I “de-converted” to use Seth Andrews’ phrase (whose book I devoured, and to whom I wrote) in March of 2019. But de-converting is not as simple as just owning up to the fact that you don’t believe in God. I think most people assume the opposite of believing in God is some kind of satanism. But atheism is the rejection of belief in the supernatural, which would include Satan!
More than that, accepting that you are an atheist means losing the vague “feel good,” one might even argue pseudo-secular, notions that “everything will be okay” and “everything happens for a reason,” because if there are no supernatural beings, there is nothing to ensure an okay outcome over a bad one and nothing directing events to some known or unknown end we might call an actualized reason. The key is, there is nothing. It’s easy to let go of the miracle of the loaves and the fishes because it’s just a story, but it’s much harder to accept the reality that there will be no justice apart from our own efforts, not in this life (karma) or the next (heaven/hell).
I knew I had successfully exorcised any magical thinking I might have been prone to when I realized I was no longer afraid of the number thirteen. For as long as I could remember, I suffered from triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number thirteen).
Some believe this superstition dates back to the Last Supper, where the twelve apostles, and Jesus makes thirteen, gathered the day before the crucifixion. Things went downhill pretty fast after dinner. Others link it to the fall of the Byzantine Empire, when Constantinople (Istanbul today) was captured by Sultan Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire on May 29, 1453; while the day of the month, and the month itself, are not a cause for concern, adding the digits of the year 1453 together results in the number 13!
I had triskaidekaphobia so bad, that if I saved a document to my hard drive, and it was written with a timestamp of 1:48 pm into the folder, I would begin to hyperventilate and completely lose my marbles for the next twelve minutes:
- 1:48 is 1+4+8 = 13, so the file will become corrupt and unrecoverable, and I will be forced to endure something horrible, like wearing Crocs, probably pink
- 1:49 technically equals 14, but the 4 and the 9 equal 13, so the file will become corrupt and unrecoverable, and, you guessed it, pink Crocs
- 1:50 is 1+5+0 = 6, so all is well! No Crocs
I would then re-save it at 1:50, realize that if you use a 24-hour clock, that would make it 13:50, and spend the next ten minutes worrying until the clock struck 2:00 (14:00), at which point I would re-save it with its new timestamp.
No really. I know it’s batcrap crazy, but the point of irrational fears is that they are, in fact, irrational.
This kind of thing, all centered around the number thirteen, used to paralyze me. However, I reasoned that if something bad was going to happen, beyond random bad luck, it had to have an agent – a cause – invisible and working behind the scenes, waiting for me to slip up and do something that totaled 13, and that no supernatural entities meant no god, but it also meant no devil, no angels, no demons, and no, let’s call them “ogres” in charge of punishing offenses involving the number thirteen with horrible footwear. Coming to this realization, I was freed from the shackles of superstition.
When I think, now, of all the times I bought a pack of gum when checking out at the grocery store once I’d realized I had exactly 13 items in my basket, it makes me smile. I don’t even chew gum!