I Left The Keys to the Kingdom On The Table

The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. – Psalm 14:1

This is a short telling of my deconversion from Christianity to atheism. It's incomplete, and definitely missing key points, but it's a start.




I can't remember the first time I ever questioned my faith in the God of the Judeo-Christian religions. I remember two specific instances, however, one time while I was sitting on the porcelain throne and another while I was walking to my church's Youth Groups of all places. Other than a few isolated incidences, I never really did much. I just considered that god might not exist, then I went back to "well of course he does, what about the feeling you get when hes in your presence?" and other standbys like that.

My life really changed when I discovered internet forums. My first forum was the Dragon Ball Z film page on Countingdown.com, back in January of 2005. I made the quick transition from "speakin' 1337" because I thought it was cool, to speaking in complete sentences with proper grammar and spelling. Soon enough I joined the game maker forums, for the excellent program Game Maker 6. I hung out there a lot for a while, but quickly got bored because the topic of discussion never varied much.

I had started watching animations on stickpage.com as early as 2003, and stopped visiting after a while, but then, in November of '05, I went back again, and I noticed that there was a forum on stickpage. Stickpage.com's forum, while technically an animation forum, was unique in that its members didn't animate and talk about animation and give little discussion towards anything else. Instead, most of the site's consistently active members don't animate at all, except for a few quickies here and there. Well, the forum had a Debate Section, and I "knew" what debating was: two guys in suits arguing about politics, but not insulting the other person.

Well, that was pretty different than debating on forums, I realized. There wasn't a 2 person limit. Anyone could join in. And since it was the internet, no one worried about insulting others or wearing suits.
This was a pretty radical discovery, but it was beaten by a more ominous one: a thread called "Does God Exist."


Immediately I ripped into all the atheists and agnostics there, and developed a reputation as one of the best defenders of Christianity. While the discussions began low in scope and intelligence, like this one: http://www.stickpageportal.com/forums/s%20...%20hp?t=17459, they eventually became more sophisticated as we all got more intelligent. After a while, though, I began to question my own logic. I began using Adam's Puddle arguments (Adams Puddle is my name for the first quote on wikiquote by Douglas Adams and the logic it shows: (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams#Sourced) and other fallacies, like the "Atheists nightmare", the banana. I started to hate myself for using bad logic that I knew was bullshit, and then defending it.

Everything changed one day in January of 2007, when I was in art class. I listened to the band A Perfect Circle a lot, and I loved there music, but they had one song, Judith, which was blasphemous, and I avoided it it like the plague. Well I overheard a Junior named Blaise (At this point, I was a Freshmen in High School) saying the words "going to play Judith", and I perked up.
I was always looking for someone who listened to the same bands I do, so I asked, "Judith by A Perfect Circle?"
He said yes, he and his band would be playing it at the upcoming talent show. I asked him if he was going to censor it, and he said "No, we're just gonna go out and say '**** your God'" So I said okay and returned to my work.

That day, after school, I went to get on the computer, and memory of this event popped up in my head. I went to youtube and looked the song up, listened to it, and cried with guilt. I loved the song, I realized. I loved the beat, the passion, the guitar, the drums, the bass, and the subtleties. I started wondering "Why am I trying to hate the song so badly?" I answered myself "Because it says **** your god in it". "But why should that matter? It's just a song?"


Here's where the turn began. I asked "Why would god care about something so menial?"

Then I thought deeper. Maybe because there... isnogod! (Yes, I realize its a non-sequitor)

To borrow the analogy from Julia Sweeney, I decided to for once, just try on the atheist glasses, and if I didn't like what I say, I could rip them off.

So I did, and in horror at the sense and order and beauty I saw, I ripped them off in shock. Then I slowly put them back on.

That day, i got back into an active religion thread. I made an argument against Christianity, and someone asked "Wait, aren't you a Christian?"

"Not anymore" I responded. "I realized it was bullshit."

"That's too bad. We've now lost our best debater."






Pic of the day: