Farthest Back in the Closet
(continued)

Zakiya is publishing a book called "A Peek Inside the Goo," that discusses her struggles with depression. Depression, that praying to God never cured. She says her Atheism came out of the cold hard facts she realized in her life. "My prayers weren't being answered. But nobody's prayers were being answered. But if you do things for yourself, than things can change."

Crystal from the West Coast, asked that I not use her last name. She says that today the discipline she received during her upbringing would be labeled child abuse. Her grandfather who raised her was a Pentecostal minister and didn't subscribe to sparing the rod. Crystal eventually went to college, married in the church, and was on her way to Lutheran seminary when a tragedy brought her to what she calls her turning point. Crystal lost one of her twins to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. This, after she did everything right according to what her church taught her to believe.

The passage Mark 5:41 tells of Jesus resurrecting a twelve year old girl. Jesus takes the child's hand and commands her, "Little girl, I say to you, arise." And the child’s spirit returned to her, she stood up and began walking around. When Crystal prayed over her child as Jesus did, but her little girl did not rise, Crystal says her eyes were opened. "These promises are not real. I knew. I need to stop living this lie," she thought to herself. Crystal has decided to make every day the best she's able, because it's all she's guaranteed. That's the way, she says, her Atheism is directing her.

And while Crystal still has people praying for her and hoping she'll return to her church, she paraphrases the Biblical Paul on the road to Damascus, when he is enlightened. She says she's cannot unknow. This knowing, coupled with a ministerial education makes Crystal a scary Atheist to many folks who would question her. "A lot of people won't talk about religion with me, though, because I can back everything up I say with scripture... In the South I'd get into debates where people would say, 'I've read the Bible and scripture says this.' And I'll explain, 'You're misinterpreting that and you didn't know the other part of the passage existed until I showed it to you just now!' ... And I was evil for showing them!"

In Philadelphia, 25 year old student, Debbie Goddard has paid heavy prices for coming out. In 8th grade, she was blackmailed to go to church each week in order to keep her scholarship to a Catholic high school. Once there, Goddard founded a philosophy club that asked questions like "Does God exist." Such antics put the 10th grader with a history of being thrown out of religion class for asking questions, on a train straight to scholarship revocation station. So in her last year of high school at her new public school, the l'il hellion was up to her old antics. Goddard became a "raving atheist" and again started a philosophy club that also led to a few kids' Atheist conversions.

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