Am I Ashamed of Atheism?

Over the weekend I had a most unusual encounter.  My grandparents were having their 60th Anniversary party in our hometown, so I made the journey home to make an appearance (I was informed in no uncertain terms this was not an optional event, mind you).  Clad in my ‘Sunday Best,’ I arrived and endured many grueling introductions as my grandmother showed me off to her friends.  It really was an awkward event.  I come from a rural family dominated by farmers.  Still, my grandmother is like a chapter out of a 1950s movie: prim, proper, mildly racist, and obsessed with perceptions.  So this party of two hundred or so people included a mix of country bumpkins and suburban snobs.

The exchanges between members of these diverse groups was not the source of my discomfort.  In fact, it was quite entertaining.  The incredibly awkward encounter came when I ran across a woman from my old church.  A German immigrant, she retired a few years ago as the general manager of the local bank.  During the course of our smalltalk she caught me off guard.  In her thick German accent she asked, “Still going to church?”

I didn’t skip a beat, “Yeah.” What!?  No, no, no.  I couldn’t believe the word came out of my mouth, but at the same time I had no inclination to take it back.  I found reprieve from further probing when I noticed my nephew in the corner of the room pestering his sister. “Excuse me,” I politely asked, pointing to the bullying going on. 

Reasons I Remained Faithful (for so long)

 A re-post from something I put up on de-Conversion a few days ago.  Worth reading are some of the personal stories various people left in the comments section…. 

It’s now been more than a year since I intellectually gave up Christianity and six months since I publicly renounced my faith. They say hindsight is 20/20, and true to form, it seems incredible to me that I was a Christian for seven years. Those seven years now seem like an eternity to me, overshadowing the previous fourteen. Maybe it is just because they are the most recent seven years or maybe because the last third of my life has been the most formative to who I am. Regardless, it is still almost unbelievable to me that for seven years I prayed, I studied the Bible, I attended church, I spoke proudly about my ‘relationship with Christ,’ I preached and I witnessed to those around me.

So why did I remain a Christian for so long? What is it about the Christian metaphysic, which I now find so distasteful, that hooked me? This is a question I have been pondering for a while now, and though my list is more than likely not exhaustive, I’d like to record some of the prominent reasons I remained faithful for as long as I did.

On Dogmatism, Re: UnChristian is Bogus

I know I shouldn’t do it.  I mean, I know it is a bad idea, but I just can’t seem to help myself.  From time to time, while surfing through the blogs of atheists, I find (by accident, mind you) blogs about atheists written by Christians.  Sometimes they have insightful things to say, sometimes they don’t.  Usually I read it and move on, but sometimes I leave a comment.  And that’s what I did when I read this little piece by Bill Phillips.

Some of what he says in the post is fine and dandy, subjects to be debated among Christians.  But he did make two assertions that I thought were odd, and I was unable to resist commenting on them.  First, he says “There are so many false converts in Christianity that it’s nearly impossible to tell who really is a Christian and who isn’t.”  Also, he says, “Who cares what non-Christians think? Non-Christians are enemies with God, dead in their transgressions, and children of the devil.”