by Dan Riley
Generation Atheist
Dan Riley
The human journey is an emotional quest to find truth and meaning. Countless books have presented this story through the eyes of people who concluded their search with devotion to God, salvation by Jesus, or commitment to religion. But a growing number are choosing a different path, finding truth and meaning from the opposite perspective. Generation Atheist tells their stories.
The people in this book come from different religious upbringings, races, sexual orientations, and genders. Many have gone through very emotional journeys in coming to a sustained, open atheistic worldview. Most were quite religious at one point in their lives. Through the internet, humanity is engaged in a global conversation unlike any before in history — about who we are, why we are here, and how we should live — and these individuals have an important perspective to share.
Dan Riley
GENERATION ATHEIST
To my mom and dad.
GUIDE
(BY INDIVIDUAL’S RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING)
Christian:
Anglican: IV
Baptist: IX, XIII, XX
Catholic: II, V
Evangelical: VII, VIII
Greek Orthodox: XXIII
Lutheran: X, XXII, XXV
Mormon: I, III
Non-denominational: VI, XVI
Seventh-day Adventist: XXIV
Unitarian Universalist: XVIII
Non-Christian:
Hindu: XXI
Muslim: XV
Jain: XIX
Jewish: XI
None: XIV, XVII
Wiccan: XII
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many, many people have helped to make this book possible. I would first like to thank two women who have helped create this book from its beginning. Andrea Kimbriel: thank you for putting so much time and energy into reading over the many drafts I sent your way throughout the past two years. You have always been a sounding board for this project and have helped me at every step along the way. Your editing and meticulousness have always impressed me. Heather Gaddis: you continuously amaze me with your diligence, competence, and work ethic. You were exposed to the first contents of the book, and I appreciate your coming along on this journey with me.
To Ben and Breck: thanks for using your creative talents to help me build a website I never could have constructed on my own. Nudge HQ has always been a bastion of imagination and luxury. To Kitchell: your acts of generosity and friendship allowed for the initial stages of this book to take place, and your encouragement throughout this process made me believe that I could create this.
I’d like to thank my parents for giving me an education and a platform to discuss ideas openly, for always encouraging me to find both truth and decency in all things. I simply would not have been capable of making something like this book without your incredible dedication to our family. I will forever be grateful for the life you have given me.
To my brothers: thanks for the years of jokes, discussions, articles, videos, and other material related to the subjects of this book. My personal beliefs have been shaped by my relationship with both of you throughout my life. I look forward to more of the same in the years ahead.
To the people in this book: thank you for opening up your hearts and minds to me for this project. Creating this book has been a labor of love; it would not exist without you. I was continuously impressed with your honesty, courage, depth, intelligence, and humanity. I truly believe that your stories will help other young minds who are traveling down a similar path to your own.
Finally, I’d like to thank you. If this book has found its way into your hands, I hope that you will find its stories memorable and compelling.
INTRODUCTION
There is an ancient Chinese proverb that I like: “To know and not to do is not to know.” I, like so many other human beings, am curious by nature. I want to know. I like to ask questions. From the time I was young, the questions that fascinated me most were those of the most importance to human existence: what is the meaning of life? What does it mean to be human? How did we get here? Does a God exist to whom we owe our lives? How, at this time in human history, can there be so many different religions that offer competing and often mutually exclusive claims about these questions?
I have dedicated a large part of my life — obsessively, curiously, passionately — to pondering and researching these questions, both in a formalized academic setting and through independent research. I examined holy books, considered religious arguments, and became familiar with the discoveries and implications of modern science. Over time, I felt like I began to know. The answers I received were hard-won and often difficult to express publicly, for my conclusions, and the beliefs that came with them, put my views at the margins of my society.
For quite a while, like many of the people in this book, I felt ashamed for allowing dangerous ideas to win out in my brain. Part of me wanted to put my beliefs in a dark corner, hoping to wish my reason away, for the word that has become a part of my identity is, at least in my home country of the United States, often associated with distrust, secrecy, selfishness, meaninglessness, and arrogance. I am an atheist.
Atheist. Seeing that word can still make me uncomfortable, as though I’m glancing at something about which I should be afraid. Cultural conditioning is a powerful force. Atheism is a very simple word, though. It is the belief that, in this world that we share, there is no God or Gods. It does not, by definition, imply a particular political persuasion, ideology, or morality. It does imply that this is it — that this is the life we’ve been given, with no afterlife, no heaven, no hell.
For me, once acceptance overcame dissonance, I was faced with a single question: what to do? I decided to spend just under three years working to grow freethought, secular, atheistic college campus groups around the world while working in the outreach department at a non-profit think tank, the Center for Inquiry. Its official mission, a mission with which I still very strongly identify, is “to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values.” During my time with CFI, I met amazing people and tried to help to build a small but growing movement. After getting to know many students personally, I began to learn about their lives. I found their personal journeys to atheism to be fascinating, emotional, and unique. I decided to create a book that documents their stories, including in it all their struggles and triumphs.
