# Not just pantheist, *scientific* pantheist... My religious journey has been a crazy one. #### Christian I was raised Protestant Christian and while we didn't attend Sunday church very much, we did do summer bible camps, youth groups, and religiously-based ceremonies (like weddings, funerals, etc.) Growing up, we were encouraged to pray before bed. I wasn't very good at it. Praying for me turned into an imaginary conversation with God--albeit a fairly one-sided one. I'd say things in my prayers like "If you let X happen tomorrow, I promise I will do Y." I quickly learned that obviously, that would never work. And that led to the forbidden questions...at 12 years old, I was lying in bed at night contemplating what I'd been doing wrong. I was a good person. Why wasn't God answering my prayers? That was the deal right? Be a good person and God will reward you with answered prayers. So the forbidden questions grew. "Maybe God isn't real. No! Wait! I didn't mean that. God is real. God is real. Oh man, something bad is going to happen now." But, just as nothing good had resulted from my prayers, nothing bad resulted from my forbidden questions. Inwardly, I became agnostic. Outwardly, I still told everyone I was Christian. #### Agnostic By the time I reached the age of 15 or so, I started dating my first real boyfriend (sorry, middle school boyfriend, but we never even got to kiss). Anyway, he was very religious. A devout Catholic, to be exact. He asked me to attend mass with him many times and eventually I went to one. The whole time I just thought about how weird everything was and I felt nothing spiritually. But, I kept those feelings under wraps. Eventually, we broke up. Well, he broke up with me many times over our relationship, but about 18 months in I finally had enough and didn't take him back. By that time I was fully agnostic. After the breakup, I wrote an article for the school paper about how church and organized religion didn't make any sense. How it was more about what you wear to church, how much money you give, how loud you are about your faith, than actually worshipping...yeah, that went over real well with my Nebraska high school audience.... Anyway, for the next year, I slowly became more and more sure that there wasn't a God. Then, I met him. No, not Him, him. #### Atheist In my town, no one I knew back in 2005 was an out atheist. I honestly didn't really know what atheism was. As a junior in high school (again, in Nebraska), it would only be mentioned in a derogatory way. In fact, around here, atheism was synonymous with anarchism and I knew I wasn't an anarchist, so I didn't look into atheism. So, summer after my Junior year, I'm working at a local concession stand/kiddie park for the second summer in a row. This guy, fresh from tech school in Wyoming, 21 to my 17, comes and changes my entire life. Yeah, I know. I'm a fucking cliché, but it's the Universe-Damned truth. Anyway, he had worked at the park before, a year or two prior to my first season and he was back for the summer. We ended up working together quite a bit since a lot of our co-workers had summer practice in the mornings and we were part of the few who could work the earlier shift. During this time, we got to know each other. It didn't take long for me to realize that he knew *things* and he wasn't afraid to talk about them like most of the people around me. To me, he was worldly af and I developed a crush on him almost instantly--so did another girl we worked with. One day, the three of us plus this other guy who I adored as a friend were working and the girl asked my worldly af crush if he would go to church with her. His answer was, "Fuck no." *That was it. That was the moment I probably started to fall in love with him.* She kept pressing. "Why not? Church is awesome." (blah, blah, blah.) Then she looked over at me. "Do you go to church?" "Not really." "Why?" That's when I brought up the points I'd written in my school newspaper, ending with the most important one, "It's fake." *And I'm pretty sure that's the moment worldly af guy started falling in love with me.* After that, we started talking more and more and by July 1st, we were dating (much to Christian girl's disappointment). By August, we'd said the three words. We dated for a little over two years and during and after that time, I considered myself an atheist. I learned a lot from him. I evolved as a person during our time together. Intellectually, we were a match. Romantically, we were a match. But, when it came to our goals and ambitions, it eventually became clear that he was a pessimist where I was an optimist. Additionally, I still hadn't quite found myself yet. There was a lot I hadn't experienced and I ended up breaking his heart in an effort to become worldly af myself. I don't regret moving on from the relationship, because ultimately it wasn't meant to be, but I do regret the way I handled it. #### Scientific Pantheist Fast-forward, years later, I'm still an atheist and I'm married to a Catholic. (I know, weird, but somehow it works because we respect each other's beliefs.) I'm in this Facebook group for atheists and realizing that I don't agree with every thing my fellow atheists are saying. There's this nagging feeling that even though I don't believe in God, there's something more to the universe. For me, there's too much that can't be explained. I do believe that everything is connected, but I don't necessarily think it's a supernatural thing. We don't know everything there is to know and we never will. So, after months of research, I eventually decided that I'm technically a scientific pantheist. **Scientific Pantheist:** My personal definition of this is that I don't believe in a god as a physical being. If there is a "God" then that god *is* the Universe and that there is a scientific explanation for all the things we can't explain yet, we just haven't figured it out because we're missing a lot of information still. #### Bonus: Satanist Also, I'm a member of TST. I believe in their [7 tenets](https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/about-us). So, yes, you could also call me a "Satanist." 😉 ### Conclusion A weird and wonderful journey, to be sure. I still have a lot in common with atheists. So, I suppose you could call me 1 part Atheist, 2 parts Scientific Pantheist, 1 part "Satanist."