The road towards atheism is not (at least in my case) anything similar to the born again Christian conversion experience. Unlike the theist revival experience, it wasn’t similar to a massive blow of misfortune on my life that made me start asking things like what is the meaning of everything. In the same sense, my deconversion wasn’t a result of any personal catastrophic event that made me discard the notion that there is a supposed invisible being out there, indifferent to my existence. It was a gradual threading towards a path of research, reasoning and weighing of evidences over time.
While I do want to provide you with some personal background on why this journey was (and still is) difficult for me, I realize I risk boring you to death. So for the sake of a back story, I will limit it to the essentials.
I was brought up in a relatively conservative Protestant family. I attended some Sunday schools and was sent to a Methodist church prior to my elementary years where I then studied in a Catholic school and got my introduction to Catholicism. My high school was spent in a private secular school, so I didn’t think about religion then mainly because I was too preoccupied with wooing the girl that I eventually married. Finally, college was spent in the oldest Catholic university in the country where I had to take up mandatory Theology classes.
At this point I should perhaps note a critical phase in my life as a former theist. Sometime between the end of high school and beginning of college I did in fact spend two years in a Christian seminary (whose name of the institution shall forever remain unmentioned). Yes, you read that right. A seminary. I actually considered being a pastor. I figured I could be like a stand up comedian pastor reeling in souls for God. In fact during those two years I occasionally did Christian lectures in my dad’s congregation, actually sharing what I’ve learned in the seminary and even proselytizing to some extent.
I left the seminary mainly because I came to a realization that it was not a pragmatic life decision. Add the fact that there were items taught in the seminary that I had issues taking in on mere faith. I also stopped attending church after realizing that I came to a point that I was simply doing the motions and were having conflicts with the process of determining who gets saved in the afterlife or not.
So fast forward to marrying my high school sweetheart, having a kid, and a long absence from entertaining anything that had to do with religion, a few months ago I revisited my former theological questions and began to research about the existence of God, the authenticity of the Bible, the historical facts of an actual Jesus and the statistical failure rate of prayers. Arriving at the conclusion felt liberating, it was like a rope that suddenly snapped after a long period of struggling.
But then came the dilemma, which was akin I later realized to how closet homosexuals feel. Will people look at me differently now knowing I am without God?
I placed that inquiry to the ultimate test and decided to tell my wife. In retrospect I regret the ill thought manner in which I sprung my revelation which resulted in an abruptly ended conversation. I actually almost wished she misheard me thinking all I said was that I really liked 80s music and just wanted to be officially labeled as such. But she didn’t, and decided to not speak to me for the remainder of the night.
In fairness though, after she cleared her head she took the initiative to take me out for coffee and crepe one night to discuss how I came to my conclusion. The conversation was long but it went fairly well that we were able to come to certain agreements about where I should stand, especially when it comes to parenting our witty daughter.
I won’t go over the details of how that all went, but I do want to point out that this is a person who knew me since high school, a person who understood me even in times I appear to be puzzling and difficult, a person who I have spent a considerable amount of time with. She has evolved to accept that I no longer go to church, but to profess that I am no longer with God was just too much for her to initially process and come into terms with.
But she finally came around and it was such a weight lifted off my chest. And that is I suppose the reason why I want to do this blog, I have always strived to be transparent and am very passionate about the things I believe in, and don't believe in. If my own wife readily entertained false notions about atheism then what more other people who know little or absolutely nothing about it.
I am currently reevaluating my stand on almost everything I have been taught in the past thirty something years of my life. Questions like what is now the basis for my moral compass? How am I going to parent my daughter now? What the heck is the meaning of life? These are the questions I am reformulating answers to that I perhaps intend to share with you in hopes that I get additional insights on.
These I realize are not easy questions as it involves the use of a lot of gray matter, something the casual theist possibly hates doing (reason for the reliance in an ancient book of convenient retorts). I currently do not have all the answers yet and I am not even absolutely sure that there is no god, but given the evidence at hand, this is my current stand.
Ok so here goes, this is me coming out: Hello, my name is Tek Cortez and yes, I am an atheist.