In 2007 I graduated from Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian college in Illinois. I used to be a very committed Christian. I was in love with God and full of faith, and I loved my first two years in the community of a Christian college. Before my senior year I walked away from Christianity and became an atheist.
The reasons for my rejection of Christianity and acceptance of atheism are manifold, and I tried to cover most of them in this blog. Ultimately, it is a matter of integrity, of truth. I value truth so much that I had to find it at the cost of comfort, community, relationships, assurance. Atheism and more specifically naturalism is the most truthful truth I’ve found.
“Leaving Eden” captures the quest for truth at the cost of comfort. If the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is available, we should always eat from it, no matter the consequences. If the whole world is there, why should we stay in one corner?
Since leaving Wheaton, I’ve been blogging at Peaceful Atheist and now my current blog, INTP mom.
Leaving Eden 
This cant be your first comment? I am mostly undercover myself, I suddenly had an urge to find out what atheism was a few years ago and eventually became one after countless hours of study and conversation. (much to my own surprise)
I will be perusing your blog .
Cris
Have you looked into the Atheist Blogroll? There are others who are going through your same situation. It might be supportive to connect with them. ^_^
Greetings, I found your blog through the Friendly Athiest’s plug. I know how you feeling and what you are going through. I attended a bible college of under 500 students – you can imagine how a critical mind might stick out in a school that small. I wish you the best of luck in your final year, I myself dropped out in my third year and started all over again to gain my Religious Studies degree at a major university.
Anyway, I welcome you to the growing club of religious apostates and I encourage you to check out our de-conversion community at de-conversion.org.
I went to Calvin College in the late 1980s and was a committed Christian until I became an atheist a couple of years ago for the same ultimate reason that you did. You can be glad you arrived at this realization at a relatively young age, and didn’t spend as much of your time, energy and money on Christianity as I did.
I just came out as an atheist to my sister (a Calvin professor) last month. It went better than I expected and about as well as I could have hoped. I hope you can soon be free to express your views without the threat of a negative backlash.
One of the things I missed after leaving the church was the social network. Since then I’ve gotten involved with local and national groups of skeptics and humanists, and I’ve been building a new social network of people with rational, non-religious worldviews. I recommend looking for groups of skeptics and humanists in your area.
I wish you all the best, and I hope you will be able to enjoy experiencing truth, comfort, happiness and the awesomeness of this life and the natural universe we live in.
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I’ve been reading your blog and like what you and your friends have written. More “Christians” need to do be open enough and confident enought to engage in this type of forum. Alas, it is not too likely to attract too many of them.
I do happen to be a follower of Christ ( I hesitate to use the word “Christian” as it carries so much heavy baggage) although I have only been one for the past 5 years. Raised a nominal and indifferent Catholic I gravtited towards agnosticism and eventually atheism in my twenties. Sometime in my thirties I began to play around with Zen, the Tao and a little Native American Pantheism, more for self improvement than anything else (or so I thought). After doing some reading on quantum mechanics it struck me that the physical univese is no less ridiculous than the idea of a god so why not it give it a shot.
Anyway- I converted into a very conservative fundamentalist congregation and became one of those zealous, over the top and starry eyed born again warriors fof God. It is an extremely self serving and ego gratifying way of doing the God thing. Thankfully my conversion was not a one-off experience and my journey quickly led me away from that form of toxic Christianity and I am now in much better place. Which brings me to my question;
I have been talking with numerous atheists on the web for about a year now and I have noticed a trend. It seems that many of those who have given up on Christianity to become atheists (or ‘free thinkers’) were more than just your typical garden variety “one-hour-every-Sunday-then-catch-the-game” church-goer. Many seem to have been involved in some sort of ministry or working towards that goal or had been thoroughly immersed in the faith 24/7. But aside from the intensity of their comittment there is one other thing they all seem to have in common; pretty much they all hailed from a life long conservative traditon. I have met very few atheists who used to be Anglican priests or Roman Catholic nuns or Unitarian ministers.
So,(to finally get to my question) is it Christianity that you find to be so stifling or is it this ‘thing’ that we call “Christianity”, something more commonly referred to as fundamentlism with all the baggage that comes with it; biblical innerancy and infallibility, biblical literalism, entrenched legalism, an obsession with religious intolerance, an over emphasis on the ‘sinful’ nature of others, a preoccupation with sex etc etc. ?
Because that is something that I have left behind as well, but for whatever reason I have still held onto my faith, in fact it has grown much stronger since it was finally unchained.
Just curious.
Christian (#6);
My experience has been that during deconversion, most atheists-to-be go through a backlash phase where they embrace fundamentalist beliefs in order to try to regain some of their lost faith, usually immediately prior to realizing there’s no point in trying to convince themselves to believe and starting to come to terms with their loss of faith.
I myself started out as a Christian moderate, drifted away from the faith, then fell in with the Evangelicals when I became scared of living a life without the comfort of a belief in a deity. That lasted about a year before I realized that no matter how much I tried to immerse myself in belief, he rational part of my brain just couldn’t accept it and I was forced to face up to my own atheism. Depression ensued for a time while I learned new coping skills and had to wrestle with questions like “What is my purpose in life?” (Before, I’d never had to think deeply on this — I could just shrug and say “God knows, so I don’t have to worry about it”) and “What rational basis is there for morality?” and many others.
That’s the hardest part of deconversion — fundamental aspects of your life fall into question and need to be worked out, due to the fact that religion provides easy ways to avoid thinking such things through by offering pat answers.
Take care, and a pleasure chatting with you!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I’m a 2008 Wheaton graduate and a resolute agnostic. I came to this realization post-Wheaton when I began to study the wonderous connectedness of the universe the ultimate insignificance of our existence. It’s nice to know there are other alum out there who have “stepped out” of the box