Jeffrey Nordstrom: Openly Secular

I'm not a very confrontational person and I've kept pretty quiet about faith-stuff, all in all, for the last few years. My online presence is obviously critical of religion, and I've cultivated a digital sympathy for various atheist-folks and ideas, but I've always avoided saying anything about it myself. As a teacher, I don't want to cause an unneeded ruckus, and I really don't think "what I have to say" is any different or more articulate than anybody else out in cyberspace.

However, yesterday I broke my own general rule and posted a comparatively aggressive video to Twitter:

Wherein I get uncharacteristically cheeky towards my apparent #passiveaggressive, absent friend. #bibletract pic.twitter.com/Yz9gOPDUqF

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jeffnords) January 30, 2016

Because while I was shopping, I found this tract:

This is one of the most passive-aggressive, entitled, assholish #bibletracts I've ever seen. #bibletract pic.twitter.com/srsLXikSiM

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jeffnords) January 30, 2016

And, to make it a little personal, I'd received similar sentiments from a caring, Christian family member, just days before.

I'm not going to air dirty, personal laundry; nobody needs to be involved in my journey from faith to reason. But I might as well make a couple statements about myself here.

At this point in my life, I fit the characteristics of an atheist. I do not believe there is a "spirit world," a soul, an afterlife, or any sort of supernatural order to the world. The evidence simply does not affirm it. Every religion's argument makes all the other religions' counter-arguments moot. What's unfalsifiable can be ignored. I value reason and rationality in ethical and philosophical situations. Religion, whatever label or type, by definition skips a few steps of logic. I see no need to cater to choose "agnostic" or "humanist" as labels in this context; they each have their place. But when it comes to the supernatural world: I'm an atheist.

I could write a big blog entry about it, but I've written about it so recently that I don't feel like writing it all again. So, as I wrote in my letter to this concerned family member,

My “deconversion,” whatever you might call it, had nothing to do with bad experiences with Christians or people in the church. My experiences in the church were generally positive, and any negative experiences were chalked up to human nature. So I don’t blame anybody for any of it. [I don't fault anybody for this]. I don’t think it’s a “fault” at all.

Nor did I adjust by beliefs due to concerns about “what Jesus would do” or theological issues. I always felt that faith should reflect reality and the other way around, that faith and the natural world should have a seamless interaction, that one should always complement the other. If the two confirmed each other, I was OK with it; if there was a disagreement, I’d have to seek out answers and dig deeper.

Instead, my movement out of Christianity was simply an extension of my skepticism and love of learning. [As a teenager and young adult,] I spent hundreds of] hours I spent reading history books and information books as I grew up; I spent hours upon hours reading at home, at the library, and at school. All that time, I synthesized history, science, and philosophy. As I learned more about the history of religions, psychology, sociology, and other disciplines, I came to see that most religions used the same systems to propagate themselves. It became clear to me that no faiths have any superiority over any others, that no faith had a better corner on truth than another. Years of apologetics taught me that it was very important to try to believe the “right” thing to the best of my ability; in my search for right beliefs, no faiths or Christian doctrines could trump skepticism and due process. As I learned more through skeptical inquiry, religious beliefs became more untenable. When I finally admitted that I had “lost my faith” back in 2011 or so (it was a long, gradual process), things became much clearer.

More than anything else, to me the world makes far more sense without religious beliefs. Throwing religious beliefs into the mix made so many ideas so much more messy and discouraging. Religious beliefs often solved problems they themselves created. I had to abandon as much circular reasoning as possible to make sense of the world, and I did. I am far more at peace with the world when I can say “I don’t know” to things I don’t know, instead of trying to fill the space with an unfounded faith-based answer. My love of learning makes me more at peace with “I don’t know” than “It must have something to do with God.”

So, [to reiterate], this is all just an extension of my natural thinking. Over time, as I learned more, faith just didn’t fit. And I have to admit that I’m much happier now, especially since I know I can take responsibility for my own decisions and cannot place any responsibility upon a deity who defies confirmation. I prefer to take responsibility for my own thinking and decisions and am much happier for it.

[…]

Have I made some bad decisions? Yes. Have some things not worked out in my favor? Yes. Have I suffered from some things out of my control? Yes. But I prefer to turn to reason and rationality to find answers and help me along my way. And there are some days where I am very sad, but that has nothing to do with a lack of faith or belief in a higher power. Instead, it’s a matter of personal responsibilty.

So there. It's public. I have a place to point people if they ask. Not that anybody has, really. Only one friend ever asked about what seemed to be happening to my faith over that time; to everybody else, well, my own "walk," as the faith-filled like to call it, is none of their business or concern.

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P.S. I'm going to keep that tract nearby because I think it's hilarious and it deserves a YouTube video or something. Perhaps once this paper is written, I'll have time to create things for myself again. In the meantime, my most recent video on YouTube has become by far my most-viewed video. Neat.