Golden ID student taking classes in biology
I was raised to believe in God. It was comforting, when bad things happened in my life or the world, to believe there was a grand design or purpose for tragedies. It was comforting to think I could appeal to a higher being for change through prayer. It was comforting to believe I and those I hold dear will not just die and decay but will “go to a better place” and watch over the world in some kind of continued consciousness and immortality.
I first started wondering why I believed in one religion and some people believed in another during college, and that’s when my journey began. It was not hard to notice that with few exceptions, kids of Christian parents were Christian, kids of Muslim parents were Muslim and kids of Jewish parents were Jewish. It gradually dawned on me that my particular beliefs may not have been based on the fact that they were a higher truth, but rather were a circumstance of my birth and the indoctrination that followed.
When I initially strayed from my religion, I continued my belief in God. But after a decade of reading, thinking and attending ceremonies and meetings of various religions, I allowed myself to consider that a belief in God may be born from wishful thinking — wanting answers to tragedies, desiring the ability to change things by prayer, feeling comfort in the shadow of death. But I understood wishful thinking might not correspond to reality.
As a high school student, I came across a technique that brought me peace and kept my excessive worry in check. By first accepting the worst possible outcome for a particular situation, I could then calmly try to improve on it. So I let myself accept the possibility that there was no God. In other words, accept that sometimes bad things happen to good people for no purpose. Prayer is futile and death may be a return to the nonexistence we experienced before we were born — living on only through the ripples of our actions while alive.
While initially less comforting, my new belief seemed more intellectually honest. For me, it made more sense to say “I do not know” instead of attributing unanswerable questions to an invisible being and evoking invisible places. I could no longer make a leap of faith to beliefs that seemed to satisfy emotional needs but also seemed to be more mythical than real and in some cases just seemed illogical.
I have now lived more than half my life without God. My wife and I have raised two children who turned out to be hardworking, moral and loving adults without attending religious school or weekly religious ceremonies. I subscribe to the human value, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” and believe that being a good person means “doing the right thing even when no one is watching.”
I have described my journey so you may know that for me, and I am sure for many others, atheism is the destination reached in a search for reality. It has not diminished my awe of the world around me. It has not diminished my morals or those of my children. It has not diminished my love and respect for those who believe differently.
Richard Zipper is a Golden ID student taking classes in biology. He can be reached at opinionumdbk@gmail.com.
