Generation Atheist

by Dan Riley

  Overall, the secular movement is growing at a rapid rate. A couple years ago, the SSA had 60 to 80 groups. Now, they’re up to 350. All reliable polling indicates that religion is on the decline in America, particularly in the 18-29 age bracket. The 18-29 age bracket makes up roughly 22% of the overall population, but has roughly 30 to 31% of all atheists. This group is the future.

  The SSA’s conferences and large gatherings help to replicate the community that churches have used to their advantage for centuries. I attended several conferences as a member of the SSA, and when students left them, they did so with a fire lit for activism. They’d want to go out and change everything because they’d met so many like-minded people and felt support, like they had an army at their back.

  While I have my personal approach to confrontation, I do think that, on occasion, even super nice atheists who never want to criticize anybody, who just want to show people that atheists can be kind, every now and then they are effective too. I think they’re much less effective than the people who are creating a harsh environment for religion, though. Right now, I think that one of the reasons that a lot of people are religious is because it’s comfortable. One thing that we can do to change the status quo is to try to take that religious comfort away. Today, a religious person, a Christian, for example, can go into the public square and spout ludicrous religious ideas. There really is a part of the social rubric that prohibits public criticism of those ideas. I want to live in a world in which religious people check themselves and think, “If I open my mouth and say things that I can’t defend, is somebody going to call me on this? Is someone going to socially punish for me doing that, am I going to look like an idiot?” That’s something that the confrontationalists are doing that is making a huge difference. I think they’re really effective.

  To me, I don’t think that Richard Dawkins is any more valuable to our movement than a car mechanic who comes out to his family. There are a lot of people who would disagree with me on that. Dawkins’s role is certainly more prominent, but we’re all a part of the movement with different roles. I’ve accepted that public speaking is part of my role, so I do it. Even though I’m a shy person, and public speaking exhausts me, it needs to be done. Frankly, I think I have one of the easier roles in the movement as a debater.

  Despite my beliefs and activism, I do recognize that religious people generally do have good intentions. Most of the time, they want people to suffer less and be happier, same as me, same as anybody else. We’re a social species. The question that needs to be asked, then, is the following: if so many religious people want to have a positive influence on the world, then why is so much evil done by religion? Good people doing evil must be at play. I have realized that it’s people’s inaccurate convictions about the operation of the universe that are the root cause of the problem. With that insight, one can understand how parents who have a sick child with a completely curable illness can wind up praying their son or daughter to death instead of going to the doctor, something that happens almost monthly in the United States. It’s not that these parents didn’t love their child, it’s not that they didn’t want their child to get better as much as any other parent, they just had bad ideas about how to help the situation. There’s only one institution in and of itself that tells people not only that it is okay to hold bad ideas about the way the world works, but that they must hold on to those bad ideas as a matter of faith and principle. This strikes me as a recipe for a tremendous amount of suffering. Because I see this reality, there is nothing for me to do but pull out the claws and fangs against religion, which is what I have wound up dedicating my life to.

  It’s interesting for me to try to understand this point in time from a historic perspective. If one looks at any study that’s tracked the religiosity of the United States, they will realize that the U.S.’s religiosity goes in waves. What I can say with confirmable certainty is that the atheists and the secularists are growing at a clip that is unprecedented in any era.

  Information is anathema to religion, which is in large part why I think the secularists are currently winning the battle of ideas. We live in an age with the internet. Information is out there. There was a time when, if someone wanted an answer to a religious question, a person went to a pastor or a priest. No longer is that the case. Everybody is beginning to learn about the moral monstrosities that are in the Bible. That understanding could create a permanent skid in our direction. If we ever get to a point where religion is eradicated or marginalized to a point where it’s not a threat anymore, where it’s not harming anyone, I would view that as a victory.

  I love what I’m doing with my life. If, for some reason, I wind up as a shoe shiner sometime later, I will still be a secular activist. As long as religion exists, as long as the idea exists that we should be proud to hold bad beliefs, indefensible beliefs, I will be opposing them.

  IX.

  ______________

  Damon Fowler: Ostracism in Bastrop

  “I do spend probably a little bit more time than I should on religion, and I have a certain amount of hostility to it. I think the most rational reason for it is because of the harm that I see it does…

  Many people do simply awful things out of sincere religious belief, not using religion as a cover the way Saddam Hussein may have done, but really because they believe that this is what God wants them to do, going all the way back to Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac because God told him to do that.

  Putting God ahead of humanity is a terrible thing.”

  — Steven Weinberg

  Given the location of his upbringing, Damon Fowler wasn’t a likely candidate to be featured in this book. Damon grew up in a poor, rural section of Louisiana. He always had plenty of questions about Christianity and no one around him to talk to about his skepticism. In high school, he defied his family when he spoke out about a long-standing graduation prayer. He worked with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and his school was persuaded to remove it from the ceremony.

