Losing Faith

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As I have previously mentioned I was about 12 years old when I began to lose my faith, however it wasn’t until I was about 14 when I actually began to consider myself an atheist. It seems to be a common misconception amongst theists that atheists simply choose not to believe in a God and that’s that. This is a severe over-simplification, the truth is losing faith is a long, difficult and often painful road, however it is a road, I feel, worth travelling. This is my story of losing faith:

At the age of 12 I read the bible in its entirety, upon doing so I came to realise that it was not as historically accurate as I had once thought, the sheer volume of contradictions and inconsistencies (never mind some of the abysmal ethics) were mind-numbing. It was at this point in my life I started to have doubt, I started to doubt that the God of the bible and Jesus were real, and this doubt hurt. For a long time I hated myself for my doubt, I felt that I was wicked in sinful because my faith was not strong enough to keep the nagging thoughts of my subconscious at bay, I started to look into the origins of the bible for answers, surely there would be clear signs of a divine inspiration; there wasn’t, those nagging thoughts tucked away in the recesses of my mind grew louder. 

Around this time it occurred to me that if the bible wasn’t entirely true then we should have another explanation as to how we as humans came to exist; so I started studying biology, specifically evolution. I think, looking back now, that I was hoping to spot flaws and errors in the theory of evolution, hoping to see that it was all a lie so that I could wake up from this horrific nightmare back to the comforting faith…I didn’t. The more I studied, the more knowledge I gained the more I realised I could not return, my faith was shattered, it was all a lie. Hitting puberty at the same time you’ve just come to the conclusion that you’ve been lied to your entire life does not lead to a happy home life, or a happy life at all for that matter; I felt isolated, alone. 

At about the age of 13 I came across the concept of deism. I loved it immediately; it allowed for all the scientific knowledge I’d garnered over the previous year to be true whilst still allowing a sense of the supernatural, a sense that maybe we were here for a reason, maybe this life isn’t all there is, for a short while I felt elation. But that subconscious nagging persisted, it was still their echoing in the depths of my mind, over and over calling me a liar.

It wasn’t long before I had to give in to that part of me that knew the truth. I had to accept it, yes deism fit my perspective well, but wanting something to be true doesn’t make it so. I was fooling myself into subscribing to a fantastic notion of faith and why? I realised there was no rational reason to believe in a higher power, no scientific evidence, nothing; I was 14 years old, alone, an atheist, weeping for my lost faith.

I remember the night I lost my faith clearly, I wept for hours until I had no more tears to shed. I suddenly felt trapped, like the walls of my room were closing in around me. I had to escape, I ran from my house and kept running, I didn’t care where I was going I just had to keep running. I think I was subconsciously trying to escape reality, to run away from my mental anguish. Eventually I could run no more, my legs gave way and I simply lay on the ground in a state I can only liken to being comatose; my body and mind felt numb, like a shell of a human being. 

For hours I lay on the cliff-tops of my home town, listening to the waves crash against the shore, then possibly the most beautiful moment of my life occurred; the sun began to rise, I can still picture it vividly in my mind, sitting their on that cliff-top seeing a sunrise on a clear summers day, the beauty of it all was dazzling. The wonder and beauty I thought for years was so special, so magical because of faith was still there without it. Not only was the beauty still there it seemed even more beautiful, more awe inspiring, I realised in this moment that nature, the world, the universe was immensely beautiful and I was happy to be at the start of my new life as an atheist.

To any theists who happen to read this, I want you to know that most of us do not choose to disbelieve, in fact many of us initially don’t want to disbelieve; we lose faith because that is where the evidence points us, we cannot give upon what is true just because we want to, and most importantly we still have a sense of awe and wonder, we are still happy without our faith.