Becoming An Atheist: The Problem of Evil

My first real doubts about the existence of god came around the same time frame of our first IVF, though the two were not related. I had recently left the first school I had ever taught at, and was teaching at a magnet school for sixth-eighth graders. We taught in "streams" -- six week courses designed to incorporate all subjects around a bigger theme. My first stream was Conflict, and it featured an in-depth look at WWII.

I had read about the Holocaust before, of course. I had studied it in middle school and high school myself. I read Anne Frank and numerous other books written by survivors. I had taught the book "The Devil's Arith.metic" by Jan.e Yo.len for several years in my reading classes (it is a fantastic example of historical fiction). The Holocaust has always fascinated me, in a somber, heartbreaking way. It was such a terrible, dark, part of human history, and my empathetic nature can't help but put myself in the shoes of the women and children who endured horrors I can hardly imagine.

As part of this particular unit, I chose to read aloud to the students from El.ie Wei.sel's memoir, "Night," a little each day. I had read the book before, of course, and I remember that I was moved by it. But -- something different in me responded this time. There was a particular passage I remember reading to my eighth graders. The room was silent, and my voice broke as I described, secondhand, what Elie witnessed: Nazi soldiers throwing infants into the air and shooting them in front of their mothers who had just finished digging their own graves.

(I will pause for a minute and let you go back and re-read that last sentence. Sit with it for a moment. Let the image sink in.)

We couldn't even discuss our reading that day. I closed the book after finishing that page, and we all just kind of looked at each other for a few minutes until it was time to dismiss. Nobody twittered or fidgeted or tapped their pencils. The air was thick with emotion, and we just sat in the stillness for a moment, afraid to break the spell. I still don't know what was going on in the minds of my students that day -- but I know what was going on in mine.

At that moment, it became impossible for me to reconcile what I had been taught about God and what had unfolded throughout history. How any omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent being could allow something like that to happen (and other, far more gruesome things that we never touched on in class), became impossible for me to understand. (It was several years later that I became aware of Epicurus' famous quote, but it certainly hit home for me that day).

I had been told that humans could not understand God's motives, and that his plan made sense on some grander scale that we could not fathom. But at that moment, I began to wonder. What possible reason or plan was God fulfilling? How was he powerless to prevent such evil? I understand that Christians believe that god gave us "free will" and they use that to explain why evil seems to flourish -- but, really? God, had he any power at all, could have prevented the suffering of millions by simply not creating one being in the first place. And, being all-knowing, he knows this. But he does it any way (assuming that God is the creator and giver of life.) How is this benevolence? How is this showing love and mercy? How does the slaughter of millions further God's plans?

I didn't stop believing in God that day, but the very first cracks in my faith began to appear. And the more I thought about the Holocaust in particular, and evil in general, the more I began to doubt in a hands-on, interventionist deity. After all, people around me were praying to pass tests and find their car keys -- and claiming that God answered those prayers -- while he remained silent at the pleas of those suffering more than you or I will ever know.

Though many atheists are themselves portrayed as evil, I would venture to say that for most atheists, evil itself is a reason supporting their very atheism. We are not evil because we reject the notion of a deity -- rather, the presence of evil concerns us so much that it has caused us to spend a great deal of thought trying to reconcile the problems we see every day around us with the notion of a loving god.

And, unfortunately, the answers we've been given do not pass the test. Theists love to give God credit for the good things, and are quick to blame humanity for the bad. Logically, though, the arguments break down -- either God is in control,or he is not. If he is, then he is allowing and/or causing some terrible shit to happen, on a global scale, every single day. If he's not in charge, then he's not God.

You can't have it both ways, though I know that some theists try. (I will tackle the hands-off Creator God in another post). Either way, both theists and non-theists must acknowledge that evil exists (or, to put it another way, bad things happen). The question becomes, whose fault is it?

There are, of course a variety of provable causes: nature, disease, other human beings. But God? How does he fit in? Is he the causer of evil, or the bystander?

According to both the Old and the New Testaments, God is not only capable of intervening, but he has done so throughout history. Why then did he choose this particular point of human suffering, on such a grandiose scale, to disappear? Where was he during the Holocaust? Where is he today?

I'm afraid that the answer is that he is where he always has been -- locked inside our own minds. Neither the perpetrator nor the bystander -- just simply a comforting figment of our own imaginations.

Becoming An Atheist: A Little Background

I was born into a "mixed" marriage of sorts -- my mother was a Methodist PK (that's preacher's kid, for those of you not hip to the slang), and my father had grown up LDS (more commonly known as Mormon), though he had rejected the faith. In 31 years, I still don't know why -- we've never discussed it. I just knew that my mom was a Christian, and my dad was not.

We didn't go to church often growing up -- sometimes, depending on where we were living, we want to a local Methodist church. I remember going to see my grandfather preach when we went to visit them. But mostly I grew up believing in God, but without much religion or ritual behind it.

When I was 14, we moved to SLC. And, if you have ever lived there, you can imagine what it was like for a non-LDS girl. I wasn't ostracized by any means -- but I also was not well-versed enough to fend off the attempts to convert me. And there were many! All of my friends invited me to church, which my mother vehemently objected to. Maybe because I was 14 and needed to rebel against my parents, or, maybe because I was 14 and wanted to fit in with my peers, or maybe because I was 14 and in love for the first time with an LDS boy -- but I found myself very drawn to the LDS community. I took it upon myself to read the bible from cover to cover (a feat I have accomplished several times since), and to read the Book of Mormon as well. My friends seemed to have reasonable answers to my not-very-deep questions, and I was never allowed to visit their churches and discuss the religion with adults. My mother never told me why she was so against it, she just was. I became convinced that, once I turned 18, I would convert and marry my LDS boyfriend and have a passel of children.

