What happened to my Christianity

Tonight I was watching a video of James Loftus being interviewed on the Youtube channel TheThinkingAtheist. They were discussing how people get into religion and most are born into it, just like I was. Some are brought into it by a significant other. And folks stay in it because they like the community they're a part of. But to get out of it they agreed usually takes some kind of crisis based in that community which may involve shutting you out of the clique and this can shake up your faith enough to end it. And some others just reason their way out of faith. That got me thinking about my own end of faith. I thought I'd crank up this old blog and see if I could get the memories to flow and explain it to my own satisfaction. As I've looked back I have always thought (and said) that it was more of a reasoning method that got me off the Christianity train, but hearing this discussion sort of made me think that the crisis approach was involved as well. I was in the Navigators in College from 1974 until I graduated in 1979. In that span of time my father died of cancer, I moved to Maryland, fell in love with a woman I met through the Navs and decided to marry her. I had come to Maryland because I had two brothers here and I came to visit them in the summer of 1976. My oldest brother convinced me to stay on and finish my degree at UMD which I did. I met this girl and like instantly fell for her big time. At his time in my life, after a very paralyzing acid trip, I had been praying and bible studying like a fiend. I thought I was getting answers to my prayers and I thought I could feel God in my soul and I was convinced that it was his power that had helped me get over that scary acid stuff (flashbacks and dreams and a lot of fear of death - psychosis, really). At least that's what I told myself and anyone I dared to discuss it with. I also thought God was guiding me into a specially planned life by communicating to me through my thoughts and my bible studies. Like if a bible verse popped out to me I would "apply" that to my life circumstances, even though it was way out of context, or even if it was simply tangentially related through some semantic quirk. If I got the feeling, it was God telling me something. I tried to make sure I had this level of "guidance" for the big decisions that confronted me. I learned this approach to Christianity through the people I was hanging around with. My 2 brothers included. The thing was that after I already got engaged to this woman, my oldest brother got guidance from God that she was not the one for me. God told him so. This didn't sit right with me or her. Mainly he heard through the grapevine that she had alcoholic relatives and drank a fair amount herself. He said that would work against me and probably end up in a divorce. She was devastated and I was pissed off. So I took my bible and looked for a sign. I read some verses about some prophet in the Old Testament (Micah? Amos?) who God made marry a prostitute for some reason. These I took as my guidance that I was being told by God to ignore my brother and marry the woman anyway. So I graduated and got my first engineering job and 6 months later I married that woman. I always wanted to fall in love and get married and I took it really seriously. She was still in school and not doing all that well right from the start. As we were no longer on campus the community of students we used to hang with was pretty much gone. We tried to go to a married people's bible study or a couple different churches but we didn't seem to click. Drinking was pretty easy and so we did a lot of that. And smoking weed too, we always had some around. I was still praying and reading my bible but my new job was right next to a library. Also, there was not a lot of work to do because it was a slow time. So I took to hanging out at the library and reading books. I got into a lot of different authors but one that I read all I could find was anthropologist Marvin Harris. I think he was the first author I read that had anything to say about religion. I'd never taken any religious study classes in school. Somewhere along the line I must have read that prayer was just talking to the voices in your head; and communion with the Holy Spirit was just calling one of those voices the voice of God. I am pretty sure that I never prayed again right after that. We lived on and had kids and stuff. But church was over. And bible reading. And prayer. Kids and marriage can really soak up years and it did with me. And I soaked up the beer. Eventually though we started random drug testing at work so I had to quit pot. It was easy. Then my wife and I started fighting quite a lot. I was always a "divorce is not an option" kind of thinker. And I didn't want to move out. But eventually I did. Soon after I quit drinking. It was also easy. I never wanted to get married again because I felt like love had kind of ruined my life. I mean that was 20 years of my life that didn't go very well. Anyway, I did get lonely and wanted a girlfriend. I eventually got lucky with an online dating service and met someone new. I fell in love again. It was better this time, much better. I got divorced from my first wife and married my second wife. As we were soon empty nesters I read a lot more. And with the internet and stuff it was an easy thing to read up on religious studies like I had never done. Also evolution studies, which I'd also avoided. Not too long after that I started thinking of myself as an atheist. I remember telling that to my mom and she didn't believe me. Now I know I'm an atheist and I spend a lot of time listening to stuff like I described above and reading stuff by atheists. I can really get angry just thinking about christianity and the rest of the bullshit religions. But I don't like myself as an angry person. So I try not to open that door much. Now you know my secret though. If you want to trash talk religion some time, just give me a call.