What This Is NOT

I want to be clear. I did not sit down to compose these pages with the intention of convincing or “converting” anyone. If that had been my purpose, I would have approached the subject differently, in the form of persuasive writing rather than the form I used: expository writing (to explain, describe, inform).

Secondly, none of what I’ve written here should be interpreted as an attack or polemic against any person or organization. For that very reason, I have been careful to leave anonymous many persons mentioned herein — lest they take offense or think I blame them. I do not.

The only things criticized here are ideas and a book, all of which were very important to me for most of my life.

I Need To Know

So why write it? The most important reason I wrote all this is for myself. I needed to understand it. An odd personality quirk of mine is that I often understand something fully only after writing it or speaking it.

Much of my character arc occurred while I wasn’t paying attention. My beliefs changed gradually and unevenly. I always questioned, but the questions changed over time. Early on, the questions concerned tiny details; later, the questions concerned the entire paradigm, but I didn’t realize the difference at the time.

It is always difficult, at least for me, to fully evaluate any stage of my life until I have moved on from it. For example, I didn’t understand the hormonal growing pains of being a teenager until after they’d passed and I could look back on it, aloof. The same is true here. Sometimes I didn’t even know I was changing until I’d reached a new milestone and could study my progress.

As for why it’s important to me: I now recognize that I’m still in the middle of the character arc that is my life — that I’m still changing and will likely always do so. In fact, my viewpoint changed even as I wrote and developed these web pages.

With increased knowledge comes increased understanding, and with greater experience (plus knowledge) comes greater wisdom. In the future, I’d like my changes to be more directed, more reasoned, more controlled. In order to do so, I need to understand where I came from.

Others Need (Or Want) To Know

Maybe not today, or next year, but someday my children will want to know through which lens I view the universe. And if that is different from what others present to them, they’ll want to know why I believe differently and how I came to that place. This is partly for them, if they ever care to read.

My wife, thankfully, doesn’t care what I believe — or what I choose to avoid believing. She’s more concerned with behavior and how I interact with the world around me. As long as I can function in normal society, she doesn’t care whether I believe that sand particles are gods and the Moon is made of Play-Doh. But I still want her to know. As one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met, she’s well-placed to counter any arguments I make here, to challenge my memory and thought processes. And knowing the way I handled the journey might give her some insight with someone else someday.

But mostly this is for family and friends who have known me throughout my life — those who will have the most difficult time understanding my shift from blind faith into careful reason. It’s important to me that they know I don’t resent them for pushing me in any particular direction, or for teaching me something I would later have to pry forcefully from my mind. It’s also important to me that they know I don’t think I’m superior to them for having come to (what I insist are) superior conclusions. Many (most?) of them are still in a place much closer to my origin than to my destination, and perhaps will not understand — but I want to them to try.

And, I am convinced that they care enough about me to want to know where I stand.

It’s also for those friends who have only known me during the latter stages of my enlightenment, or those whom I’ve not yet met. They will wonder why I react to certain phrases or behaviors in particular ways. If they ask, I’ll tell them, but I have to understand it first. And the best way for me to understand something is to write it down.

Others Will Have Similar Struggles

I have never read an account similar to mine — though I know that others have lived through it, and likely some of them wrote about it. More often I read about the opposite: someone living without faith who was drawn in, “converted” to Christianity. These stories are popular material where I come from.

My story is — in at least a few ways — akin to those who have been “deprogrammed” from life in a cult, though there are certainly differences. Many of them “escape” into mainstream religions, which — from where I sit now — isn’t that different from the cult they ran from, other than the level of societal acceptance.

Would it have helped me at some point if there had been (or if I had found and read) an account such as this? I think so. At least if it was written in a clear and reasonable fashion, without attacking the point of origin too harshly.

So, on the slim chance that others like me are out there, I’ve struggled through forming these few web pages — for more than a year — partly in the hope that another lost soul will wander in and find solace.

Why Write So MUCH?

My first instinct was to have one blog entry about this, simply stating my new position with a paragraph describing it. Of course, I realized, many people would not understand without a little background. Once you know the background, there is the question of how and why I made the change.

Further, because I spent so much time on the side of faith, I anticipated a thousand questions. Some of the less crazy ones, I warded off by adding new lines of explanation, some of which grew into new pages.

I still would rather have just one simple page, and perhaps someday — in a fit of brilliance — I will edit this accordingly.

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