Baptism of Death

I believe I can credit this radical change of self to religion, or more specifically atheism. The alteration of my religious beliefs have been the most dramatic and challenging. I spent some time over a month ago reading a book by Richard Dawkins called "The God Delusion." The book gave me power to challenge my beliefs in God and successfully destroyed twenty-three years of built up belief in the existence of a God. So successful was it that I went towards agnosticism.

Yet I couldn't go further. Not yet. I did not want to allow one book to change everything in my life. I wanted to return to theism but more carefully. I wanted to seek a belief in God. The wonderful thing about that was that my old beliefs towards God were shed. I had become new in my view of religion, morality, and beliefs.

Perhaps that strongest change in my internal morality compass was that being gay and believing in God are no longer intertwined. I don't see having a belief in God as conflicting with my desire to find companionship. I feel free at last and that is an amazing thing.

I don't know if there is a God. I don't know if such a Being has ever existed in all my life and all the eons before and after me. I want to know now but I want to better understand that belief and explore the world before me. I am, at last, a creature born anew in religion. Freed from the previous views on God and morality. I feel like I can stand up straight for the first time in my life. I have this sense of inner peace that I can at last seek out the questions I have long held.

So atheism is to thank for this theistic-leaning agnosticism. It killed the God I had built up in my mind and gave me the key to challenging everything I had ever believed. Now I want to know the truth. I have this thirst to know if there is a God.

And for once in my religious life I feel 100% confident that I am doing the right thing.

I am happy and free of guilt for the first time in a long time.