From Christian to Atheist (Part Two)

A Transitional Period.

In my last year in elementary school (6^th grade) we were given the assignment of doing a book report presentation. At this point in my life, I was not much of a reader yet. I had struggled with reading (and spelling) from day one, and was unaware of what dyslexia was. Still, I had been given an assignment, and so looked for a book that interested me. What I found was a book on hypnosis. I’ve no clue where I found this book, though it is possible that my mother had it, or that it came from the library.

What a concept; the control of another’s actions and thoughts, in the hands of a twelve year old boy. I’ll bet the author hadn’t thought that one through. I read the book and wrote out my report, but this was a book on hypnosis, and screamed to be performed before the class, not merely talked about. I got a friend (I think her name was Jackie) to be my subject and practiced a few times on her before the day of the book report presentation. She was a natural subject and by the time I presented my report could be put under very fast .

She was subjected to the usual “tricks” of the hypnotic art (at least as performed by a 6^th grader) including lack of feelings from pinching, and arms that couldn’t be lowered or raised except on command. Thanks to her being perfect for the job, and my having learned the rules for putting someone under, I aced the book report and the presentation.

This was also the start of another part of my journey from Christian to atheist. This book report was my first real step into the area of the workings of the mind, and the fringe studies of ESP, ghosts, magic (as in “real” magic), UFOs , and in general, “things that go bump in the night.” I started to discover that all these things were being talked about and, from what I could tell, they were the subject of real investigations. And I had, after all, experienced the “power” of mind control over another person, so there may just be something to these many claims. Thus began my foray into the world of the paranormal.

This also coincided with a shift on the religion front. I don’t know why or what caused this, but my dad had decided to leave the Southern Baptist Church. This didn’t bother me much, and we spent many a Sunday visiting churches all over the valley, until we came upon The Shepherd of the Valley (United Church of Christ). This was big in my development because this was not a highly dogmatic congregation. That’s not to say there weren’t a few folk who were more or less literalist, or perhaps conservative in their beliefs, but not anything like the Baptists. It was very freeing, and without the dogma to demand my acceptance of much of the Bible claims, they were going to suffer. One of the reasons why was that I was starting to question the Bible stories, and this would not have been easy in a more conservative environment.

So along with moving to a more liberal church, hypnosis was one of the catalysts to my questioning ways, and if I had known what atheism was back then, this might have been a shorter story, but that word was still not in my vocabulary. Nope, I still had a ways to go before I got there. I had, after all, discovered the paranormal. I suspect even atheism wouldn’t have stood a ghost of a chance, until I got that out of my system.