A very faithful disbelief

When I was a young boy, not much older than six years of age, I began attending what is the entry-level educational curriculum in the United Kingdom, a time colloquially known as Junior School. Prior to that my life had been at best a blur, and at worst totally unremembered. My earliest memories of life were of my grandmother pointing to a calender, telling me not to use it until the following year. It is very probable that this memory, one that I still remember clearly to this day, was in fact a dream, or perhaps a mish-mash of other memories. From what I could gather, my memories began sometime in December of 1990, at the age of four. There are large gaps in my memory from that initial spark of consciousness, but from I could gather my knowledge of the Bible, and indeed of God, was either inconsequential or non-existent. That changed of course, once I entered Junior School.

Back in the early nineties it was compulsory for children in the UK to engage in Christian prayers, listen to Christian tales and be taught Christian values. I have since learned that such practices have since been ruled out in favour of more secular assemblies. Never-the-less, much of my childhood life revolved around the stories of the Bible. Even at such a young age I found myself filled with incredulity as to the truthful nature of the stories I was being told. My mother, a person I owe a lot of my moral values to and love very much for that, was not someone who beat about the proverbial bush when it came to matters of truth and knowledge. When I was five I asked the dreaded question "Mummy, where do babies come from?". Unlike some parents who may have passed off the question with a scientifically invalid "Stork Theory", I was treated to a number of diagrams showing the act of sex, the development of the fetus in the womb, and then the subsequent method by which the baby is birthed. Some might say such images are a bit much for a child to consider, but I found myself utterly fascinated by the whole process. It was this early exposure to the complexities of life that piqued my interest in such things. In our house we had a Readers Digest Atlas, the contents of which I can still remember to this day. It had the standard maps of the world at the time, a section I occasionally perused over with glee, but it was the preface chapters to this that really astounded me. It detailed a very brief explanation as to how the Universe was created based, detailing the initial Big Bang, leading up to the Earth forming from the dust particles of a supernova to, somewhat morosely, the eventual destruction of Earth by our very sun.

So it was with heavy cynicism I listened to the stories of the Bible, such as the creation in Genesis, the Great Flood, the Tower of Babel etc. Even back then it struck me as odd that I was being told one thing by one source, that the Earth was created by a cosmological accident, and told something contradictory by another. In the end I came to the conclusion that the stories in the Bible were just that; stories. It was the only way to explain why Dinosaurs, animals we were told lived millions of years ago, weren't mentioned going onto the Arc two by two, or why God managed to create light long before he created the sun. It made sense if you considered the stories in the Bible were false. This eventually led to me being somewhat of a rebel and refusing to bow my head in prayer during assembly, a practice that gained the contention of my teachers. Needless to say I was relieved when a visiting tutor from the Comprehensive school were we due to go to, the next step in UK education, informed us that we would not be taking part in such needless wastes of time again.

Fast forward in time about two years, and religion had played little to no purpose in my life since then. As a child I had never attended church, and the move from Junior School to Comprehensive had meant that state-sanctioned religiosity was no longer a concern. I could never remember being concerned about any kind of belief in God, though I probably wouldn't have called myself an Atheist at that point in time. Christianity was to make a comeback in my life however, in form of one my good friends who I'm still very close to. He invited me to attend his Church. On reflection of my previous experiences bored stiff and incredulous in Junior School assemblies, I was informed that on the whole, the Church was more of a social club than anything else. A place to meet new people and hang out and have a good time. My first experience in such an environment proved to be anything but relaxing. Once "the worship", as it is colloquially known, had begun, people engaged in various amounts of hand waving, chanting, tongue-waggling etc. At one point I retreated into the toilets to ring my mother up asking for an emergency evacuation. Not wanting to put to fine a point on it, I was freaked out. Yet I had still enjoyed the company of the other patrons of the Church, and found myself attending their various events more frequently as I grew older.

At this point in my story, many of you may expect me to talk about how I converted to Christianity soon after. Well unfortunately it is not as simple as that. However much I enjoyed my time I spent there (I did immensely as it happens, and have many dear friends who still attend that same church), my mind just refused to cave into the same beliefs as those around me. That early childhood curiosity of the truth, of seeing the world in terms of observable evidence than blind faith, meant that for the duration of my time spent at the Church, I never once found myself believing anything that was being said. Over the years I have gained a deep understanding of the modern-day Christian faith, which to me seems more like a spiritual glee club than an actual religion. It was here that I was first introduced to some of the hypocrisies of modern-day faith; the idea of a personal God, the "divine plan", prayer healing etc. (It's worth pointing out that no one ever claimed to be miraculously healed at this Church, though when ill people did get better it was invariably by the grace of God).

My time spent at the Church was a happy one, and I wouldn't change it for anything. But in my adult life I have to come to terms with the fact that my presence there was nothing more than superfluous. It would be like Kate Moss attending a Weight Watchers seminar, or a vegetarian attending a weekly steakhouse run. I was there for no other reason than the people. So it partially broke my heart when one of my very good friends took me to one side and personally asked me to become a fully-fledged Christian. I can honestly say it was the most welcomed I had ever felt. Some may have collapsed under the sentimental pressure right there and then, but I knew that it would have been a lie for me to agree to such a thing. I politely declined, and we have remained friends since. After moving to London my attendance at the Church when I did visit home was limited primarily to social gatherings, places where I didn't have to sit through readings from the Bible or testimonials from the true believers about the goodness of God.

I wanted to start off this blog by recounting this story, because invariably I will gain an excess amount of comments from believers claiming that I don't know what I'm talking about or don't understand the true grace of God. From this perspective, I hope you all understand that I know of where I speak. Everything I say in regards to Christianity in particular is "from the horses mouth" as it were. I can't speak for every Christian or every denomination, but I can speak from my own experience and the set boundaries of logic. This blog will set out to point out the logical errors in many of our modern day beliefs. I will endeavour to use science, reason and logic to clearly define just why the beliefs of many humans alive today are wrong. You may not like what I say or how I say it, but all I ask is that you listen to what I have to say. Even if you walk away from this without picking up anything I say and continue to live your life as you see fit, at least I can say I tried to get through. Because to me faith is the most dangerous, devise and deadly way of thinking we face in our modern culture. We are in a position now where we can either hold onto iron-age philosophy as the unmoving greater truth of reality, or open ourselves to the possibility of the scientific truth of our reality.