Science!

I recently have come to realize I should have paid better attention in high school to the mathematics and sciences the teachers attempted to teach me. Sure, some of them could have been more interested in teaching instead of just getting through the lesson-plan, but that is no excuse for me being lackadaisical about the subjects. Oddly enough, I came to this conclusion a little while after abandoning the last shred of religion I was clinging to, a process that has been going about for the better part of a decade, but reached the apex about three months ago, I suppose.

So, after all the years of back-and-forth with religion, I put aside the childish things and moved on. I was committed for years, then began to waiver, and of course, in the strangest and yet most fitting way an atheist is developed - study of religion. You see, when you attempt to better dissect and understand your beliefs (instead of blindly accepting them outright), you have to study the religious texts and teachings. However, the longer this goes on, the more parts of the teachings blatantly contradict the outside world, and even other teachings themselves concealed in the same documents.

So, I struggled to maintain what I was brought up to believe, just like I struggled and rationalized when I wanted to continue believing in Santa Claus. But, as time went on, inconsistency after inconsistency piled up, until I could not pretend to ignore them anymore. I would see good people, faithful people, devout and loving people, suffering, with no explanation in sight. I would see condemnations heaped upon some while praises thrown on others, but could not see the difference in the actions of the two groups. And every time, I turned to the teachings for answers - and they always came up wanting.

Once I realized the religious institution itself was at fault, I tried more rationalization. I tried to convince myself that the beliefs were true, as was the deity, but that the dogma was incorrect - dogma created by fallible men. However, more time passed, and it became clear that the beliefs were also strewn together by fallible men, and I was left with just a deity. So I still tried to cling to that, just in-and-of itself. I tried to believe that the deity was real, and just that most all the writings about it were exaggerated or fabricated.

Then Reality slapped me, and told me something:

"Grow the fuck up."

How could I postulate that this being existed, when the teachings, rules, regulations, beliefs, sayings, and even "evidence" of it were non-existent? I couldn't. Perhaps something existed out there, but it was surely not the god of my youth that I was brought up to love, and at the same time, fear. And even worse, most of the claims about the deity were clearly contradicted by the world around me, with claims that could be tested and verified and re-tested and re-verified, over and over again.

It was at this point that two things happened. I shrugged off the tattered cloth of a weak and ineffectual effigy of fear and devotion in exchange for an open mind and free spirit; and I saw the world for how it truly was - amazing and beyond my comprehension.

And I wanted to comprehend it. I wanted to understand, to learn, to contemplate and experiment and come to know more about a world I had been living in for nigh three decades and yet had never once truly seen. But I found myself without a means to do so, in part due to my lack of focus on the subjects high school would have given me knowledge in that would have given me a foothold to begin this investigation with.

Instead, I sought out videos on YouTube that showcased others with better understanding. Not just understanding in sciences, but also understanding about where I had just come from and where I had arrived: other free-thinkers and those unfettered by ridiculous religious convictions. I found the channels of YouTube users like DarkMatter2525, AronRa, Thunderf00t, potholer54, philhellenes, and The Atheist Experience, to name a few, and not counting the various one-off videos from various users across YouTube, showcasing the talents of great minds like Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michio Kaku, and others. Even Bill Nye! I watched his show back in elementary school, and damned if I didn't feel like I learned something. And here I come to find out he wasn't just some TV-show host phoning it in, but an actual full-fledged mechanical engineer and a legitimate science communicator. My mind was blown.

And it was at this point I made a decision - that when I finally return to school, I come at it with both barrels. Not just classes to become a designer of video games or some other artistic career. I want to actually learn what I was supposed to along-side my career training: Algebra, Geometry, Calculus, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Astronomy, and the like.

And I will be coming at them with a mind ready to receive them, instead of one ready to deny them by the light of a flickering candle of a close-minded vacuum of thought brought on by my religious beliefs. Religion stunts the growth of a developing mind, and is tantamount to expelling a child from school in regards to the sciences, history, and any other subject that discusses the world - nay, the existence - we live in.