From Questioning to Atheism

Personal photo of St. Peter's (Rome, Italy)

            My first real doubts about the existence of God came about through a Breitbach philosophy courses titled “Belief, Unbelief, and the Good Life.”  In this course, I was challenged to read and dissect the writings of historically significant atheists such as Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud.  This was the first time I had truly practiced the idea of reflective thinking in my undergraduate education.  The claims that these writers were making against Catholicism and religion constantly haunted me.  Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity was the most thought provoking piece I encountered due to his belief that God is merely a human projection of the perfection of Man.  I simply did not have what I consider to be logical counterarguments against the claims these writers were making.  Still, I placed pressure on myself to write the assignments as if I remained firmly rooted in Catholic doctrinism over fear of consequences within the Breitbach program.  In retrospect, this was a childish fear because Fr. Wathier and my classmates have been extremely supportive of alternative viewpoints.  While this course was likely designed to strengthen our faith in God, it caused me to seriously question everything I had previously believed in.

            These feelings were not warmly welcomed by me at the beginning.  I imposed an incredible amount of pressure on myself to get rid of any thoughts of disbelief because I thought it would be socially unacceptable to be an atheist.  For this reason, I placed a great deal of importance on my J-term trip to Italy that dealt with studying the origins of the Catholic Church.  I viewed this trip as an opportunity to reignite my passion for religion.  What I really experienced was just the opposite.  In Rome, I was surrounded by what I believe to be the unnecessary extravagance of the Catholic Church and the secular nature of society in allegedly one of the holiest places in the world.  Surprisingly, the location that had the biggest impact on me was Assisi.  This is because of the simplicity that the town exuded and the surrounding beauty of the rolling hills.  It was here, with the help of meditation, that I began to realize that living without God would not be as negative as I had previously thought. My strict set or morals would not deteriorate just because I did not believe in God.  I will forever have a strong emotional attachment to the little town of Assisi due to the personal growth I experienced there.

View of countryside near Assisi, Italy.  This spot was allegedly a favorite location of St. Francis of Assisi.

            Around this same time period, I had begun performing research under the cell biologist Dr. Kate Cooper.  I initially viewed this experience as little more than a resume builder for medical school.  The first couple of months were incredibly difficult because I had to think critically about how to overcome obstacles I encountered instead of just relying on memorized facts to achieve success.  However, I started to gain a great deal of satisfaction from performing scientific research due to the difficulty of the work.  I began to seriously consider continuing conducting research during my career as a physician because of the joy it brought me.

            My research also caused me to think more about the contradictions between science and religion.  The miracles and exciting stories that many religions rely on completely fall apart when looked at from a scientific point of view.  These stories came about during a time when science was in a drastically primitive state compared to today, and people did not have the knowledge to logically explain why they happened.  An easy answer to any question was to place it squarely on the shoulders of God.  Also, the historical evidence behind many of these events is sorely lacking.  Choosing to assign the unknown to God is simply poor science.  I began to realize that there really is no middle ground.  One must choose to follow either the school of thought of religion or science, and the answer was clear for me.  Many people continually look to the complicated nature of life as supporting evidence for a higher being, but I believe everything could have, and likely did, come about through chance and evolution.