My de-conversion

I don't have any horrific stories of being beaten by nuns, made to kneel on gravel, or otherwise tortured by church authorities. Really, the church never did anything bad to me. I more or less enjoyed church. So, my story is not really that interesting. I was raised for the first 6 years as a Unitarian (in those days in the Kingston Trio early 1960s it was mostly a bunch of beatniks smoking cigarettes, banging bongos, wearing turtlenecks, talking up communism, reading poetry, and drinking nonstop coffee). Unitarianism was probably my Dad's idea. In those days, very few people would out-and-out declare their atheism, but he was a pretty well read guy, and he knew a lot about how different cultures saw the world. I got the impression over the years he was mostly secular, but in more of a fuzzy, deistic, generic "higher power" sort of way.

I would sometimes pray as hard as I could for super-powers, like superman (who was my hero), or for a particular Christmas present. Mom said that that was selfish and that god would not grant me those kind of wishes. I could sort of understand me not getting a prayer like that answered, but it seemed like he must eventually give at least one deserving person the ability to fly, or X ray vision, or super strength, but as far as I could tell that was never happening. I began to think that praying just didn't work, period. I had only recently learned the truth about Santa Claus, and was mentally prepared to accept that, along with him, our other invisible gods didn't really exist.

In grade school my Church-of-Christ mom started feeling guilty for not doing something about our souls, and got us going to the local First Christian Church. No excuses worked, and there was no getting out of it.

At around 12 or so, she got me enrolled me in the baptism preparation class for pre-teens. I was the only one in the class to refuse to go through with the baptism at the end. God seemed too much like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus to me. I couldn't verbalize it, but it felt phony and the pressure I was feeling to admit a belief I didn't have made me angry and rebellious. But in high school (during the peak of the Jesus Freak movement, around the time of "Jesus Christ Superstar"), I got involved in a church based teen night club, "En Rapport", at the local Methodist Church. In addition to smoking pot and chugging beer in the parking lot, dancing and hanging out, and hooking up with girls, we got preached to quite a lot by the hip youth minister.

In spite of all the partying, this cool youth preacher convinced me to get baptized. I went through with the baptism, and immediately after (that same day) I just felt awful - like I had made a big mistake, sort of like when you ask a girl to go steady and instantly wish you had not! To combat my doubt, I read the old and new testaments all the way through, and would struggle to get into that "believing" state where for a few moments you felt like it was all true. But that took a lot of effort, and the feeling never lasted. At some point soon after, I remember going into our back yard and challenging god to strike me dead with lightning if he was so god damn powerful. Nothing happened, so I cursed and challenged him soundly and loudly for several months to kill me if he wasn't a complete pansy wuss. Definite fighting words! Obviously, still nothing happened. From that point on, it has been pretty much non-belief for me. If he wouldn't respond to prayers or to insults, I decided that he probably wasn't even there.

During college I went to a couple of those new "atheist/christian" debates and watched the atheists get their asses kicked (they didn't know how to debate at that time). I almost got sucked back in, but managed to steer clear. But it made me really interested in understanding the intellectual reasons why non-belief made sense. If it were true, then how come it was so hard to prove??? Been interested ever since.