About the Author
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I am Judith Hayes, The Happy Heretic. I am an atheist. This monthly column about the folly of god-belief was born in November 1996. It continued until the summer of 2005, when I decided to take a much needed sabbatical. I came back online in February 2008. Before writing my Internet columns, I wrote scores of my outspoken articles for numerous secular humanist magazines and newspapers. I’ve also written two books: In God We Trust: But Which One? (published by FFRF, 1996; revised and updated in 2003) and The Happy Heretic (published by Prometheus Books, 2000).
I was raised as a strictly fundamentalist German Missouri Synod Lutheran. (Maiden name Meyer.) My grandfather and great-grandfather were Lutheran ministers, my father was a Lutheran pipe organist, and my youth was filled, literally, with religion. My life was Lutheran. Yet even as a young child some things about this religion that made no sense to me. So I did the unthinkable: I began asking questions. I now understand how awkward that was for my parents because they were sensible, reasoned questions and my parents had no sensible, reasoned answers for them. For example, when I asked my mother why we Lutherans didn’t believe in cremation (I had only just learned that such a thing existed) she told me that the “body” had to be saved to be reunited with its soul in heaven. My logical (to me) follow-up question was, “What happens if you die in a hotel fire or something?” Her sharp (to me) response was, “Ach, nonsense! God knows what he’s doing!” Thanks, Mom.
As a young teen, though, I began to seriously question some of my church’s teachings. My subsequent search for knowledge ultimately led to me atheism. During that uncomfortable period between believing and not believing, I was a “closet” atheist, and I do wish there had been connecting doors between all of those atheist-containing closets. We could have been playing cards or something while we all waited to find the courage to come out.
I have a new perspective on many things for several reasons, but mainly because of a lengthy illness. Serious illness can make you feel humbled or it can just make you feel like hell. I felt both but through it all one thing never changed one whit: my perspective on all things religious. My disdain is, if anything, more vehement. Strangely, many people have written to ask me about the moniker I chose for myself: The Happy Heretic. Apparently there are two things wrong with it. First, from purists, I am told that I am not a heretic at all but in fact an apostate. Duh. I am aware of that but I’m fond of alliteration.
But second, and far more important, I am often asked how I can refer to myself as “happy” since so many of my columns are angry. This objection is more puzzling. It’s as if people can’t understand that I do in fact have a life outside of my writing. I am indeed happy to be free of the shackles of religious belief. Religions, especially fundamentalist ones, insist that you close your mind, ask no questions and just believe. What a terrible way to live! Our minds are all that separate us from most other animals, so why should we not use them and treasure them? I have always had enormous curiosity about the stars and the planets and then when I was older I was curious about fossils and atoms and parthenogenesis and endless other things. But questions about those endless other things fell on deaf ears. I was told that God works in His own ways. Accept it and move on! What makes my parents’ attitude so odd is that they were both very intelligent and read books day in and day out, with weekly trips to the library, always. I later realized, however, that they each kept their interests carefully focused. Evolution, for example, was not only considered a foolish errancy, but was an actual dirty word in the home I grew up in.
As I struggled into adulthood, however, my mind refused to stay closed and I began to read forbidden books, like Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Utterly confused, since this thoroughly contradicted the simplistic story of creation in the Bible’s book of Genesis, I decided to read the entire Bible. And I did. Twice. By the time I was finished I was an atheist. In a way I was sad because belief in some invisible God simplified things. But at the same time I felt like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. So this was what the world was really like! I couldn’t read enough books fast enough. The world was there for me to discover, and I devoured it all hungrily.
Ergo, The Happy (get it?) Heretic.
I currently live in California, in the Central Valley’s gold country. There’s still gold in these here hills. My favorite composer is Mozart, although I fell in love with Elvis Presley when I was twelve and still listen to him. And, finally, hoping that at least some of you can find it in your hearts to forgive me for such a character flaw, I like anchovies on my pizza.