I had occasion to chat with a student recently. He was raised in a religious family, but has realised that he doesn’t believe in any gods. The realisation has not been particularly easy. I got the feeling that, while he hadn’t believed for a long time, he was only just beginning to admit this to himself, and to solidify his identity as a non-believer. He seemed poised on the verge of some kind of decision about what to do next, and he was concerned about the effect that his deconversion would have on his family.
The first thing I did was to congratulate him on his sound reasoning and judgement! I also noted that we might have had some experiences in common. I had a deconversion ‘click moment’ about a year or so ago, but it was a long time in coming. While I identified very closely as a Mormon, I was also learning concepts about evidence, and how to evaluate ideas. As a result, I found that my religious knowledge was becoming less and less relevant. Rather than working my secular knowledge into my spirituality, I now found myself trying to defend my religious faith from the onslaught of remorseless reason, and these attempts seemed increasingly dishonest. At last I was able to consider the idea of the non-existence of gods, devils, spirits, and demons without panicking, and then to realise that the doctrine of theism was not well-supported, and very likely untrue.
There are some differences in our stories. For instance, the people in my life have taken my deconversion very well. I’m aware they don’t like the approach I’m taking to life, but they’re still my friends and family. I think it might be somewhat easier for them because I haven’t changed my behaviours — I still don’t smoke or drink, and the only commandments I disobey concern spending hours at church and giving the Church forkloads of money. For this student, it’s a different story. His religion ostracises its ex-believers, and it’s going to have an impact on the people closest to him. He’ll have to take a peripheral role in his social group, and perhaps in his family. They may cut him off. He may not see them again. And what a shame that would be. They’d be missing the chance to associate with a smart, great young person.
Why do we atheists put ourselves through it? Why not just go with the flow, keep our doubts to ourselves, and stay in the organisation? It’s not a bad life. They teach about being nice. Well, nice to other believers, at least. Maybe we’d eventually be able to deal with being slightly out of step with our peers — hey, some of us actually enjoy it. Why not just stay undercover and enjoy the benefits?
The first reason I’d suggest taking the road to deconversion is that when one sees the religion for what it is — a system that people have made up — association with believers becomes less tolerable. This was particularly true for me in a ‘Bible literalist’ church (which Mormons are, though not everyone sees it that way). People would swallow amazing amounts of nonsense if spoken from the pulpit. I remember going to a Sunday School lesson about Noah and the Flood (post-deconversion), and realising that I was surrounded by people who actually believed that Noah literally got all those animals on a literal ark. (I marvelled that once I’d literally believed it too.) At that point, the people of my former faith seemed like aliens to me. I wondered how it was that they could believe these fantastic things in the absense of any physical evidence at all. Perhaps it was that they believed in God, and if one can believe in a god that can do anything, all the rest could follow. But my standard of evidence was higher.
Could I have saved myself some trouble by taking the Flood as figurative, in a church of literalists? Only if I wanted to have a lifetime of arguments in Sunday School. Or shut up completely — but I’m not good at shutting up. Too frustrating. And if the Flood is figurative, what about the Creation? What about the Tower of Babel? The parting of the Red Sea? The miracles of Jesus? What about the Resurrection? Why couldn’t they be figurative too? And if they were figurative, then there might be no literal resurrection, and no life after death — just like atheism. So without literalism, the much-touted ‘comfort’ offered by religion evaporates. And literalism doesn’t last long when sound evidence is required. Nope — might as well save a step and not believe. It’s certainly cheaper and less time-consuming.
Another reason I chose to ‘go public’ with my lack of faith is that I’m trying to be a more honest person, and I thought that pretending to believe would be inauthentic. I view atheism as honest in the same way as science is honest: you observe facts as best you can, and try not to say more than the facts will tell you. And if the facts tell you something new, you have to stay open to it. I sometimes tell people that if some solid reproducible evidence of a god’s existence came to light, I’d happily become a believer again. I’m not holding my breath though.
The road for my student — and for any recovering believer — will not be easy, whichever way he may take. There are costs for not believing. For me, coming out as an atheist meant not participating in church ordinances. Baptism and priesthood ordinations are, to me, symbols with no eternal significance, but they can acquire significant social meanings. My dad performed both of those ordinances for me; if I don’t, am I abnegating my fatherly duties? And so a good friend baptised and ordained my sons this year, while I watched and realised that it had to be that way. It was what I chose when I decided to accept an evidence-based worldview.
While deconversion isn’t easy, it is possible, and it is worthwhile. You can think more clearly. You can make decisions based on how they’ll affect people without worrying about offending some shadowy being. You can teach your children how to evaluate ideas, which will serve them for the rest of their lives. You can overcome a lifetime of religious training, centuries of philosophies and social patterns, and millions of years of human evolutionary perceptual weirdness, using only your mind. I view my deconversion as my greatest intellectual acheivement to date (although it’s a small list).
Leaving the religion of my youth behind was challenging, but I’ve come through the other side of it okay. And I’m finding that being an atheist can be a noble and good thing to be.
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