Our country is still very much in the dark, to this day you can still find articles revolving around mutilations for "muti". The Marikana massacre showed us how deeply black people still believe in the wizardry of sangomas. Men charged at armed police officers believing that a sangoma had made them invincible.
Now atheism merely means the opposite of theism, which is the belief in a deity, a god in layman's terms. As far back as I can remember, the idea of the Abrahamic god in the Christian bible was suspicious to me from the age of 5. I was nearly run over by a speeding bakkie in grade 1 when I tried to cross the street without looking & I honestly felt like God was rejecting me, refusing to let me go to heaven while I was still free of sin & I began to think that God did not love me. From an early age I recognised that the world was ill,& my near-death experience felt like God was punishing me, because I was a regular Sunday school scholar I had heard the promise of heaven & I desired it dearly & in my mind, the all knowing God knew this & yet refused me entry.
I remember pondering over it for days, but eventually I felt that God had a plan for me, as they teach in the church. But the incident planted a seed of doubt & I would begin to open my eyes at school assembly during morning prayers, because the principal would tell us that God might smack us over the eyes for not having closed them during prayer & I was curious.
I would also stop praying for God's help during tests, because I felt I didn't need God for that, I could pass by myself. But I would continue to believe in God, but doubtfully so until the age of 13 in grade 9 when I met these senior students who told me they did not pray at all & I followed suite. At the end of the year I concluded to myself that God was just a character in a story book called the bible.
It was not until grade 11 when I joined facebook did I discover there was a name for the way I felt, atheism, & that there were other people who dismissed the idea of all gods. I was still going to Sunday School, because I knew my mother wouldn't understand, but it began to hurt me emotionally to go to church & listen to those teachings. I would begin to miss some Sunday school sessions & my mother noticed my growing relunctance to go to church & she asked me why & I explained I was an atheist to which she replied "There is no such thing! You will get up, bathe & go to church!". Out of respect to her I went, but fortunately she came to her senses later that day & said that she wouldn't force me to go to church.
I'm proud to say I haven't gone to church since November of 2009, even though my mother had me baptised in 2011 in hopes it would change my view. I am immovable in my views & everything science has yet to explain is simply that which we have yet understand, not the work of some invisible magician in the skies.
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