I am an atheist. I thought I should start out by saying that. I have many reasons why I don’t hold myself to any specific religion or believe in a higher deity. On the other hand, though, that doesn’t mean that I don’t hinder on others' beliefs, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for what people believe.

Why an atheist, some of you may ask? Well, both my parents growing up were devout Lutherans. I read the Bible from cover to cover when I was younger. I did this for two reasons. The first was when visiting my grandfather in the home as he slowly deteriorated from Alzheimer’s, when he started to panic, there were two things that usually calmed him down: reading the Bible and singing hymns. The second was that my mother liked us to each read a chapter of the Bible to each other before we went to bed.

In reading the Bible, I noticed the hypocrisy, the nature in which God demanded fear and bullied his worshipers. How he ruined lives, like Job's, for something as ridiculous as a bet. A god who brutally sacrificed his own son and drowned a whole world to make a clean slate instead of actually working out to fix the issues he found with the people who resided at the time. I could not believe in something that vengeful and angry. I believe in kindness, not wrath and intimidation.

Yet, I make it a point to never try to impede on others beliefs. Yes, there are many religious groups that spread hate for people different from themselves, causing wars, inspiring terrorist attacks, and many more atrocious things. On the other hand, I have seen what good religion did for people. Christianity helped my Grandfather deal with his family being torn apart, the loss of everything he had known, because of internment camps. In the church I went to growing up, there was an elderly woman who was a regular for decades; she was able to find peace and community after escaping Germany, her family having been executed because her father was a general in WWI, and her best friend and her child gunned down right next to her as they tried to escape, all because they were Jewish.

I saw time after time people of several different religions finding peace in losing loved ones with the help of religion. I saw the Mormon kids in my high school build a community together within their religion, and find a safe space with each other (and throwing the wildest parties). Religion helps many people find community and unity with each other. It gives people a sense of purpose, a place to be, and a community to belong to.

So yes, I am an atheist, but I am not blind to the good religion does for people. I see the ugly within religion, but I also see the good. And within most religions, even the most hateful ones, subsects are popping up that allow for people who are of different race, sexuality, sex, and gender. Hopefully all religions would have this viewpoint to embrace and accept everyone for who they are, because a lot of religions I have seen create a sense of belonging and community that I haven’t seen anything else provide for some people. I know there's hope.