Several Pieces

I have a habit of assuming that people, if they got to know me, would find me intensely disinteresting. To some extent, I see myself in this way.

It is very difficult for me to concieve of this changing. Another habit of mine, quite possibly acquired as a direct result of the foregoing, is imitation. I tend to accentuate similarities between myself and others I find interesting--I will selectively represent my interests and opinions, or blatantly name-drop so as to advertise that we have mutual shared acquaintances. Occasionally, I will wind up in a large social group and find myself rushing in an attempt to imitate an aggregate image of them.

On a gut level, I seem to feel I'm rather worthless. No surprises there--I have suffered depression more or less my entire life, and I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the "optimistic bubbly confident" archetype I've been pushing myself to express for...quite a while now...didn't last. I have been fed some very...odd...ideas about life, the universe and suchforth as a result of the associations that encouraged me to try and be that person. In the process of relating to these ideas, and ostensibly turn them into useful behavioral feedback for myself, I have neatly paralleled another ongoing struggle-in-thinking that overlaps with this one...

By way of explanation: I was raised with a rather agnostic bent, at most. Despite my parents' churchgoing habits, I didn't experience much direct indoctrination as a child--it meant nothing to me, stories that I couldn't understand the significance or interest of. When the instructors tried to suggest that these stories had something tangible to do with the world around me, the one I lived and breathed in, I didn't give them any credence whatsoever. Carl Sagan had more to do with my life of mind, until I was about fifteen. While I wasn't a formalized atheist, I didn't really hold much belief in gods--though I recall a stubborn interest in parapsychology.

That was the point when I found myself faced with the prospect of social acceptance, from a church youth group I'd attended with one of my friends (something I hadn't really had until that point in my life). At first, it was quite sufficient to simply feel as though I were being accepted and included--something I hadn't experienced much of, being quite poorly-socialized and a bit of an introvert. However, I became increasingly aware of an "inner circle" effect taking place--those who really fit here, who got seemingly-genuine praise and encouragement whenever they went out on a limb to express themselves, were those who were also explicitly self-identified as Christian.

What is more surprising than my conversion is how long it took--I think I waited months before asking the youth pastor, somewhat timidly, if we could begin a bible study together. Although he cautioned me, in a very warm and friendly manner, about making sure this was "the right choice for [me]", I could predict my decision even then. At the time, I had to have this.

I assimilated rather poorly--an early exposure to evolutionary theory and a long-standing love of biology, physics and geology leaves one poorly-prepared for admission into a social network of biblical creationists. When I encountered persistent difficulties integrating my newfound faith with what I'd known previously, I turned to the head pastor of the church for guidance. Making a decision on my own was pretty much unthinkable, as was dismissing the new cultural framework I'd begun acquiring. I had to do and say and think and act in these ways, or I was betraying the very thing that had won me some attention from the world--and I had to get it right, because the alternative was to go back to self-hatred and depression.

(Not that these ever really went away, but that's how my adolescent self concieved of the situation--there was pain and hurt and worthlessness, or there was meaning to be found in the approval of others.)

As fate would have it, my pastor tried to frame the matter intelligently and fairly. He professed not to know much about it, but that evolutionary theory was generally believed to be good science and that the Bible didn't say much of anything about God's methods. He had heard of a book, recently-published, that claimed to show proof that living organisms must be intelligently-designed. If I'd like, he said, he would order me a copy to read.

That was how I acquired Darwin's Black Box, by Michael Behe, and it didn't take long for me to progress from the pseudoscience to strait-out literal young-earth Creationism. That the one really Fundamentalist book I'd encountered said, rather explicitly, that I'd go to Hell if I didn't believe a literal account of Genesis had a lot to do with this. I was taking this pernicious meme-plex more and more seriously by the day.

From then until about the time I turned eighteen, I was some varying flavor of Fundamentalist Christian. Where I couldn't fit Biblical dogma in with my core attitudes (say, regarding homosexuality or abortion, two things I've never concieved of as genuinely "wrong"), I took a "love the sinner, hate the sin" approach. I attended church diligently. I tried to keep in dialogue with the pastor about various things, and to fit in with my youth group. To some extent, it worked--while I was still "the weirdo", and socially awkward as ever, I had a place to be and a role to play. It was something I'd never had before, and I am rather surprised at times it didn't keep me there.

At 18, I suppose I had gotten tired of the online message board debates with atheists and scientists over evolution. I gradually came to acknowledge, internally, that copy-pasting the same creationist arguments, hoping to stump the nonbeliever and catch them in the act of self-delusion, was not actually serving me to show curiosity insight toward the natural world. Inasmuch as I adopted and reinforced my faith to win a sort of surrogate self-esteem, I did so on the belief that what I'd learned was true and explained the world better than the science-derived worldview I'd grown up with. More and more, I was coming to accept that it wasn't. I'd been wrong, and the world was a far larger and more interesting place than my hastily-assembled religious views could possibly describe. While I believed it internally, the fears of damnation, apostasy and rejection from my social group exerted a drag effect. As I tried to slow my drift away from the one source of seemingly-secure identity I'd ever had, the discomfort I felt around those I'd once considered peers made me slide away even faster. For two years this dragged out.

It was summer of 2003--another year hence and I would begin contemplating transition, but at that moment I wasn't thinking of such things. I had embraced atheism and the freethought movement, along with the Principia Discordia--a rather pleasant endcap to my thinking of Christian thoughts. Instead, I had discovered a sort of acceptance from myself that had utterly eluded me while chasing after faith--one in which my situation was simply a fact of life, and up to me to deal with--or not deal with--however I chose.

---

A note to Livejournal readers:

My blogging situation is now, roughly, as follows--most of my personal entries will occur here at A Denizen's Entertainment. Those not pertaining solely to site-specific topics will be cross-posted to my usual LJ. However, there are probably going to be fewer such entries overall, and they will be somewhat more specific in focus--little or nothing of my day-to-day life, future plans or really sensitive topics.

My blog at Idle Session, for those who are interested, will probably be used to cover interest-related topics and such cerebrations as I may find sufficiently well-developed to be worth sharing. It still hasn't gotten a genuine post--I meant what I said about fewer entries overall.

Most other topics are being taken offline, into paper journals.