My Freedom from Religion

Like many people, I started out life labelled by my parents' religion.  Through time I have come to question this and am now free from religion.  Let me run through the key stages:

When I was born I was christened by my parents and of course as a baby had no say in this.  This meant I was now officially a Christian by paperwork.  As Richard Dawkins would correctly say, I should have been identified as the child of Christian parents rather than a Christian child.

Time went by and I attended church most Sundays with my family.

When I got to about fourteen I was sent by my parents to 'confirmation classes'.  These were run by the local vicar and seemed in hindsight to be basically a form of indoctrination.  I wasn't keen but it was made clear that this was the done thing and at the end of the process I would be Confirmed in the church.  I suppose it was out of respect for my parents that I went through with this but I wouldn't class myself as a true believer event then.

Over the next few years I didn't think much about religion, and only attended church for the usual events of births, marriages and deaths - certainly not a regular Sunday service goer by any means.

The time came when I wanted to get married.  Obviously it was expected by both sets of parents that we would marry in church.  I was by then fairly well agnostic but felt it was important to celebrate our wedding in front of family and friends in a very positive ceremony which I felt a registry office wedding would not give.

After marrying, neither my wife or I were regular church goers - again the usual round of BMD to attend but otherwise nothing.

During these years I started to think more about religion, and the more I thought about it the more I decided that I had no belief at all in it.

There were too many questions that were unanswered by religion, with the usual reply 'it just is' or 'the bible tells us this'  Added to that I was finding more contradictions in religious teachings and writings.  Finally there were the massive discrepancies between what religion teaches and known scientific evidence.

Faced with all of this I decided it was time to finally decide I was an atheist.  I watched a Richard Dawkins series on Channel Four and this highlighted even more issues that convinced me.  I also read his book 'The God Delusion' which reinforced my decision.  Subsequently I have read other books by the so called 'Four Horsemen': Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and Harris.  Unlike the bible they don't ell me what to think, but give me a starting point and ASK me to think.

At this time I was in correspondence with a friend who would label herself as a devout Christian.  We did a book reading exchange whereby I asked her to read 'The God Delusion' and she selected parts of the bible for me to read, including the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John amongst other sections.

After doing so, she reported that reading Dawkins had merely confirmed her views, but without explanation why.  I asked her some questions and raised some issues about the sections I had read but got the 'it just is' response and better still, 'we mustn't try and understand that in today's world' - surely a cop out.

So here I am now, an Atheist (or should that be atheist?) I respect other people's rights to believe in their god or gods and hope they respect my right to believe there are no gods.

To quote Ricky Gervais 'If God exists, why did he make me an atheist?' 

Need I say more?