Many people are surprised and taken aback when they find out that I’m an Atheist. See, I’m full Italian and like pretty much every other Italian, I was raised Catholic. I like to say now that I’m a recovering Catholic. Shit, I should probably start a complete 12 step program that helps wean people off Catholicism. Mental note……………okay not so mental note since I’ve typed it into a post, but I should actually write a post that is a 12 step program for recovering Catholics. Now don’t any of you fuckers go about stealing my idea! But, that is an idea for another post, probably next week sometime. This post is all about my finding freedom by losin’ Jesus and gettin down with jack shit, or Atheism.
To hardcore Christians, Atheists are arrogant and close minded, among other things. What many of them don’t know is that a lot of Atheists believed in God or some sort of religion and it is those religions and their whack job followers that drove us to Atheism or in lesser cases, Agnosticism. Allow me to explain how I came to my choice of not listening to “the good news about Jesus.”
As I mentioned some 2 paragraphs previous, I was unfortunately raised (shutters and shivers) Catholic. While my oldest sibling, my brother Anthony, went to a Catholic school, my twin brother and I were pretty much at the bottom of the barrel and by that time my mom stopped caring and therefore, stopped trying! So we went to a good ol’ fashioned pubic school. That’s right, I said pubic school, it was so bad they couldn’t afford the L and there was pubic hair all over the place. Also, we didn’t go to church every Sunday like a typical family, in fact, we never once went to church on a Sunday. Every Saturday morning though, we did have to go to CCD or as I like to call it, Catholic Children’s Dungeon. What really sucked about this was that we had to miss Saturday morning cartoons! We took part in the holy sacraments of baptism, the first fucking communion and that confirmation bullshit. By the time I got to high school, I was not only a believer but even went as far as to want to get a cross to wear around by neck. Fortunately though, my mother would rather spend the money on bingo and lotto tickets, so I never got one.
Now I would be lying if I said that my Atheism had nothing to do with my homosexuality. As a homo, its tough to remain devoted to a religion that believes you are going to hell just because of who you are. This is not limited to Catholicism, but all of the other major religions as well. And of course, there are still a good percentage of gays who are still religious and there is nothing wrong with that, but it just doesn’t work for me. Even if I were straight though, I would probably still be an Atheist, but more on that later, if I remember.
Throughout high school, I heard a lot about the Pope and the Church being against gays. The Pope and the Church would not only condemn gays, but also compare homosexuality to bestiality and, get this, pedophilia which is deliciously ironic now. When I was about 18, I remember reading an article in the paper in which a Catholic priest said that Barney the dinosaur was an instrument of the Devil because he teaches kids to love everybody and you shouldn’t love gays. It was right about then that I realized that there was no place for me in the Catholic Church.
So I became Agnostic. I believed in God, but thought the Bible and all major religions were just man made bullshit. I remained this way even when my mom was dying. I remember when I took her to the hospital to get a bone biopsy and after the doctor told me she had cancer, I went into the hospital chapel (it was, ironically, a Catholic hospital) and prayed to God that my mom would be okay. She wasn’t and was dead 4 months later. Damn…………….I should have urinated in the holy water when I had a chance!
Even in the first few years after she died, I still remained an Atheist skeptic, in other words, I was still Agnostic. I wanted to believe but the small flame of Atheism was starting to flicker within me. I remember one time I told somebody that I was Agnostic and he said “so in other words, you are too much of a pussy to be an Atheist?” That made me think. After all, what was I holding on to. In my opinion the religions were all bullshit. And when I thought more about it, the whole thought of an afterlife and the concept of a God really doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense. To put it simply, it just doesn’t add up. And I’ve always been a cynical person; things need to be proven for me to believe. And that is how my Atheism was born.
I’ve got a sister who is 15 years older then me. When I was growing up, she was an Atheist. I could never understand why or how she could not believe in God, but being a kid, I could never fully grasp her reasoning. Until I became an adult that is. The irony though is that she is no longer an Atheist. She actually practices Wiccan, which for those of you that don’t know, is the religion of witches. No, she is not a Satanist, she is a witch. And yes, she is married to a guy named Durwood (just kidding……………but bonus points if you can name that reference). She is not a broom and black cat witch, actually its more of a nature based religion.
I remain an Atheist for all of the above reasons, but also because of the way modern religion is run. This is where my homosexuality doesn’t play a part. Religions are about control. Religious leaders want to control people and will do anything to achieve that control; they brainwash people and use fear as a tool to gain followers. Religion divides and in many cases breeds hate. Its not about helping people but instead about getting more and more followers so that they can gain more power. And as a compassionate person, I can not in good conscience belong to any organization that follows those practices.
So there now you know the story of my Atheism, that is if you weren’t bored to tears after the first few sentences.
