The two-mile long corpse.

Christmas and Easter are about the only times I attend church anymore. So only a couple days ago I was sitting in a Catholic mass, considering the people around me and wondering how many of them were there as I was; keeping the family happy and foregoing the argument and disappointment that would follow revealing to your loved ones that you do not believe in any god, let alone their God.

I had a very Catholic upbringing in so much as I attended Catholic school for much of my life, was an Altar Boy back when there were “Altar Boys” and not “Altar Servers” and studied Catholic theology in school for more than 12 years. As one could logically expect, there was a period of time where I was extremely devout. Devout enough to feel guilty when I masturbated to Playboy nudes I had torn out of the magazine in the bathroom before a nightly shower and devout enough to think, for perhaps a year, that I should become a priest.

I wouldn’t say I took the Bible literally at this time. I just never really thought about it. If you had asked me when I was 13 if Adam and Eve was a true story I probably would have said, “Yes.” If you had asked me if I thought evolution was real, I also would have said, “Yes.” The contradiction in that is embarrassingly apparent now, but at the time I just sort of accepted this as how it was. For a 13 year old reconciling something like that was not a primary concern. It wasn’t until high school where I began to really critically consider the reality of the notion of God. Ironically it was my Freshman year Theology class that planted the seeds of Atheism in me.

I went to an all-male Catholic high school. The Freshmen Theology class was taught by a monk at the accompanying Abby. I hated him from almost the first day of class ( I remember him making a derogatory comment about uncircumcised men whilst discussing the early Old Testament books that I found distasteful), and I became increasingly defiant towards him as the semester continued. At any rate, while discussing the Great Flood of Noah’s Ark fame, he explained that the entire story was a metaphor. That there was no “Great Flood” and that at best it might have been a normal regional flood. It certainly did not cover the entire Earth and Noah certainly did not fit two of each animal into a boat. He was trying to make religion identifiable for a group of boy who really did not care about religion. For me, however, it was the beginning of the end for God.

“Of.. course…” I thought to myself. “How *could* Noah do something like that?” I felt like an idiot for ever thinking such a thing could be feasible. Looking back I think my 14 year old counterpart might have been slightly dense. The fact is though that I had been indoctrinated to God since I was born. The idea of questioning any of it had never materialized in a discernible way until a priest provoked it. But once that doubt was implanted it was impossible for me to stop questioning. Suddenly all of religion looked to me to be a collection of cherry picked beliefs. As we continued to read through the Old Testament, more and more of God became questionable at best, offensive and ethically objectionable at worst. Then there was the issue of evolution and how that could realistically work along with religion. Some argued that “7 days” was not actually “seven, twenty-four hour, days” and could instead span millions, if not billions, of years. But if Adam and Eve is also a metaphor, then why does it even matter?

I flirted with Agnosticism for a while. But as my other philosophical beliefs developed I could not accept gods as an unknowable issue. Humans are capable of anything, and the knowledge of the existence of gods is one of them. Therefore I could do nothing more than cast my lot with non-belief. When religious people find out I’m an Atheist they immediately question my fear of death. Of course I am afraid of dying. Countless Christians are too. I have to wonder how popular Christianity would have been if it had developed exactly the same as it is today, minus the promise of eternal life after death. Would it still have been appealing?

I doubt it.