Thinking Made Me an Atheist (original) (raw)

I was abused as a child. The abuse to which I was subjected is called “child indoctrination,” a type of brainwashing considered noble and necessary and, therefore, the most natural thing in the world.

My mother took me to the Seventh-day Adventist Church, an American denomination known for keeping the Sabbath and emphasizing the advent, or return, of Jesus. Adventists boast that they are the only ones to interpret the Bible the way its author wanted. Consequently, they deem themselves the most special creatures to God—so special that they’ll soon arouse the envy and wrath of all other denominations and religions, which, under the command of the beasts of Revelation (the American government and the Catholic Church), will persecute them. Adventists believe that the Earth was created in six days, that it is 6,000 years old, and that dinosaurs are extinct because they were too big to be saved on Noah’s ark.

Despite its being founded 160 years ago, all its missionary work, and being present in 212 countries, the total membership of the Adventist Church embodies only 0.3 percent of the world population. Apparently, God doesn’t like a large flock, because instead of seeing their small size as proof of their failure, Adventists see it as proof that they are God’s chosen people.

The Adventist Church exercises great influence over its members, whose lives revolve around it. With very rare exceptions, Adventists don’t read books that haven’t been published by the Church and don’t have friends who are not from it. I was taught from childhood to believe the world is Satan’s kingdom and, in consequence, almost everything is sinful or worthless, nothing is more important than bringing those who live in falsehood to the truth, and nothing is more noble than working for the Creator of the Universe. In 1986, I enrolled in the Faculty of Theology of the Adventist Teaching Institute in São Paulo. However, in my third year, doubts and questions, both ecclesiastical and theological, began to pop up in my head.

I noticed that Adventists, including myself, were no better than other people and that many, including pastors, were not only hypocrites but even capable of committing evils. What, then, was the advantage of belonging to this church? Another thought: If what everyone most wants is to know the truth and it’s in the Adventist Church, why weren’t people running to it by the millions? I also started to see the degree of dominance of the Church over my life as excessive, with its constant demands for dedication to it and its many prohibitions and demonizations with no biblical basis. I began to feel a little envious not only of people who didn’t care about religion but also of members of less rigid churches. I didn’t want to be different anymore. I wanted a “normal” life with freedoms and pleasures I knew wouldn’t make me a bad person.

The Bible stories started to smell to me like fables. Talking snake and donkey? People 900 years of age? All species of animals on a giant boat? Floating axe? Man transported in the stomach of a whale? There was a glaring difference in God’s way of acting, direct and frequent in biblical times, that is totally hidden today. Why don’t we see chariots of fire take men of God, that is, pastors, to Heaven? Jesus himself assured that those who believe in him could do greater miracles than he did. Not much need for that today. Repeating the early ones would be more than enough. Why, then, don’t we see Christians feed crowds with five loaves and two small fish (an excellent way to satisfy world hunger) or take money out of fishes’ mouths (a great way to pay the bills without having to work)? Furthermore, some biblical doctrines started to seem illogical and even unjust. Why do I, who was born 6,000 years later, need to suffer because Adam and Eve ate a forbidden fruit? Why do I, who was born 2,000 years later, have to feel guilty because Jews and Romans nailed Jesus to a cross?

State Opera House in Vienna, Austria

Breaking Away

In 1989, with $600 in my pocket—which I had earned selling Bibles door to door—I went on an adventure in Europe. After short stays in Portugal, France, England, and Germany, I settled in Austria, initially in a small town. Of all the brainwashing, the religious one is the deepest, the one whose deprogramming takes the most work, because it has to do with the greatest of human desires: to live forever. Add to that the fear of being eternally grilled on a gigantic barbecue and it’s easy to understand why, despite my doubts and questions, I didn’t turn my back on the Church overnight. However, three years after dropping out of the college that would have turned me into a man of God, when I started to study opera at the Vienna Conservatory, I stopped frequenting that building in which people fawn over an invisible being, from whom they implore forgiveness for anything and everything. Despite Austria being a country of Catholic tradition, the overwhelming majority of young Austrians don’t give a damn about religion. Besides, almost all my friends were from the artistic world, in which being religious is extremely rare. Moving to an (increasingly) secular continent and being surrounded by “normal” people was, therefore, a decisive development. If I had remained in Brazil, close to my evangelical family where twenty-five new churches are started each day and one can’t turn on the television without coming across a pastor with a Bible in his hand, I might never have left the Church. If I had left, I would soon have succumbed to the Church’s persistent appeals and threats and returned.

Believe it or not, but when I passed the entrance exam for the College of Singing, I had never attended an opera—first, because my parents were clueless about the arts, and second, because evangelicals hate the arts. The arts make one think differently; therefore, they are from the Devil. I had, therefore, a great hunger for the arts. I like to read, but I have always liked watching and listening more. In my first years in the Austrian capital, I would buy standing-room tickets and go almost every night to either an opera, a ballet, a concert, or a stage play. I would also go to movies and exhibitions. To support myself, I initially worked security at an exhibition hall. The job was boring, but the place was ideal for learning, because it showed paintings and sculptures by artists who were making history. The arts transformed my view of the world, which became enigmatic but, for this very reason, much more interesting. The arts confirmed my feeling that the worldview offered by religion is ridiculously simplistic. Three years later, while still studying, I was hired by the Burgtheater. All artistic genres broaden the horizon, but in my case the one that most broadened it was the theater. I confess, however, that many years later it was a literary work that exploded like an atomic bomb the small chance that still existed of me going back to believing in invisible beings and places.

