As a recent de-convert of a few months, let me tell you my story.About two years ago, while going through a spiritual high in my life, I picked up a book entitled “Essential Spirituality” by Roger Walsh. Before that, I was
overweight, aging (45 at the time) and “spinning my wheels” personally while my professional and family life were going great. I felt there had to be more to life than what I was experiencing, and a few weeks after that fateful Tuesday of morning of September 11, 2001, I decided that I had to find out more about the meaning of my life.I joined a weight loss group in Toronto (http://www.weightloss4men.com) and was getting my life together, when I felt a desire to join a Catholic men’s charitable organization – the Knights of Columbus. Up to that time, I had been a conscientious Roman Catholic of Indian origin having been brought up in the faith by a devout mother and a religiously bitter father, who had left the Jesuit’s seminary out of disgust for their demands of blind obedience. (Goa was one of the Portuguese conquests that saw a large number of converts from Hinduism when Christianity was introduced several hundred years ago. It is the resting place of the body of St. Francis Xavier.)
Through my interaction with the Knights, I was involved with the Papal visit to Toronto during the World Youth Day celebrations and felt that I could get no closer to Heaven than being in the presence of the Pope. However, I was also exposed to the “business of the church” – I had been a member of the building committee for a new Roman Catholic church in
Mississauga and was involved with fund-raising through the Knights which gave me a different perspective on the internal workings of the Church. At the same time, I was doing other reading on evolution and having a professional interest in animals (I am a veterinarian) and their welfare (I decided to become a vegetarian for health reasons and saw the other side of the their plight as a reformed meat-eater). I came to the conclusion that we are not much different from them except for the size and complexity of our brains, which allow us to think abstract thoughts and create a god for ourselves.That was the beginning of a soul-searching journey which resulted in my publicly acknowledging that I had no interest in an external, omnipotent, power that was just a figment of our imaginations. I was more interested in following an ethical life. Roger Walsh taught me how I could do this without having to believe in anything other than the here and now. His book contains exercises to enhance the practices of seven main virtues that have been the basic tenets of all the world’s great religions. However, over time, the organized religions have lost that value between the rituals and dogma and no longer help their adherents see “the light.”The more I read about other organizations like the humanists, skeptics and atheists, the more I am convinced that I am on the right path this time.
This is a story by someone who was brought up Christian. (Stage 2 - See my article “Religious Development for Dummies.”) But then he seems to have been disillusioned when he was exposed to the “business of the church.” Over time you can see that he grew out of that stance – he was looking for a more authentic, more ethical belief system. All it took for him to convert to Stage 3 - was a logical presentation in Roger Walsh’s book. Now he is more interested in integrity and ethics. He no longer needs a supreme being to organize his life.
MPJ said,
July 29, 2007 at 10:39 pm
This is a story by someone who was brought up Christian. (Stage 2 - See my article “Religious Development for Dummies.”) But then he seems to have been disillusioned when he was exposed to the “business of the church.” Over time you can see that he grew out of that stance – he was looking for a more authentic, more ethical belief system. All it took for him to convert to Stage 3 - was a logical presentation in Roger Walsh’s book. Now he is more interested in integrity and ethics. He no longer needs a supreme being to organize his life.