My Personal Experience Of Religion

This is a favorite topic as I have fairly strong opinions. The truth of the matter is that there wasn't as much philosophy behind my conversion to fundamentalist Christianity as there was to my rejection of it. I will write separately of the specifics of why I reject the tenets of all religion.

In standard three, the then (1975) South African equivalent of fifth grade, I got my first introduction to science by reading "The Wonderful Story of How You Were Born." So much for the 'we found you under a cabbage leaf' story. (And if you'll indulge a little humor here: Young Jimmy asked his mother where babies came from. She replied, "Why, honey, the stork brings them." "I know that," replied Timmy, "but who screws the stork?") From there, my curiosity went from strength to strength. Electricity, atoms, chemical reactions, biology, mathematics, etc. just amazed me. I think it was in the eighth grade that I first heard about Darwin and his wonderful tale of how we evolved from an organic soup to the incredible beings we now are. I recall being absolutely astounded.

I don't remember when I was first introduced to religion. As far as I know, religion was always a part of our family. In school, we learned a little about each of the major religions, namely Hinduism, Christianity and Islam whenever some or other celebration in each came around. My great grandmother was Irish Catholic, so my mom was raised Catholic. However, in typical female protocol of the time, she followed my dad's Hindu faith after marrying him. We were raised Hindu but our devotion to it could at best be described as ritualistic. None of us, including my parents, understood much, if any, of it. As is customary with South African Hindus, we never ate beef or pork. On Mondays, we abstained from meat and prayed together as a family when my parents got back from work. We used to gather before a little clay lamp and incense that we'd lit, clasp our hands together and with eyes closed, sing a few Hindu hymns before praying. The rule was that aside from Mondays when we gathered collectively, someone had to light the lamp daily and say a few prayers. First it was my elder sister whose job it was but, as we grew older and she got more busy with schoolwork, the duty fell to me. I hated it, but felt obliged--scared even--to not miss a day. My conscience didn't convict me strongly enough as I'd often open my eyes during the prayer to see if anything extraordinary was going on. Sometimes my mom or dad would catch me and reprimand me. It wasn't long before I started to question how they knew I had my eyes open if theirs should have been shut at the time. I was beginning to challenge the legitimacy of superstition and the effectiveness of prayer (I would discover later that a Christian argument was that it wasn't really prayer unless it was to the Christian God). If it was improper for me to have my eyes open during prayer, were not my parents risking some calamity by watching me during the ritual? Then I began wondering whether my parents were indeed subject to the same rules and punishment as I or whether they were merely using religion to scare me into behaving the way they wanted me to. The connection between this control tactic and the explanation for how self-appointed messengers of God founded religion to control people had not occurred to me at the time. It was at this time that the beginning seeds of doubt and rebellion were being sown.

As I grew older, I started to become less superstitious about the whole thing. In fact, on Mondays, I would dare to eat the potatoes in leftover meat dishes partly because I wanted to see if any great calamity would befall me and partly because they tasted so much better than those in vegetarian dishes. No ill befell me as a consequence of my dietary rebellion (however, Hindus may argue that the consequence is yet to be realised when I am re-incarnated into a lesser being). When spotted by my older sister (I dared not chance such sacrilege in front of my parents for fear of a sound thrashing), I would argue that potatoes were veggies so technically, I hadn't broken any rules. By-and-by and, not a moment too soon, the lamp-lighting duty fell to my younger sister. As I grew older, I prayed less and less, though on dark stormy nights when my sisters and I were scared out of our wits, we would agree that a little prayer might help. And it often did set our minds at ease.