  The day after graduation, Damon came home to find that his parents had thrown all of his possessions out on the lawn. He moved in with his brother in Texas, trying to restart a life that he had hoped would include college and a career in animation. Hearing about his story, “The Friendly Atheist,” Hemant Mehta, another subject in this book, set up a scholarship drive for Damon on his website. It raised over $30,000. Despite his hardships, Damon doesn’t regret his activism and is grateful for the incredible generosity he has received from the secular community.

  I was born in Louisiana and grew up in the city of Bastrop. I went to various Assembly of God and Baptist churches throughout my youth. I was forced to go to church twice every Sunday and on Wednesday as well. I have two brothers and two sisters, and they were put through the same thing. I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family. When I was younger, I never knew nonreligious people and was always taught to view other religions negatively. I was told that atheists were bad people, that they steal and do drugs.

  I never read the Bible, like almost all other Christians in Louisiana. When I actually learned about some of the things that were in it, such as passages where God commands people to kill everyone, including children and livestock, that was very disturbing to me. I was baffled at how other people didn’t find that troubling, too.

  The first time that I accepted Jesus into my heart was when I was four years old. When I was five, my mom remarried, and my step-dad came into my life. He was pretty religious, and he got even more religious when he married my mom. I think they played off of each other’s religiousness. They began praying more often, reading the Bible, and going to church together. They believed that Christianity would influence God to give them money, even though they didn’t know how to maintain or manage their finances. Their religiosity got more intense over the years. I think my mom was mentally unstable; she probably still is. My step-dad has always been rather gullible and often believes what other people tell him without thinking about anything
on his own. In retrospect, it seems that Christianity was a crutch because we were a very poor family. I think my parents used religion for hope.

  I remember being pressured into being a Christian during my entire childhood. I was constantly asked if I knew Jesus. I didn’t want to say no because if I had, I thought that I would be punished. Church sermons were always torturous for young people. Preachers would constantly say that we would burn in hell for eternity if we did certain things or had certain thoughts. Even though I was questioning religion, the church had a pretty big impact on me. I thought religion might be stupid, but I also thought that there was a possibility that it was true, that I might burn in hell if I didn’t believe in it.

  My family and I always went to two different churches. One is called Assemblies of God, which is in Sterlington, Louisiana, and the other is Trinity Assembly of God in Bastrop, Louisiana. The churches seemed very much like cults. If my family stopped going to church or missed one Sunday, members of the churches would start calling us to try to find out what was wrong. They were very involved with everyone’s personal lives and tried to tell everyone how to act and how to live. One preacher would often give examples of things that kids might be doing and say with certainty that their behavior was the result of the devil. He also believed that Harry Potter was witchcraft. It was very difficult to watch because people in the church would take anything the preacher said and apply it to their lives without question.

  As I aged, I became more openly skeptical of Christianity. A couple years ago, the church I attended got a new youth pastor. I asked him, “Did God make cancer?” He said, “The devil made cancer.” I asked, “Why does God allow the devil to have so much dominion over something that He made?” He replied, “God has mercy on the devil.” Unsatisfied, I asked, “What happens when a Christian gets cancer? Does that happen because they don’t believe in God enough?” He said, “No, getting cancer just happens sometimes.” I said, “If you look in the Bible, it says that if you pray, then your prayers will be answered. What if someone’s praying to be cured of cancer and then they die of cancer?” He couldn’t answer that question.

  I began trying to look up answers to those hard questions on the internet and in books. I started researching the arguments of theists and atheists, and it always seemed to me that atheists had better arguments, better explanations. In secrecy, I bought The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I told my mom that I was going to go to church one Wednesday and drove to a neighboring town to purchase it. I had to hide the book while I was reading it, as it was viewed as evil propaganda in my community. I found the arguments within it very compelling.

  I came out as an atheist in October of 2010. While I wouldn’t run around saying that I didn’t believe in God, if someone asked me, I would tell the truth. When people found out, they would often ask if I worshipped Satan. I would reply by saying, “If I don’t believe in your imaginary friend, that doesn’t mean I worship your imaginary friend’s enemy.” Being an atheist is virtually unheard of in Bastrop. My real friends tried to be understanding.

  I began to become more comfortable with my identity. I started putting bizarre but largely unknown Bible verses on Facebook. One that I put up was Ezekiel 23:20: “There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.” Somebody asked, “Where did you get that? That’s not in the Bible.” I said, “Go look it up.” They did, and they became angry.

  When my parents finally found out that I was an atheist, my mom wouldn’t talk to me. My step-dad yelled at me and said, “I thought I told you not to become too smart for God.” They punished me by cutting off my phone and grounding me until I apologized. Then, to try to reconvert me, they forced me to go to a weeklong Christian retreat called The Ramp in Alabama.

