I’m a relatively young man, a husband, a father, a lover of dogs and pizza and I am an atheist. Despite my current lack of faith, I was raised in a Christian conservative house and was, in fact, an ardent and enthusiastic believer in Jesus. Obviously, things changed as I grew older. After moving away from my family, I stopped going to church. I still believed and would occasionally pray, but it didn’t take long for me to take on the label of agnostic. It took a long time for me to accept I no longer believed in a higher power. A lot had to happen in between. I came out of my liberal atheist closet to all my friends and family when I was 25 years old.

Like anyone else who admits their lack of faith to loved ones, I was asked a seemingly simple question, “how did you come to believe in atheism?” I didn’t really know how to respond at first. I didn’t have enough information to explain how evolution and the Big Bang are more valid than the book of Genesis. I felt compelled to start reading more books on scientific and historical education I missed out on.

Adults 35 and under have been leaving the religions of their birth at record rates. So many of them leave and wonder, as I did, “what now?” I found it’s hard to give up one kind of spirituality without another taking its place. I didn’t know how to start picking up the pieces of facts or faith and sort them properly. I knew there had to be more out there like me, and I was right. Meeting so many people who have struggled to make sense of life after religion has inspired me to use my passion for writing to promote education, skepticism, and how to use evidence based facts to form opinions.

This blog series will explore the events that transpired which ultimately led me to the conclusion of atheism. We will explore all I learned from various members of my family as well as the multitude of teachers, ministers, youth pastors, and performers, all of whom work in the service of the Christian religion, specifically in regards to creationism. I will relate this extensive education with all I learned later in life and the psychological ramifications of it all.

The teachings and stories used in this series are not meant call out any specific family members or educators I encountered in my youth, therefore, I will not be using any true names. I can rarely remember who specifically taught me certain aspects of Christianity or creationism since it was all so long ago and I was surrounded by different Christian influences across several states, many schools, and countless churches. Because of this I will often say “I was taught” without providing any specific details of the context of who taught me certain lessons or when it happened. Teachings from the Bible are bountiful and open to many different interpretations, so I do not feel the need to overly cite sources when it comes to these lessons. I understand that many Christians interpret the Bible differently, but for the purposes of this series we will be exclusively looking at my own experiences and perceptions of them. I will, however, reference the Bible by using direct quotes from my own childhood Bible, which is the New International Version (NIV) translation. When necessary, I will also use other translations.

The scientific and historical information we will explore will come from various sources which I will do my best to cite properly. I am an amateur writer and researcher, therefore the extent of this information is limited and relies heavily on other professional historians and scientific writers. I will provide a bibliography of all the books I have read in my quest to understand the full extent of the gaps in my education. I implore any reader who questions or doubts the information I share here to refer to this list and check my sources for themselves to draw their own conclusions.

This series is not meant to be offensive to a Christian audience, although I understand some points may be difficult for believers to read. I encourage any Christian interested to read with an open mind. The purpose of this series is to expose the potential psychological dangers of limiting a young mind to only one belief system, in a sense, indoctrinating them. The limitations put on me from a young age reverberated into adulthood and in many ways altered my perception of reality causing further problems in social and professional settings long after I no longer believed.

For the atheist or agnostic reader, my hope is to enlighten the various justifications of creationist beliefs in order to help create a better dialogue with believers. My goal is to inspire anyone young or old, religious or not to understand the important differences of faith and fact and ways they can both coexist.

This series will comprise of nine chapters. Each chapter will be divided into smaller sections which will be released on a weekly basis.

Start Chapter 1 Here

Contact Me:

sifford.matt@gmail.com

Biography

I attended Christian schools from Pre-K to 10th grade. My Junior and Senior years were my only years in public schools. I was in church every Sunday morning and night, as well as Wednesday night. I would then spend Monday through Friday in christian based schools. I changed schools on average every 2 years for various reasons. In my world, evolution was a bad word – like sex. Science was guess work and all scientists were atheists whose sole desire was to disprove the existence of an almighty creator. Secular entertainment was all apart of a liberal conspiracy to warp my fragile mind into a god-hating zombie. The Bible was the only truth I could rely on, and everything else needed to be pleasing to God. Everything good was God and everything not godly was evil and therefore the work of the devil. I was unable to learn about much of anything beyond the bubble of the Bible. At age 18, I moved away from my family to start my own life. What followed became a long and at times painful journey of self discovery.