Losing my religion

I've read recently that 7% of the U.S. population are atheist. Truthfully I was a bit surprised. I didn't think there was that many of us or think that many of us would admit it. Earlier this week I was talking to a co-worker and he ask what church I attended. I said that I didn't go to church. He then ask me why not and I told him that I didn't believe in god. He then ask if I worshiped the devil. When I stopped laughing, I told him that since the devil was supposedly a creation of god and since I didn't believe in god then I certainly didn't believe in the devil, angels, demons, ghost or the Easter bunny. I hoped that would be the end of it but then he said. "Why do you hate god?" I figured it was time for me to ask a few questions so I asked, "Do you still believe in Santa Claus?" He replied that he didn't so I then asked if he hated Santa. "Of course not" he replied. I said it would be pretty silly to hate something that I didn't think existed so therefore I didn't hate god. I think it might have been OK if I would have stopped there but not being one to let well enough alone, I had to add, "But I think religion is pretty fucked up." So now I have a co-worker that thinks I'm some sort of evil creature. Oh well, I doubt if he is the first and probably not the last to think that.

I grew up in a small southern town in the 1950's. My family was Southern Baptist and when I was young I went to Sunday school and was fed all the same propaganda the other kids heard. I guess I believed it for a while because I was baptized when I was eight. A year or two later I was telling my Mother that I was going to sit in the balcony with some friends and we would then slip out and hang out until the service was over. I don't think there was any defining moment when I decided I was no longer a believer, it was more like a slow erosion of faith. I do remember asking a Sunday school teacher that if someone led a life that was unblemished by sin but had never been taught or heard of Christianity could they get into heaven? I was told that they would unfortunately end up in hell unless they accepted Jesus even if they lived in a place or time where they never heard of him. That just didn't sound like the fair and just god they had preached to us about. In my early teens I was refusing to go to church and my Mother, who was a good Christian by all accounts, did not put up much of a fight about it. She was also getting some reports from the Sunday school that I was debating the teachers so I think that had a lot to do with it. The next time I went back to that church was when I was around seventeen when I went to ask the pastor to remove me from the church roll. He asked why and I told him that I no longer believed that Jesus was the son of god. He told me he would pray for me and I said that I wish he wouldn't. For the next ten years or so I claimed I was agnostic and I did look at other faiths but I just could not buy into any of them. At some point in my twenties I admitted to myself that I did not believe in any god(s). I don't begrudge anyone for their faith unless they try to impose it on me or others. To paraphrase the old joke, I don't mind religious people as long as they act like atheist in public.

The above photo is of a outside wall of a gym in Vancouver, Wa.