By the time I reached the age of thirteen, I was no longer required to pray in those family gatherings. Although my parents would make sure that I did if I was around, it was no big deal if I missed a day or two due to sport or some such. After the eighth grade and my decidedly scientific orientation, I point-blank refused to participate in any religious activity. None of it made sense, I argued with my parents, and I ought not be forced to do something that I didn't believe in. As much as they would have preferred I adhere to some culture, I think they quite liked my independent thinking. In fact, I noticed that they too were becoming less strict in their own religious practice. Ironically, there would be a complete reversal of circumstances some 12 years later when, at the age of 28, I lived briefly with them after returning to SA from the US. My parents demanded that, whilst living under their roof, I attend church where they were ministers, in no small part in the hope that the Holy Spirit would bring me around but certainly in great part to avoid the hypocrisy of their own progeny languishing at home on a Sunday whilst they were compelling their flock to drag their families to listen to their pearls of wisdom. The hypocrisy cut both ways, I contended as, roof notwithstanding, I wouldn't be caught dead being untrue to my better knowledge so that they could save face. I got the sense that they were prepared to compromise on the hyprocrisy if I made a token appearance despite my non-belief but I think they underestimated my devotion to intellectual integrity.

After more science and Darwin and school debates on the subject of the existence of God, I became convinced that there couldn't possibly be a God. In fact, I took pride in the fact that I was an atheist. It seemed the scientific thing to do. Take note, this all happened before I was even fourteen. By the ninth grade, I was quite openly describing myself as an atheist when asked about my religious affiliation. I even wrote 'atheist' on forms or questionnaires that asked about religion. Some people must have thought it was cute, a youngster like myself being able to argue so intelligently; others probably judged my parents for not being able to rein in their son. My parents were just relieved that I was doing well at school and that as an athletics nut, didn't smoke, drink or do drugs like many other kids my age.

There were dramatic changes in our lives in 1980. We had moved to a new town where I enrolled in a new school. I was a precocious fifteen year old in the tenth grade. And much to my delight, I discovered that a cousin living in the same town was also an atheist. We often got together and planned on starting an atheist society. Exactly what the society would try to accomplish we weren't quite sure. Perhaps we'd discuss topics of a scientific nature but with a decidedly atheistic bias. Suffice it to say, the society never got beyond the planning stages. But the two of us did delight in deriding the old-fashioned beliefs of our parents. And they, in turn, delighted in engaging us in stimulating arguments, though all in good fun. My mom would jokingly resign by saying she would follow any religion that could convince me there was a God. Little did she realize how prophetic that sentiment would turn out to be.

My dad and I were ardent Elvis fans in those days (I unapologetically still am). About a week before Easter of 1980, we discovered that one Samuel Soodyall (note the last name), an evangelist and older cousin of my dad, was conducting a tent crusade in a town just north of where we lived. Sam had converted to Christianity when he was a teenager and my dad recalled his preaching to his cousins when they were all growing up. Sam was famous in Christian circles of Indian descent in our entire province because of his travelling ministry. The hallmarks of Sam's ministry were loud gospel music and miraculous healing. He claimed that the deaf, blind and lame were being healed instantly after he touched or 'laid hands' on them. There's some obscure scriptural backing for this. He was careful to point out that it wasn't he who was healing people, rather, Jesus who worked through him. Sam had been given the gift of healing the way others might get different gifts like prophecy or tongues. But these were only meagre miracles. The real miracle was Sam's personal Pauline conversion, his own 'road to Damascus' experience about which he talks mid-way through a crusade of several nights.

I was busy doing my homework one night when my dad popped his head in and asked if I might be interested, just out of curiosity, in attending one of Sam's evangelic meetings in the nearby town of Tongaat. I wasn't too keen, given the religious nature of the thing. However, when my dad claimed he sang like Elvis, I was up like a shot, we all piled into the car and off we went!

The meeting was fantastic. The music was great and Sam truly sang like Elvis. He had a deep baritone voice. His "How Great Thou Art" and "Amazing Grace" were emotionally stirring. And what a bombastic speaker he was. His whole presentation seemed to be based on the style of one moral citizen: Jimmy Swaggart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Swaggart). Speaking of emotion, there was no shortage of it doing the rounds in the tent. Being there, you wondered whether these people had anything other than love for humanity. With this much love going around, it was hard to believe there could be any hatred in the world. They hugged one another, even strangers like me, and said "I love you with the love of the lord, brother" Their shouts of "hallelujah" and "amen" during the sermon were full of gusto. Well, I found all this extremely new, not to mention uncomfortable when I was hugged by complete strangers. Still, I couldn't help but feel wanted here. But what followed left me confused as all hell--the miracles!

