From Altar boy to Atheist....Part 1

Before I begin, a quick disclaimer. No, my religious world views were not shaped by Father Friendly Fingers touching me in my naughty spot, nor was I the victim of insufferable corporal punishment in Catholic school. The title of this post reflects that I was indeed an actual altar boy. Believe it or not, I actually had quite a positive experience in parochial school and I credit them with planting the seeds of my skeptical nature and logical reasoning abilities.

Now onto the story of my fall from grace.

I suppose to some extent I have always had serious misgivings about god. I was born into a catholic family and attended catholic school, but whenever I thought about god, it didn't make sense from the beginning. I was taught that god is an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving entity. He created the heavens and earth and all its life just for us and gave us dominion over it all. Wow, so far so good right? Here is where it gets a little weird. This wonderful god has only one caveat for us to heed and then we will enjoy all the wonderful benefits of heaven for all eternity. We have to praise him .

I always thought it awfully silly that this omnipotent, omniscient god would: A) give a flying shit what we do, B) punish us for eternity for not giving him praise, and C) have some sort of insecure need to receive our undying praise in the first place. In my freshman year of college I wrote an essay about my views on god and characterized him as reminding me of Stuart Smalley, a character with serious self-esteem issues from Saturday Night Live. I wrote that I could picture him in heaven looking at himself in an ethereal mirror and giving himself daily affirmations, "I'm benevolent enough, I'm omniscient enough, and doggone it those sheep-like bipeds down there really like me!"

I vividly remember being in 7th grade religion class when one of my classmates raised the question about other religions that believe in god but not in being catholic. I would be lying if I told you I could remember her exact response, but to paraphrase : "We believe that our doctrine is correct and not believing in this in its entirety is to deny god and the truth". My teacher's answer started a chain reaction of thoughts in my head. Denying god seems like a pretty big one up there on the list of sins. Would all non-catholics go to hell? Dosen't seem right that you could be a devout Jew, Muslim, or Protestant, live a pure and chaste life, and not make into heaven on a 'technicality'.Shouldn't somebody tell those other religions they are wrong and save their souls? These thoughts rattled around but were soon overpowered by other thoughts that frequently pervade the mind of 13 year old boys. The groundwork for my atheism however, was laid.

During 8th grade, religion was taught by Sister Geraldine. She was a particularly gregarious and thought provoking teacher. The latter trait she exhibited too well it seems in my case. Suddenly I found myself, almost on a daily basis, asking the "hard" questions during religion class. Looking back it seems I was destined to be a White House staff reporter. Many of my questions had to do with biblical stories and the seemingly inconsistencies a big one was reconciling the whole thou shalt not kill thing with say,... anything in the old testament. Try as she might to satisfy my inquisitiveness (read: pain in the ass-edness) She never quite answered my questions. She tried the old "Many of the stories are symbolic and should not be scrutinized literally" defense. I wasn't buying it. This raised more questions than it answered. If not all the stories in the bible are true then who is to say any of it is an actual account of anything? Who gets to decide which bits are what we should believe in and which are just allegorical? On what authority? If we are picking and choosing then how could this be the word of god?

My Doubting Thomas routine continued throughout the year and culminated (not surprisingly- looking back) on my being sent to meet with the monsignor of our parish-one rather physically imposing Father Craven. I supposed I deserved it, I mean I was rather disruptive in her class with my litany of questions she really couldn't answer. In addition to this I had a particularly bad habit of being "talkative" during class and the combination landed me in the most undesirable position of having to "go see the monsignor". I was rather intimidated by his large presence. As I recall he was about 6'6 280lbs (I'm sure in reality he was much smaller but I was in trouble and as everyone knows, disciplinarians always grow in proportion to the trouble you are in) His size, combined with his booming baritone voice, had me fearing for not only my eternal soul, but my hide as well.

Thankfully, after reprimanding me for constantly interrupting Sister Gerri's class, he relaxed his stern demeanor and became rather friendly and easygoing in an avuncular sort of way. I started to tell him of some of my difficulties understanding things in religion class and he listened patiently. He initially offered some of the same explanations that my teacher had but I wasn't going to be assuaged that easily; since I no longer feared for my life, I was free to be the inquisitive pain in the ass again. He tried to answer some of my questions about the veracity of some of the bibles stories I wondered about. He did most of the talking (occupational hazard I guess) but each point he made just led to more questions on my part. As I recall I was only in his office in the rectory for about an hour, but the good father taught me a lot. Not so much about religion, but the wonderful rhetorical tool of the Circular Argument. Or in logical reasoning it is known as the fallacy of petitio principii, or more commonly, begging the question. Here is how it basically went:

Me: "How do we know anything in the bible is true?"

Msgr: "You have to have faith my son."

Me: "Why should we have faith, Father?"

Msgr: "Because the bible tells us so."

Oh, well, since you put it that way, it is as clear as mud! We went around and around in this Abbot and Costello manner for a bit until finally he advised me to go home and pray and things would become clearer as I got a little older. To this day I am not exactly sure what I was supposed to be praying for- Faith? seems like the old circular bit again!

I left there feeling confused and uneasy. Had I just beaten a professional member of the clergy in a religious debate? Surely that couldn't have happened. I must have missed something; maybe I am just not smart enough. I mean so many, many people for thousands of years have believed in god I can't be smarter than all of them.* God has to exist. I am definitely going to hell! Just great.

The good father was right about one thing; it all became much clearer as I got older. (part 2 to follow)


*For the record, I don't think that people who believe in god are all morons. I do think however, that religion incubates, in some people, a particular kind of stupidity of the most dangerous type.