Personal Atheism: What I gleamed in that moment
Written by Christopher Thielen in Opinion at October 8, 2010
Though atheism is clearly defined, an individual’s purpose in subscribing to it is not. Personal Atheism is a segment exploring what atheism means to the individuals in question.
This segment began of my own mechanisms, so I’ll answer first:
I’m not so interested in the story behind my personal abandonment of Catholicism. I was never a strongly religious person and I never much cared for the arguments or concepts; I very strongly cared about the understandings found through science, and in that contradiction, my choice was clear.
What has interested me though are the philosophical and social implications of being an atheist: it inspires a strange sort of autarky. The idea that the vast majority of the world is religious, while I am not, implies to me that the rest of the world could be wrong about a great number of other things.
I have this theory that, unlike many other creatures, mammals are required to be nursed in their infancy, so they learn and accept a certain concept of authority; the paternal figure is a natural one to us, in a way, say, fish born of eggs who never encounter their original inseminator do not know. We then readily assume there is something above us, greater than us, controlling or ensuring many aspects of the world. It’s perhaps why the concept of governance too, is so natural to us as well. It does not occur to us that adults are merely children, older, and with widely varying experiences, some far less adapted than others.
So when I view issues in politics, or attempt to answer the great social questions of our day, I remind myself that there are no correct answers, that there are no absolutes, and that the universe is only what we make of it.
In short, I not only lost faith in religion, I lost faith in authority.
(I encourage my fellow writers to follow-up on this series and answer that basic question, ‘What does atheism mean to you?’. In fact, reader, what does it mean to you? Leave your answer in the comments below.)
For me, atheism is simply the by-product of the knowledge I’ve acquired. I was raised LDS and it was at BYU (I currently still attend, but have to fly below the radar) that I lost my faith in god, despite fully active participation in prescribed religious practices. Ironic, huh?
Inherent in my new-found belief is a necessary abandonment of authority. The tenets of LDS doctrine are wholly predicated upon God actually revealing is word to the world, through the prophets. All arguments hinge on this assumption. You either accept the church is led by god and believe everything without question, or you don’t believe the church is led by God and thus are free to choose which pieces of doctrine you subscribe to.
Personal Testimony is a key component of this trust. How can one know whether the church’s leaders are worthy of this degree of trust. The answer is to “pray about it and god will give you an answer.”
For me, I never got those promised answers. So when core doctrines began not lining up with what I believed, I knew I had a choice to make. Like yourself, my intuitions trumped the empty space that was supposed to occupy my prayerful answers.