My parents were never all that religious, we never went to church, and to this day I'm still not exactly sure what they believe (although I do know my mom believes in a deity of some kind). Religion was seldom brought up in my house, and I learned at a very early age that the stories of Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny were all just that: stories. I knew very little about Christianity et al, but assumed they were stories too, told to kids to scare them into being good.
My next door neighbors were religious however, and I spent a lot of time playing with their two children. From them I learned a little about Jesus, Noah, and some other stories, but still considered them to be made up. I decided I wanted a copy of the Bible for myself, so I could read more about these neat tales. I pestered my mom into getting me one (a children's Bible), and read it all the time, still thinking that they were mere stories.
Soon I learned that people held this book to be complete fact, and believed there really was a god. I was dumbfounded. How could people believe this stuff? It had as much credibility as the story of Santa Claus. And why did people feel the need to credit nature's phenomena to a god, when science provided much better answers (with proof, no less)? About this time I was 8 years old, and decided I was an atheist. I told this to anyone who asked.
This didn't sit well with my peers, and many attempted to convert me to Christianity (a lot still do today). However, most of their arguments consisted of "you're stupid, you're going to hell, what a moron," etc, so their attempts just pushed me further and further from Christianity. I had to put up with a lot of tormenting from a select few kids, including one who apologized to god for having a friend who "believes the first god was a monkey." I'm still trying to figure that one out.
My parents divorced in 1994, and I moved to Tennessee with my mother (before I had lived in Michigan). I was 12 years old, and very open about my atheistic views. Maybe not such a good idea in the Bible Belt of the U.S. I had repeated threats put on me by fellow classmates, and my girlfriend called me one night to tell me that she was breaking up with me. When I asked why, she said simply, "our religions." Apparently, some kids had gotten it into her head that I was a Satanist (the logic in this is pretty shoddy, as you probably know). I was publicly humiliated by my History teacher one day: I was discussing my views with some kids when he walked by and one of them shouted, "Mr. Faughnen, Scott doesn't believe in God!" He looked at me with a raised eyebrow, and said "you don't believe in God?" I shook my head, and he replied, "you really are stupid," and walked away.
Not even a year after I moved to Tennessee, I moved back up to Detroit. It wasn't much better there, as I recall one day in Science class: the intern told the class to get in groups and come up with a hypothesis about how the oceans are formed. I told my group that maybe volcanoes around during the early days of the Earth eroded away large portions of the ground, which was later filled in by water as our atmosphere precipitated. Now, I'm not sure if this is true, but at least I was making an educated hypothesis. They all looked at me like I had gone insane. The spokesperson for my group read our report to the class like this: "Most of us agree the oceans were formed by God, but one of us - -" gazing at me with hatred in his eyes, "who doesn't believe in God, thinks it had something to do with volcanoes."
In January of 1996, I moved back to Tennessee to live with my mother. By that time she had moved to the larger city of Knoxville, and away from the country bumpkin town of Loudon. For the most part, people are much more civilized here, and much more respectful of people's beliefs and feelings. One of my best friends is a very religious Christian, with white upper-middle-class Republican parents and an extremely phobic approach to homosexuality: "All gays are perverts and should be killed," etc. However, we've only talked about religion one time in our three year friendship, and he knows and respects the fact that I am an atheist.
I still haven't been safe from persecution though. I've been threatened a couple of times since then because of my atheism, and I've had the periodical attempts to be "saved" by Christians (one thing I can't understand: they must think I believe in hell, because that seems to be the focal point of their argument).
I just hope that one day Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and all other religions will have gone the way of Zeus, Ra, Odin, Jupiter, and all other false beliefs: a history book.
Scott Ewen
URL: scottewen.8m.com