be to believe in no god."

Atheism allows me to lead my life based on fact. I stand in awe of the universe, prophets. I get emotional about the cosmos and the nature of the world, not somebody's idea of how it should be, but how it really is. Atheism is Liberation, and Freedom. And for me it's the only way to live.

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