Coming Out

I have to come out because it's who I am, and it's what I do. This will probably surprise everyone who knows me because I've lived an "out life" since moving to my current city of residence. Everyone else will remember me from a time when this truth was apparently not so. But it is so. It is true. I'm an atheist.

Before reacting, I think it's important to recognize the consequences of simply admitting my atheism. First, my 2016 presidential bid will not withstand the blow. In fact, my atheism may be the sole disqualifier (outside of age restrictions.) After all, look at the hubbub that was made of the type of Christian that Mitt Romney was versus whether Barack Obama was a Christian or a closet Muslim. 

Further, statistics say that out of every 100 people I know, 80 are likely to be religious. And I'd be willing to bet the number is actually higher than that in the Bible Belt. I'm also willing to bet that out of those 80 or so, many will take their religion seriously enough to discount 29 years of evidence to the contrary and immediately believe some pretty awful things about me. Also, that there will be terrible things waiting for me upon my expiration.

Another consequence of atheism is that in the event that I ever score a touchdown or win an Oscar, I will have no one to thank first.

Penultimately, in the absence of a book of divine wisdom, I am forced to use words like penultimate in order to try to sound intelligent.

Lastly, Steve Harvey will never ever ever want to be my friend.

Are these points facetious? Mostly. But they're also true.

So what is the correct response to this? It is not to tell me that you'll pray for me. It is not to tell me that I just have yet to find Jesus. The correct response is not to threaten me with hell. The correct response to my atheism is to recognize it. Simply. My lack of a belief in god does not make me lesser, it does not make me equal, it does not make me special. It does not make me contentious. My atheism doesn't make me anything. That is not the nature of an un-belief.

(How religion is a lot like a holey sock)

Now, how is it that a literate and hardworking soul from the Bible Belt converted to atheism? If you spend as much time on Youtube as I do, and I hope you don't, you'll eventually come across a Christopher Hitchens clip where he claimed that people to not convert to atheism, they realize they've always been atheists. And the more I thought about the quote the more I realized how true that was for me.

One of my earliest memories is being mortified at the prospect of eternity. Just think of it. Forever. What if you get bored? Or perhaps imagine it this way, you're sat in front of a Mario video game and told that you have to play for 24 hours straight. So you sit down, and you beat the game in thirty minutes, right? Boom, straight through. Then you have to spend the rest of the time just running around. No bad guys to kill, or gold coins to find, or princesses to save. You just wander. Wouldn't that be awful? And that's just one day. After that, you have forever of those. Now think specifically of heaven. Is there an element of corporeal reassembly? Who does that job? Is heaven just a big dinner party? Would it be possible to meet everyone there? What if you didn't like any of them? What if my mother and sisters weren't there? I'd like to have a word with the boss if that were the case. Would that be possible? Or would god be in the VIP area?

And that's just heaven.

It doesn't take Russel Crowe fighting rock monsters to make the story of Noah sound silly. The story of the Prodigal Son sounds pretty nice. But are those really the sort of values that one can (or should) be talked into? If so, would you mind calling my father? And while you two are talking, do your best not to mention Job, yeah?

But these stories aren't meant to be taken literally, they're metaphor.

Then where is the line that separates metaphor from meta fact? Is Jesus a metaphor? What about Muhammad? Or god itself? God as a metaphor would help to explain some of the inconsistencies. 

The truth is that no two people have the same religion. People don't always have the same religion at the middle of the week that they had at the beginning of the week. And how many young people bother to keep a pesky god around on Friday and Saturday nights? But sure enough, there he is on Sunday morning, ready to be worshiped and feared all over again.

But that is the fault of the sinner, not the unchanging.

So how many people repent for eating their steak medium-well? No? Leviticus would like a word with you.

Oh, Leviticus. What a silly thing for an atheist to quote, no? Leviticus is not in red letters. You know what is in red letters? Matthew 5:18, which says, "Till heaven and earth pass, not one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."

But don't I know? The only way to heaven is through the acceptance of Christ the Lord as my personal savior? Sin is inevitable. We're just made that way. Kind of like how GM makes cars without proper ignition switches once in a while. And every time god does a recall, he doesn't change the ignition switch, he just drowns almost every engine in the world and then fires up the assembly line to get more of those faulty autos on the road asap.

So what's the point? Why am I writing this and hoping that you'll read it? Because of what being an atheist means that I do.

I eat babies. I throw rocks off of overpasses. I find litters of still-pink puppies all dozing and suckling of their mother and i douse them in gasoline so that I can set them ablaze. I mean, it is important to know that it is only in the light spawned from burning puppies that one can truly appreciate the works of Anton LeVey. Some times I bake kittens. On nights that I'm not washing my hair in the blood of virgins, I like to go out and haunt graveyards. Mostly, I laugh at the misfortunes of others. I must, right? Isn't that what atheists do?

No.

I lead a life largely dedicated to letters.

I value the impact that my existence may have on others, and I hope their experiences are more positive because of me.

I love my family and my friends. I work hard every day so that I may make their existence more enjoyable.

I look in the mirror and acknowledge that time is of unfathomable value. And swear to myself to use all of mine to the best of my ability because every day is the endgame.

Because I am an atheist.

I am an atheist.




 ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, and The Eunoia Review. Follow him on Twitter @adriananyway