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Leaving the Fold by Vincent S. Introduction Once upon a time, it was so simple. I was a Christian and thought that the only religion on the planet that could make me a decent person was Christianity. Catholics, lukewarm Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and especially atheists and agnostics were doomed to eternal hellfire, while I would go to Heaven and be with God. But today I am an atheist. I do not believe in any gods or spirits, or that one can be a better person by believing in invisible beings that supposedly govern the world. To me, the Bible is just a book, a collection of stories and myths, and not the divinely inspired will of any deity. Religious believers are often disturbed at the lack of belief of their fellow person. Believing that one will eventually become evil without belief in a god, they will sometimes disassociate from non-believers and condemn them publicly. I hope that, in telling my story, both believers and closet non-believers will better understand the forces at work when a person becomes an atheist. I know that some will fly into a rage at what is to follow, but I know that there are a few who will realize that what I have gone through may be similar to what they are going through. In the Beginning . . . I was born on Nov. 1, 1960, at St. Catherine's Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y., a late baby. A Cesarean section had to be performed but I was a healthy baby. My family was Italian and Catholic, and I can dimly remember my great-grandmother, who spoke broken English and talked often of the benefits of Brioschi. Religion was a factor in my upbringing, though not exceedingly so. My parents went to church, and brought us up (me and my brother Patrick (born in 1963) and Robert (born in 1969)) in the faith. I attended Our Lady of Hope Elementary School in Middle Village, Queens, from kindergarten through eighth grade, and was introduced to Catholicism there. As a child growing up, I assumed that the whole world was Catholic. All my friends from the block seemed to be, so far as I can tell, and we all went to Catholic schools. The public schools were held to be bad, in some way, and the fact that there were blacks in the public schools frightened our parents even more than the fact that they wore sneakers and jeans. We attended school in a uniform. Other Catholic schools in the area included St. Adalbert's, also known as Saint A's, Resurrection-Ascension, also known as R-A., and mine, known as OLH. Later, when I got involved with Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) baseball, I'd meet guys from Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, also known as OLMM. In Catholic school, there was a progression in the way you advanced through the sacraments. In third grade, you made your first communion. In sixth, you were confirmed and chose a confirmation name. My parents had not given me a middle name when I was born, so I took the name Frederick as my confirmation name and used it as my middle name from then on. We were a middle-class family on a street of middle class families, mostly untouched by the tumult of the late 60s and early 70s. My mother's brother went to Vietnam but came back mostly unscathed. Things were happening, though, that would affect me and my personal life. Like most Catholic boys, religion played a decreasing role as I grew older. Early on, there was the secret desire to be a priest. The priests were looked up to by all who attended church as men to be respected. Even back then, fewer and fewer men were seeking vocations in the priesthood and it was causing problems for the church. I had even considered being an altar boy, but decided to go for baseball instead. While I was observant, I was starting to wonder if there was anything to all this religion stuff. I did not, however, go so far as to sneak into the school's auditorium, which was used as a church, and eat the hosts, as one bunch did. I just started to doubt. This became especially obvious when a Protestant church opened up down the street from my home. We neighborhood kids played ball in the yard, and were often chased off by the cops, but never attended the services. Still, they obviously weren't Catholic. One day, my mom took me to visit a cousin of hers, and there was a strange building with strange lettering carved into the facade. That was a synagogue, I was told, where Jewish people worshipped. I had heard about Jews, and that Jesus was a Jew, but had never known one. The general consensus was that Jews were cheap and strange, and we children picked it up from our parents and passed it on. As mentioned above, I never seriously challenged the faith, but I did do one experiment that shook my beliefs for a time. I was in the fourth or fifth grade and was attending a children's Mass. Now, the rule was that if you missed Mass the previous Sunday or had committed any other "mortal sin," you could not receive communion until you had been to confession and received absolution from the priest. I had not attended Mass the previous Sunday and had also, before school, quoted some obscenities I had heard to one of my friends. So here I am in this Mass and I decided that I would receive communion anyway, and see what would happen. I expected the priest to refuse, since he had a direct pipeline to God and thus knew everything, but that did not happen. My friend whispered