For as long as I can remember, I was a proud atheist. So much so that when I attended my sister’s communion as a teenager, I stubbornly stayed seated, unwilling to walk up to the front to partake in the ritual. My grandfather gave me a furious look. My whole family didn’t understand why I couldn’t just play along for the sake of my sister’s ceremony. It felt existential.
That’s how deeply I had ingrained my identity as a non-believer. Throughout my youth and early 20s, I was exclusively interested in science and the material world. I had no doubts that at the end of human life, what awaited us was simply “lights out”.