Why I Left Atheism

Sean Munger first became an atheist after doubting Christianity at age 13, but later found himself with the same doubts about Atheism at age 36. At age 42, just 5 years ago, he converted to Judaism. We asked him why he made all of those decisions. 

Q: Hi Sean, thank you so much for agreeing to share your experience with us. To start, could you share how you ended up as an atheist? 

A: I kind of drifted into it. My family was nominally Christian but in practice not very religious; I remember going to church last when I was about 6. In my early teens I began questioning why people believed stories in the Bible as true. The story of Noah particularly bothered me. The hypocrisy and pettiness of religious right types—this was the 1980s—really grated on me, and I began to conflate, as many atheists do, fundamentalism and religiosity in general. From a rational standpoint the universe made much more sense without God than with Him. By college I was fairly entrenched, and even somewhat militant. God definitely did not exist!

What was life like for you as an atheist? What was compulsory, what was forbidden and what was most important? 

At first, there really wasn’t a “code.” The rise of the Internet in the 1990s and early 2000s started to change this, and atheism became sort of a cult. Fans and followers of public atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens increasingly began to define atheism as a belief system, but it was based not on a set of positive beliefs, but upon antagonism to others’ beliefs. What was most important was not giving any quarter, not even considering the possibility of the existence of God. It was a badge of purity and of moral achievement to be absolutely certain in your own non-belief, which usually manifested itself in maximum hostility to the views of others regarding religion. So, what was most important was “virtue signaling” how deep and perfect your own atheism was, which usually meant going on the attack against religious people or ideas. For an example of this, try mentioning the words “Mother Teresa” to a group of atheists online, and watch how quickly they rush in to demonize her.

When then did you first start having doubts about atheism? What triggered your doubts? 

My very first job, in high school, was as a counselor at a summer day camp run by a Jewish community center. They did not require you to be a Jew or have any kind of belief to work there. Though I wasn’t part of their faith, I loved their songs, their culture, the sense of shared community and the joy they took at being part of that community. The theology was incidental. I always considered myself a spiritual person, but while I was an atheist I was careful to define my belief in non-sentient terms. “I believe in nature” or “I believe in a cosmic balance of the universe” were things I would say. When I was in my late 30s I began to consider, if I truly believed in “nature” and “balance,” whether it was so far a jump from believing that to consider whether “nature” and “balance” could themselves be sentient and could have a consciousness. If they did, that could only be described as God, or at least some sort of God. So I realized I could no longer be certain that God did not exist.

I also realized that atheism lacked the means to explain at least half of the human experience. Rationality and “show me proof” works very well for things in the tangible and measurable world. The world of the mind and heart, the world of artistic expression, creativity, and meaning, works along a totally different set of rules, where measurement and “proof” are useless. How can I “prove” that I love my family, or that a Michelangelo painting is beautiful? You can’t do it. Instead of trying to explain this aspect of being human, atheists generally ignored it. And most atheists I encountered weren’t really more contemplative about their beliefs than the fundamentalists they railed against. If it came out of the mouths of Dawkins, Harris or Hitchens, it was good and true. If not, they didn’t have much regard for it.

When people, especially atheists, hear that I’m an ex-atheist, most of them assume that I found “proof” that God exists. That’s not what happened at all. It was a much less linear or empirical process.

How long did it take you to go from doubting atheism to deciding you had new beliefs? What pushed you past the point of no return? 

I guess I started to have doubts in the early 2000s, but the “point of no return” was one moment on a very hot Saturday morning in July 2009. I was considering a lot of life changes (like going back to school to get my Ph.D. in history), had entered a new relationship (with my now husband), but life was still very fraught for me at the time. Apropos of nothing, as I was getting out of bed, I had a very strong sense that a powerful presence had its eye fixed on me. For an instant, and no more than that, the eye of God was watching me. What I sensed was God looking at me and thinking, “Okay, so how’s he doing?” and then concluding, “Oh, he’ll be fine. He doesn’t need my help. Move on.” And then His eye wandered off to look at someone else. It has never happened since and I don’t ever expect it to, but when you sense the eye of God looking at you, it’s kind of hard to take atheism seriously after that. Still, even after that it took a while to really commit to Judaism.

How does one leave atheism? Did you have to do anything special? 

I don’t even know how you leave—write a letter of resignation to Richard Dawkins? One leaves atheism, at first, by conceding the possibility that God might exist. At that point you might be an agnostic, but you’re not an atheist anymore. Then you begin to explore the dimensions of God in your own mind. It’s about asking questions, not necessarily finding answers. This is what atheism, as a belief system, has so much in common with the fundamentalist religion it railed against: it professes certainty and discourages deviation from that certainty.

How did the people closest to you react to your decision to leave atheism behind? And how did you react to their reactions? 