to me as I got up that I shouldn't go, but I went anyway. So I got in the line as the priest gave out communion. "The body of Christ." "Amen." "The body of Christ." "Amen." "The body of Christ." "Amen." He came to me, and I expected him to stop and refuse to give me communion. He did not. "The body of Christ." "Amen," I said, and opened my mouth and let out my tongue. He placed the host on my tongue, I brought it in, and I waited for the bolt of lightning to strike me dead. Needless to say, nothing happened. No lightning bolt, no voice from the heavens announcing that someone had gotten communion with a mortal sin on his soul. I chewed the Host, went back to my seat, and life went on. By the way, it might interest some to note that there was a whole set of worries about chewing the host. Some said that if you did, your teeth would all fall out. One girl told me that she accidentally bit into it one time and imagined herself losing all her teeth right there in church. The thing was, nothing happened at all. I had committed what some considered the ultimate sin and no one was the wiser. It seemed that there were limits to the knowledge of the priests and God. By eighth grade, church was a chore, to say the least. By this time (1973-74), you could attend on Saturday night to cover your Sunday obligation, but it seemed to me to be a hassle. The sermons were deadly dull, you had to get all dressed up, and holidays like Christmas and Easter guaranteed even longer services. There was nothing like a Christmas Mass when the priest talked and talked on and on. The closing hymn, ironically, was entitled "Now Thank We All Our God." My sentiments, exactly. My future education seemed to point to a Catholic high school, but I was not enamored of the idea of attending such a school. The school I would have gone to was called Christ the King (aka CK) but I didn't want to be a burden on my parents. By this time, too, my father had had a heart attack and my mother had to go to work to keep a roof over our heads. I had to take a heavy guilt trip since my father's mother blamed the three kids (me, 1960; Patrick, 1963; Robert 1969) for causing the heart attack. So the less I was a burden, the better. I decided to go to public high school and went to Newtown High School, in Elmhurst. It was a culture change and a shock, mainly because I was encountering blacks for the first time but also because I was going to school with kids from the neighborhood who had attended the public schools. Without the compulsion to attend church, I drifted away from going to Mass, though occasionally I'd get interested again. That was the situation when I joined the Marines in late 1977. I was just not that interested in college and thought that, since I knew everything, any advice from parents was ill-informed. I didn't consider myself an atheist or humanist -- I had no idea what the words meant -- but just stopped thinking about religion. Tell it to the Marines The Eastern Airlines 727 climbed into the sky on Aug. 3, 1978, bearing a number of young, male passengers on their way to a small island off the coast of South Carolina. The flight was not a nonstop; it would land in Charlotte, N.C., then make a short hop to Charleston. Then we'd get on a bus to our destination. It's been over 20 years since I got on the plane and I still wonder why I joined the Marines. Part of me longed for adventure, I suppose. I wanted to be a man, and what better way than to be a Marine? But still, there was the terrified little boy who wanted to go back home and hang out with the bunch by the park, maybe go to Queens College and then try to find a job. My story of Marine boot camp is written down in more detail, and I hope to finish it someday, but there are parts of Marine boot camp quite relevant to the story of my becoming an atheist. Indeed, had I not been in the Marines, I would not be an atheist today. It's hard to explain to those who have never experienced it the sense of total isolation one feels in an alien environment like boot camp. Part of the head game of Marine boot camp is that everyone's pissed off at you. The Drill Instructors, the cooks in the mess hall, the admin people, everyone. Even the civilians look like they're ready to explode if you look at them cross-eyed. It's your fault that they are there, the story goes, in this hellhole of an island of swamps and rattlesnakes. If not for you, they'd be out defending America for real or making a decent living. So you learn to watch for the signs of an impending tirade and "Sir" up a storm. The only person who doesn't seem to want to kick your ass across the island is the chaplain. The way people respond to a complete (or nearly complete) loss of freedom is very interesting. Some become belligerent, while others become overly submissive. Some, though, dive headfirst into religion for solace. This seems to happen in prison a lot, and when I worked for the Postal Service some of my co-workers were very religious in reaction to the psychological warfare being waged in most postal facilities. Karl Marx called religion "the opiate of the masses" but his meaning has been distorted into a negative connotation, with opium being seen more as a drug for escape than what it actually was. At the time, opium was a painkiller, sort of the way the trash that's advertised relentlessly on TV and radio is today. Religion, Marx was saying, killed the pain of daily life. For me, Marine boot camp