Your First Atheist

Oh I’ve known atheists all my life. Guess you could say I was raised under both influences in a way.

My grandfather’s brother was one. He was a WWII medic who had to decide who they could or could not save. Sometime during the war, he stopped believing in God. I remember the disagreements he and my grandfather had over whether or not god exists and I felt sorry for my great uncle because my grandfather was hitting him over the head with Christianity.

The thing is, my great uncle was one of the nicest men you could ever meet. He loved children and became a teacher after the war. I don’t think I ever saw him without a smile, except when my grandfather was nailing him. Being an atheist didn’t keep him from teaching- either because his family were the only ones who knew or he just didn’t talk about it much. Either way, it didn’t affect his life much that I know of, except among family members.

I don’t think I have met another atheist, at least no one who has admitted it to me. I guess that would make the people I have met online the “firsts”.

The first atheist I ever met was my mother but if I hadn’t then I’m sure I would have met some at playschool. They may not have self-identified as atheists but they hadn’t been indoctrinated into a belief system.

Never met any until I was in my early twenties. Looking back, I can see I never truly had any real faith, despite being raised RC. I don’t know if knowing an atheist would have helped or hindered when I was younger….

The first “out” atheists I met were in college. I grew up in a small, conservative town, where I don’t remember atheism even being discussed. Being able to talk about it openly was a huge relief.

My 9th grade English teacher/track coach, which is amazingly awesome in retrospect, considering I grew up in a 500-population tiny town that almost all attended church. He was not just disliked but HATED by the rest of the staff (including my mom, who’s a guidance counselor at the school) partially for being so blunt about his beliefs and partially for being really harsh to students (and other teachers) who acted irrationally or got on his nerves.

He had a soft spot for me though and got me into science fiction (he loaned me ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’ which is the first non-H.G. Wells sci-fi I remember reading). His wife had a particularly painful kind of terminal cancer and although we never talked about it directly, I know that influenced his skepticism about a benevolent God existing.

I remember that during our poetry section in English class he passed out copies of the lyrics to “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas and we listened to the song in class, but besides that I don’t think he ever ‘pushed’ or mentioned his atheism to students unless they asked (as opposed to several of the Christian teachers who refused to teach birth control, included creationism in science classes, had desk ornamentation with Bible verses on it, etc.

My US history professor in college announced he was and I failed his class. That was also the semester I had philosophy 101 and started really speaking out as a skeptic and abandoned xianity.

I don’t think I was aware there was even such a thing as atheism until I stumbled upon the atheist wobosphere during the Dover trial. I knew a whole bunch of apatheists in college, though.

Looking back, my best friend in high school was an atheist, though he never used the term. I seem to remember him saying the finite amount of Jesus’ suffering, divided over everyone who had ever lived, would be about equivalent to a pinprick, and why couldn’t we just take the pinprick of sin-wages instead of bowing and scraping once a week for the rest of our lives?

I didn’t quite comprehend it at the time, but he certainly helped shape the course of my intellectual development.

I encountered plenty of non-Christians once I went to college, but nobody that I can remember who came out and called themselves an atheist. My last year in school, however, I met the guy that I have now been with for 3 years, who is an atheist, and I remember being shocked about it – at the time, I was struggling with my beliefs/non-beliefs, and didn’t know how to react. As we got to know each other better, I found out that plenty of other people we knew were atheists or agnostics as well, and it became much easier for me to accept the fact that I no longer believed in God. So I guess for me, finally meeting people who felt the way I did was extremely important.

Ah… the family down the street. The two boys always won the Science Fairs because their dad (a NASA Astronomer and Roboticist) always helped them with their projects. They were the Athiest Family in our neighborhood when I was growing up. I was an irrational, evangelical Christian f-ck at the time I heard about them. I carried my bible around and spent a lot of time trying to convince people that Christian rock was every bit as awesome, if not better than, whatever it was they were listening to. I hated the athiest family for no reason at all. I would get creeped out when they came on the school bus. All I knew about them was that they were athiests and that was enough. They dressed weird and looked overall “nerdy.” I would revel when Christmas would come around. Since everyone knew that they were athiests (I think something nasty happened once at a PTA meeting) the neighbors on all sides, even across the street, would put up elaborate nativity scenes in their yards. I would laugh, thinking it was so funny that they were surrounded. It was a battle and they were totally losers because no one was on their side.

Luckily, I got better. By my Junior year in high school I was friends with them and a better person because of it. I would say I was “questioning” at the time. But that wasn’t why we became friends. We all liked video games and electronic music. And one of them gave me piano lessons for a while. I guess it was a time when I thought being smart was cool, or at least worth aspiring to. I still do.

My Dad. As it turns out, I’m a third generation atheist, although I didn’t think about this too much until the last year or so.

I remember when I was four, a neighbor kid said, “Oh, you don’t know about God? He’s everywhere. He could be over there.” And she pointed to the corner of my yard. I looked over there, but there wasn’t anything in that corner. I went and asked my Dad about it later, and he explained that he didn’t believe in God at all. I was intrigued by what other kids told me, so as I grew up, I read the Bible and explored a few religions. Ultimately, I decided my Dad’s way of thinking was mine, too. So for me, religion and God were sort of this extra, unnecessary thing that other people did. I never called myself an atheist until recently, because it just seemed so normal. I don’t call myself a-Easter Bunny, you know?

