Sorry for any grammar mistakes, I’m Hispanic.
I was born in Uruguay and attended a Seventh Day Adventist Church since childhood (I still do that, but it’s not the same). As you may know, SDAs are advocates of Young-Earth Creationism. When I was about 7 years old, my mother kept telling me that evolution was created by Satan and that it was ridiculous and even made me sing a song titled “No vengo del mono”, which means “I don’t come from the monkey” in Spanish.
When I was 9, I read a book about natural history (I always admired nature) and found out more about evolution, but I just said it was nonsense. I was only allowed to read books about YEC and I was told not to question anything. I had to watch videos from people like Ken Ham and Kent Hovind (it was horrible).
When I was 15, I started asking myself many questions that could not be answered by any book I had read up to then. When I found an article about an atheist who had been a SDA in his youth, I felt that God was nothing more than an imaginary friend for grown ups. I was more of an agnostic by then, but my mother knew nothing.
Then, I came across an article at exchristian.net titled “How I Figured Out Christianity is Not Real” written by a guy who started losing his faith when he accepted evolution as true and asked himself these questions “Why did God wait 95,000 years to make contact? And why did he only make contact with an isolated tribe in the Middle East?” and other article asked “Did Jesus die for the sins of the Neanderthals?”
Not much time after I read those articles, I started reading things from people like Robert M. Price, Acharya S, Bart Ehrman, Lawrence Krauss, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Michael Shermer, Carl Sagan, Jerry Coyne, Victor Stenger, John Loftus, Richard Carrier, Dan Barker, Bruce Gerencser, AronRa, Matt Dillahunty and others. I still remember Dillahunty’s deconversion story. He started studying to strengthen his faith, but it ended up being destroyed.
After reading AronRa’s book (“Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism”), watching several of his videos (like those about Noah’s ark) and watching the Zeitgeist movie, I was almost an atheist. My faith had been almost destroyed, and it all began with YEC.
But, although I had forgotten about Him a long time ago, there was a certain Someone who had not forgotten about me. That Someone took me here, to BioLogos, where my questions began being answered one by one. I realised that evolution was not as ridiculous as I thought it was and that it glorified the Divine Architect of the cosmos. I thanked that Someone so much for what He had done for me. I knew that I had a purpose: saving people from becoming what I had almost become and take lost souls to the feet of He who loved me before I was even born. I knew that doing so would not be something easy. Modern atheists won’t believe in God unless two possible things happen:
- God comes down from Heaven and shows Himself to them.
- They have evidence of God.
After reading quite a lot about philosophy, history and science, I’m here, telling you my story, hoping that it will inspire you to continue fighting. It does not matter if storms come, just remember that behind those pitch black clouds, the Sun continues shining.
Just remember that the One who made the very first living organism and made it evolve into more complex life forms over billions of years, came here to our planet in the form of a human to give His life on the cross for you and for me, and that one day, we will see Him face to face.