was the most frightening experience I ever had, though I was a volunteer and determined to succeed. There was no place to turn to for solace; there was no time for personal reflection. A moment's inattention during marching could create chaos if you missed a command. Get caught in a class daydreaming, and you'd be doing push-ups forever. There was only one place that seemed to be a relief from the stress and torment: church. Religious services were, I must admit, a comfort at a time when there was no way to find any comfort without appearing to show weakness. Of course, going to church wasn't that simple. We were divided in Catholics and Protestants and, of course, I went to the Catholic services. We were marched there as a combined platoon with Catholics from the other three platoons in our company. When we got to the chapel, we went in one squad at a time. The service was standard Catholic, though the closing hymn was "The Marines' Hymn," not "Now Thank We All Our God." Then we'd march back to resume the reduced Sunday routine. I was told by one fellow recruit that the ones who refused to go to church were made to conduct a "Field Day" of the barracks while we were gone. So it wasn't only comfort that drove me to church; it was also a good way to evade work. For me, the absolute worst time in Marine boot camp came when I failed a physical fitness test and was dropped from my platoon and sent to what was called the Physical Conditioning Platoon, or PCP. I could run like a deer and do enough pull-ups to pass, but I only did 35 of the required 40 sit-ups, so I had to pack my stuff and go "bye-bye," as my Drill Instructor, Sergeant Bostic, liked to say. The worst part was that while waiting for the paperwork to be completed, we had to sit and wait outside an office. There was a company whose four platoons had just graduated, and the new Marines were walking around, enjoying their hard-won freedom and putting their stuff on the bus off the base. I sat in misery, tears welling in my eyes. I thought it would be a long time before I ever left Parris Island. Of course, when you're 17, minor setbacks seem like the end of the world. I thought myself a total failure. In the past, my response would be to give up and go home. Now, I had no choice but to go forward and strive to get picked up by my platoon again after they completed the rifle range and mess duty. If I busted my hump, I could do it. The Physical Conditioning Platoon was part of the Special Training Detachment, which had the platoon I was assigned to, PCP; the Correctional Custody Platoon (CCP), a "prison" for recruits who had wised off to DIs or had stolen from other recruits; the Marksmanship Training Platoon (MTP), for recruits who had failed to qualify with the rifle; and the infamous Motivational Platoon, where they sent you if you were "unmotivated." The situation in PCP was not as bad as I thought. We ran lots of Physical Training, of course, and I quickly improved in the new atmosphere. I continued to go to church and counted myself luckier than the poor souls in CCP. Part of our duties were firewatch for the CCP guys, and it was always a sad sight to see them literally making (assembling) their beds before going to sleep and then disassembling them in the morning. MTP was intensively into shooting, and one fellow from my old platoon, Rosado, was shipped there for violating just about every safety rule in the book. With religion as a crutch, I made it through the PCP experience, qualified with the rifle while there, and, after shooting Marksman, the lowest classification, took and passed a Marine Physical Fitness Test (PFT). My reward was to be sent back to my old platoon, where I finished training and graduated on Oct. 31, 1978, the day before my 18th birthday. "Catholics are not Christians" My 10-day leave after Marine boot camp was over, and I walked down the jetway to the waiting 727 with my heart fluttering. Once again, I was stepping into the unknown, heading for the Naval Air Technical Training Center in Millington, Tenn., near Memphis.The past week and a half had passed in a seeming blur as I became reacquainted with friends and family. They saw someone who had left three months ago as a teenager, though not as ragged as most; I came back as a ramrod-straight Marine. One friend told me that she almost didn't recognize me because I was sitting up straight. But now was the time for part two of the great adventure. As before, I must leave the gross details to another story, but suffice it to say that I arrived in Memphis and settled in to the routine there without any trouble. I was assigned to the dreaded mess duty for the first three weeks, but then got into the training routine. There was time off, of course, and I went on liberty to the town outside the Naval Air Station. The way it was laid out was that there was a north side and a south side to the base, and in between was a road that pointed straight into the town of Millington. The town was, as one fellow told me, a "military suck," existing mainly on the government checks being handed to young men for military service. There were bars, including topless joints, fast-food outlets, head shops (off-limits!), jewelry stores and churches. One day, on my first walk down Navy Road, I saw a place on the left side called the Servicemen's Recreation Center. It was full of pinball machines and the crude video games of the time, including PacMan and Space