The 'miraculous' healing left me breathless. Deaf people claimed to hear, though, in retrospect, it took an awful lot of waving and signaling to communicate to them questions about their auditory well-being. Lame people began to walk without support, albeit with a limp “as the healing process had only begun.” The testimonies of healing came fast and furious. People who had the worst colds just two weeks earlier were now feeling much better, thank you very much. That it takes about two weeks on average to get rid of a cold anyway just didn't occur to anyone. One old blind guy, whom my sisters and I dubbed 'Blind Bartimaeus' after the biblical character, claimed to have been healed and was ever so thankful to Jesus for that. However, until his death two years later, he still had to be led around because he could barely see a darned thing. Despite that, he continued weekly to thank God for healing him. The fact of the matter, I've since realized, is that not a single person got healed through any incantations performed in that tent. Certainly not my mother who, ever since I can remember, has always been in and out of hospital on account of damaged discs in her spine. Though she would swear today that she is healed, she continued to be admitted to hospital every so often for the exact same thing. Battling diabetes and on a cocktail of pills for a variety of maladies, she remains a devout follower of Christ. I don't quiz her on these things to keep the peace but wonder how it is possible to ask for healing which she surely must have, have those requests categorically vetoed as evidenced by her state of health, yet continue to worship the very entity that requires worship and requests for healing, but won't! Have you ever seen a dog whimper and cower before a sadistic master that has just beaten it, wishing and hoping for a pat on the head instead? One of my friends once likened human devotion to the divine to that of a dog to its master.

In retrospect, the tent in Tongaat was the most ridiculous façade I have ever seen. Not intentionally, mind you. I'm sure Sam and his followers sincerely believed that the miracles were occurring. You couldn't help but believe. The crowd was so whipped up, you could believe anything you wanted. For my part, one of the foundations of my new-found teenage atheism was that miracles were impossible. But here I was witnessing first-hand what, at the time, I believed to be real live miracles. If a deaf person claimed to be able to hear, who was I to doubt him? The wheels of the logic behind my atheism came off when I witnessed these events. With all the emotional hoopla going on around me, I just couldn't observe the proceedings critically. I was only fifteen, for crying in a bucket! All around me were stable adults who believed. Despite my logical arguing and debating in tame classroom environments, this was a whole new ball-game. I proved extremely impressionable and gullible to the mass hysteria and mass psychology at play in that stuffy tent. I was so astounded by the proceedings I had observed, I returned the next night and the next and every night thereafter for the next fortnight. More and more, the message of love and hope became enticing. And more and more sinisterly, the threats that I would be damned for eternity if I didn't subscribe to this system of beliefs scared the living crap out of me. You just can't believe how graphically evangelists can describe hell. Despite the fact that neither they nor anybody else has ever been to hell and back to tell about it, nor is anything documented about the conditions there, Christians have a fairly good notion about what it's going to be like. By week's end, I was soaking all the rhetoric up. When Sam yelled that we sinful unbelievers were doomed unless we accepted Jesus, I believed him.

About three days into the crusade came Sam's ultimate show-and-tell, the promised revelation of his own miraculous experience. He claimed that when he was 14, he was so ill with some-or-other blood condition that he had been admitted to hospital where he slipped into a coma. To cut a long story short, he awoke in a tub of ice and experienced some sort of out-of-body-experience. He claims that he is medically documented to have died and, amidst a fuzzy set of circumstances, got healed with a miraculous blood transfusion to boot. He didn't just get an IV drip but a complete oil-change, like a Chevrolet. His tale got even more outlandish, namely that the blood flowing in his veins was no longer the good 'ol Soodyall red & white but the very blood of Jesus. I wonder whether he was talking metaphorically. If he was, that fact was lost on the crowd. This frenzied bunch was convinced that were it not for the depth of his skin, it was about to shake hands with the Messiah Himself. Sam is now in his late seventies or early eighties. He has suffered a stroke, perhaps in penance for infidelity indiscretions, not quite of Swaggart proportions (one wonders when Swaggart/Haggard et. al. would get their just dues rather than yet more television time). The same god that raised him from the dead, it seems, hadn't intervened to prevent his stroke. Early in 2009 he made a brief speech at my dad's 70th birthday party and still looks remarkably well. Perhaps he does have good stuff coursing through his arteries. We should get my geneticist cousin to compare our blood samples. If there's a Y-chromosome match...

