At least, that’s exactly what happened to me; I first turned to atheism because I was taught that creationism was totally true, and modern science (specifically evolution) was not. Yet, modern science was what was keeping me alive, and modern science also perfectly explained why my antibiotics stopped working every couple months or so. 

Meanwhile, I was already very, very angry at God. Coming to understand and accept evolution as fact was the straw that shattered my faith, especially when I attended a private Christian school for one year of high school, where my science teacher (if you could call her a science teacher) taught us Chemistry and Biology via textbooks written by creationist “scientists”. 

These days, I’m trying to go through College Biology with a still-shoddy understanding of Chemistry and, to a lesser but still significant extent, Biology. I enjoy learning about Biology enough to stick with it and learn everything that I can in the class. But I can’t help feeling a little angry about my past, and the fact that I was taught creationism instead of real science for that one year in high school. 

Also, at that same private Christian school, we were invited to a science symposium being held by Front Range Christian school, where we were encouraged to go around the school in the morning and ask actual scientists the hard questions about science and faith. After that, we spent an entire afternoon in the auditorium listening to an Evolutionary Biologist talk about the reality of evolution and how it didn’t disprove Christianity, but rather how it could reinforce one’s faith. During that lecture, I felt like God was speaking to me in a way; telling me that it was okay to believe in God and still accept science. 

But, the following Monday, the teachers at my Christian school immediately dispelled the notion that modern science and faith can go hand-in-hand. “I don’t think that [evolutionary biologist] was even a Christian!” my science teacher hissed, “Real Christians don’t compromise God’s Word to fit worldly narratives in it.” 

Those words were so crushing for me to hear that I fought back tears for the rest of the day. As soon as I got home, I scribbled about it in a journal while crying my eyes out. Whatever faith in God I had left was gone at that moment, which, looking back, was absolutely terrifying as it was depressing to me. I mean… at that point in my life, I was only getting sicker, with no hope of getting better. Modern science could only help me so much, and it was rapidly failing me. 

For context, the main reason why I chose to attend a private Christian school with only nine or ten other students in the entire high school, was so that I could expose myself to less germs and stay in school the whole year, as my Cystic Fibrosis was progressing at an alarming rate. Every few months, I lost a little more weight and lung function. My face was puffy yet pale from all of the antibiotics I had to take to keep my existing infections at bay, my hair was terribly thin and frayed, and I was scarily skinny. If I got a simple, minor cold, I’d be out of school for two weeks, at least. Worst of all, I had no hope of getting better unless a literal, Divine miracle happened. 

Now that my faith was obliterated, so was the hope that I’d somehow get better, or that I’d move onto a better place if my physical body didn’t recover. Medical science was progressing, but not nearly fast enough to save me from an inevitable slow, painful death I was certain I’d suffer within the next ten years. I was already doing everything in my power to stay healthy and get better, but nothing was working to stop the progression of my genetic disease. Hell, my strict regimen of pills and treatments and a sugar-free, organic diet hardly slowed it. 

Honestly, I don’t remember much of what happened after all that (though I still have many journal pages that I wrote from those days). But, I definitely embraced anti-theism for awhile until God showed up in life again several times, which made me reconsider my position as an angry atheist a little more each time I experienced the inexplicable.