face to face

 My first boyfriend and I bonded over theology. He and his family were part of a home-based, semi-exclusive, Christian church. We met in our last year of school, when we were 17, and he had begun questioning his restrictive upbringing. There were a lot more rules about behaviour in his church than mine. For instance, women were not allowed to wear pants or cut their hair short. The only permitted biblical translation was the King James version. Most relationships outside the church were frowned upon – even relationships with other Christians. One of the core beliefs of his congregation was that they were the only Christians who got it all right; that all other Christian churches were on the path to eternal separation from God. Needless to say, I was intrigued. He was open to talking about it and questioning what he had been taught. Our theological discussions were usually tilted towards my interpretations of scripture.   After all, I was the one who had been taught to look ...

I’ve been putting off this blog entry for a while because this topic opens up a philosophical can of worms. To avoid drowning in philosophy, I’ve decided to make the bulk of this post a series of questions. These questions get to the heart of why I believe Christianity is incompatible with life as a human. On choices in general… What causes us to make choices? Is it pure ‘rationality’, or are there other factors? How important are those other factors? If we always have full power over our choices, why does marketing work? Why do people choose to do things that hurt themselves? Why did I choose to snooze my alarm today? I wanted to get up early. Is being tired a good excuse? Does it justify the choice? Did I make that choice or was it my body? Am I my brain? Is the one who makes choices separate from my body altogether? What if we extend this reasoning to other, more consequential, choices?   Photo by me. In the Bible, ‘sinning’ is when one disobeys God’s comma...

I just can’t get behind the idea of life after death. Our life on earth is unimaginably short compared to eternity. One could even say it’s infinitely short, since eternity is infinitely long. The concept that such a short existence determines our eternal fate is, at best, extremely unreasonable. My birth mother died when I was three years old. Immediately following this event, the idea of heaven and everlasting life was lovingly instilled in me by many caring adults. They told me that my mother would always be watching and that she was happy and doing well – I just couldn’t see her anymore. Photo by me However, upon the introduction of Christianity into my life I had to confront the fact that there was another place she could be. As far as everyone knows, she was not a Christian. Her family are not Christians. My father (her husband) was not a Christian when she was alive. It’s most likely that she died without confessing her faith in Jesus (this is the way ...

When people find out I’m an atheist, they sometimes ask me how I can find meaning in life. Indeed, when I began my journey away from Christianity, I often felt afraid of meaninglessness. Why are we here? What happens when we die? What’s our purpose? What is love, beauty, good, evil? What about this “God shaped hole” that we all have? For a while, I got into the habit of saying “I don’t know” to life’s big questions. During this time, some people would tell me that “I can’t keep living in limbo,” implying that uncertainty in life and death is unhealthy. However, my experience has been on the contrary. I can say, with confidence, that I have found peace, wonder, and comfort within a life of accepting the unknown. Photo by me. Studying physics has made me realise just how special it is to be human. The human brain, amazing as it is, cannot fully comprehend reality and the universe. Yet, we are able to come close, little by little. For me, the most amazing thing a...

First, a Bible excerpt - John 20:24-29 New International Version (NIV). Jesus Appears to Thomas 24  Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came.  25  So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” 26  A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”  27  Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” 28  Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” 29  Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” ...

A change of social scenery was one of the biggest factors that brought about my change of mind regarding Christianity. Speaking of scenery. Photo by me. When I was in high school, I was in a very insulated world – surrounded by people who believed the same things as me and had very similar upbringings. I was aware of this. I was often told to be careful when I went to university and moved out of home; that people would challenge my beliefs and worldview. There were always tales of young people, like me, who would go to university and lose their religion. I’d often practice arguments for Christianity inside my head. The faceless atheist would say, “Why do you believe what you believe?” I would be ready to answer. I imagined atheists as people that just didn’t know the truth about God. I thought that They were perhaps angry or hurting. What possible reason could They have for rejecting the Gospel? I thought that the world was filled with lost people. I knew there was drunk...

