Just before my baptism, I had an insatiable appetite for scientific knowledge. It was at that time in the fifth grade that I was learning about evolution, but once I was baptised (at the unusual age of nine) my focus turned entirely away from science and onto the Bible. I went to two Christian camps the next year, I read the Bible for hours every night and was disgruntled when Mum would tell me to go to sleep and turned my light off. Between the ages of ten and thirteen I don’t recall much involvement in either science or Christianity, but my religiosity became prominent once more when I was fourteen and attending a Baptist Church in the Brisbane suburb of Mansfield1. There I met one of the Church elders/deacons named Jock Buttress. He was an aged man and an editor of ‘The Answers Book’, a book published by the creationist/Intelligent Design organisation ‘Answers in Genesis’ founded, I believe, by Ken Ham, a prominent creationist and Biblical literalist. Jock introduced me to ‘Creation Magazine’ the monthly publication of AIG, a pseudoscientific journal of articles written to discredit Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, often using the same arguments as The Answers Book that have been long rebutted by actual scientists2.
It was through reading these magazines and books that I myself became a Biblical literalist, a position which dominated my worldview for six years. In the science class at school I refused to accept evolution as a scientific fact. I spurted the creationist motto: I didn’t come from a monkey!
I had a short period of Christian fundamentalism in the mid to late 2006 that involved me alienating my friends by not only being a Puritan, but by being a right arse to everyone around me.
It wasn’t until late 2010 and early 2011 that I actually came to accept evolution as truth. I began watching videos on YouTube about debates between creationists and ‘evolutionists’3. Time and again I saw the creationists fail to present arguments that were sufficient in establishing Intelligent Design as a plausible alternative to evolution by natural selection. This was difficult for me to handle. As I watched more videos and learned more about what evolution really is (not what creationists misconstrue it to be) I slowly became convinced that I had been wrong all along. It was then that I began to question my faith as evolution became an increasingly solid fact in my mind. I also had to cope with what evolution meant for the Bible. If the theory of evolution was to be taken seriously then it was unlikely that Adam and Eve were literal humans4. And if that were so then the fall most likely never occurred, which meant mankind was no born in sin and had no need for a saviour, thus making Jesus' death on the cross void and invalid (this would later become one of my key tenets of atheism). The Bible began to fall apart before my eyes and I lost my faith very quickly.
I held on to title of Christian, not wanting to let it go. But soon I began to call myself a naturalist, one who believes in the natural world as all there is and the natural sciences as sufficient to explain the questions of life. I soon started writing brief articles about naturalism, evolution and atheism, all of which can be found in the appendices.
I came to believe that if evolution had the effect of nullifying the Gospel then the Bible wasn't true and God didn't exist (the Abrahamic God at least). It was then that I began to call myself an atheist. I was angry about having been guilt tripped by a religion that was contrary to the physical evidence and began my own channel on YouTube to combat the irrationality of faith. All of the videos I uploaded were adapted from my written articles.
2The actual scientists argument goes like this – creationists claim that scientists have a monopoly on scientific education (called scientism) so that they are the only people who are allowed to speak on scientific matters. This claim is false. The reality of the matter is that anyone can speak on science, as we see with AIG and other creationist organisations, but that scientists are the only authorities on scientific matters because they actually have an education in science and know what they are talking about! Unlike creationists, most of whom do not have a university education in the sciences and therefore cannot be considered authorities and should not be listened to if you want to know accurate scientific facts.
3Which is a misnomer, because scientists who study evolution are no more ‘evolutionists’ than those who study the theory of gravity are ‘gravitationalists’. The terms are ‘biologist’ and ‘physicist’.
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