The Fear of Knowledge

You can't trust everything, or can you?

Throughout my life, maintaining my Christian faith and evangelical identity was an exercise in constant self-censorship. When I was about six years old, I mentioned to my family that the movie The Land Before Time had inadequacies: Animals that existed during different geological periods were shown co-existing. I was really proud of this observation, but I was scolded: "There was no such thing as time periods. All the animals were created within seven days." I felt foolish. I had heard the Biblical creation story many times and I liked it, but I hadn't known that I was supposed to think it was really, factually true. I wasn't sure what to do about the fact that while most of the books I read said the earth was millions of years old, my family was telling me otherwise.

I learned to read with caution. Phrases like "6 billion years ago" or "the Pleistocene era" were taboo, so I skimmed over them. When issues of National Geographic came in, I avoided the articles about human evolution. I fast-forwarded the Rite of Spring segment in Disney's Fantasia. One time when I was about 9 years old, I had a clandestine peek at an encyclopedia article about evolution and was so convinced by the matter-of-fact way the idea was laid out, that I whispered to myself "Yes, evolution is true." Ashamed, I slammed the encyclopedia shut and said a prayer of apology to God for my momentary disbelief. I started to get increasingly worried that if I wasn't careful I would be brainwashed into believing evolution. I became more and more interested in creationist materials and read them any chance I got. My parents didn't overtly forbid me from reading about evolution-related topics, it was a self-driven censorship to a large extent, but they definitely encouraged the creationist materials and scoffed at evolution. I was homeschooled and all my schoolbooks were creationist, including the science books.

It's interesting to note that as I carefully dodged the evolutionary "conspiracy theory," I wasn't gaining a lick of healthy skepticism, it was done only out of fear of learning. I eagerly read, and believed, stories speculating about the existence of alien visitors, Bigfoot, and the Jersey Devil. And of course I loved all the creationist stories about possible modern-day dinosaur sightings. Anything that presented itself as conceivably factual was fair game, except for evolution or old-earth teachings.

Coming up short

When I got older and obtained access to the Internet, I decided to engage in some evolution-creationism debates and was flatly defeated. I was shaken up and disillusioned by this, and soon learned not to bring up creationism around thinking adults. In the meantime, I learned more about evolution and realized my initial childhood earnestness was correct: Evolution was a strong theory, there was no godless liberal conspiracy to silence the truth of creationism, and there was good reason to view old earth as actual fact. Even most Christians outside the U.S. found young-earth creationism silly. Gradually I stopped believing in creationism.

Even though I realized that my lack of knowledge about evolution was substantial (all those years of tuning out the "millions of years" had done its damage), I still felt theologically threatened by evolution and I didn't go out of my way to learn about it. Only now as an atheist is it something I want to examine more fully. I love animals and for the first time, I'm not afraid to learn everything I can. Questions that used to disgust or worry me as a creationist now seem fascinating: Why do humans seem predisposed to believe in gods? What were early hominids like compared to us? What kinds of human-like traits (like higher-level thinking) have non-human animals been shown to have?

Even though my faith was not destroyed by disbelief in creationism per se, my realization that carefully orchestrated self-censorship could not protect me from the truth was a raw wound. I began to wonder what other big questions I was shielding myself from. I had, with the help of a handful of creationist charlatans and my well-meaning but incorrect parents, locked my critical thinking and knowledge of the natural world in a box. Surely that was not the only box I was keeping myself in, I realized.

Theism starts to look suspicious

I warily eyed atheist books and Internet articles, reading some here and there but keeping them at arm's length for the most part, scared to death of having my worst doubts confirmed. I knew the anti-atheist scripts from all the Christian and creationist literature I had grown up with, but trusting them had been a bust and I was not about to leave my mind in their hands anymore. All I had to do was decide if I wanted to put my faith on the line and really and truly consider what the skeptics had to say.

My deconversion had already begun to happen by osmosis: finding out that feelings of God can be synthesized using an electromagnet, the realization that infinite punishment (hell) for finite crime is horrifically unjust, observing how closely my faith was tied to obvious logical fallacies. I learned that intercessory prayer makes no statistical difference in the outcome of hospital patients. The universe started to look suspiciously less like one that contained miracles and more like one where humans desperately wished it to be so. Amidst all these doubts, I couldn't shake the feeling of being trapped with religion. I was afraid of reading a convincing atheist quote or finding out some fact that would destroy my core beliefs. It was just like how I felt about creationism before I abandoned it. Deep inside I knew that a faith that's so fragile it can't stand up to an honest assessment is a worthless faith.

I didn't even need to read The God Delusion or God is Not Great to realize I was an atheist. Just the fact that I was afraid to was enough evidence for me. And since becoming an atheist, I have never felt happier about learning. There's no fact I need to be afraid of. I don't have the burden of the Christian agenda to support. The world is so much bigger outside the box and if I had known how freeing it would feel, I would have taken the leap much sooner. I can really and truly think.