Invaders. Normally, we who were into electronics would gravitate to such a place, but it was empty, save for a couple of well-dressed guys. One called out to me, and I went in. It astonished me that a recreation center off-base would be empty, and the guy and I sat down and played a couple of games of chess. Then he started his sales pitch. The recreation center was a front for a jewelry selling operation. The pitch came hard and heavy, but I refused to bite and left in anger. By this time, it was near the holiday season and, as a training command, they could send us away for Christmas and New Years. I celebrated both holidays with my parents in New York, attending church at Our Lady of Hope on Christmas Eve in my Marine uniform and ringing in 1979. Then it was back to Memphis. I had stopped going to church after boot camp, but still considered myself Catholic. Talk in the barracks often turned to the very aggressive proselytization we were subjected to by some civilians when we left the base. People would come right up to you and ask you to join them and be "saved." Knowing their market, they would send attractive women to try to lure us in. With all the arrogance and certainty of youth, I declared that "they'd never break my 'heart of stone'." Ah, but they found a way. The way they found was that problem suffered by all young, single men away from home, family and friends for the first time: loneliness. Despite living in a barracks full of fellow Marines, it was hard to evade the fact that there was a form of company that was infinitely preferable but very difficult to find: women. This was a time when many in America were not too wild about the military, and the scars of Vietnam still ran deep. In any case, young men like myself were considered threats, as we had some money, though not a lot, and desire. Of course, I'm biased in this assessment mainly because, while I had female friends, I never figured out how to convert those friendships into any sort of relationship. Truth to tell, I was so shy that I had a crush on one girl from eighth grade through 10th, and never once talked to her, though I saw her almost every day. I had thought that being in the Marines would change things; it did, but not for the better. I was, for this reason, angry that churches were using a weapon against me -- women asking if I wanted companionship -- as a means to lure me to church. Of course, churches are not above using such means on vulnerable people, but I was enraged about it. In any case, one night I was walking down Navy Road and walked a little further than usual when I saw a building on the other side of the street. The sign on the glass said, "Nothing to sell. Just a place to sit and talk." Wanting conversation with anyone, male or female, at that time I crossed over and went in. It was a dark place, and there was a fellow who greeted me and asked me if I wanted something to drink. I think I asked for tea, and we sat in a couple of chairs and talked. I noticed a mural on the wall. It showed a man and a woman leaving a garden, as I recall, and a sword guarding the entrance. The fellow, I'll call him Bob, saw me looking at it. "What do you think?" he asked. "It reminds me of Milton's'Paradise Lost'," I replied. At that, Bob was taken aback. Obviously he hadn't expected that response. "That's secular literature," he said. "It's offensive to God. We should only read the Bible." I was taken aback myself at this, and Bob told me that God was getting angrier and angrier at the way people had been worshipping him, and was ready to unleash the end of the world. Bob was especially hard on the Catholic Church and people like the Pope and Mother Teresa, who he said were servants of a "false" church. The Catholic Church enraged God, Bob said, because it had invented its own rituals and had discounted the absolute literal truth of the Bible. All Catholics, including my dead relatives, were burning in Hell for their sin of being Catholic. "But what if you know no other life?" I asked. "Well," Bob replied, "you've been exposed to the truth, so you can't make that excuse." Now Bob opened a Bible and gave me the "Roman Road" and then asked me if I accepted. I told him that I did not accept what he said, but that I'd go back to the barracks and think about it. He became upset and said that the world might end before I made my decision; then where would I be? Hell, he said. I replied that I'd take that chance and get back to him. I left and went back to the barracks, and never did return, though I had an encounter a few months later with someone from that place, which is reported below. Despite the pressure of school, which was a self-paced electronics course, there was the problem of loneliness still. I was drinking more than usual and feeling, generally, that I had to do something. One fellow said that going to church was a good way to meet women, and while I was not interested in the religious aspect, I was open to the possibility of meeting women. It's important to recognize that, at the time, I was still quite innocent of the real differences between the Christian faiths. I thought that all religions were approaches to the Truth, but, as my mother told me, "God understands." My feeling was quite ecumenical at the time: if you believed and were sincere in your effort to do right, it mattered little what church you attended. If God was the same, then I thought that the devil was not in the details of how you