Instead, when I was just shy of 16, we moved to Podunk. Where, instead of being surrounded by the LDS and their very strong sense of community, I was an oddball. We didn't attend any of the mega-churches, and I wasn't a part of their youth groups. I clung to my version of Mormonism (which was by no stretch of imagination a very accurate version) for a while, but eventually teenage normalcy begged and I identified only as "Christian." I still read the bible, and I missed the community I had found in SLC. I searched for that for many years. When I was 18, I joined a local Methodist church. It was familiar, and it embraced all people. Even then, in my conservatism, I had doubts that any one religion was spot-on. I did believe some were more accurate than others, but had a very difficult time embracing the idea that people who hadn't heard about Jesus, or who were born and raised in a different culture, were going to hell simply because of an accident of birth.

I joined several small groups at that church, and continued to attend throughout my two years of college there. (I go back and re-read some of my college papers from back then, littered with conservative ideologies, and can't help but laugh. How self-righteous I sounded, and how much my liberal-arts professors must have hated me! :-) )

When I was almost 20, I moved Down South (even further south than Podunk). I finished college, met Mo. Got married and started teaching. We didn't attend church, though both of us wanted to raise our children in church. I was of the mindset that church attendance wasn't necessary for a relationship with God. After several years, and lots of struggles personally, Mo broke down one afternoon and said he wanted to call his childhood preacher. We did, and the next Sunday went to his small church. He had left the Assembly of God church that Mo had been baptized in several years earlier and started his own, non-denominational church that preached prosperity -- you know, God wants you to be rich, etc. They embraced us immediately, and I felt a sense of belonging that had been missing since we left SLC. We did things with their family every weekend, attended church together every Sunday. When Mo's dad died, Mo disappeared (metaphorically, at least). I won't rehash that time period, but it was the most difficult we have ever endured. I begged them for help, but they didn't know what to do. They tried, they prayed. It did no good. I stopped attending. I miscarried. They were nowhere to be found.

When we moved back to Podunk, my faith was shattered. I had prayed for years for a different outcome, to no avail. I had prayed, not for myself, but for another, and it did no good. I knew that God wasn't listening, if he was even there at all.

It took several more years, and an atheist friend, to help me become aware of my actual beliefs. To separate what I had been taught from my actual experience. To look for evidence, and find it lacking.

There will be some readers who want to blame my atheism on my bad experiences, to say that I am angry with God. I am not, because I do not believe that any gods exist. I am angry with the situation I am in, yes. That is real. For me, god is about as real as Santa Claus, and I feel just about as much anger toward him as I do that jolly elf.

What I hope that readers get from this over-simplified explanation of my religious background is this: I have spent quite a lot of time thinking about god. I have prayed daily for years. I have read the bible, in depth, multiple times. I have examined other spiritual texts. I do not take atheism lightly -- it is not a default position, nor one based on rebellion or anger. It is the logical conclusion that I have come to after examining closely my own life experiences, those of the family and friends that surround me, and even those in far-away continents that I will never meet.

For me, religion (specifically Christianity) was the default position, an accident of birth, if you will. It is cultural and geographical and, for the majority of participants, as easy as breathing.

It is only when it became impossible to breathe that I had to examine it closer.

What I found shattered my illusions, but has ultimately brought me peace.

I Am Angry

That may not come as a shocker to most of you, but it about sums things up pretty well right now.

I am angry at much of the world -- everyone who has ever had babies, easily or otherwise, or who will in the future have babies, with or without huge costs to their marriage, their sanity, and their self-esteem.

I am angry at infertility -- that faceless entity that has stolen so much from me.

I am angry at my husband, and his inability to accept the reality of our situation. (He actually wanted to talk tonight about using his sperm and a known donor egg if this next IVF doesn't work -- because, even though that's way more expensive than d-iui, and there are no known egg quality issues, this can't be " all his fault." *)

I am angry at the System, and the bureaucracy, and all the red tape. I am angry that adoption has become a for-profit business that is trumpeted as the answer to all of our problems by people who will never have to consider all of the sacrifices we will be making if we ever do choose to walk down that road.

I am angry that, at 31 years old, I have spent a decade chasing the unattainable. I am angry that I may have "wasted" my most fertile years waiting for an opportunity that has already slipped out of my fingers.

I am angry that I have spent so very much of my soul on this process -- and still have nothing but emotional scars and a broken heart to show for it.

I am angry because I am grieving. I get that.

I am grieving the loss of the life I planned, and will never have. I am grieving the loss of the babies I created and carried and will never hold. I am grieving for my marriage, which has been battered and broken and patched up again too many times to count.

I am grieving for the person that I was, and will never be again.

No matter how this ends, the girl I was is gone. There is no way to escape that fact. I am forever, irreversibly, damaged. There has been too much pain, too much sorrow, too much bitterness and regret.

Sometimes it feels overwhelming, impossible to bear. And yet, somehow, I bear it. I wish I could say I bear it gracefully, but I do not. I bear it, but with a deep and unforgiving anger that bubbles just beneath the surface. I do not hide it well.

Some people are beautiful on the outside. Others are beautiful on the inside.

I am neither. **

Beneath my very average face, and all my extra-padding, is a heart that is twisted -- black and gnarly and wholly repulsive.

So, yeah.

I am angry.

Angry.

And broken.

And sad.





* I have never, ever, said that any of this is his fault, just for the record. Our diagnosis is male-factor infertility and recurrent miscarriage. There are many things at play here, some of which we understand and others we don't. I absolutely do not blame Mo -- but, if we are looking for solutions, we need to look at the things that we DO know are contributing to our inability to get/stay pregnant, don't you think?

** Yes, yes, I know. Learning to love myself, accept my flaws, blah, blah, blah. Some days I can manage that. Today? Utter failure.