Even though I no longer cared about God, religion, and the Church, I hesitated to consider and declare myself an atheist. This word has, because most people are believers, a negative connotation. It’s so negative that, between a Muslim and an atheist candidate, Americans would elect the Muslim for president even if the atheist was more capable. It was only when I read Ethics by Baruch Spinoza, who was cursed and threatened just for having different thoughts, that I understood that there is nothing negative or wrong in being an atheist. Atheists do not reject God (after all, to be rejected, God first would have to exist). Not believing in invisible beings is a sign of maturity and coherence. I had the courage to consider and declare myself an atheist and even be proud of it.

Beyond Religion

The Enlightenment happened 300 years ago. Our scientific advances today include space probes that land on comets. Yet billions of people still believe in invisible beings, for whom they would fight and even kill. In some regions of the world, religious fanaticism is on the rise (and shaping politics). I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Is it black humor, a Kafka tale, a nightmare, or a horror movie? Although the world is, in various aspects, better today than in the past, I think it’s less advanced than it should be, and religions are the principal cause of that. From what we already know about the universe and nature, not even a single religion should exist anymore. If not impossible, it should be extremely difficult for college-educated people to believe in gods, angels, demons, heaven, hell, spirits, reincarnation, miracles, karma, and “positive energy.”

This is the definition that the respected Michaelis Dictionary gives for superstition:

Belief or feeling without rational foundation, which induces to trust in absurd things, fear innocuous and imaginary things and create false and undue obligations, without any relation between the facts and their causes. Belief in signs and omens, originating in purely fortuitous facts or coincidences, without any proof. A blind and exaggerated belief in some rule, principle or thing, which is worshiped and followed without question.

This definition can completely be used to define religion, making it clear that superstition and religion are the same thing. Isn’t it unbelievable that, despite all the advances in science, there still is so much superstition?

When I think of the load of rubbish that believers believe; the fear they have of their gods; the ridiculous rituals they practice; the time they waste on sermons, prayers, and reading holy books; and the money they spend on their temples, I feel truly privileged.

Books such as the Bible and the Qur’an are considered divine only because they are ancient and respect for them has been passed down from generation to generation. In other words, they are considered divine by tradition. If humanity were reading them for the first time today, it would consider them fiction, much of it ridiculous and perverse. Isn’t it interesting that Christians have no problem laughing at the stories about the Greek gods? Well, if Emperor Theodosius I hadn’t imposed Christianity as the official religion and Christians hadn’t persecuted pagans, perhaps in what are today’s Christian regions, the Theogony, the Homeric Hymns, and the Golden Verses would be considered divine and people would laugh at the stories about the Christian god, which they would call “mythology.”

What books threaten people with punishment, and even torture, for not believing what they say? Only books considered divine do that. All major religions threaten people with punishments, both in life and after death. If billions of people finding this normal is not proof that religion is brainwashing, I don’t know what is. It’s precisely because holy books contain threats of punishments that, throughout their history, Christians and Muslims have killed so many people.

The thing is, we shouldn’t respect, much less accept, doctrines that threaten people. It’s fundamentally wrong. And we have a duty to reject what is wrong. If I wrote a book full of good teachings but in the last paragraph threatened people with torture, I would be considered psychotic and dangerous. If it ever got published, my book would be removed from stores, and I would be in trouble with the courts. Why isn’t that so with religious books? Sometimes, I get emails from readers of my books telling me they are afraid and depressed because of the religious threats they grew up hearing. Jesus himself, who is regarded as the loving version of his father (who is somehow also himself), threatened those who reject him with torture in a lake of fire and brimstone. This is more than enough reason to reject Jesus. The Qur’an says disbelievers are dragged on their faces into the flames of Hell. Over their heads is poured boiling water, which melts their organs. Whenever their skin gets roasted, Allah makes new skin grow.

Thank goodness God is love. Imagine if He weren’t!

Honestly, no matter how hard I try, I can’t see anything useful in religions. They are a hindrance, cause division, don’t do anything good that is not also done by nonreligious organizations, don’t teach anything special, and instead teach a lot of absurd, primitive, wrong, and even perverse things. We manage to believe in God only when we suppress reasoning, because when we reason we notice that the idea of God doesn’t make sense and belief in him is full of illogic and incoherency. Jews, Christians, and Muslims boast that being monotheistic is more logical, but the attributes of Yahweh/Allah—such as omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence—cause a lot of contradictions, making His existence much more unlikely than that of the deities of polytheists.

It’s not impossible that God exists, yet hundreds of things in the universe—such as galaxy collisions, star explosions, gamma-ray bursts, black holes, rogue planets, solar flares, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, lightning, asteroid impacts, and diseases—point to no one being in charge. God complicates things and generates even more questions whose “answers” require argumentative contortion and aren’t satisfying. Without God, the universe, nature, and life make much more sense. Everything has natural causes. The universe, nature, and life are the way they are because that is how they naturally developed.

One of the lines by poet Vinicius de Moraes says, “Then I ask God: ‘Listen, my friend, if it was to unmake it, why did you make it?’” Indeed, we know that, when it becomes a red giant, the Sun will destroy Earth (but due to the heat, life on it will be exterminated long before that). This is inevitable. Well, shouldn’t this simple truth be more than enough to make believers acknowledge that believing in God (let alone in an intelligent designer or a god of love) is, at the very least, childish?

I don’t want to believe; I want to know. Atheism is a natural result of intellectual honesty.

Paulo Bittencourt

Paulo Bittencourt was born in Castro, Brazil, spent his childhood in Rio de Janeiro, and studied theology in São Paulo. Close to becoming a pastor, he went on an adventure to Europe and ended up settling in Austria, where he trained as an opera singer. Bittencourt is the author of the books Liberated from Religion: The Inestimable Pleasure of Being a Freethinker and Wasting Time on God: Why I Am an Atheist.