Science and Death Convinced Me
I’m a 22-year-old Latino, currently attending a Lutheran college as an atheist (have to act like I’m still a Christian). I was born and raised to a Catholic family from Mexico. My mother took me to church, I was baptized at the age of 5 and made my First Confession and First Communion at the age of 12. However, I was skeptical of religion from the very beginning. I was attending public school and learning a lot about Science, from Biology to Astronomy. Science was so interesting and explained things very well.
I remember seeing the news about Osama bin Laden’s death and thinking about how, in church, they say that under the ground is Hell, but in school I learned it’s just Earth’s crust, mantle and core. I was, and still am, a big weather nerd. I learned many things about the weather, such as how hurricanes and tornadoes are formed, and later about climate change. It was explained beautifully. As for the church, it was boring, but since my mother took me to church and kept telling me that God, the Devil and Hell are real, to be approved by God I felt like I needed to play the good little faithful Catholic kid. I remember them making a list of things that are sins and which I must confess when making my First Confession. I remember masturbation being on it. I thought “This is odd. There’s nothing wrong with that. I felt great afterwards”. That little card also mentioned homosexuality, and I thought “How could it be a sin? It’s two people in love hurting no one. Why punish them?”. It made no sense to me, but it was all about being faithful to God, right?
But that “faith to God” and a lot of what they were telling me in church and in Sunday school became null and nonsensical when tragedy struck. My grandfather died. I went to Mexico with my mom and her brothers. The entire village came out and started to sing. I left the room where he died, looked up and asked God for some comfort. I heard nothing. In Sunday school, they told me God and Jesus would talk to them about how blessings would come their way, but I got nothing. I made Confession, took Communion and did the necessary things to be on God’s side.
Five years later, my cousin died. He wasn’t even 18. He had problems with his dad. My uncle brought him to the US to be with some of our extended family and gave him things to make him feel good, but what my cousin wanted was love. He went back to Mexico to live with my grandmother, bitter about the falling out with his father. One night, while out with his friends, whoever was driving lost control and they all died. I was stunned and broken. I thought to myself “They told me God loves and saves, yet he didn’t allow my cousin and my uncle to reconcile with each other”. My uncle says he has to live with this for the rest of his life.
But the death that affirmed me as an atheist was the death of one of my childhood friends. His father left him as soon as he was born. His mother was bad at looking after him. I remember dropping him off at his house, with his mom not even worried about his whereabouts. His personal struggles affected him in school. He was killed with a shot in the neck. He left his girlfriend pregnant with a boy, leaving his son in a fate similar to his. I thought “Why didn’t this loving god prevent any of this?”.
During that time, I was in college, studying Astronomy. It explained how the Universe and Earth naturally came to be. It was very insightful. I learned how all the elements in the Universe were formed and that it wasn’t a big explosion, but a gradual expansion, and that the Solar System was a planetary disk. I came to these realizations, and George Carlin helped me understand how religion is the stuff of primitive people and is used to control the masses. How open-minded I am now! I feel liberated. I’m a good person. I don’t need religion or some sky wizard.
I will end this off with quotes from fellow Mexican atheists:
“There is no God. Natural beings sustain themselves.” (Ignacio Ramírez)
“I consider religions to be a form of collective neurosis.” (Diego Rivera)