  I was a full-blown atheist at this point. While I was at the retreat, I had a “Matrix” feeling, like I was the only person who was actually awake, that everyone else was living in a widespread delusion. The leader there was very anti-gay. He made people come to the front and pray if they had ever had one homosexual thought. From what I saw, the true objective of The Ramp seemed to be trying to make people apologize for being human. It was a more offensive version of what I had seen in the documentary Jesus Camp. That experience was the death of anything religious that I had left in me. I knew that I didn’t believe in God, and I became very hostile toward religion.

  After I got home, my mom and I would frequently get into religious arguments. She gave me a book, Why God Is Real. I knew that that was a desperate attempt by her to try to make me Christian again. It didn’t work.

  Around this time, I remembered that there had been a prayer at my sister’s high school graduation. We attended the same school. The prayer had been a part of the ceremony for a long time. I was aware of a law that stated that there can only be a brief moment of silence at graduation, not a state-sponsored prayer. I decided to tell the school that the prayer was unconstitutional. I wrote an e-mail to my superintendent and said, “I am an atheist, but that has nothing to do with this issue.” I made my point by stating that the prayer was wrong and illegal, that not everyone is of the Christian religion or believes in the Christian God. I told him that I would call the ACLU if a prayer was read. He forwarded the e-mail to all the school’s teachers, and because I had included my name in the e-mail, any teacher that I had ever had in that high school knew that I was trying to stop the prayer. I’m pretty sure that drastically changed their opinion of me. Up to that point, I don’t think any of them knew that I was an atheist.

  The school did agree to stop the prayer. When people found out that I was the one responsible for it, some people began to talk about me, saying that they were going to beat me up. I received indirect death threats. My family thought that I was mentally unstable for doing what I did.

  As the day of graduation approached, the local newspaper wrote, hilariously, that there would be increased security due to the outrage of atheists across the nation. At the ceremony, a lot of people were looking at me as if I was evil, and I was scared. I took my place in line, and the person in front of me was hinting that there would be a fight after the ceremony. When I received my diploma, a person in the bleachers yelled, “Jesus still loves you!” and was escorted away by police.

  The Freedom From Religion Foundation, which I communicated with during this whole ordeal, was a big help. They asked the school to have increased security for me. At the ceremony, we were supposed to be lined up in alphabetical order, but school administrators decided that I should graduate last because I had missed a graduation practice due to threats of violence that had been made against me. The FFRF helped me regain my alphabetical place in line. They advised me to leave graduation as soon as I could. As soon as I was allowed to leave, I did.

  The day after graduation, I came home and found that my parents had thrown all of my personal belongings outside of my house. Some of my things had been stolen, and the house was locked. I took what I could, put everything in a car, and drove to my brother’s house in Texas. What they did — kicking me out, abandoning me — was the worst thing that they could have done. Before this, I had ambitions and goals that I had set. I wanted to do something with art. I was planning to go to college and study animation. What happened shattered everything.

  Now, I’m living with my oldest brother. I feel guilty, and I get depressed a lot. I really don’t have any friends. I lost the majority of my family, and I only have a couple sisters and a brother left who actually want to be a part of my life. While I feel badly sometimes, I figure that if some of my friends and family just dropped me because I tried to make them obey the law, I don’t need them in my life.

  I have, however, received a lot of support from people through the internet. I posted something on Reddit.com about my experience to get a little encouragement, a little support. It blew up into something that I didn’t expect. Dozens of bloggers began writing about me. “The Friendly Atheist,” Hemant M
ehta, organized a college scholarship fund for me, which raised $31,000. I’m very grateful to him. That has really helped me through a lot.

  I have also been able to attend the CFI Student Leadership Conference in Amherst, NY. It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. There were people there who shared my beliefs on a variety of issues. I had a lot in common with the people there, who were close to me in age. It just felt right.

  I know that there are other people like me who are experiencing similar hardships. I would let anyone going through something similar know that there is a huge atheist community out there. While they might feel alone, they have the support of a large number of people around the world. Even with everything that’s happened, I don’t regret standing up to fight the prayer at my graduation. It had to be done. If I hadn’t said anything, nothing would have changed.

  X.

  ______________

  J.A.G.: The Psychology of Religion

  “The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology.”

  — E.O. Wilson, Consilience

  Martin Luther wrote his 95 Theses in 1517, posting them to a door at Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. His document is widely recognized for fueling the Protestant Reformation. In it, Luther criticized the practices of the Catholic Church for, among other things, his perception of Church abuses, particularly regarding the sale of indulgences. Nearly 500 years later, a Lutheran, who wished to be identified through his initials, J.A.G., began to criticize his own Lutheran faith after experiencing panic attacks brought on by religious fear. He didn’t eat enough, didn’t sleep enough, and was terrified by the possibility of going to hell.