The Search for God

I was eight years old, attending a Catholic school in St. Kitts. Though I was not Catholic, my parents believed the school would instill morals. It was run by Belgian nuns—stern, joyless, and often cruel—who made my days miserable.

I was a curious child, hungry for knowledge. Yet the school offered no science, and its history was filtered through Vatican dogma. At home, however, my parents had placed The Children’s Book of Knowledge in our living room—a massive tome, nearly the size of an encyclopedia. I devoured it, page by page, and often felt I knew more than the nuns who claimed authority over me.

Catechism hour was torture. I listened to endless moralizing about Limbo, Purgatory, and Communion hosts that bled if bitten. These strange concepts terrified me. The Devil and Hellfire—shared by both Catholicism and my Protestant upbringing—haunted my nights.

The most traumatic moment came when a nun declared that anyone not baptized Catholic would burn in hell forever. She called me to the front of the class. “Look at Ian,” she said. “He has not been baptized as a Catholic and will go to hell. There is nothing he can do about it.” I sat down, shaken, marked as damned before my peers.

Even then, I began to question. I turned to The Children’s Book of Knowledge for answers. One morning, during a lesson on creation, I raised my hand: “Excuse me, ma’am. If God created the world, who created God?” Mother Monfort, the infamous nun, clapped her hands over her ears and screamed incoherently. My father was summoned and warned that if I ever challenged Catholic doctrine again, I would be expelled.

I realized she had no answer—and worse, she feared the question itself.

My father moved me to a public school. There, I thrived in science, discovered real history, and spoke freely. I no longer feared sleep; the Devil was not waiting for me.

The Teenage Years

I continued attending church, listening as preachers read carefully chosen passages, omitting the troubling ones: Lot’s incest with his daughters, biblical endorsements of slavery, the ruthless slaughter of enemies.

The Bible clearly sanctioned slavery. Yet in a church filled with descendants of slaves, I never heard 1 Peter 2:18: “Slaves, be subject to your masters… even to those who are perverse.” Nor Ephesians 6:5: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear…”

Priests and ministers had once marched alongside slave traders, reinforcing obedience. They converted the slaves and used scripture to convince them to accept their status and revere their owners. Even generations after emancipation, the institution of the church remained complicit in this denigration.

Still, I found joy in that period. The church was a community, a family. I loved ecclesiastical music. My mother, the choir mistress and organist, filled our home with classical and sacred melodies. Music gave me solace, even as faith gave me doubt.

Awakening to the Cosmos

After graduation, while teaching at my alma mater, I borrowed an astronomy textbook. Its black-and-white images revealed my first knowledge of star birth and death. The heavens were not immutable, but constantly changing. Cosmology was young in the 1970s, but for me it was revolutionary. I gazed at the night sky with new eyes, and the old question returned.

Perhaps Christianity was the problem. I studied other religions systematically, hoping for answers. None satisfied. Each was a cultural variation on the same theme: a wise figure, a book of teachings, and followers persuaded—often by force. Mohammed’s armies swept through lands demanding conversion or death. Christianity spread through Roman conquest and European colonization. Fear of hellfire kept believers bound. Priests, imams, and gurus held the keys to divine knowledge, guarding it jealously.

Every religion rested on a creation story. The Abrahamic six days of labour and one of rest. The Hindu cosmic egg. All shared one feature: the world appeared fully formed at a single moment. None addressed the question that had silenced Mother Monfort—what came before?

Cracks in the Story

The first crack appeared in 1859, when Darwin published On the Origin of Species. Evolution showed that life did not spring whole from nothing, but unfolded gradually. Religion’s refusal to accept such evidence revealed its fragility.

The second crack came with Einstein and the Big Bang. The universe, 14 billion years old, is expanding from a singularity into galaxies, stars, planets, and eventually life. Yet even this theory left a haunting question: what preceded the origin?

Through midlife, I devoured books on evolution and cosmology. I found no ultimate answer, but I found freedom. To accept someone else’s edicts as truth is lazy. I read, pondered, speculated, and debated. I kept my mind open, expanding it as far as I could.

I may never know the single truth. But I reject those who claim it as their own.

Freedom from Superstition

I have freed myself from superstition, from a vengeful God, from hellfire and prophets, from holy books and rituals. Irene was free too. She never struggled, never studied; she instinctively knew that religion was fabricated. She hinted at her reasons: the most devout people she knew were hypocrites, using faith to manipulate others; therefore, the basis for their religiosity must be flawed.

Irene died peacefully, without belief in an afterlife. If such a place exists, surely she would be rewarded for living a good life, regardless of doctrine. If there is a God, surely he is not vain, narcissistic, or cruel.

We were united in this freedom.