worshipped, so long as you did. Of course, this was anathema to the fundamentalists, who were convinced that so long as you attended their church and believed exactly as they did, you were guaranteed Heaven; going to other churches might land you in Hell, and going to a Catholic church would definitely get you sent there. I had noticed a school bus near the barracks every Sunday morning. According to the sign on the side of the bus, it was from Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis. One Sunday, I put on my best civilian suit and went to the bus. If nothing else, I thought, I'd get a free trip into town. A young man named Jim walked over to me and started talking to me. He gave me a sheet to fill out and then told me what was planned for the day. A few minutes later, he walked to the front, got into the driver's seat, started the bus and drove to the base exit. Aboard were several other servicemen from the base. We were all low-ranked enlisted men. About 20 minutes later, we pulled up outside a church and got off the bus. My first reaction was total shock. The church was huge. It and its associated buildings took up an entire city block. I noticed a television camera pointed at a picture of the building. Jim told me that the service was carried live on television every Sunday. I was amazed. We went into a small one-story building and were told the day's agenda. We would attend the morning service, come back for lunch and recreation, attend the evening service and then go back to the base. I thought it would be a nice day spent with people who seemed to be pretty nice. Anyway, how else would I get home? My shock at the sight of the outside of the church was exceeded only by my shock at seeing the inside of the building. The place was enormous. There was a giant orchestra section and a large balcony. The stage was quite large. Behind the stage was an area curtained off. I wondered what it was for. This was religion on a scale I had never experienced before. The little Catholic church I had attended while growing up could not even afford a church; it used the school's auditorium for services. This, plus the live TV and radio coverage, shocked me. Religion seemed to be more of a big business than anything else. The attendees of the church looked as well-off and successful as the church they attended and supported. Naturally the service was quite different from the Catholic service, but interesting to me nonetheless. The pastor, Dr. Adrian Rogers (later president of the Southern Baptist Convention), gave an interesting sermon, as I recall. What was shocking was what happened at the end. "Friends," he said, "people always talk about taking control of their lives. What is most important is not to have control but to give up control to Jesus. COME TO JESUS!" People began making their way to the front of the church. Rogers was still working to convince others to come forward. Jim, sitting next to me, started nudging me. No way, I thought, not on television. After a short time, Rogers talked to each person who came forward as the camera zoomed in on them. Following a short conversation with each person, the service ended. I was a little shaken by what I had seen. The surprise ending kind of baffled me a little. Still, I kept my thoughts to myself since the others didn't seem to be too affected by what had happened. We ate lunch and I even bowled a few games. The recreation center had its own bowling alley, complete with automatic pinsetter. This place was definitely something else. Finally, Jim walked over to me and asked if he could talk to me. I said yes and sat down next to him. "What did you think of the service?" he asked. I told him that it was fine except for the ending. "The 'Billy Graham Crusade' kind of bothered me a little," I admitted. Jim replied that that was the way Baptists worshipped and that their way was the only way to worship God. He opened a Bible and showed me verses that proved that I was a sinner and doomed to hell. In fact, Jim told me, all Catholics were doomed. "Do you want to go to hell, Vinny?" he asked. Naturally I didn't but I didn't think I'd be shipped there just for not joining this church. "Look Vinny," Jim said, "I don't want you to go to hell. You don't want to go to hell. God doesn't want you to go to hell. That's why he sent his only Son, Jesus; so you wouldn't go to hell. He wants you with him in Heaven. But he'll send you to hell if you don't accept his Son right now." I was quite confused. This being that supposedly loved me, as I had been taught throughout childhood, had secretly hated me for being wrong all these years? His anger would eventually cause me to be condemned for all eternity? Well, Jim replied, now that I had heard the true Word, all I had to do was accept it and Jesus and I would be forgiven and never sin again. "What if I accept and then leave here and kill someone?" I asked. "You'll never sin again," Jim assured me. I sat there, pondering not my sinfulness in the eyes of God, but my options. The place and the people were nice, though there were no girls around. The food was good. I was looking to be around morally upright people. If I didn't go along, things might be rather chilly if I came back. So I decided to go along. Maybe Jim was right; I'd never know if I didn't find out. "Wonderful," Jim said. "I'm so happy for you, Vinny. You've done the right thing," he assured me. He led me through a prayer in which I