by Jeremy Patton

Created on: November 11, 2010

People have many reasons for giving up religion and becoming atheists. Some are moved to non-belief after witnessing the atrocities of war and rejecting a divine protector who watches over us. Others are persuaded by scientific discoveries that contradict holy texts. One 60-year-old former preacher explained to me that “I just read my way out of it.”

None of these stories completely match my own, although they present valid reasons for doubting the claims of religion. My atheism is most accurately described by the great Christopher Hitchens in his book “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything:”

“We are those who Blaise Pascal took into account when he wrote to the one who says, “I am so made that I cannot believe.””

My parents would occasionally take me to church when I was young. They never force-fed religion but they believed in God and hoped that I would share their faith. I was an insufferable little skeptic and when the congregation bowed their heads, closed their eyes and joined in prayer, my eyes were wide open, surveying the scene (and I was usually not alone). When I asked  “where is this god we pray to?” I received unsatisfactory responses such as “God is in another dimension,” “God is in all creation” or a rare, honest answer, “I don’t know.”

Because most people in my small world affirmed the supernatural, I struggled with faith well into my teenage years. As I met more people, I realized that there were others who thought as I did. I increasingly stumbled across arguments against faith, or uncovered them through investigation, and they made sense to me. Many of these arguments mirrored ideas that I had thought up on my own. My most potent observation was that there were many differing religions, yet one seemed no more valid than another.

I cannot remember the details of events from decades ago, but I am sure that I abandoned all notions of heavenly surveillance, intervention and authority by the time I entered high school. I did not call myself an atheist because I did not understand what it meant to be one. My ignorance was further reinforced by the misinterpretation or deliberate slander of atheism prevalent in church and elsewhere.

Not until I entered academia did all my beliefs, or lack thereof, finally coalesce. I learned the meaning of atheism in philosophy class and was introduced to the Socratic Method. Reading Socrate’s

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