I Am An Atheist

I bet there are plenty of stories here about this kind of thing, but I thought I'd give my story to it. It's kind of a boring ending, but anyways...

I grew up in a moderately religious home. It's strange and almost beautiful because they were on opposite sides on pretty much everything, political, social, etc. and yet they were able to make it work mostly. Obviously I was a Christian most of my life, but they were never too pushy. They didn't talk about religion too much and let me be in the general sense. They were lenient when it came to parenting, so I suppose that answers it.

So yeah, I was a Christian at this stage, and originally a very hard-hitting conservative one. I asserted that I knew God existed (couldn't give any evidence, of course, but that didn't stop me) and when I met someone who wasn't Christian it was almost like I was shocked.

I grew a lot more left-wing about it when I started to "mature in the faith" I suppose a Christian might say. I believed in a secular political and otherwise social-economical system, and I started to realize that there was scripture, but there was also real-time issues going on with tolerance and other matters.

I grew some close friends that shared my faith and all was well. I went to Youth Group, participated actively in Church, and was quite into saying "Sunday best." Until I realized that the Christian religion (and later down the line a lot of other religions) were complete BS.

I started analyzing scripture, and looked up contradictions, surveys of how many people actually saw an afterlife (and why it wasn't some supernatural force), etc. and I came to the conclusion that it didn't hold up to scrutiny at all. And honestly, it was both frightening (for a short period of time, as in minute) and liberating. Having to spend the majority of my life giving thanks to someone I never actually saw, appreciating someone who did nothing for me, worshiping someone that didn't exist, I was glad to realize that it was all bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I'd be fine following and worshiping a deity, if one would present itself - but it always felt lonely. I had realized what it was like to be able to think for myself instead of being told what to think by some celestial puppetmaster.

So here I am, still atheist, still left-wing, and still waiting for some goddamn evidence. Haven't found any so far.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Again, there's probably hundreds just like this, but I thought I might as well.