confessed my sinfulness and accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Jim said that I was surrendering my life and will to the will of God. He, not I, would run my life and make all my decisions for me. Next, Jim said, I would have to go forward that night and make a public pronouncement of my faith. I was hesitant, but Jim assured me that, as Dr. Rogers had said in the morning's sermon, Jesus would be ashamed of me on Judgment Day if I was ashamed of him now. Also, he added, I would have to be baptized. Baptized? "Yes. The baptism you had as a child was meaningless. You're accepting Jesus of your own free will. You have to be baptized again. Then you'll be born again," he told me. So I did it. When Dr. Rogers called, I went forward and told him that I had accepted Jesus. I was excited, though inwardly I was anxious because I felt nothing. No being entered my body, no instant revelations, nothing. Unlike some of the other guys who had accepted, I was quiet and withdrawn on the way home, mainly because Jim had told me that I should call my parents up immediately and tell them of my new status: born-again Christian. This was something I was reluctant to do and, in fact, never did. Periodically, Jim would remind me but I pretended that I had forgotten and would get around to it next time. Jim had also given me a King James Bible, which is on my desk as I write this. On opening the cover, I see a presentation page. "Presented to," it says. Below that I had printed my full name "Vincent Frederick Safuto." Then, also printed by me, these words: "I accepted the Lord Jesus as my Savior and Redeemer, that I may have eternal life in the glory of God on April 8, 1979." Two weeks later, I arrived at the church and exchanged my civilian suit for a white robe. I followed a few other people into a small pool (behind the curtained enclosure I had wondered about). As I walked into the water, I felt intense nervousness. What would happen when I came back up? Would I feel a change? Would I suddenly know beyond a shadow of a doubt whether or not God existed? The service was, as usual, held live on television. The person doing the baptizing mispronounced my name and then gently lowered my upper body. I went down and came back up. Then I walked out of the pool; a newly born Christian. Or so I thought. I felt nothing. No revelations. I still doubted what I had been told. But I went along because I didn't know what to do. Now, every Sunday was dominated by going to church, Bible study and recreation with the other servicemen. Jim and another of the young ministers often had us over his house for dinner and other stuff. We even went waterskiing one day. Over all of our activities hung a pall of religion, though. When we discussed the evils of rock music, I ventured to disagree based on personal experience. I enjoyed listening (still) to The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith, I said. If the songs seemed to advocate drugs, I ignored the message and enjoyed the music. Except for some experimentation with marijuana as a teenager, I had not been involved in drugs to the extent that most religious people seemed to expect. I was sternly lectured for my insistence on making my point. "There is no middle ground!" I was told. "This music is satanic and evil!" And that was that. We also discussed the Bible from the perspective that the book was completely, totally and absolutely true in all respects. We were shown how to use certain verses (the "Roman road": the Book of Romans) to convince people to convert. We were encouraged to be part of "God's Invasion Army" and proclaim the Word to our fellow servicemembers. I was not a very public person. I found the requirements of public prayer embarrassing. Didn't Jesus say that one should pray in private? Yet we made public spectacles of ourselves at restaurants. I found "witnessing" impossible. How could I possibly try to convince others when I myself was not convinced? I found much of what I was told hard to believe or accept on faith. Like Martin Luther, who died thinking himself a Catholic, I still had strong ties to the Catholic Church despite my conversion. For this reason, I found the anti-Catholic jokes told by various preachers extremely irritating. During one sermon, Adrian Rogers talked about a young lady he had met on an airline flight. "I won't tell you what religion she was," he said, "But they worship -- get this -- Jesus' mother!" The place would roar with laughter. Others would talk about the evil, rich Catholic church and insist that it was run by Satan. According to them, "The boys in the Vatican" had sold out to Lucifer himself. I was also exposed to Bible tracts then. They showed a world populated by hell-bound doubters, unbelievers, secular humanists and Catholics; loving, caring born-agains working to save souls; and a vengeful God waiting to make humanity pay for its errors. If you had all your knowledge about life from these tracts, you would think the world was full of adulterers, murders, sex perverts, blasphemers and so on. No middle ground -- you were Christian or you were not. One tract presented an analysis of the humanist versus the Christian. The Christian had Jesus in his driver's seat and humanity off to the side. The evil, godless humanist placed himself in the driver's seat and ignored Jesus altogether, the tracts said. A humanist's morality and works could not save his soul from hell. Secular humanism