My story so far....

I have always been an atheist. I have never believed in god. I have tried, very hard at times, but nothing happened. My earliest religious memories are our local church services, Sunday school and the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebrations attached to both. Jelly and ice cream, singing songs in church and games in the church garden. Very nice when you are 7, church is great, monarchy undoubtedly a wonderful idea! Around the same time, in the summer holidays, we had a visit from some sort of christian camp for kids to the park at the bottom of our garden. I loved it! Trendy young things came with their long hair, flowers and guitars (it was the 70's!) and taught us songs about how much Jesus loved us. We drew pictures , played games and sat around on rugs eating picnic lunches in the sun. I remember they had good scissors and plenty of glue and we did lots of cutting and sticking (I still love a bit of cutting and sticking!) As part of this 'camp' we were given workbooks to take home and do a page a day. I don't remember much about the content but I do remember keeping the booklet under my pillow, 'religiously' filling in my page a day and memorising the biblical quotes. I loved the attention I got for showing my filled in book and there were prizes and lots of clapping. I was hooked and really wanted to 'believe'. I guess the camps lasted a couple of weeks and I know I went for more than one year. I also remember around this time having a problem with the belief bit. Was I going to 'see' Jesus? Was he going to talk to me? Would I just 'know' that he was there? I sometimes used to squeeze my eyes shut and wish that when I opened them I would know Jesus was there.

Later we moved to a different region, to a small village and once again I found a positive space at the local church. I sang in the choir and went to Sunday school. The local vicar and his wife were really lovely and cared so much for all the kids in the village. We had wonderful games in the vicarage garden, homemade cakes and the vicar's wife spent a lot of time with me for singing lessons. As I grew older, both the vicar and his wife offered support and kindness through difficulties I faced. At this point, as a teenager, I took to reading from the bible every night. I had a beautiful white and gold bible with wonderful colour pictures that my grandmother had given me. However hard I tried though I still struggled with belief. I saw how the bible was often contradictory, how god was often mean and how some things just surely couldn't be. I wondered how god could make Jesus suffer so and then could be called a 'merciful father'. How could Noah get all those animals in the ark? Not like a child's set of wooden animals with say 15 pairs or something but ALL of the species represented? I remember being told that faith is about believing first then seeing the evidence, about taking that leap of faith. I tried it but I didn't really know what that meant. Saying you believe? Pretending? Fake it till you make it? I then began to worry that there was something wrong with me, maybe I was too thick to see what everyone else could see or maybe I was lacking some sort of 'belief' capacity. I didn't want anyone to find out that I couldn't do it.

At that point I didn't really know anything about atheists or evolution or science or even other religions. I think I really wanted to be a good person and I also wanted someone to be looking after me and I got the message that these things came with belief in Jesus but I was somehow letting the whole side down by not believing and that's why I couldn't believe and I kind of felt trapped in that circle.

As a teen, my mother started going to a spiritualist church and I went with her a few times. The nice vicar had left and I didn't like the new one much. I began to think about other denominations, other religions and maybe that I needed to find a different one in which I would be able to believe. The spiritualist church was a joke. I think the medium was so thrilled to have a young person in her church she tried really hard to make me feel special so came to me all the time which made my mum and others pretty cross as they weren't getting their turn! She told me I had a red indian guide with me, a really tall man in battle dress! Then did that question and answer thing trying to get some 'hit'. I had no clue what she was on about most of the time but my mum often jumped in identifying long dead relatives I had never heard of. Why long dead relatives should want to come to me with banal and pointless messages beats me - maybe they could have come to my mum instead and told her to stop being such a cow to me, but maybe that's not suitable for church. One time the medium also told me I had 'healing hands', and another time that I could soothe animals. So that whole experience kind of left me back at square one. If Jesus was so good and god looks after us all why aren't they looking out for me and why don't I feel this kind of 'belief' hit that others seemed to find so easy?

I kind of lost interest after that in a bit of a haze of heavy metal blow outs and mostly lost touch with my parents, which was no bad thing. Many happy, hazy, slightly mental memories. Coming out the other end , then finding myself a young divorced mum with 3 small boys, my next thoughts on religion were really triggered while studying a joint archaeology and history course. Bizzarely it seemed to me, I was being taught about human evolution and anthropology and finding it all very fascinating, then having history lessons from a devout catholic who raised my awareness considerably, blowing me away in one go with the comment 'as if a lizard would one day find itself up a tree and suddenly grow wings, and that's how birds 'evolved' how ridiculous'.

Wow! Can it be true that this intelligent, articulate woman, a professor who I admired and was fond of, be so unbelievably thick when it came to evolution? Can it really be that I understand more than she does? Am I being really thick? Does the theory of evolution really say that and somehow advocates make it look presentable by blinding us with science? This triggered a burst of reading, thinking and observing for me. I delved a little into evolution and looked at creationists refutations. I learned that it is quite easy for a creationist to attempt the 'blinding with science' option and that it was sometimes quite difficult to understand the nitty gritty of evolutionary theory. I also learned that being a single mum to 3 small boys and studying full time left little time for reading, mulling things over and looking up references.

A christian friend said 2 things to me around this time that made me think and nagged at me. Firstly, that she had looked inside herself and just 'knew' that god was there and that Jesus loved her. When I asked why he would love her and not others who suffered horribly she talked about lifestyle choices and how god had given us freewill to choose whether to believe in him or not. Secondly she told me later that maybe for her believing in god was lazy and that she had not looked into evidence or anything. I could see how both these thoughts make it very easy for religious leaders to exploit people and reinforce the comfort of ignorance. Still, I wondered whether I was just being bloody minded in 'being bothered' to want to look at evidence and if I wanted the 'consolation' of religion, maybe I'd just have to pretend. I also considered whether I could join a church for the fellowship, community and routine that I felt I needed and keep hidden the fact that I didn't believe in god. I really like a song on a Sunday morning and enjoy 'being involved'. I decided I would not be happy with the hypocrisy of this.

Since this time I have mostly home educated my boys and we have been on a real journey together. I have learned massive amounts about the universe, the natural world and science alongside them, far more than I ever learned before and ironically, have been able to have really open, critical, exploratory conversations with my children, far more than with anyone I have met before! Children are not happy with shallow, brush off answers I find and demand evidence, even when you are tired and can't be bothered. They have learned to look things up themselves and then discuss what they've found. Home education has also meant we have met, socialised with and learned from people of many different faiths and met real life atheists and this has led to many insights.

So now, as my boys grow up and have less need of me (or different needs anyway!) I find myself noticing more and more the debates going on around me, the books being published, the radio and TV interviews, Darwin's Bicentenary, the atheist comedians popping up all over and having a little time to read and mull and rant and read some more. I am astonished and outraged to read such things as Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor saying that atheists are 'not fully human' and Ken Ham waxing lyrical about an atheist conference being meaningless. I suppose it never really occured to me that life should be meaningless or pointless without god. I am more shocked when someone I know to be clever, decent and thoughtful reminds me that they do believe in god by saying something about their faith. I think I realised a long time ago that there are plenty of ways to find fellowship and community and to wonder at the natural world and the cosmos, do meaningful work, decide about morality, relish the company of interesting people etc and hadn't thought for a long time that my life was missing anything for not believing in god. I just wish I'd had the opportunity to explore these issues as a child and I've tried to make sure that my kids can do that.

So I have lots of questions, observations and thoughts I'd love to explore either by myself or even better with anyone of any persuasion who has any interesting insights.