An Atheist Perspective: Life, Death, & Everything in Between

Chapter 1: My Life as an Atheist

First off, let's start with some background of my life (If you're not interested on this, you can just skip to the next chapter). I used to be a Catholic, I was raised by Catholic parents, and I also was on a Catholic school since 5th grade until 10th grade. I started questioning my beliefs on February 2014, and it took me 3 months deciding whether or not I was going to leave my faith, or stay in it. It was a hard decision. Questions like: "will people hate me?", "will my mom kick my out of the house?", "will my dad hate me?", "should I leave this school?" were always on my head.

I was very interested in science, so it was very common for my beliefs to collide with my way of thinking. Most of the time, I'll try my best to come up with an idea so my beliefs could fit into science. For obvious reasons, this was impossible most of the time. I would just contradict myself. I remember one time at my other school when I was around 2nd grade, we were in a trip and it was raining. Another kid said: "you know why it rains? it's because God is crying. People sin too much." I obviously told him: "no. that's not why it rains, it's because *explains water cycle*." Then, my teacher told both of us: "you're both correct. Manuel is just looking at it from a scientific perspective." This is a funny anecdote, and thought it was a good example of how interested I have always been in science since a young age.

So, after those 3 months, I ended up deciding that I'll leave my faith, and I became an atheist. I only let my closest friend Roger (his name isn't Roger. It's just for the sake of his privacy) know about my decision. Luckily he's also an atheist. After 2 months, I was public about my atheism. Some friends stopped talking to me, others didn't care, and others were surprised.

My parents knew it in a very unusual way. I came out to my mom while we were discussing about evolution and creationism. Because I was supporting evolution, she asked me: "you don't believe in God?" I obviously replied that I didn't. In the other hand, my dad knew about my atheism, because I was posting things related to it. Both of them asked me a lot of questions, but they accepted me for who I am.

I also remember getting hate on my personal Instagram for just posting things on how proud I am for being an atheist, atheist quotes from famous people, etc. I have never posted anything offensive, and I still got hate from some people. In the end, I just created a new Instagram account dedicated to what I like (@A_Moral_Atheist). Most of the time I get bad comments rather than good comments. But, it's actually pretty uncommon. People just rarely comment on my personal account.

I also love participating on different atheist events like: ask an atheist day, openly secular day, etc. I was going to do the "interview an atheist at church day", but I couldn't get any pastor to get interested on doing it. Most of them never checked the message, and the others just ignored me. I'm also very interested on reading books related with atheism, science, and religion. I'm actually reading The Qu'ran, after that The Bible, and after that I plan to read The Satanic Bible. It's good to read books of other religions. You can learn a lot from Holy Book and, some cultures are so tied with religion, that if you read their Holy Book, you may learn most of their culture. It's also good to know about different religions. That gives you a big advantage in knowledge.

Nowadays I really don't mind being open about my atheism. When people ask about my religion, I always tell them: "I don't have a religion. I'm an atheist." But, compared to my natal country, people here are more tolerant (at least the people that I know) here. Even though, some people take my atheism as something personal, and they get offended. Overall, almost everyone treats me the same.