was viewed as an evil force permeating and threatening the world. No one would tell me what it was; only that it was a threat. This unwillingness to approach questions eventually caused me to stop going to Bellevue Baptist. I planned on being transferred soon, so I said my goodbyes and prepared to leave Millington. I didn't leave for a few weeks afterwards, but I avoided the church bus and stayed in bed on Sunday mornings. In my last days at Naval Air Station Memphis, I had an experience that caused me to really wonder about religion and tolerance. I was walking down Navy Road one day and was accosted as I walked past the little building where I first found out about fundamentalist Christianity. This was not the first time I had been stopped, though it was the last. "Hey!" shouted a young man, "have you heard the good news of Christ?" "Yes, praise God, I have," I replied. "Do you attend church?" he asked. I replied that I went to Bellevue Baptist Church. At that his face assumed a less friendly countenance. "I used to go to Bellevue Baptist and you know what, I was headed straight to hell," he stated. Not wanting to argue with him, I walked away and ignored his questions. So now, Baptists were part of the many condemned to hell. I found then and still find today this attitude ridiculous. Every church is busy condemning the members of another church for some error in procedure or faith. It is interesting that, whenever I entered a church, people would tell me about how evil churches were; all except their church, of course. My next involvement with religion came in 1981 after a six-month overseas deployment. I was thrown together with Bill, a fellow aviation electrician who had been quite a hell-raiser in his earlier days. After he had returned from a deployment, though, he started going to church and had settled down, getting married and exuding peace and decency. He was an interesting person who was fun to talk to but I found some of his attitudes odd. He hated Baptists with a passion and felt that the end of the world was imminent. He and I were on a detail together that presented us with much "hurry up and wait" time, so we would bring books to read to pass the time. I tended towards Stephen King novels; Bill said that there was only one book to read: the Bible. I told him about my experiences in Memphis and my attitude towards religion. I was stationed in Yuma, Arizona, and found the place to my liking. There were no religious fanatics cornering you on the streets and few proselytizers roaming the base. I used to go rollerskating every Saturday night at a place called Rollerland. In the same shopping center as the rink, a place called The Door opened up. It called itself "a foursquare church." One of the other fellows in my squadron went to that church and had tried to convince me to go, but I refused. I had heard of some strange goings-on there and had no desire to get involved with religion again. But Bill seemed to have something going for him. He told me about all the wonderful people (including girls) at the church. Finally I asked if he'd take me and he agreed to do so. So one Sunday, I put on my civilian clothes and went with him to the church. It was quite small and the vestibule was full of people waiting for the service to end. They seemed nice and rational. Following the end of the first service, we walked in and took seats. The service was like a Baptist one, at least until the preacher said, "Let us pray." At that point, all hell broke loose. Bill and his wife were babbling strange syllables and raising their hands. A woman collapsed when she was touched by the preacher. A man began preaching. I was becoming quite frightened. Later, at Bill's house, he told me about his religion. It was foursquare fundamentalism: the Bible was literally true, all except true believers in its veracity and God's existence were doomed to hell, etc. The members of his church would go to heaven, though. If I joined, I'd go to heaven, too. That night, I went forward and babbled some syllables. I kept waiting for something to happen but it didn't. I was just going along. The routine went on as in Memphis. I attended services, "spoke in tongues," sat through bible study and lacked the courage to ask the questions that were going through my head. How could the mass murder of the Canaanites be justified? What about slavery? Why did God reject Cain's sacrifice? I just was afraid of asking those questions. One day, I was sitting in Bible study when the topic was: getting what you want from God. I sat taking notes and listening. The leader of the group noted that the key was praise. "Praise is the key," I dutifully noted. Then I stopped. Why? Why should I praise this being? Why did he need and indeed demand such praise? Did he have an inferiority complex? If he was wonderful enough to create this whole universe, why did he need to be constantly reminded by me of his dominion over it? "Faith," Bill said, "will answer all your questions." But it didn't and I soon stopped going to church. Bill tried to convince me to return but I refused. There were no answers in his church, just suppression of uncomfortable questions. I remained uninvolved in church or religious activities until 1987 or so. I had moved to Florida in 1986 and was living alone and working nights for the postal service. I was single and, at times, quite lonely. Many of the women I met at work were divorced, single parents. I