It’s been about 9 years since I left Christianity and I’m still unpacking how growing up as a Pentecostal/Baptist Christian has affected (and still affects) my sex life. As I mentioned in a previous post, losing my virginity was terrible. Yet, there are more ways in which I believe purity culture poisoned my sexuality. Photo by me. The two metaphors I discussed in my last post are centrally focused on permanent loss of and damage to one’s self. This is the idea I had of sexuality going into adulthood: the act of physical intimacy was an act during which I would permanently give something away. I had better save that something for my husband, otherwise I would be damaged goods on my wedding day – un-sticky and full of rocks instead of water. Enter, sexual shame. When I lost my virginity, the mood was of overwhelming shame. Shame as a consequence of sin is a prominent theme in the bible. From the story of Adam and Eve: 6 The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree ...

A couple of weeks ago, I was enjoying ‘apericena’ with some friends. Among them was a friend from high school, who was visiting Florence. For one reason or another (probably because I was thinking about writing this post), we got talking about the sex education we received at school. As I’ve mentioned, my high school was very religious. Our ‘sex education’ was often focussed on promoting abstinence until marriage. We began sharing purity metaphors we were taught. Strap yourself in. Photo by me. Metaphor One: You have a piece of fresh (virgin) sticky tape. When you have sex, it’s like sticking the tape to someone else’s skin. If you were to keep the tape stuck there, it would continue to be well-adhered; if you commit to one person and only have sex with them for the rest of your life, your ‘tape’ will remain intact for both of you to enjoy.   However, if you decide to have sex with someone else, you reuse your tape. After being removed, the tape now carries piece...

If I’m being honest, my loss of faith was motivated by emotions. The reasons I left Christianity are quite different to the reasons I’m still an atheist. I can think of two major experiences that most likely initiated my conversion. Photo by me. Firstly, I felt betrayed when I discovered my science knowledge from school was completely different to real science. During my childhood, scientists were generally presented to me as arrogant types who thought they knew everything about the universe. Many scientific theories, especially evolution by natural selection and the big bang theory, were flippantly dismissed as nonsense due to their perceived contradiction to the Bible. Based on what I’d been told, I believed that these theories had very little evidence. I thought scientists only backed these theories because they had no other explanation, or because they didn’t want to admit that the Bible was the truth. Moreover, there are a lot of Christian books that try to debunk scie...

I have always been interested in science. I loved learning about how the world could be experimented on and, most of all, understood. It was only in my first year of university, studying a Bachelor of Science, that the philosophy of science was properly presented to me. Here, two major concepts I learnt laid the foundation for my change in worldview. Speaking of views. Photo by me. The first was the idea of e mpiricism . Scientific knowledge is gained through human experience. While doing experiments in my physics courses, I learnt that everything that is measured has uncertainty. A good example of this is simply measuring the length of a pencil with a ruler. You can use the ruler and read off a number, but the number you read depends on many things. Even if you do your best to read the number carefully, your measurement still relies on the precision of your ruler. The smallest markings my ruler has are millimetres. This means that, using my ruler, I can never know whether the p...

I will never truly lose my religion - my God left an indelible mark on my brain. He exists in my life as a memory of a person who knew everything about me. He was a friend who I could trust with my deepest confessions. He would, at least, keep them a secret. But, he most certainly disapproved of many of my actions. Like many break-ups, it was a messy one. My Fall (so I call it) began almost 10 years ago, but I am still working through it all. Photo by me. Before the Fall, I’m standing in a crowded place. Although 30,000 people surround me, I could be alone. I’m lost - lost in the music, in the lights, in the lyrics: “All my delight is in you, Lord. All of my hope, All of my strength. All my delight is in you, Lord. Forever more.” It’s the truth. I’m bathing in it; tears streaming down my face, hands both raised. In the words of my cousin, I’m “weird”. But I don’t care. I’ve never felt such intense gratefulness, acceptance, longing, hopefulness. I probably never w...