Alan E. Johnsrud had doubts about religion, but years passed before he considered himself an atheist. (By Tim Sloan for The Washington Post)

By Alan E. Johnsrud
Saturday, November 7, 1998; Page B09

The account of my path to a particular belief system starts at strong belief and ends with atheism. This still should qualify for your series, I think.

I was raised in a strongly Lutheran household in Wisconsin in the 1930s and '40s. That was a time and place where everybody of Norwegian descent was expected to be Lutheran, and I was a prime example. I was the best student in my Bible class, but I had a few doubts, which I attributed to my sinful nature.

For some reason, the Book of Revelation was never taught, and I remember our pastor saying that it was not too well thought of. If I had found out about that part of the Bible, with all its fantasy, I think I would have jumped ship sooner.

In due course, I went off to the state university and began to study science, which was my passion. What I picked up from science was that nothing is ever accepted without evidence and that the simplest explanation for any phenomenon (the one with the fewest assumptions) is most likely to be correct.

I had better things to do at college than attend church, but I always attended services with my parents when I went home. Some statements of belief (called creeds) were recited during the services, and I was in the habit of not thinking about them.

One day, I must have had what the religious would call a spiritual awakening, because I paid attention to the belief statements and realized that I could not possibly believe a single one of them. I was wasting my own time and the time of the devout members of the organization, so I never went back.

I remember a particular observation I made at the time. If God has given us a brain capable of separating truth from untruth, how can he expect us to make a huge decision about our eternal life with a foolish exercise like the following: "You must believe what is in this book because this book says you must believe what is in this book."

At first, I did not want to admit to atheism, especially since it was anathema to most people and associated with communism. I needed to work, to have a security clearance. So I defined a "show" deity for myself: Whatever mechanism is responsible for the world as it stands is what I will call my God. (This, I notice, is what some scientists say when asked whether they believe in a Supreme Being. They have their deity cause the Big Bang, start everything off and then bow out of the picture.)

Later in life, I decided that my convenient definition for a deity was a cop-out. A religion, to my way of thinking, must have a deity that is active in human affairs, responds to prayers, sends souls to proper places in an afterlife and demands constant adoration. If one cannot believe in such a deity without evidence (beyond testimonials and anecdotes), one must be an atheist.

Beliefs associated with atheism include: There are no divine rewards or punishments for deeds and no sin – which is an offense against a deity. Good and evil are determined by their effects, not by holy writ; punishment of evil must come from society, not a deity; humans don't have a right to destroy the Earth, especially through overpopulation; and there is no "purpose" for human life (other than to reproduce, as with any other species).

There is no congenital predisposition to believe in a deity, as I discovered with my children, both of whom are atheists, and my grandchildren. I worried for a couple of years about my supposed soul, etc., because I had been indoctrinated (imprinted) while very young. But I got over it.

My children, and now their children, are free of imprinting and have no worries about (or belief in) their souls.

Alan E. Johnsrud, 67, is retired and lives in Arlington. He has worked as an aerospace engineer and a military operations research analyst. He enjoys daily workouts at a gym, traveling in his camper and doing home improvements and auto repairs.