From Fearful Catholic to Insolent Heretic

During the last couple of years, I have spent a lot time questioning, deconstructing, analyzing and attempting to understand how belief-systems work and operate. It has become an intellectual hobby of sorts. The reason for my fascination with the subject derives from the 180-degree transformation I underwent in terms of spiritual affiliation. From fearful Catholic to insolent heretic, this is how it happened:

I was brought up a Catholic through a half-hearted, culturally motivated, well intentioned attempt at indoctrination from my parents. They are both non-practicing cultural Catholics on paper, but sort of atheist/agnostic in “practice”. Out of that background (extremely common in a country continuously misrepresented as overwhelmingly Catholic); I was the only one out of three siblings to seriously buy into the religious dogma. My devotion started at around age nine. Genuinely anguished by everything I was told at catechism, I felt it was my duty to drag my family to church on Sunday. Attempts at evangelizing my nuclear family failed systematically, which only increased the anguish, the fear, and most harmfully, the guilt. I remember parading around with a shiny little cross around my neck, which worked wonders in three different ways: as an evil-proof amulet, as a sign of cultural belonging and most importantly, as a guilt-soothing reminder of my moral rectitude.

This situation must have seemed amusing to my parents as they compared their precociously religious elder son to their hard-core scientist daughter. Two years my junior, my sister was ultimately expelled from catechism. Her fearless and rebellious nature prevented her from following the golden rule of dogma: sit-down, shut-up, listen and believe. What she was thought in biology class at regular school diametrically opposed the tales forced down her throat by a priest on Monday afternoon. She was by no means your regular undisciplined, nasty, little troublemaker; it's just that to her young scientist mind, the talking snake and the virgin birth made absolutely no sense. And she wasn’t going to take it! Predictably, she got the quintessential dogmatic treatment: Out! My sister’s shenanigans might have cut my parent’s amusement short, but what must have turned it into serious anxiety was when I proudly announced to my mother I was considering the path of priesthood. I don’t recall my wording but I sure can see the horrified expression on her face. It showed something like: “Dammit, this went too far, we’ve created a monster!”

I honestly don’t remember how I broke out of the circle of self-imposed guilt and why I didn’t follow the Lord’s call, although I’m guessing that my mother’s horrified reaction to something that seemed so sanctified to me may have been the first step. Being the only hard-core believer in my close circle probably helped a lot, and I’m certain that the courage to think for oneself that comes along with maturity was also a determining factor. But regardless of how it happened, by age sixteen I proudly identified myself as a Deist, an idea I borrowed from Voltaire. The “simple” logic behind it goes as follows: “God created the Universe but is indifferent to its fate and never interferes in human matters”. The Deistic approach satisfies the “need” for a creator while it somehow justifies things like war, famine and sickness happening under the Almighty’s watch. It does not, however, clarify the mystery of the creator’s own origins…

It then took almost another decade for me to clear my eyes, shake myself awake from dogmatic numbness and finally face the blatant truth. Patiently led by my baby sister and authors like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris et al., I finally gathered the courage to admit that Voltaire’s God was either unreal, or a sadistic egomaniac at best. In any case, he was unworthy of my worship. The notion of a distant and cold God had been the last straw I could grasp at, while attempting to think by myself without letting Him down. It was a complicated feat in deed and I couldn’t have it both ways without being a cynic, a hypocrite, or both. The only answer left was as elegant as it is true: there is no God. Or like Nietzsche once said: “God is dead”.

Epicurus’ take on the matter is probably the most powerful nugget of theological wisdom I have ever come across: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”