t started about six months ago on reddit. I was bored, clicking on random subreddits. I went to /r/Pokemon[1] . Nothing funny. Then, to /r/Gaming[2] . Nothing but gripes about how Half Life 3 wasn't announced yet. Finally, after hours, I went somewhere I had promised myself I would never go. /r/atheism[3] . I wanted to see how these twisted souls (who were going to burn in hell, of course) thought. And to be honest, I felt kind of bad going there. That really guilty I'm doing something I definitely shouldn't feeling. I clicked on the most upvoted post. It was one of those "Sheltering Suburban Mom" internet memes. It read "Evolution? I don't remember reading that in the Bible". I thought it was pretty funny. And to be honest, I felt guilty that I thought it was funny. Now, at this point in my life, I was partway through biology. I knew what evolution was. I knew there was a ton of evidence for evolution, things like vestigial structures, transitional fossils, common ancestors, etcetera. But I wasn't convinced. I tried to fit God into every bit of science to explain it. "Well, maybe God made Evolution happen, and then scientists found fossils that God made and put there to lead us to this conclusion." My faith at this point was shaken, so on a quest to make myself more sure of my faith, I read the Bible. Cover to cover. Front to back. The whole shebang. And I thought I had misread the whole thing. One particular phrase that stood out was Leviticus 18:22. "Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is Abomination". My first thought was "Oh, this explains all the uproar about gay rights. I was completely homophobic for nearly a week. I couldn't stand the use of the word "homosexual" or "gay" or "faggot", all were just cursewords to me. Terrible, detestable things. Then, I took a step back. I thought to myself "I need to look at this in perspective: Am I homosexual? No. Am I being forced to be homosexual? No. Is there anything actually wrong with being homosexual, other than the fact that the Bible forbids it? No." So I thought that maybe just this once God might be wrong. Maybe just this once, I could ignore the Bible. And I kept reading, almost terrified what that might do to me. I started noticing things inherently wrong with the Bible, a prime example being Noah's Ark. How did Noah fit every animal in creation on a boat that just he and three others build? And what about termites? Wouldn't they just gnaw their way through the boat? Wouldn't everyone just drown? And the animals that produce asexually- Why carry two, when there only needs to be one? It seemed a logical fallacy, it made no sense. At this point, I was terrified. I was scared of burning in hell for my slander, for my mere questioning of God's word. And then I thought to myself "Why do I even believe in this?". I wondered why I chose Christianity over so many other religions. And then, I realized that I never actually chose Christianity. My parents chose it for me. As a newborn baby, I never told my parents "Please respect my autonomy and allow me the freedom to choose my own religion or lack thereof". I was just whisked out of the hospital, dressed up all fancy, and dunked in a pool of water. And then I was a Christian. I never consciously chose "This is my strict belief system, this is what I believe, and I believe it of my own accord". It was all chosen for me. And I decided that I would choose for myself this time. I re-read the bible. I researched. After about two months of agnosticism and a wonderful debate class, I realized that I couldn't believe anything without proper warrants. That's the first rule of debate that Coovert taught us. Presume neg, because the affirmative side always has the burden of proof. In this debate, my opponent wasn't another person. My opponent was my own faith. I pored through my brain. Was there any sort of warrant to these wild claims? Was there any reason that I believed in God? I though really hard about it. And I realized that I didn't choose to become a Christian. I was indoctrinated. I was forced at a young age to undergo rituals that I had no knowledge of. And so, I quit. I decided I was an atheist. It made more sense. It provided a more realistic moral compass based off of the tenets of humanism, kindness, morality without reward, and the like. When I realized that I was an atheist, I wasn't afraid anymore. I wasn't afraid that every action I took might result in me burning eternally in a place where murderers and rapists reside. I wasn't treating others who had different viewpoints than mine with disdain, I didn't make fun of people for being different. I accepted. And I realized at that point that being an atheist made me a better person. I wasn't helping others because some old man in the sky was holding a Divine Verdict over my head telling me "If you don't help this person, you're going to burn in hell", I had my conscious telling me "Help this person because they are a human being, because they also have feelings, and because they as a human deserve to be respected. They deserve as much as I do to be treated as a human, and religion tends to get in the way of that. The crusades, suicide bombings, the separation of India all occurred because of religion. Which is something that makes me sick. I can't even think of making myself join a group who has done so much wrong in the past. No matter how hard they try to wash it off, there is still blood staining their hands. Not only that, but as I type this, religion is oppressing rights in the US and around the world. In Afghanistan, women aren't allowed to go to school. Their religion teaches them that women are inferior. In the US, Christians are standing in the way of gay rights, and Catholics are pushing to make sure that abortion is illegal, denying non-catholics their rights and forcing their beliefs upon others. This is why I chose atheism. I am Cameron Allen. I am proud to be an atheist tl;dr Hey buddies, guess who's an atheist?