The beginning catalyst of everything, was when I became good friends with a neighbour friend Sean. He was a boy older than me, but not by much. I can't recall how old I was when this happened, but I was less than seven years old and going through some awkward times. I had first learned the word “sex” and discussed it vividly amongst my friends, and we decided that it was something a boy and a girl did when they were older, in a bed and naked, as we had only one boys report when he overheard his parents talking about what a doctor had said.

           

    This imbued a type of special mystery around the subject, for we were clearly not supposed to know about it, and it was reserved for adults.

 

    A little later I had an experience with one of my cousins. We were extremely young and liked to play games, and had most vivid imaginations. One day, we somehow were both naked under a table with a cloth over it, concealing us from outside view. We probably spent thirty minutes playing, and when it ended, we have never spoken about it or referred to it again. This did not trouble me at all, and I just went about my life.

 

    My next sexual encounter was with my best childhood friend, Corinne. We were both sitting around one day watching the Disney channel, when we started to wrestle. She was devastatingly gorgeous, and I was starting to clue into that girls and boys were different at this point, so this wrestling game was extremely interesting to me. It was the first time that I really got to touch a girl, it was purely play wrestling acting out of sexual notions, so it was more geared to exploration of each other than winning a game. I remember touching her chest and feeling an incredible rush, an even stronger one than I had gotten with my male cousin. This made me very excited, as we continued to play fight, we eventually got disinterested but I had ran my hands all over her body, and it was a very enlightening at the time.

 

    Finally, I was with my friend Sean, and we were discussing what it felt like to be naked. At one point, I was laying in my room, naked except for a blanket over me, trying to describe to him what I was feeling. Days later, we were in my trailer, and we were naked together in the master bed. Eventually we got bored, and threw our clothes back on and went off to play in the fields.

 

    It would have been fine, except for the fact that I left my underwear in the bed. It was discovered by my parents a few days later, and they demanded an explanation. By their faces and tones I could tell that what I had been doing was very, very wrong. I got very afraid and began to cry. They told me it was OK as long as I told the truth. So being a natural at being a child, I wove them a purely fabricated story about how my pants fell down (I was incredibly underweight as a child) and somehow my I tripped while we were playing around. He then took off my underwear and hid them in the bed, and after I while I gave up and just forgot about it.

 

            There is nothing else of mention until I was in the 5^th grade in South Jordan Elementary school, where I was finally removed from the ALPS (Accelerated Learning Program for Students) due to my negative views on school, and got re-integrated back into normal society. I made quite a few friends and the ones in particular were Derek, Andy, and Hayden.

 

    One day Andy brought some cards to school and there was a huge fuss about it on the playground. I was very good friends with Andy, and so I found out very quickly exactly what was on these cards. They were mini-calendar cards, all with topless models on them. I remember how angry my parents were last time there was a subject involving nakedness, so I knew that I was in forbidden territory.

 

    But on the other hand, these women were gorgeous. I could spend hours just staring at the card he had given me, just observing the curves of her back, and how her breasts were so perfect. I was enraptured by this feminine beauty, it completely overwhelmed me.

 

    Andy had told Hayden, Derek and I that we could find more of stuff like this on our computers. He told us about www.angie.com (Site no longer exists) and how there were tons of girls that were naked.

 

    This excited us incredibly, that we could see other girls naked. The only dilemma was that we knew we were doing something that would, to put it lightly, piss off our parents. We weren't quite sure how to go about this, because at the time he had no concept of the Internet history, and most people browsed to sites they liked by using the drop-down bar, and it saved every site you had gone to. So in a supreme showing off of my own idiocy and wishing to show off to my friends, I said I knew a way to get it off there despite my not knowing how.

 

    We went over to my house one day and went to the site. What we saw was another mind-blowing experience for me. There were incredibly attractive women, much much older than us, with their clothes off. We browsed for a few hours until my parents were coming home, absolutely gorging on this. I do not know my friends Derek or Hayden's feelings on this, but I was absolutely captivated.

 

    That same day, my sister had done something to anger me, and I knew that she had used the Internet without asking permission.  I asked my older brother to go into the history so I could turn her into Mom. I think I had totally forgotten what I had done that day, and he noticed a folder named Angie. It all came back in a rush of what I had done, and I ripped the mouse out of his hands, told him it was nothing and closed the computer down and went to my room in a total state of panic.

