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Born Atheist, Raised Mormon

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(Via Tim)

Mormon Father. Jewish Mother.

27 cousins on his side. 1 on hers.

I hated church as a child, mainly because it was long and boring and I didn’t believe anything anybody said. It all sounded nice, but I could never convince myself that anyone speaking at the pulpit actually believed what they were saying. It sounded more like regurgitation of dogmatic maxims, like: “knowing” Mormonism is “the one true church”.

During Sunday School, they tried to convince me that Joseph Smith was told by god in a vision to dig up and translate magical plates of gold, written in a dead language, which predict Christ’s eventual return to Missouri. (Yes, that Missouri). Even as a boy, I knew this silliness was not for me. But I was afraid to tell anyone my true feelings out of fear being judged.

So I played along as best I could, repressing my anger and shame. I came to despise the church’s supernatural teachings, much to the chagrin of my Sunday School teachers, who feebly attempted to answer my smug questions, like: ‘if there is no hell (Mormons don’t believe in it), why shouldn’t I just kill myself to get to heaven sooner?’. I was a handful. Eventually, my distain for the church’s dogma reached critical mass after I was forced to participate in church-sanctioned “Baptisms for the Dead”. Google it.

At 15, my parents finally allowed me to drop out of Seminary (daily 6am bible-study), and I have not attended a Mormon service since.

I spent the next 15 years investigating other religions. Surprisingly, my journey was similar to Joseph Smith’s. Both he and I shared dissatisfied with the church we were born into, so we explored others in early adulthood. Over the years I have studied and/or practiced Buddhism, Judaism, Taoism, Falun Gong, Hinduism, Catholicism, and even Scientology (which is the most bogus of them all).

At 25, I even traveled to Israel for two weeks to explore my Jewish heritage.

At 30, I decided to stop searching for god. I had searched enough. Then something amazing happened. I realized I had been an Atheist my entire life.

I do not believe in Atheism, the way religious people believe in god. Rather, I choose to accept the reality that no empirical evidence exists to prove there is a god (or Zeus, or Allah, or Vishnu) instead of assuming the opposite – that god exists because he cannot be disproven. That decision automatically makes me an Atheist.

If there is anything I have learned as a therapist, it is that everyone’s brain is wired differently. It is not good or bad, just different. Some people are wired to WANT to be told what the rules are. It is too hard, or too scary, or just too much work to figure out the truth for themselves, so they adopt the beliefs of others and pass them off as their own. For some people, believing in a made-up answer is better than admitting that no answer exists.

I am not one of those people.

I choose to take responsibility for my actions, good and bad, rather than attribute my success to god and my failure to sin.

Life as an Atheist has made me happier than ever before. I finally feel allowed to be myself, all of the time. Instead of attributing the good I experience to god’s benevolence, I praise myself for a job well done. Rather than pray to God for help, I use my brain to figure out the best solution to my problems.

And, if I find myself at the pearly gates after I am dead and gone, I will happily admit my transgressions and repent of my sins. But until some proof exists that god — or Brahma, or Osiris, or Elohim, or Athena — is real, I choose to accept the science of evolution over cult superstition.

I wasn’t born a Mormon, or a Jew; I was born an Atheist. I have never believed in a god, no matter how many times I tried to convince myself otherwise.

Sorry, Dad. I was just born this way.

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