I want this book to put a human face on atheism — more specifically, a young human face. Over the course of many months, I interviewed 25 young atheists — individuals who, according to recent polling data, are part of a growing demographic within the United States and around the world. Most of the people who I interviewed I had met during my time with CFI. I recorded our conversations, had them transcribed, and then organized and crafted each of their life stories. I made edits and additions for grammatical and literary purposes, to allow for cohesion and smooth transitions, while ensuring that the spirit and accuracy of their statements were maintained.
This book asks and seeks to answer the following questions: how and why do young people become atheists in the world today? What books, people, scientific theories, or ideas have influenced their worldview? Do any — or most — young atheists receive backlash from their friends, family, or community? Do Generation Y atheists view their atheism as having a positive or negative influence on their lives? Has atheism influenced their social relationships? Are they confident in their belief that this world and everything within it was created without deistic intention or cosmic oversight? Do they wish they could go back and change the way they think?
Right now, I can walk into any bookstore and have no problem finding books that tell stories of people finding God,
Jesus, or some other higher power. One might find, for example, 100 Stories: Finding God in Everyday Life, Finding God: A Treasury of Conversion Stories, Finding God in the Shadows: Stories from the Battlefield of Life, Bumping into God Again: 35 More Stories of Finding Grace in Unexpected Places, Our Lives As Torah: Finding God in Our Stories, Finding God in the Graffiti: Empowering Teenagers Through Stories, or, last, but certainly not least, Stories of the Supernatural: Finding God in Walmart and Other Unlikely Places. To date, I have yet to find one book that documents the personal journeys of people who have come to view life from the opposite perspective.
I hope this book can be educational for non-atheists in understanding who atheists are, where they come from, and what they want out of life. They may find that, in many ways, atheists are just like them. While I do not expect all who read this book to become atheists, I feel that if people better understood the perspective of atheists, it is likely that atheists’ standing in society would improve and that identifying as such could, for many, be understood as an intellectual, moral, social, or even spiritual victory for those who self-apply the label.
Most of the people documented here — from different religious backgrounds, races, sexual orientations, and genders — were quite religious at one point in their lives. Many recognize some positive aspects that religions can and do, in certain contexts, bring to the world. Many disagree about the best way to engage religious leaders and institutions. Most have been hugely influenced by online resources and a recent wave of atheistic books. Some did not want to be identified in this book for fear of professional or social backlash. Most view education, often specifically science education, as having been influential in their road to atheism. Most feel that religion has a privileged position in society and government. Many have gone through very emotional journeys in coming to a sustained, open atheistic worldview. All believe that we live in a world with no supernatural observance, that we’re on our own, and that we can and should work together as humans to create a more educated, more prosperous world. Through the internet, humanity is engaged in a global conversation unlike any before in history — about who we are, why we are here, and how we should live — and the subjects of this book have an important perspective to share. These are their stories.
I.
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Jon Adams: Unworthy Mormonism
“Dear Warden,
You were right.
Salvation lay within.”
— Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption
Stereotypical Mormons are known for their impeccable manners and devotion to traditional Church values. Jon Adams possesses much of the former and very little of the latter. His dedication to principle is matched by his commitment to fairness and truth. After having his faith seemingly secured by religious experiences throughout his teenage years, his demand for evidence began his interest in science and a path toward secularism. He has an impressive knowledge of Mormon history — the timeline of Joseph Smith’s life, the Church’s long-held view that blacks were spiritually inferior to whites, the belief in the war for heaven. His criticisms of his religion are much-contemplated and factually-based.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doesn’t generally produce bisexual Democrats. His evolution into an atheist, as he explains, was a liberating experience, allowing him to forgo years of cognitive dissonance. The pain he feels for his worldview shift is not for himself, but for his parents, who have been told by their church community that his atheism is a result of failed parental guidance. While he condemns the ignorance aimed at his family, he wouldn’t want his perspective to change: he finds his atheism to be enriching and empowering.
My mother was born in Utah, so she’s always been a member of the LDS Church. I think precisely because of that, she’s taken her faith somewhat for granted. She’s not very well-versed in Mormonism. I’m often correcting her about what her religion teaches and informing her of the practices of the Church. I think that’s just something that comes with being a part of this culture. Mormonism in Utah is less a system of beliefs and more a way of life. My dad, however, is a convert. He was raised in Germany, and in the late 70s, a couple of LDS missionaries spoke to him about the Church. He ended up converting.
His parents were against it. Consequently, there were some family issues, and at the age of 18, he moved to Utah to be with other Mormons. Probably because of this, his faith is more devout and more sincere than my mother’s. Even he’s not the most conservative Mormon though: he’s often skipping church to watch a football game. Overall, I don’t come from an incredibly conservative or devout Mormon family.
For me, I was most devout in my Mormon faith in middle school and high school. I was really fervent. I would drag my family to church on Sunday morning. I would teach what’s called family home evening lessons in Mormonism where, on Monday night, Mormon families get together and give lessons about the Church. They do faith-promoting activities and play games together.