 

I knew that I was caught, I knew that my parents were not going to react nicely to this, and about a week later, I had a talk with my parents.

 

            My mother sat next to my father on a couch facing me. My mother was in tears, and my father not quite angry, but more disappointed. They explained to me that what I had done was not only degrading to women, but a horrible sin too. I had never really thought that I could be capable of sin. I mean everyone lies, but to REALLY sin, this sent a shock through me. I felt that I had betrayed my parents and after the long talk, I cried into my bed for hours.

 

The only thing I didn't understand was how it was “degrading to women”. I thought every girl I had seen was beautiful, the most wonderful thing I had ever seen. I thought of it more like exaltation to the beauty of the female, than the degradation and cheapening of them. I didn't understand this, but to avoid conflict I didn't bring it up.

 

            I woke up the next day, and my dad jokingly referred to the scriptures where it stated that a man should “Pluck out his own eye, rather than have seen an abomination”. This quite frankly, scared the bloody hell out of me, and just confused me further. I still thought everything I had looked at was beautiful, and the idea that I should rip my eyes out rather than view women without their clothes blew my mind. They were just people, how can other people be abominations?

 

            We were a foster family, which meant we served as a temporary home for children without parents. I got along fabulously with all of them for the most part, but there was one older girl that truly explained exactly how innocent and ignorant I was when it came to girls. She described some of the sex she’d had in her previous schools.

 

But then, I turned twelve and as such, bi-yearly Bishop Interviews became a part of my life. In these, the bishop asks you personal questions, in order to help your spiritual growth, and make sure you're on the right track.

 

            The first interview I ever had, I admitted to viewing pornography when I was younger. I had now been more indoctrinated and learned of the LDS church, so I knew what I had done was a sin, and unpleasing in the eye of the Lord. This shocked the Bishop visibly, but he said that if I prayed and asked for forgiveness it would be granted to me. I did fail to mention all the sexual escapades, because I felt as if I was the worst person to ever live, I wanted to throw up after that.

 

            And so I lived, with the ever burning guilt, that I was a sinner in the sight of God. I would occasionally just spend an entire night crying as I felt helpless, I had gone against God's will, and I was going to hell. I became a social recluse because I hated myself so much, and withdrew into the world of literature and video games for years.

 

            One night, I had a sleepover with my best friend outside on a trampoline, and we talked about how cloning was possible, and that if God made the world that Cloning was possible, how was it a bad thing? He had created man with the ability to do this, how was it a bad thing? For at the time, a sheep had just been cloned and was causing a storm all over the community.

 

            I stopped praying, and reading my scriptures, not because I felt “dirty” or anything, but because I felt they did nothing. Praying to me made no sense, God would either answer with a “Yes, no, or not now” which basically meant, that no matter what, God was basically going to keep doing his divine plane. The Mormon teaching that they don't believe in pre-destination blew my mind. They gave Patriarchal blessings, which were basically letters that told your future, but in cryptic passages so it was up for interpretation. It seemed to me that if God already knew what you were going to do, before you did it, free will was an illusion, and that our salvation was already known, and that this world seemed utterly pointless to me.

 

            But I kept following the church, the idea that it was wrong, was so out of my scope, and I started to hate myself. I swore in my thoughts, and it disgusted me. I tried to condition myself out of it, by physically abusing every time I swore in my head. The fact that I had the will to do this was outstanding, but it didn't help, I kept thinking how I wanted, just hurting more inside and outside.

 

            I began to become obsessed with girls, their beauty was too much for me to handle. I started failing classes simply because I spent the entire period just staring at them. I would lay in my bed, just contemplating their beauty, the feminine form, it was just so captivating.  

 

            The first time I masturbated as a child, I woke up with a burning realization, that I had defiled myself. Girls always talked about how they wanted their future husband to be “pure”. And I was now impure. Yet again, I had stumbled in the footrace of salvation. I wanted to kill myself, and to this day I'm not sure why I didn't at that time when I locked myself in the closet with a knife that  I could have easily flayed myself with.

 

            Seminary was another frustrating experience. I was the only person who seemed to take the subject matter at hand seriously! People forgot their talks, didn't do homework and generally were only there because they were being forced to attend. It infuriated me at times, how could they take eternal salvation lightly?!

