My name is Matt and I’m a skeptic living in the southern United States. I come from an evangelical Christian family and I’m the first in my family to completely reject religion.
I have a lovely wife who is also my best friend, and we’re the proud parents of two boys (5 and 3 years old). I work from home throughout the day whenever I can find time between taking care of my children and doing chores around the house. You see, I’m also a stay-at-home dad.
Because I spend so much time alone, I’ve been feeling a bit isolated. I’m hoping this blog will be a way to connect with others about the many issues that interest me. (Plus I think my wife is getting tired of me talking her ears off.)
After high school, I went through an extremely religious phase. I would spend at least an hour a day in prayer, another hour reading the Bible, and another hour in worship (singing praise songs during my drive to and from work). The rest of my spare time was for reading Christian books or attending church (Sunday school, worship services, Bible study, prayer meetings, outreach, and so forth). I’ll write more about this phase in future posts.
The first crack in my shell of faith appeared when I read Atlas Shrugged. It took me about two years to go from enthusiastic believer to disillusioned non-believer. I’ll explain this process in future posts, as well. When I first told my family I was no longer a Christian, I identified as agnostic. Later, I embraced the term atheist (specifically, agnostic atheist).
I also think of myself as a humanist, but that mainly refers to my morality and philosophy of life, and there are many other topics I would like to blog about (science, conspiracies, social issues, etc.) so I decided the best way to refer to myself on this blog is as a “skeptic.”
I could have called myself the Southern Atheist, but I’m a skeptic first and an atheist second. My atheism is the result of my skepticism. If in the future there is sufficient evidence for God’s existence, I will stop being an atheist, but I will still be a skeptic.
Whatever the idea is, I’m not going to buy into it until I see sufficient evidence. I’ve made the mistake of not doing that way too many times. Here are just a few things I used to believe:
- 9/11 was an inside job.
- Chemtrails are poisoning us all.
- Climate change is a hoax.
- Evolution is “just a theory.”
- The “New World Order” controls everything.
- Vaccines cause autism.
- Y2K will be the end of the world as we know it.
There are many others, but these are the main ones. I fell for most of these even after I quit believing in god because I didn’t understand that I was putting faith in these conspiracy theories the same way I had been putting faith in religion.
But a few years ago, something changed. I gained a son and lost a father within 7 months of each other. These events got me thinking about the big picture–things like the origin of the universe, the meaning of life, and the key to happiness. I reexamined my reasons for abandoning religion and realized my biggest problem is that it requires faith, and faith requires you to believe extraordinary claims with little or no evidence. I couldn’t make myself believe in god again even if I wanted to. It would be like trying to convince myself that Santa Claus is real.
My interest in these things led to the discovery of skepticism. This concept appealed to me because I had already figured out how to think this way when it came to religion. But then I noticed something: Most skeptics don’t believe 9/11 was an inside job, or that climate change is a hoax, or that the New World Order exists and wants to enslave humanity. This really blew my mind because I was absolutely certain of these things. How could skeptics be so right about religion and so wrong about these conspiracies? Slowly but surely, I began to realize that many of my non-religious beliefs also had very little evidence to back them up.
Then one day I had an idea: Why not search YouTube for “9/11 conspiracies debunked”? In the past, I had avoided articles and videos like that because I already “knew” they were wrong. But this time I thought, “What do I have to be afraid of?” I watched one, then another, then another. An hour later, I no longer believed 9/11 was an inside job. This was very disorienting. If I was wrong about something I had been so certain of, what else was I wrong about? I eagerly started examining other viewpoints I had never really considered.
At this point, I’ve figured out where I stand on all the most common ideas and conspiracies and I look forward to writing about them. I should point out that I may change my mind if I learn new information (although in the case of self-contradictory fairy tales and scientific theories that have mountains of data to back them up, that is extremely unlikely). For many issues, my stance is simply, “I don’t know.” And I’m okay with that. No one can be an expert on everything, so the honest thing is to admit what you don’t know rather than have an uninformed opinion about it.
The topic I’ll be blogging about the most is Christianity. As I explain in the post, Why I Stopped Believing In God, Christianity had a huge impact on my life–in a bad way. And getting over it was a difficult, though ultimately liberating, process.
Some people say that just because I lost my faith doesn’t mean I should try to shake other people’s faith. I disagree. As I explain in the post, Why I Care About Things I Don’t Believe, I’m convinced that Christianity (and all religion, for that matter) is literally making the world a worse place and holding humanity back. I’m not saying the world wouldn’t have problems if there were no religion, but I’m convinced there wouldn’t be near as many.
Keep in mind that most of my posts are aimed at evangelical Christians, so before you leave a comment saying “you’re misinterpreting the Bible” or “not all Christians believe that,” remember, I’m not necessarily addressing your particular denomination. In fact, most of my posts are written with my Southern Baptist relatives in mind.
Thanks for reading this! I hope my blog helps and inspires you.
What’s good is that i am not only alone who quit trusting in “God” .Because what happen with baloon if you will fill it with air??? At and it will explode.. Same here… My “parents” (Few foster families, and my real mom) overloaded my brain with religions.. And i started to think.. And.. If there is a “Jesus” who died for my sins, then my sins are only my and i won’t anyone take ’em from me.
Hebrews 11:6, I’m going to pray for much adversity to come on you. You need a good slap side the head to wake up and see what’s going on, idiot. God is gentleman and won’t force himself on you. I think you’ve had life a little too easy. Maybe you need to come face to face with evil for a while.
