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Interview with a local atheist: Jamie Gorden
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Jamie
Recently I spoke with Jamie about her lack of belief and asked her to explain how she graduated from calling herself a “Christian” to claiming to be “agnostic” and now adding “atheist” to how she describes her views. Here’s a brief look into her journey.
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve never really bought into the whole God/Jesus thing. My mom and grandparents have always been Catholic, so when I was younger I’d go to church with them and even went through the whole obligatory baptism, communion, confirmation ritual because my mom wanted me to, so I would be a better person, I think she said. Oh yeah, and to save my soul. (Lol.)
Church always bored me, I think mostly because of the lack of belief I felt for what they were talking about; I didn’t have any proof that what they were talking about was true and therefore didn’t think it applied to me really, it always seemed a lot like a cult to me the way the way religion has people brainwashed. I’ve always been very inquisitive and wanted proof of things so I was completely baffled by this institution that, as far as I could tell, had absolutely none, and everyone seemed to be okay with that.
As I got older, especially throughout high school, going to church and youth groups was the “cool” thing to do, so while I still didn’t profess to believe in God, I didn’t profess not to either, for fear of what people would think. It wasn’t until I got into college that I finally stopped identifying myself as a Christian. I did a little bit of research into it and decided to describe myself as “agnostic,” which, upon further introspection I still find partially accurate, but I think at the time I did so in a subconscious way because I didn’t want to call myself an “atheist.” All I’d ever been surrounded with were people that were religious, so I’d been exposed to a lot of the stigma surrounding the word; I was afraid, given the town I lived in, it would make people think I was immoral and I didn’t want to hear about how I was going to Hell. To this day I’m still not even allowed to tell my Grandmother what I believe because it might “break her heart.” I could tell her if I was gay, but atheist? Oh no.
I’ve come to find that both atheism and agnosticism invariably mean different things to different people (whether accurate or not), but, simply put, I consider atheism to be the lack of belief in the existence of a god/gods, while agnosticism implies that it is impossible to know for sure one way or the other, and I think, though you can be an agnostic in and of itself, that you can also be agnostic while either being theist or atheist. Personally, I don’t believe in God because, like I said, there is simply no evidence; as far as I’m concerned, the bible is just a book. I do find it somewhat interesting, but I don’t put any more stake in its accuracy than I do in Harry Potter. It’s kind of like when you’re little and you have a make-believe friend, you eventually grow up and realize it’s unnecessary; religion is kind of like the make-believe friend the world never outgrew.
I also find it amazing, given the legitimate proof science has provided, that Christians continue to refute the idea of evolution and the big bang theory on the basis of what is essentially a fairytale. One of my biggest complaints about religion is that it promotes ignorance by making people content with not understanding things; you can’t make up stories to explain things just because you don’t know what they are, it doesn’t work that way. And what about all the other religions? Who’s to say who’s right and who’s wrong?
I do identify myself as an agnostic atheist now, however, not because I think it more socially acceptable, but because I think part of accepting that there are things we don’t know yet encompasses religion as well, however improbable and unfounded it may be.”
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