 

            At this time however, I began to formulate questions in my mind that I kept to myself out of fear of being looked at like a monster. The one that remains clearly in my mind was “God made man in his image. But natural man was the enemy of God.” I sat for hours perplexed by this. Why would God make something to go against him?

 

            Nothing else really happened, until I turned 16, and became a Priest in the LDS church. I was supposed to bless the sacrament, which is a very big event in the development of a male in the church. When I finally did it, I didn't feel special or spiritual at all. I had to fake a slight-quivering tone, and a hushed voice of reverence as I did it. I thought this was once again God showing his disappointment with me, due to how much of a bad person I was. I struggled on my with faith, feeling like a failure.

 

            My teacher, Brother Ward, commented on how strongly I sounded when I blessed the sacrament once. I felt empty inside, like there was something wrong with me.

 

            I was playing World of Warcraft, But, I found a sense of community that I never shared with my actual community. I played, lived, and talked with typically about 40 other people. But, these people weren't Mormon. These people, found me exceptional, they thought I was easily double my age (In one case, a guy named Achilles thought I was 40!) and very intelligent. I love these guys, and they are what and who made up my best friends in my childhood.

 

            But one in particular “Ricket” was his name, said something astounding one night. We were talking about religion, and he mentioned that he grew up Mormon, but now was “better”. Never in my life had I heard anyone speak about religion as if it was a disease. This perturbed me, but I kept silent for that part of the discussion.

 

            Then, I met a very special girl named Jill. I had not been “friends” with a girl since that childhood friend of mine Corinne had moved away during my childhood so I was riveted that I was perhaps, normal. I had been too disgusted with myself to even concern myself with girls beyond fantasizing before. But Jill for some reason liked me. We had had other classes before, but in 11^th grade English, we sat next to each other and talked and traded notes the entire time. We talked about all sorts of things, but one day I managed to bring up religion in a note, and how I was starting to doubt the church. She stated that she was going through the same thing, and I felt a rush of validation and extreme attraction. Here was this absolutely gorgeous girl, and she was going through the same thing I was! It was easily one of the top three changing and catalytic events of my life.

 

            She mentioned that she was going to other churches on Sunday, and I asked if I could go with her. She said I had to ask my parents and make sure everything was OK. So I lied to my parents and said that she normally went to another church but had invited me. My parents said it was fine.

 

            We went to a Baptist church, and it was a eye-opening experience. They spent an enormous amount of time on their feet, singing about Jesus. This week, they even had a special guest singer from Texas, and his voice was powerful. But I couldn't really take it seriously. I was more interested in Jill wearing a skirt, than I was singing about Jesus. After about an hour, we went to a scripture class, and we discussed scripture passages, that I found incredibly boring. I found their analysis of scripture childish much like I had at my own church. Jill and I left, and I don't know her exact feelings about it, but I was sort of taken aback at the existence of other religions.

 

            This was another catalyst; I truly recognized the existence of other religions. It clicked for the first time, that there were thousands of religions, and I knew nothing about them. I talked about going to a Roman Catholic Church, or visiting an Islamic Church to Jill, and even though she appeared interested and agreed, we ultimately never went to another church with each other, and she found someone else.

 

            Instead, I got a copy of the Qur'an and read the entire thing within weeks. I found it's words, even with the commentary explaining the passages, to be dull, uninspired, and that if this was God's word, he was a barbaric sick person. So, despite my friend’s insistence that I was becoming a terrorist when they saw the book, I was more becoming less and less of a theist even if I didn't know it at the time.

 

            I began to really question things, and get involved with tracking politics. Homosexuality really struck home for me, as I always had the gnawing experiences of childhood, despite the fact that I was obviously attracted to women.

 

            Also the idea that the world could break down into a nuclear war, and religious people would take it as a good thing, since they view it as a sign of Jesus' coming, disgusted me. To be able to see a silver lining in the killing of other humans made me sick.

 

            The idea that morality came from Religion was starting to upset me. What kind of animals are we, if we're kind out of fear of reprisal, not because it's actually wrong. Religious people had actually said to me that if there was no God, they would kill and steal without a second thought, because there were no real repercussions. This was frightening and childish to me, because shouldn't we be good out of common love for each other as humans, recognizing that we each have feelings and thoughts? Anyone who can't find a reason not to kill me without God, I fear might be a sociopath.

