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In the meantime, I found myself questioning my religious beliefs. There were basically two things that helped me give up each layer of my beliefs. The first was honest intellectual problems. The second was recognizing the psychological damage.

The first thing I gave up was my Pentecostal beliefs. I found this branch of Christianity much too judgmental. Not only was one required to be born again, they also had to be filled with the Spirit.

A couple of years later, my views on the Bible began to change. Once, in an Old testament class, the professor asked us to compare the list of kings found in Chronicles, Kings and Samuel. None of us could make the lists fit together. After many attempts, the professor informed us that it was impossible to make the lists fit together. The same excersise could be performed with the four gospels.

While in seminary, I became interested in other religions. I soon noticed that I had the same subjective feelings when reading the holy books of other religions. This feeling was what I always considered the witness of the Holy Spirit that I was reading the word of God. Apparantly, I was either wrong about the experience being God speaking to me throught the Bible, or I was wrong in thinking that the Bible was the only word of God. It was not long until I realized that many people had the same types of experiences in their different religions as I had in mine. I soon became of committed universalist. I believed that their were many different paths to God. Even though the paths are very different, I thought they represented different ways of seeing God. Of course, I still believed in God, and that there was only one god. At this time, I no longer thought that Jesus was a supernatural being. I lost that belief somewhere in my liberal Christian phase.

I later began to realize that biology can explain religious experiences. I learned that when certain parts of the brain are stimulated, people will see supernatural beings and feel a presence .

Seeing that spirituality is mostly biology, I became interested in yoga. I did find that a good yoga work out made me feel better than praying. My wife and I became vegetarian. I tried to find ways to ecorporate spirituality in every aspect of my life, something that I felt was often lacking in Chritianity. I discovered that there are aspects of yoga that teach that God is within.

In my search for a more intellectual approach to spirituality, I began to study Buddhism. Here I found much that I agree with. I appreciate that Buddhism is more a way of looking at life than a religion. The popular face of Buddhism that many of us Americans are familiar with, mostly Tibetan, is very religious, almost like a type of catholicism. There are earlier, more primative versions of Buddhism, that are almost anti-religious. Therevada is an early form of Buddhism. It is very much about mind control. Not mind control to try to gain magical powers, but learning to accept life as it is. It is trying to get to the bottom things. It is very atheist friendly, without using that label. The early forms of Buddhism state that there is no god or soul. It states that misery, or suffering, is a part of everyone's life, so why not show compassion on all beings?

But, I am not a Buddhist, in a religious sense. I am an American, with a Christian background. The only honest word to describe myself is "atheist". I am an atheist. It is probably also safe to call me a humanist. I am becoming more and more a rationalst as well. I believe that rationalism is the best tool we have to determine what is true. I am a positivist; I believe science is our true salvation. Politically, I am probably a classical liberal. Yes, I believe in government programs.

Whether I feel like one or not, I am an atheist, which means only one thing.....I do not believe that there are any gods. RETURN HOME