The first atheist I remember meeting was a substitute teacher in high school. I grew up in the South, where it just wasn’t heard of to be an atheist. The teacher said he didn’t believe in God, I said that was fine.

The interesting thing he said was, “That doesn’t mean I’m going to Hell, does it?” At the time I was a practicing United Methodist. I said, “That’s not for me to decide.”

Now this is an interesting question. The first time I met someone who was admittedly not a Christian was in high school. There was a guy who said he didn’t believe in what churches taught, and he just followed his own way. That was very new to me. In college, I met a girl who was an agnostic. That just rocked my world. Here she was, in the middle of the Bible Belt, and she was very open about her possible lack of belief. Around that time, I started meeting other people I suspected were atheists or agnostics, but they never really said one way or another.

The first person I ever met in person who also claimed to be an atheist was a coworker in Texas a few years ago.

The first person I ever knew was an atheist was me.
I came to the conclusion that there was no god without really talking about that option with anyone.

When I was a child living in a close-knit farming community, one of my friends told me her mother was an atheist. I would watch her closely when I would spend the night with that friend just to see if she was different from everyone else’s mother. My impression of her was that she was distant, health-conscious, and bookish. She never spoke about her lack of belief. I felt sorry for her because she seemed so lonely. I wonder if she ever had any close friends with whom she could really be herself.

I was the 1st one that I knew. But it turns out that one of my best friends in High School was traveling the same road I was. We both went to a Christian school in a very christian conservative area(Holland Mich). I was a only about 2 steps ahead of his deconversion process.

I’m in the process of deconversion myself. Given that I’m a molecular biologist, I like Dawkins’ stuff, but when I read Harris’ stuff I still can’t understand why atheists are so averse to the idea that they employ faith in their position as well as religious people. I think it’s just that it’s become a dirty word given the type of trolls who use it to define themselves. I guess that categorizes me as an agnostic. You’ll never prove God doesn’t exist or that aliens didn’t put us here, but that doesn’t mean I have to believe in the god of the bible either. I choose to BELIEVE that the god of the Bible or other holy books is incoherent with our understanding of science and many other disciplines. Does this mean I’m not a true atheist?

I’m not sure about this, but I can’t recall meeting anyone who used the atheist label until college. Seems strange when I look back on it, but I simply don’t recall anyone who would have described themselves as an atheist before then.

Some of the foreign exchange students in my hight school were atheists. In fact, one of my classes was really small (only about 10 people) and there were a whole bunch of foreign exchange students there that didn’t believe in god either. It was interesting having a class with a third to half of the kids were atheists.

Either my mum or dad.

It’s interesting how many people have mentioned that they thought someone they knew somewhere along the way was a non-believer, but never asked. Maybe it’s time we started?

There’s been a couple of conversations here about how valuable it is to declare that one is an atheist, just so the rest of the (religious) world knows we don’t actually have horns. Maybe asking is the other side of the coin, sort of a ‘do ask, do tell’ policy.

Although it seems (even to me) somehow impolite to ask someone if they are an atheist, but no problem to ask if they are buddhist or jewish. It must seem somehow wrong to other people, too, since no one else is asking. I think that really shows the depth of the bias in this culture, when you can’t even ask someone if they are atheist.

On the topic – I remember I was about 10 when I was walking through the living room and heard my dad say something to someone about how religion wasn’t true, and thinking “Aha! Dad agrees with me. Well, that’s pretty cool….”. That’s the first time I remember anyone saying anything like that around me.

I guess my first atheist would be my dad, because he’s always been a Communist, but he never identifies himself as an atheist (although he did oppose my baptism). The first time people I knew oppenly identified themselves as atheists was in 11th grade. I was an atheist by then too, but I hadn’t started identifying myself as one. We were in a Theory of Knowledge class and we were doing lots of philosophical discussions at the time and the teacher asked us who was an atheist. It was a 14-people class and eight of us raised our hands (although one of the girls who raised her hand is really more of an agnostic). Some of the people who raised their hands I’ve known since the 7th grade, and I believe a couple were raised without religion, but none of us had openly labeled ourselves as atheists until then.

It’s not really a big deal in Canada, I guess, although it’s more difficult finding atheists in Ottawa’s Bulgarian community. I’ve never met any other Bulgarians who were open atheists and everyone who finds out about me is a little shocked.

The first person I knew as an open atheist was a friend in high school – one day during lunch, a group of us were talking about religion fairly casually, so it came out – and life went on as normal. It did start my examining of religion, though; it’s one thing to damn abstract people to hell, but quite another to damn your crush to eternal pain, torment, and unavailability for dates.

It’s funny, but I never thought others would not have at least one family member who was/is an atheist. My bio-father was too, but he wasn’t a good example of one, IMO. Be that as it may, I’m surprised not everyone knew of at least one family member as a child who was an atheist. I guess it’s all about what you grew up with and what you are privy to as a child.

My third grade teacher in Catholic School.

It’s really fascinating the whole recurring theme of “nobody ever mentioned they were atheists.” Or “it was rude or unwise to identify yourself as an atheist back then.”

My mother was the first Atheist I met. I don’t think I need to go through that story. 😉

My parents.

Then later on, my best friend in high school. I’ve also known a lot of non-religious people who for reasons of not wanting to be ostracized, don’t consider themselves atheists… I also know a lot of weak theists… people who weakly believe in God but not in the particulars of Christianity and certainly not what the Christian fundamentalists (or even what the mainstream Christian denominations) preach.

My mom. Nuff said.