[Introductory Post] The Pitch

14 years of being a Roman Catholic. (17, really — I haven’t officially renounced my religion on documents and whatnot. Too lazy.)

3 years of flip-flopping between Catholicism and agnosticism.

This year, I’ve finally decided that there is no God.

So why have I decided to set up a blog about it? How could I possibly be interesting, when I’m a total n00b to the whole atheism thing, and on top of that, I’m just some dumb 17-year-old who doesn’t know any better? I started Diary of a Teenage Atheist because I am, most likely, just a little bit different from all the atheists you know, and I have so much to rant about. My limited knowledge of the tenets of atheism (or whatever) is extraneous to this blog; it will include little to no philosophizing. I hate philosophizing, it’s so pretentious (sorry, Martin!) it makes me look like an even bigger idiot than I already am. Diary of a Teenage Atheist, if you haven’t yet figured out from the title alone, is entirely anecdotal.

I feel like my situation is more difficult than that of most atheists because, to paraphrase director Q. Allan Brocka, my country makes America look liberal. While Americans worry about their nation becoming a theocracy (“one nation under God,” you know), my country fucking is a theocracy. Where I’m from, 94 percent of us are Christian, and 84 percent are Roman Catholic (I don’t feel like naming my country, but do a little Googling and you won’t have any trouble figuring it out). Divorce isn’t legal here because it violates the sanctity of marriage…or something like that.

My family found out a few months ago, and they were not at all happy or even accepting when they found out, an experience which I will expound on in a future post. I’m not sure whether or not to tell my friends, although a couple of them know, and they handled it pretty well.

Right now, I’m in the middle of college applications, and the college I want to go to is, tragically enough, a Catholic one. The headmaster himself is a religious leader, and the school motto pretty much means “I’m God’s bitch.” Going about this will be pretty tough — do I admit to my lack of a religion and hope they like me anyway, or do I live college life as a closet atheist? It’s quite the dilemma, but if/when I figure something out, I’ll let you know.

So stick around, if only for the schadenfreude you’ll experience reading about the difficulties and discrimination I face as a non-believer in my bigoted Catholic family, not to mention my Predominantly Christian Country (yes, that’s what I’ll be calling it from now on, unless you can think of something wittier).