Well, I can't begin to describe the emotional and intellectual turmoil I experienced in Sam's tent. It seemed that the very foundations of my existence had been rocked. Was science completely wrong? One night, when the air was particularly thick with the breath of the gullible, I spontaneously rose to my feet when Samuel Soodyall made an altar call. His invitation didn't ask you to consider accepting Christ as saviour. Rather it was a command to the non-Christians in the crowd to repent. When he said: "Those of you who don't know Christ, rise and come forward," I just felt like everyone around me knew I wasn't a believer. It felt like they were all looking at me, and I felt peer pressure where there was none. After I stood, there was no turning back. Surely everyone had already seen me and I just wouldn't be able to save face if I sat down again. The next step was to walk to the altar. I braced myself firmly and moved. As I walked toward the altar, I passed my mum who was crying. When I turned around, the whole family was following me. You can't begin to imagine what a powerful moment that was in all our lives. In one night, our entire family unit had converted to Christianity thus fulfilling my mom's prophecy to follow whatever religion would convince me there was a God. It's a dubious distinction about which I don't feel any honour whatsoever.

For someone who takes pride in trying to find logical justification for most things that I do, this was a rare moment in my life when I made such an important decision purely on impulse. I console myself that at the time, I was young and impressionable. For weeks after the tent meetings, I seemed to be emotionally in limbo. The overriding sensation was that I had made a choice from which I could not retreat. I began to proudly share my experience and proclaim my stance in speeches to my classmates. Boy, were they ever wide-eyed in disbelief! I had arrived at their school at the beginning of the year a sassy atheist. Now it was Easter and I was singing another tune. It was easy for me to become a fanatical fundamentalist thereafter. The seeds had been sown in some pretty fertile soil; I was young, smart, very curious and unafraid to speak my mind. It was only then, weeks after Sam's crusade was over, that I started really reading the bible for the first time in my life. And therein lies the irony of the whole thing. I had committed to leading a Christian life before I even knew the fundamentals of Christianity. In fact, by the time I started reading the bible, I was already fulfilling one of its tenets, namely spreading the "Good News" to all that I met. Go figure! And there you have it...my conversion from atheism to fundamentalist Christianity.

I remained a devout Christian between Easter of 1980 and Christmas of 1985, coincidentally the celebrated resurrection and birth of Christ respectively. From the very beginning of my conversion, I found myself preaching the fire and brimstone message in church with all the fervour that my teenage zeal would permit. My parents were delighted, to say the least, and I wanted so badly to please them. For years I tried to emulate the good reverend Samuel Soodyall. At one point in the eleventh grade, I wanted to quit high school and enroll in a bible college to become trained as a minister. Ironically, it was Sam who talked me out of it. My Christian years were not all bad, mind you. On the contrary, it was a period when I did a lot of soul searching and pondered much about morality. My family and I grew very close, the strength of our ties developed then prevailing to this day.

