My Personal Quest

To my knowledge I am the only atheist in my entire family who is honest and open about his non-acceptance of the bible as divine and Christianity as being the "ultimate truth." From fundamentalist believer to atheist is a radical and big leap from the perspective of most, but it was the journey I had chosen and I decided to see it through to the end. I have been an atheist for the past 18 years, and to date I have lost a lot of so called friends and have received discredit and outright disdain from members of my own family. My rejection of Christianity and its traditions has made me an army of one amongst those who knew me in a different time and place in my life.

Even though I have been an avowed atheist for the past 18 years my interest in Christianity and religion in general has not waned. In fact, it has grown stronger than ever, and continues to fuel my passion for following reason to the end no matter what the conclusions may be. I have been accused by members of my family as being obsessed with religion and Christianity, but I don't consider myself obsessed with either. If anything, I am obsessed with finding out the truth and whatever that entails.

I am on a lifelong journey of discovery, and it is that thirst for knowledge that fuels my passion for truth. I have taken the route of faith only to find it lacking in providing a true understanding of my life and the world that I live in. The many wonders of nature and the universe fascinate me to no end, but I found that faith had no answers for me that would satisfy my craving for wanting to know as much as I possibly could.

I did all that faith required of me. I submitted my will to the all powerful and supposedly loving father figure in the sky. I preached in a street ministry every single weekend and at the time believed that this powerful man in the sky had filled me with his Spirit and the powers that came with it. I prayed and fasted often, immersed in the scriptures as I prayed for spiritual understanding and wisdom from on high.

In those days I firmly felt within body what I thought to be the awesome power of God flowing through me. I believed that when I prayed for the sick, the troubled, and the weary that my imaginary guy in the sky would have mercy on them and take care of whatever was troubling his believers. All the while at the same time when things did not work out I had this nagging feeling deep inside that told me something wasn't right. It was this very feeling that led me to put aside what I had learned in church and through my own studies that had led me to dig deeper.

I read the bible for myself in its entirety and was later surprised to find out that I had come to the same conclusions on my own of some of the greatest free thinkers and atheists of our past. I was fearful at first, but I had decided to ride this train to the final stop. I found out eventually that the more I learned, the further away I got from Christianity and the less I believed anything that was in that so called holy book.

Eighteen years later and I am still on this journey, and based on what I have learned I can tell you that Christianity and religion have now become a thing of the past for me. I no longer see religious belief as logical, and knowing now what I did not know then I can say with certainty that I could never convert to any Christian religion ever again. In fact I could never believe in any religions that rely on their truths from ancient texts, traditions, or supernatural sources of knowledge. I am not out to destroy Christianity, this is my personal quest for truth.