]
] How I Found My "Faith":
] A Freethinker Raised Mormon
] growing up a freethinker while rejecting religion
] [http://www.hackunix.org/~derekm/faith.txt]
] April 27, 2000
]

	I was born and raised in a supportive, loving Mormon home.  As far
as your average Mormons go, my parents were pretty liberal; they were
dogmatic, indoctrinated, and "good" Mormons as I was growing up, but,
nonetheless, they had a libertarian world-view on a majority of the
issues.  They were kind and liberal in dealing with me when it came to my
intellectual quests.  (I was an exception to the standard rule, I guess.)

	I always insisted on doing my own thinking, even at an early age.
I'd ask questions about everything, then I'd ask questions about the
explanations, then I'd ask questions about the explanations' explanations,
and so on.  (e.g., I forced a /very/ detailed "the birds and the bees"
talk out of my mom at the age of four, all the way down to "it takes about
15 minutes."  I immediately explained the entire process to all of my
friends.)  I was always a fairly logical and rational thinker, I had (and
still have) a love for science and the unknown.  If I wanted to do
something, I found out everything I could about it, and I did it.  (This
actually got me into trouble several times.  *grin*)

	Being raised Mormon, I never fully accepted what I was taught...
I liked proof and logic, it was a natural thought process for me even at
four years old.  I didn't accept my early teachings on the basis of faith,
I accepted them as fact; why would my parents and elders teach me
something that wasn't true or something that was questionable?  I asked
"Why?" a lot, but not at first out of true questioning, rather out of lust
for a deeper understanding.

	I didn't start seriously questioning until I was five or six.  It
was around that time (between first and second grade) that I learned that
not everyone had heard of the Book of Mormon; that not everyone knew the
story of Lehi, his sons, and the nations they'd built; not everyone was
Mormon.  I began to learn other people's concepts of God, the plan of
salvation, heaven and hell, life, et cetera.  It was upon learning these
things that I really started to question.  I was so baffled by it all.

	I questioned quite rigorously from that age until I turned 16.  I
frustrated many Sunday school teachers along the way, tearing through
their answers until their only response was, "You have to take it on
faith."  The ultimate question that I'd think and ask was, "How can I say,
'I know this church is true,' before I've known all the others to be
false?"  I guess I was never a "good" Mormon, I never really believed,
though I was very active.

	Through all this time, I had also learned to keep a lot of my
thoughts to myself...  Many of my own personal thoughts, philosophies,
theories, and ideas that I had developed through my life were found by
many people to be considered radical.  They were by no means bad or evil,
but for some reason people seemed frightened by some of the things I'd
suggest.  Many of the things I had to say were considered "different,"
thus I was labelled "different."  I must admit, I was (and am) a geek.  My
lust for knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom caused a good amount of
ridicule from my peers in my youth (being labelled "Dork Moron," "Retard,"
or "Tard"), turning me from a happy-go-lucky, crazy, spontaneous kid into
an introvert that had to censor everything that came out of his mouth for
fear of further seclusion.

	At 16, it started to seem rather pointless, I voluntarily stopped
attending church on a regular basis.  I was still rather interested in
religion, if for no other reason than for its historicity.  I had many
Christian friends, though, honestly, I always considered them mostly
kooks.  Most of them were fundamentalist or "liberal fundamentalist."  I
was often asked by friends to attend YoungLife, and being the shy person
that I was and not wanting to turn down my friends' good natured requests,
I attended a few meetings.  I really never liked the crowd...  They
weren't my crowd.  They were the crowd that I had always longed to be
accepted by, but by this time I knew I could never fit in with them.  They
were the "popular" people, the "cool" people, the not-all-that-
intelligent people, the hey-let's-worship-God-then-go-home-and-have-sex-
at-parties people.  (Okay, not all of `em were like that, but a good
number of `em were.)

	I even thought, "What the hell," and went to a YoungLife camp one
summer.  They just ended up scaring me.  Ultimately, I had a fun and
enjoyable experience.  I spent a good deal of the camp in solitude,
sitting in the beautifully serene landscape and thinking through my
infinite number of thoughts and questions.  By the last two days of the
camp, I finally and silently told one of the more sincere girls in my
group that I had indeed "accepted Jesus as my Christ."  It was a lie, I
knew it was a lie, I had only said it in hopes that they'd leave me alone.
Even if I had truly accepted Jesus as my Christ and Savior, why did I have
to tell everyone?  Why did I have to announce it to the whole camp at this
one particular meeting?  Why should the other kids care what I'd done?
Why couldn't I keep such a personal thing exactly that, personal?

