I never went through a period of questioning whether atheism was alright. I think I figured out pretty early that praying was an exercise in futility and a waste of time. Looking back, I think 4th grade is when absolute atheism was set in stone in my mind but I didnt really think about it at the time. Back then nobody in my world was screaming hellfire and trying to force ancient fairy-tales on me. There are things I recall very vividly from my final year at Pleasant View Elementary. Whole new vistas of reading had opened up to me that particular year. To me, that was the year of Rawls, Dickens and Twain. It was also the year I was first introduced to the study of theology. I remember that I had to keep renewing my check-outs from the school library of both Wilson Rawls Where a Red Fern Grows and Charles Dickens Oliver Twist because I kept re-reading them, no matter how much they made me cry. Probably BECAUSE they made me cry. I had also fallen in love with Twains Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I wasnt aware at that time that Twain was a hugely popular and in demand atheist speaker in his day. Funny side note about Mark Twain: in my opinion today, his greatest work was a twelve year labor of love called Joan of Arc. It was mythology that I think did me in that year though. When I recognized the similarities between Roman, Greek, Norse and Egyptian mythologies and modern religions, God no longer held any significance in my world. I never questioned whether or not that was okay. It just was. The opinions and delusions of people around me were never a consideration.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 12:51:46 +0000
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