Not sure if anyone posted this yet but Mike Winger made a refutation video for Matt’s 7 reasons the bible isn’t inspired. https://www.youtube.com/live/rdZdEReV3kQ?feature=share
I did not grow up a Christian, at all, quite the opposite actually. I spent much time ridiculing Christians up until not too long ago.
I wanted to learn more to understand the topic better and be more educated, and I was shocked to learn everything I thought was true that regularly makes the rounds in the atheist world, is false, twisted and misrepresents Christianity. Turns out not I nor they knew anything about Christianity at all. To be honest I was embarrassed.
And a little annoyed about how many Christians out there are equally uneducated and naive about their own faith – they have no clue how to defend it, and the majority of them believe because they grew up in the faith and just keep following it as if it were family tradition, and see a lot of it as wise advice but don’t really believe the bible is true. In fact, many haven’t even read the bible. Especially Catholics. Speaking of which, that’s quite different from Protestant Christianity and shouldn’t be confused as the same thing.
It caused me to continue to learn more, and find where Christianity is actually, scientifically disproven and refuted. I was more shocked to learn, it hasn’t been done. It actually has not been disproven. Along my search I found many interesting stories from people’s personal lives, but more importantly I kept seeing more academic support but I ignored it for a long while, as I was still looking for proof it was actually disproven. Proven false.
So at that point, at best, I said to myself, fine, there’s no proof it’s NOT TRUE, but there can’t be any evidence it’s true right? Whatever I was coming across before, I wasn’t willing to look at. But at that point I was. I went back to my investigation to examine what is the support for the bible being true.
I won’t share the rest of the story but today these are a list of things I think are fascinating and must be seen. It’s a short list.
For anyone interested in learning fascinating evidence:
– The Fabric of Time https://tubitv.com/movies/506063/the-fabric-of-time
– Allen Parr’s The Beat, https://youtu.be/ZyyFnEekiE4
– The Secrets of the Bible Codes Revealed https://youtu.be/CzYxlXAvFEI where you will see PROOF that The bible is for real and has predicted future events in crazy detail.
– J. Warner Wallace an LA county Homocide detective https://youtu.be/E4uRWk06Wo0 and https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=j.+warner+wallace&sp=CAM%253D
– Lee Strobel, Dr, Gary Habermas and Dr. Hugh Ross.
– All discoveries of archeology pertaining to the bible – aka Biblical Archeology. Evidence is uncovered regularly.
These 4 suggestions are some of my favourite things. Enjoy them, they are most interesting. Copy and save this note to share with others. Everyone, atheist or not should take the time to look at real evidence.
There’s a reason that enemies of God want to take over Israel, level it and dig up the ground to build tall buildings – that’s where all the artifacts are, and below that, mineral rich resources. There are trillionaires around the world who would have to give up their lifestyle of snorting drugs off of minor victims of sex trafficking and getting away with murder, if it was discovered that the bible is real. They would have to actually start doing good things with their lives and riches. The only institution that makes money from the idea of tithing within Christianity is the institution of the Roman Catholic Church in the Vatican and that doesn’t even represent most Catholics let alone the adamant protestants who want nothing to do with the RCC at all. Again, there are bad people in good churches and good people in bad churches. Got nothing to do with God. The richest most powerful people in the world have the biggest incentive in the world to suppress Christianity and sponsor atheism. Then they can keep their immoral business practices and stay trillionaires. That’s how it works.
Climate change is a hoax.
There has always been climate change, the question should be is AGW a hoax and the answer to that too is no. In fact it is the biggest calamity facing humans.
Cry me a sob story Matt!!! You pampered little wuss. The issue is not with God, it’s with you. Your problem is you’ve had it too easy and now you’re throwing a hissy fit. You need a spiritual punch in the face!!!
I think you’re a troll and you’re doing it wrong. At best, you’re lost and you’re misrepresenting what being a Christian is. Christians who actually try to be good and decent Christians control their emotions and don’t lash out like a someone having a toddler tantrum.
Not a single Christian with a heart would every say such things to anyone. If you’re trolling, try harder, you’re transparent. Go research how an actual bible believing church going christian would behave. Actors often go undercover to learn their craft. Like undercover boss. Why don’t you go do that? Go to church regularly, read the bible, listen to sermons like from Mike Winger on YouTube. Study this fascinating specimen – the Christian!
Matt’s experience is legitimate his life story is real and requires compassion and face to face discussion and sharing with a genuine aim for dialogue.
This is a bit of a test to see if you only post negative comments.
I really do feel for you. Have you noticed a pattern in your life? Most of the Christians I know didn’t fall for “chem trails” or “911 conspiracies” or “vaccines cause autism” But you fell for all the classic blunders modern internet conspiracies. Now you have just replaced those with a new one. A well rounded Christian faith makes you healthy in mind. For someone who claims to have studied the Bible and hour a day you are simply wrong on some of the most mundane facts concerning the Bible. From some of you other articles you just simply have a very shallow understanding of Biblical concepts. I encourage you to be skeptical about your skepticism. I know the Bible is extremely challenging to the modern moral code but when you attack at least try to be fair. Come at it from a better angle than mere pop-culture atheism. Peace.
Hi Matt, not sure if you are still blogging, I just found your website. I have a very similar story, would love to chat with you.