Coming Out of the Closet
A few weeks ago while I was in Burbank, my business partner tossed me an issue of Wired magazine and said read the article on the “New Atheism”. Until reading this article I was not aware of an Atheist Movement, much less a New Atheist Movement. I mean I assume there are organized groups of atheists but I knew nothing more than that they probably existed.
While I have a recollection of believing in Santa, I have no recollection of ever believing in God. I think the first time I categorized myself as an atheist was at the age of 14 when I used a black permanent marker to scrawl the words ATHEIST on my surplus military jacket which was already crowded with skulls, anarchy symbols and the names of skate punk bands like “Butthole Surfers“. I’m sure people took my stance on God very seriously at the time.
In college, I spent many hours debating many things with many people. Nothing different here. I minored in Philosophy at Illinois State University and often found myself arguing in the middle of class, against the existence of God, usually alone in my opinion. I had few friends that would consider themselves an atheist, and fewer still that would publicly deny the existence of God.
Since college my atheism is not something I’ve advertised. It only comes up as an internal stuggle when I find myself in situations where a friend or family member involves me in their religion: like when my sister asked me to read a passage from the Bible at here Catholic wedding. Or when one my close friends starts off a Thanksgiving meal with a prayer.
In both of those cases, I’ve had the urge to opt out, but haven’t, for fear of alienating myself.
In this light, I found it interesting to read about the New Athiest Movement, and their claim that not only should an atheist announce their disbelief in God, but should also stop respecting other people’s belief in God. My first thought was that the New Atheist obviously doesn’t attend their sister’s wedding or have friend’s over for Thanksgiving. I understand their point, and I want to be that type of atheist, except it’s simply impractical. I would offend people I care about.
But the fact remains that I don’t understand why intelligent people, specifically intelligent people I know, believe in God. If it weren’t for them, it would be easy for me to speak as Sam Harris does in the Wired article:
At some point, there is going to be enough pressure that it is just going to be too embarrassing to believe in God.
I shared the Wired article with my wife. Afterwards she asked me if I believed what the New Atheists believed. I answered yes and to my surprise, we debated about that position, and how that conflicted with her own spirituality (which is not even associated with organized religion or a belief in a “God”). And that’s when I realized how far in the closet I have been since the time I took a black marker to an old army jacket.
Time to start coming out.