 

            I began to question the very existence of God, because I couldn't seem to justify his existence in any way shape or form.

 

            All of these ideas began culminating when school ended and I was going to work at a scout camp as staff with Jill. This was extremely frustrating, as I was madly in love with her, but it plainly wasn't returned, except as an emotional friendship. So I spent my free time withdrawn from the group, thinking out in the woods on my own, writing in a note book they had issued to all the camp staff. I spent a lot of time crying on my own, and grew a general distaste of the stupidity displayed by my fellow youth staffers. They were all Mormons except two people (One genius of a man named John Boom, and then Jill). So when the people my age discussed things, they were usually on the intellectual level of dick jokes, except on an even lower level, because dirty jokes weren't allowed. It made me want to put my head in an oven.

 

            But, I did become better friends with the senior staff. I had one enlightening talk with them, when I found out most of them were Deists, Agnostics, or Atheists. These were my people, a few of them had grown up Mormon and had thrown the religion away, and I talked to them instead of people my age. Ultimately, I quit the job only after a few days, because watching Jill flirt, even casually, with other guys was driving me insane, but also because I felt that the scout’s policies on Homosexuality were disgusting and primitive. I had one talk with one of the senior members, how he severely disliked the camps policies also, as he had a lesbian aunt.  But he validated it because he had a wife and daughter, and that when you have that sort of love; you are willing to be dishonest with yourself if it means helping them.

 

            I looked at the reasons why I was there, and I only had to watch Jill run her hands through someone other guy’s hair before I realized that I was there for no reason. The next morning I informed the camp director that I couldn't work there due to my disagreement with the scout’s policies. They called my parents and they were there the following evening.

 

            I had a most uncomfortable ride home, as my parents didn't buy my reason that I felt bad working these due to discrimination, and I didn't want to get into how I was obsessively in love with Jill, so it evolved into a discussion of faith. At this point with all the time I had to write down my thoughts and feelings in the woods, I knew that I no longer believed in God. So when I touched on those subjects, I made my mother cry, which really made me feel absolutely horrible, even if I was being honest.

 

            I began reading Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens. They really put a voice to my thoughts, and confirmed a lot of what I was thinking about. Hitchens with his Religion Poisons Everything, Harris with his just plain common sense, and Dawkins with his insistence that forcing and indoctrinating children was child abuse. I slowly became less and less depressed, and began to find beauty in the world. I thought back to all the hymns I had sang as a child, all the time I had chanted “Follow the prophet” and “I hope they call me on a mission”. I remember as a kid I hated to sing those, so I don't think it truly sunk to the level it was supposed to.

 

            I cried that night, but not out of fear or sadness, but out of relief. I understood now, what I was, what I believed, why I believed (Or in this case, didn't), and how religion almost cost me my life a few times.

 

            But, with my suicidal tendencies and my young homosexual experiences this rang true. I had managed to repress these events out of fear, because how could God hold me accountable for that which I could not remember? But they came rushing back, but with a new perspective. I was not a disgusting freak; I was just a little kid, totally ignorant of other people and exploring. There was nothing wrong with this, and it actually is totally normal to have homosexual experiences before you mature and your true sexual orientation rears its head.

 

            I found comedians like George Carlin and Bill Hicks, who, even if not straight Atheists certainly laughed at all organized religion. I found groups of like-minded people like on Face book, there is a group called Atheist, Agnostic, and Non-religious. It was a breath of fresh air, considering my state is 90% LDS.

 

            Weeks later, I had another talk with my parents about religion, where I informed them that I not only didn't believe in God or the church that I abhorred what they teach, and what they do to children. I didn't mention my own experiences with the church and putting me into a brooding depression for the entirety of my childhood due to the fact that I wasn't strictly Heterosexual, but wasn't Homosexual. Even though I was sexually attracted to women, I don't find men sexually disgusting, but I sure didn't mention this to my parents out of fear.

 

            Once I realized that I was an Atheist was like shattering the image of myself that I had been carrying around for years that I was a sinner. I was no longer a sinner, but more just a person. And a different as I was, there was nothing wrong with it. I dropped my suicidal thoughts that result from depression, and began loving the world for what it is and people for who they are, not what it is and what I wish they would be.

 

            The next bishop interview I had, I handed him a letter of resignation and walked free. It feels good to get this out.