"Altar Boy to Atheist: Giving Up God" is as much a random collection of thoughts about the world as it is the story of someone discovering themselves anew throughout different periods of their life. Ryan Bedell grew up Catholic, and now he's not. The book tries to explain why and how Ryan went from youth group leader to an agnostic atheist, and his stories of different religious experiences around the world will resonate with readers from any background.

Okay, let’s get one thing straight. I didn’t write this book to de-convert anyone. Honest. So, if you’re a devout Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Mormon, Catholic, Scientologist, or whatever, you just keep on doin’ what you’re doin’. No offense, but, as long as you’re a good person who doesn’t try to shove your beliefs down my throat or protest at military funerals, I really couldn’t give a rodent’s rectum about your spirituality. It’s none of my business. Go to church. Don’t eat pork. Worship Ganesh. Pray your rosary. Do…well, whatever the fuck those batshit crazy Scientologists do. Jump on couches and pretend you’re on Oprah? Whatever. If it keeps you from going on a multi-state killing spree armed with grenades and an Uzi, knock yourself out! For your information, I wrote this book, well, for your information. That’s it. Over the years I’ve been asked more and more how I went from being a Catholic to a teen atheist to a rabid Bible thumper (with a mullet!) to a (somewhat) mild-mannered atheist and I’ve always said, “It’s a really long story. I’ll write a book about it someday. I promise.” Now, after repeating this oath a bazillion or two times, frankly, I’m tired of stalling. So, instead of procrastinating more or becoming rude to (mostly) well-meaning folks who are just curious, here ya go. I done wrote a book about it. So if this book offends you, don’t launch a campaign to re-convert me. Don’t carpet bomb me with hellfire and brimstone e-mails. If you’re really pissed off, I’m so nice I’ll give you a list of names and home addresses of all the people who’ve pestered me for the story contained within these pages. So go bother THEM! It’s their fault this book exists, not mine! Incidentally, if you feel so inclined, you can pray for me. That’s cool. Whatever lights your altar candles, pardner. That’s none of my business either.

The once dark shadowy corner of the author's heart is finally flickering to life. For years it was a place of spiritual turmoil and inconsistency concerning complex matters of faith. As an impressionable child Tom Reilly fell for the God story. As a free-spirited teenager he was a devoted Catholic. As a rationally minded adult he is a devout atheist. A life long inner search for a genuine God failed miserably. He is now embarrassed that he ever believed at all. He sees God as possibly the greatest sham ever. Only now does his world make any sense. Ireland is a country where, for years, religion did not unite - it divided. Having emerged virtually unscathed from centuries of oppression, today the Catholic Church, not just in Ireland but also worldwide, faces its greatest crisis ever. No longer under threat from the penal laws and such, these days the Church is persecuted by abuse scandals from forces within. Its long-term survival is no longer as inevitable as it once seemed. A born again skeptic, Reilly has already succeeded in challenging one of Ireland's sacred cows; Oliver Cromwell's war crimes, once the popular verdict of history. At a time when many of Ireland's Catholics are wondering if, to question might actually be the answer, the author's fall (jump) from grace is a challenge to believers everywhere.

The Western World is becoming atheist. In the space of three generations churchgoing and religious belief have become alien to millions. We are in the midst of one of humankind's great cultural changes. How has this happened? Becoming Atheist explores how people of the sixties' generation have come to live their lives as if there is no God. It tells the life narratives of those from Britain, Western Europe, the United States and Canada who came from Christian, Jewish and other backgrounds to be without faith. Based on interviews with 85 people born in 18 countries, Callum Brown shows how gender, ethnicity and childhood shape how individuals lose religion. This book moves from statistical and broad cultural analysis to use frank, humorous and sometimes harrowing personal testimony. Becoming Atheist exposes people's role in renegotiating their own identities, and fashioning a secular and humanist culture for the Western world.

How might it happen that a boy of five or six would be tortured by the question of the existence of God? How would this happen, even if that boy were raised to be an atheist by atheist parents? If the boy was never baptized and never taken to church? Was never told about any religion? This book records the spiritual autobiography of a boy who, raised in a household which discouraged belief in anything religious, nevertheless came at a young age to worry about the place of God in his life and family, and suffered from intense fears that he would be condemned to hell because he had not been baptized. Looking back, here is the way the author describes his early years: “I grew up in a household with no place for God or religion. My mother and father were atheists. They did not believe in any divinities, and certainly not in the divinity of Jesus. Perhaps like some of their intellectual friends, they dismissed the idea that Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. This was in America in the 1930’s and 40’s, a time when scientists and intellectuals challenged the claims of Christianity. For my parents the questions of who Jesus was and whether he had actually walked the earth were irrelevant. “Is there a God in heaven? Is creation a gift to us from God? Does God love and care for his children? These were not questions my parents would entertain. Such statements had been denounced as meaningless by the scientists and the rationalists, who insisted that all discussions of God are pointless.” The author recalls his childhood swept by the cold winds of atheism as especially painful because his mother, suffering from the loss of meaning of the atheist’s vision, sank into a deep depression and then into madness. She suffered a series of nervous breakdowns and spent most of the author’s early years in and out of mental hospitals. As a child the author felt “spiritually bankrupt.” He felt he “counted for little in my parents’ world. I counted for even less in the larger world. I looked out at the vast universe that the scientists described and saw it as a frightening place. Darkness and frozen space extended for millions of miles in all directions, and there was nothing out there to comfort us or give our lives meaning.” The author was born into the Great Depression and went off to grammar school during World War II, both events exerting a terrible impact on his family, contributing to his mother’s mental imbalance and his own feelings of insecurity. “I was four years old,” the author writes, “when World War II began. As the war grew more widespread and destructive, I watched with terror the newsreel reports of Nazi bombings. I listened horrified to the newscasts on the radio. Every week fresh issues of Time and Life magazines entered our house, and they brought new images of cities in flames or bombed to smoking rubble. There were close-up photos of the dead on the battlefield, of soldiers bleeding to death, of bodies on a beach. “I recall in particular a photo of a boy my age standing in the ruins of his apartment building somewhere in Europe. He looks lost, frightened, and utterly alone. He wonders if his mother, missing since the bombing, is alive in the ruins. Rubble and twisted metal are all that remain of the city street he had called his home. “Turning the pages of that Life magazine, a terrible fear and sorrow seized me. I identified with the boy. I feared what had happened to him would happen to me.” The author speaks of how, from a source he could not name, powerful religious emotions, primarily fear of a God of Wrath, took hold of him and “initiated me into a secretive life I kept hidden from my father. The fears were brought into focus when I casually used words that had a religious meaning I didn’t understand. The words were these: ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’ “I had heard other kids utter these words when they wanted to impress one another with the truth of an assertion. They often said them when it seemed fairl

What I intend to do in this book is fill up “forever” for you, and I believe you will find that there is only one thing that’s been happening forever, and one thing only, and that is, God been happening, and God alone. Happy reading!Stephen J. Franey