I can trace one of the reasons why I believed in the Mormon faith back to one experience I had when I was having a particularly hard day. It was Thanksgiving, and I felt really ungrateful. I had had a family fight that day, and I was feeling lousy. I got on my knees, and I prayed the most sincerely I had ever prayed. I did what Joseph Smith did, which was pray aloud. According to Mormon teachings, when Joseph Smith first prayed aloud in the Sacred Grove at the age of 14, which is how old I was at this time, God the Father and Christ the Son appeared to him. That’s called the First Vision in Mormonism. In this moment of prayer, I asked God for forgiveness for my being ungrateful. I had a very powerful spiritual confirmation wash over me. I felt comforted by some other being. Being raised in a Mormon culture and a Mormon family, I interpreted this experience through the lens of my faith. It strengthened my testimony for years to come.
As I grew older, though, I began to be skeptical. My moments of doubt often coincided with my periods of greatest religiosity. I’d oscillate between the brink of agnosticism and complete faithfulness. If I had some spiritual experience — for example, an emotional moment brought on by praying to God about certain doubts and concerns — I’d be even more devout. It often felt as though I had two different worldviews existing simultaneously.
The most formative spiritual experience that I ever had occurred when I was in high school. I was either 16 or 17. There is a guest bedroom in the basement of my house, and I would often go down there. I liked the seclusion of the basement, and there I would spend a lot of time praying, studying the Scriptures, and listening to Christian music. Every night before I went to bed, I would pray out loud for 20-25 minutes. One night I was lying in bed, and I was about to go to sleep. As I was falling asleep, I felt my body become paralyzed. At the same time a dark, ominous spirit came over me. I felt as though the devil or some demon was in the room hovering above me. I had this incredible sensation of my soul leaving my body. I became combative with this spirit, this demon. I said, “In the name of Christ, be gone!” Then, the spirit left the room. That experience happened on three different occasions. I took each of them to be very strong affirmations of my faith.
These experiences were particularly important for me as a Mormon because there were many shades of Joseph Smith in them. Joseph Smith, in his First Vision, the founding event of Mormonism, reported feeling paralyzed. The powers of doubt surrounded him, and he felt like he was on the brink of destruction. Then, God, at the last second before he was destroyed, would come in and intervene. My experience was incredibly similar to his.
Around that time, I was studying UFOs, and it struck me that there were striking parallels between my spiritual experience, Joseph Smith’s religious experience, and UFO abductions, alien abductions, where people claim to have that same sensation of paralysis while they’re lying in bed. They often report some kind of alien or some kind of dark prominent figure being in their bedroom with them. I did some research and found that these are fairly common psychological experiences
. People have out-of-body experiences because the frontal lobes of their brains are less active when they are about to go to sleep. Something clicked in my head, and I knew that I had lost an anchor of my faith.
In high school, I was very involved in the debate team. Debate instilled in me the idea that evidence for one’s beliefs is important. I had to compete against people in debate, and I found that if my beliefs and arguments weren’t warranted by evidence, then they would fail in competition. I thought that I ought to turn that same spirit of inquiry toward my religious beliefs. I did so in the hopes of affirming my faith. I was incredibly self-righteous, and I was hoping that I could use the tools of reason and logic in the service of my Mormonism.
At first, I didn’t actively search out anti-Mormon sources. I read a book written in the late 1950s called Mormon Doctrine. It’s by Apostle Bruce McConkie. Most of the book was faith-affirming. I was trying to learn more about my faith and its precepts. Then, I found a chapter entitled “Negros.” It said that the Negro is inferior to the white race in the area of spiritual blessings. To give some background, in the book of Genesis, Cain is cursed by God for killing Abel and his curse of blood is called the mark of Cain. Historically, Mormons have interpreted that mark, the mark of Cain, to be dark skin. In the early Church, that assessment seemed rather fair to a lot of people. As I discovered through Mormon Doctrine, the early Church taught that blacks were born into Cain’s cursed lineage because of the preexistence, the life that predates mortal existence.
In the preexistence, there was a war in heaven. Mormonism teaches, controversially to many religious people, that Jesus and Satan are brothers. In the war, in the preexistence, Jesus and Satan vie for power, and they propose two differing plans for salvation and present them before God. Jesus’s plan was to give people free will and let them inherit bodies. Satan’s plan was to take people to Earth, give them bodies but not endow them with free will in order to ensure that they all come back to God. It was decided that everyone, all the spirits of heaven, would be granted the ability to choose which plan they wanted, Satan’s plan or Jesus’s plan. Those who chose Satan’s plan were cast into hell immediately: that was one-third of all spirits. The other two-thirds wound up here on Earth; those people voted for Jesus’s plan. The way that the Church explained why blacks were born into Cain’s cursed lineage is that while the blacks in the preexistence supported Jesus’s plan, they were “less valiant” in their support. So whites, who became Mormons like myself and my family, were on the forefront in the war in heaven. We were campaigning for Jesus’s plan vigorously, whereas the blacks were lazy. This played into the common racial stereotype of blacks possessing that characteristic. That’s how the Mormon Church historically explained how blacks are burdened with, according to Mormonism, their unattractive skin color.