Just as my belief in miracles converted me to Christianity when I was fifteen, my scepticism of them helped me reject religion entirely. Where do my beliefs have me now? It's the wrong question, really. I don't believe. My yardstick is measurement. If it can't be measured, I'm sceptical of it's existence. And by that yardstick, there is no God. By conventional definitions I'm an atheist though I detest being described as something I'm not. Characterising myself by such a generic term is terribly simplistic. I prefer to describe myself as an open-minded, sceptical intellectual. I do not subscribe to any religion. I'm not a fan of the term 'atheist' as it implies theism as the norm in which I am pariah. For example, I am often asked to prove that there isn't a God. That's ridiculous, I argue, as it approaches the debate from the wrong angle. First of all, there is the implication that there actually is a God--after all, the majority of people believe so--and since I do not subscribe to the popular opinion, it suddenly becomes incumbent upon me to justify my stance. Just the reverse must be the case, I argue. The burden of proof of God' s existence should lie with those who claim there is one. To the best of my knowledge, neither God nor the Devil can be detected using the instruments that we use to measure things. There are those who claim to hear and see God or, with eyes clenched shut in meditation and prayer insist that random thoughts that come to them are from God. I think they're just delusional. I know this because I was one of them. If you shut your eyes and resist rational thought, you can pretty much succumb to any whimsical fancy that enters your head. I once saw a pastor pray for my dad's aunt. She had a gaping, festering sore on her foot that was usually bandaged but exposed for this ritual. He suddenly pulled off a 'God is telling me to do this' that almost made me gag were it not for my total devotion to the process. He stuck a finger in his mouth until it was liberally lubricated with saliva, then proceeded to apply it to the wound. Luckily for all us, he didn't 'rinse and repeat' or I surely would have fainted. Sydney of this dog-lick-wound circus earned his evangelical stripes as a lay-preacher on busy trains. He is still a pastor of a church. I would not have the likes of him counsel anyone I know. My grand-aunt did not recover and died shortly afterwards. Who knows, maybe the saliva poisoned her and ended her misery. A deity is a philosophical concept and, as far as I am concerned, must first be shown to exist. Only then, in the face of incontrovertible evidence, must I be challenged to disprove God's existence.

I have another, egotistical, problem with the implications of the word 'atheist'--someone who disbelieves the existence of God. I prefer describing myself by the personality that I am and the things that I do rather than something I'm not, in this case a 'non-believer.' It's rather condescending. Let me elaborate with another example. For years, people of colour in South Africa were referred to as 'non-Whites.' Well, pigmentally-enhanced people, the so-called 'non-Whites' found that term very insulting. It postured that being White was the norm and all people who were not White could be grouped together. It completely ignored the reality that despite skin colour, the group comprised very distinct individuals with distinct identities. On a similar vein, I consider the term 'atheist' to carry the same negative connotation that 'non-White' does. So, on a more positive note, I am intellectual, philosophical, scientific, secular...rather than atheistic.

Having said all that, I am the last to claim that I know for sure a God does not exist. However, I'm convinced that there's no benevolent entity in the universe with a paternal tilt towards us. Within the realm of my personal knowledge, exposure and experience, I haven't encountered anything that remotely resembles the popular perception of God. This sounds a bit like a cop-out not dissimilar to an auditor's disclaimer that accompanies financial statements. If a proof of God's existence exists, I would like to see it, analyse it, discuss it and dissect it, but I am open to suggestion. However, anecdotal 'evidence' of effect caused by prayer just doesn't cut the mustard with me; someone attributing his sporting victory, lucky escape from harm or recovery from illness to a mysterious, benevolent force is simply conjecture. Maybe some other force "out there" does indeed control what happens "down here." After all, there are numerous occurrences or ' miracles' that happen on earth which cannot easily be explained away by science. For example, medical science cannot explain every healing where identical other cases end in death (neither can religion, for that matter). Of course, we don't know all the science that there is to know. So far, we refer to what we cannot describe with science as a miracle. Who's to say that even the most 'miraculous' event won't be commonplace when we discover its scientific explanation? And assuming it can be proven beyond a doubt that God exists, does it necessarily follow that He, She, They or It is a benevolent being that has our best interests at heart? The Bible, Koran, Torah, etc. all claim that God is male with loving, benevolent paternal instincts yet, in the same breath, is vengeful, jealous and cruel. I find the claims of those good books very dubious and inconsistent indeed. The Old Testament is replete with accounts of a jealous God exacting cruel vengeance on humans, punishing them with floods, disease and other disasters. Whereas the modern God who 'repented' from his Old Testament ways is supposed to be all loving and always accessible, there is far too much mayhem and carnage in the world to corroborate the benevolent, omnipotent nature of God. When one asks where God was during the holocaust in Germany, the massacre in Rwanda and the slaughter in Bosnia, the easy answer is that these are man-made calamities inspired by the Devil. Surely this doesn't hold true when tsunamis, avalanches and earthquakes decimate believers and heathens alike. Does God have His purpose which must not be questioned? That response is hopelessly naive and inconsistent. In my opinion, it is basically a euphemism for "I don't know what the hell God is up to. I know it doesn't fit in with my impression of a kind and gentle God, but I'm foolish or scared enough to not question it."