Most of the people close to me were casually, not devoutly, religious, so they were fine with it. My father, who is devoutly religious (Methodist) and became so late in life, was quite happy. I did have friends who were atheists who simply couldn’t understand it but generally they just shrugged. The people who were most hostile were, predictably, strangers on the Internet who were very offended by the choice that I, a person they did not know, had made. I posted a blog article about leaving atheism which got a fair amount of traffic. It was linked on atheist message boards and Twitter threads where people reacted angrily and concluded that I “never understood” atheism, or that I was never “really” an atheist. That, incidentally, is a logical fallacy called “No True Scotsman,” a profound irony considering that most atheists see themselves as governed by logic and reason. Some tried to debate me and angrily demanded I give them proof that God exists. Clearly they missed the point of what I was trying to say.

What’s life like for you now that you identify as a Jew? Do you think it’s better, or worse? 

Much better. I’m now part of that community I admired when I worked my first job. I like to say that I was born a Jew, I just didn’t know it for the first 40 years of my life. Judaism works for me because it’s about questioning God, not finding certain answers, and because the Judaic tradition judges you as a person by what you do, not by what you believe. What other religion makes it a sacrament to eat freshly baked bread and drink wine to celebrate the coming of the weekend? We’ve been “thanking God it’s Friday” for 4,000 years. The holidays are beautiful. The sense of community is meaningful. It’s made my life much richer.

Is there any part of your life as an atheist that you miss? 

No, I really don’t. Atheism gave me nothing of any particular value. I respect it as a belief and an intellectual tradition, but it did nothing for me, personally.

Which 3 people or things in your life are most important to you right now? 

My husband; fighting climate change; and understanding the past.

Which item, bought or received after you became a believer of Judaism, has been most useful to you?

If you’re talking about physical items, I can’t really answer that. It’s not about material items, really.

Can you list 3 things you realised only after no longer being an atheist?

First, being a person of faith is not a betrayal or an abrogation of reason. It doesn’t make you “less rational.” The mistaken view I had of religion when I was an atheist was that it was basically a zero-sum game, that any belief of a religious nature was tantamount to being a fundamentalist. Atheists make a lot of good critiques of fundamentalism, but they don’t really have much to say to people for whom faith is a reasonable part of a well-lived life.

Second, most people, the vast majority, do not follow religions because they’re afraid of judgment in some sort of afterlife. Atheists often assume that religion is a form of extortion: “Follow this set of beliefs, or you’ll go to Hell!” That’s a ridiculous idea. Maybe that was true in the Middle Ages, but I don’t know anyone who seriously thinks that way now. As a Jew I don’t even believe in Hell; I have no idea what happens after death and frankly I doubt I’ll have time to worry about that until I do actually die.

Third, most people of any faith fully recognize that religion is a construct of human beings, not of God. It was people, not God, who wrote down the Torah and created the mitzvot and established the cultural and theological features of Judaism. Going back to the story of Noah, which bothered me so much as a kid, now do I literally believe it happened? Of course not. It’s just a story, like many stories in the sacred books of most religions. No one has ever asked me to take it literally.

What advice do you have for those currently contemplating leaving atheism?

Don’t announce on Twitter that you are no longer an atheist—you’ll receive a ferocious tidal wave of abuse! Seriously, though, I would say that deciding whether you believe in God, or leaving the question open as a serious possibility, is not a moral failing. It won’t make you stupider or more irrational. You’re not suddenly going to wake up and want to join the Westboro Baptist Church.

Is there anybody you presently look up to, who you would like to learn from?

There’s a reason the wisdom of the Talmud scholars has survived for 1400 years. As I explore Judaism, I would like to learn more of that wisdom.

Lastly, what is your perspective on life and the afterlife now? 

As I said, what happens in the afterlife doesn’t motivate me very much. I certainly do believe there are other universes and planes of existence besides our own, but whether I’ll ever see them I have no idea. In this life I think you have an obligation to try to leave the world at least a little better than you found it. This is one reason why I work on climate change—we have to reverse the effects of climate change, urgently, and I feel like I have to contribute to that project.

Sean hopes to continue to speak about, consult on and teach climate change and historical topics as much as he can in the future, and also put out another book soon. You can read more about him on his website, seanmunger.com or chat with him using the comment box below (“With the caveat that I do not wish to debate atheists (or anybody) on the existence of God. It’s been my experience that atheists think anyone who expresses a religious faith is eager to have this debate. In reality, no one other than atheists have any interest in having this debate. So please don’t send me demands for ‘proof’ that God exists. That’s not what this interview is about or why I did it.”).

More interviews with people who have left habits, lifestyles and religions available here.

Photographs courtesy and copyright of Sean Munger. Interviewer: Sy
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