like children, but I had no wish to be involved with a women who had any. In addition, there were the "barflies" my friends introduced me to. Most were alcoholics interested in sex, not conversation or self-improvement. So I spent much time alone. Again, I decided to foray into church, out of desperation. I figured that I would find at least one woman who did not believe wholeheartedly everything she was told by a preacher. I was wrong. Bible study was just as dull as ever. I attended one bible study session where a girl in a $300 dress talked of our society's materialism. No one dared question anything said on any topic by a discussion leader. The final truth, the leaders insisted, was in the Book. I was disgusted. All around, people were telling me that the only way to be truly moral was to be religious. Sure, one could be moral without religion, they said, but that was humanism. Since humanism was an affront to God and actually a rejection of morals and values, it was an evil and dangerous philosophy, I was told. I patched together, from various sources, an attitude that was quite like humanism, though I did not know it at the time. I decided that you could live a moral, decent life without religion. I found that idea of a supreme god ruling the earth ludicrous as I learned more about science and astronomy. Why would a being pick just one world? And why this one? While I had a philosophy that worked -- I never committed crimes or hurt anyone -- I was convinced that I was the only one who had come up with such an idea. All around I saw people who thought that there was something to religion. Were there others who thought as I did? I did not know. At the same time as I was doubting the religious aspects of life, my doubts about astrology and other pseudosciences were becoming apparent. I had grown up believing that there might be something to UFOs, astrology, the Bermuda Triangle and other stuff. Now I was beginning to wonder. About this time, I received a piece of junk mail from a group called CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal). When I saw that they published a journal that had articles about that sort of stuff, from a critical perspective, I sent in my money for a subscription. In addition to receiving their journal, the Skeptical Inquirer, I got a catalog from a publishing house: Prometheus Books. While perusing the catalog, I noticed a book called On The Barricades: Religion and Free Inquiry In Conflict. I ordered it and a few other books. When On The Barricades arrived, I read it cover to cover in breathless joy and fascination. I was relieved and happy to find that my ideas were not original; others had had doubts about religion. I wasn't as alone in my ideas as I thought! The philosophy I had taken was secular humanism. I was a humanist without even knowing it. I began subscribing to Free Inquiry magazine and developing local contacts with humanists and other atheists. Today these contacts are still developing and helping me widen my group of acquaintances. They have helped me immensely in my life as a humanist and atheist. Interestingly enough, I now find myself in the position of helping others deal with their doubts about religion. I feel good letting people know that it's OK to doubt the preacher. Many have told me that they had doubts about religion all their lives, but never knew that there was such a thing as humanism or where to find a group. As you can see, one does not simply become an atheist the way one becomes a born-again Christian. There is the same intense personal self-examination and the same difficult decision making regarding family, but the difference is striking. You are pressured to make a born-again decision RIGHT NOW! Don't think about it too much, the ones seeking your conversion demand, tomorrow may be too late. For the atheist, the decision is often a lonely one made after much study and reflection over a long period of time. No one tries to convince you to stop believing that there is a God. You must do that yourself. I consider myself an atheist. I feel that I am being honest with myself. In my life (I'm 41 now) I've seen no evidence of the existence of a god or gods. Lots of religions, mind you, but no God. I've seen people do wonderful, humanistic things for others but insist that the work is expected of a Christian and denounce humanism for abandoning humanity. My atheism is positive and dynamic. Like most people, I have ups and downs, but my life is wonderful and getting better. I do not live to glorify a being who does not exist but rather to enhance the lives of beings that do exist: my fellow men and women. Put simply, the Christian does things for God, the humanist-atheist does things for himself and others. Both want to see human life on earth improve; but the former want to save souls and the latter want to save lives or make lives if need be. Unlike the time when I was a "born-again", I am now secure in my unbelief. In the Bible Jim gave me when I was a naive 18-year-old, I had written my statement of faith in a god and his son. Below that, I recently wrote this: I reject, as totally unfounded and ridiculous, all assertions previously made by me about any supposed veracity contained in this book. This is literature - not a guide for life! Vincent S. is 41 years old, single with one cat, and lives in Vero Beach, Florida. He has been an atheist since 1988. |
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