	Somewhere between 16 and 17, I just stopped caring a whole lot
about a religious fulfillment.  I just sat around not knowing what to
think or what to believe, wallowing in my own confusion.  I knew the
Christian religions really well and was capable of arguing any side of the
Christian world fairly well; but I tended to argue mostly for Mormonism.
I didn't believe Mormonism, but of all the Christian-esque religions I
tended to respect it most.

	By the time I had turned 18, I had decided that most, if not all,
religions were probably an invention of humankind; but I still didn't know
what to think or "believe."  It was around this time that I started to
study other religions besides just Christendom.  I first studied Anton S.
LaVey's Church of Satan, their history, and their philosophies.  I learned
that I'd been fed hundreds of misconceptions about them as being "evil" or
"led by Satan."  I decided to learn a bit about Islam.  I read two
translations of the Qur'an and Caesar E. Farah's Islam (a comprehensive
books on Islam's history, sects, rites, and rituals).  I also read a few
secular works, including Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
Walter Kaufmann's Critique of Religion and Philosophy, and George W.
Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God.  I started reading accounts of the
historicity of the Mormons.  I read about the early religions, the
influences of religions and science through history, the evolution of
religious thought, et cetera.  I read some of Josh McDowell's works (his
stuff is laughable) and apologetics for other religions (especially
Mormonism).  I read about Eastern religions and portions of the Vedas (the
Bhagavad-Gita).  I tried to read at the very least small portions of most
religion's sacred texts.  I read many pro, anti, and unbiased works (and
I'm still reading).

	It was hard confronting many of the things I'd read -- things that
tore me up inside.  With the secular works, I'd say, "How can they say
that?" or "How can they justify no belief in God?" or "How dare they
attack that!"  With the religious apologetics, I'd say, "Wow, that's
lame!" or "What logic do they see in that?" or "How dare they twist their
facts so -- they might as well blatantly lie!"  Even though I was never
really a believer in the first place, I found that even I was heavily
indoctrinated with, at the very least, a whole slew of false and absurd
presuppositions.  It took a long while of diligent reading, hunting,
weighing arguments, digesting things stated, thinking, rationalizing, then
feeding every single thought generated by each of those steps through the
whole process again before things started to clear up.

	My mind was an enormously jumbled mess as far as religion,
metaphysics, and epistemology was concerned for a while there.  My
thoughts and emotions were being torn in every direction -- from extreme
to extreme...  I'd often think, "Why can't I just be stupid?  Why can't I
just have irrational, simple, blind faith like all these other people?
Would it maybe be simpler if I were an intellectual robot, a slave?  At
the very least I wouldn't be confused; I'd probably be wrong, but I'd at
least be content.  Right?"  (I've since decided that malcontent is one of
my most "righteous" virtues.)  I knew I could never be "stupid," I guess
it was just a bit of a fantasy -- a wish that things were simple rather
than complex and confusing.  But, nevertheless, the more I thought the
more my tangled mental cobwebs were brushed clean away.

	It came to the point were I realized I must be some kind of an
agnostic.  "Yeah, I like that," I thought.  I learned more and more, and I
realized I had to consider myself an atheist.  As far as my quest for
knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, and truth goes, I'm agnostic.  As far as
my belief in a supernatural being or a "god" goes, I'm atheist.

	It was a breakthrough.  I feel good now.  My perception is very
unclouded now.  Things are clearer and more beautiful.  Life is far more
precious than I could ever have imagined -- all life!  Instead of worrying
about my life in the hereafter, I'm free to focus on this life; I'm free
to put it to the best use that I possibly can.  I'm continually more
fascinated by the complicity of science and the splendor of nature.  The
trees are more beautiful, life has more value, our cosmos is more
exciting.  I'm free, completely free at last!

	I'm only 19 and I'm continually learning and reading (I don't ever
plan on stopping), so I'm certain my "spiritual" journey and personal
philosophies will continue to evolve and grow...  My mind is a jumbled
mess of stonelets of ideas constantly tumbling, sifting, and sorting --
refining, smoothing, and shaping each other.  But as of this point in my
journey, I must call myself a hopeful, spiritual, implicitly critical,
explicitly skeptical, humanistic, agnostic atheist.

	I always sort of thought that no matter how you sliced it,
religion was still bologna...  But I never realized its sheer
devastational power until I found myself, a nonbeliever, ripped apart due
to my studies.  To think religion had such a strong grip on such an unsure
person as myself!  But I'm happier now, things make sense, my years of
doubt, nonbelief, and questioning have been made sense of...  I'm quite
literally in love with this intellectual freedom that is atheism.

	"And all that [I speak is] but the awe in which [I stand] before a
great unknown force, and [my] courage [is] but the reverence in which [I
hold] this great unseen."