Dan Riley - Generation Atheist

Around this time, I began to have recurring nightmares of standing paralyzed at the bottom of long flights of stairs, with various monsters slowly making their way toward me. I hated these nightmares and decided that the only person I knew who could help me was God. I decided to strike a deal with Him: if He would guarantee that I would not have nightmares, then I would pray and read three pages of Scripture every night. That fear of nightmares made me a diligent reader and scholar, having now read the Book of Mormon cover to cover upwards of 15 times and the entire Bible several times. Though I’ve long ceased reading and praying, I have not had a nightmare since.

As a young student of the Church, I found the Book of Mormon to be largely boring and textually dry. There would be times when I would forget to read my Scriptures before bed, and I would feel particularly guilty, so I would make it up the next night by reading six pages, which always felt like a daunting task. Mark Twain once called the Book of Mormon “chloroform in print,” and I would tend to agree — and not solely because one of the books is named “Ether.”

Far from boring, however, were the prophecies regarding the end of the world. As described by the Book of Mormon, the end of the world will feature skeletons thrown out of their graves and entire cities sinking into the sea or being swallowed by the Earth to a soundtrack of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Mormonism frequently focuses on the Apocalypse, and I was often told that my generation might be the very last before Christ returns. Having an active imagination as a child, whenever there would be a particularly violent storm, I would be absolutely terrified, thinking that the end might be near. I would spend hours on my knees crying and praying to God, “Please, don’t let the world end, but if it does, please spare me and my family, and my dog, and my friends.” On several occasions, I found myself waking up in the morning prostrate, having fallen asleep in prayer the night before.

As I got older, I began to notice odd things in the Book of Mormon and would discuss them with my leaders and teachers. At one point, for example, it condemns polygamy and later, in the Doctrine & Covenants, condones it. My teachers explained that polygamy was a policy that God would choose to implement from time to time — and during the times of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the early saints, it was allowed. In modern times, it was not. Knowing that they loved me and wanted the best for me, I had no reason to doubt the explanations of my leaders. As a result of those discussions, Scripture reading, and my own independent research from other Mormons regarding topics such as the archaeology of Mormon civilizations in Central America, I considered myself a budding apologist.

My freshman year, I attended a Jesuit high school. Being one of few Mormons at the school, I took it upon myself to represent the Church and tried to convert all that I could. I read from the Book of Mormon aloud and volunteered to pray in my required Catholic Scripture course. I wasn’t terribly popular. Later, I attended my local high school, where I began dating a beautiful and brilliant girl who lived nearby. She was Lutheran, but I hoped that through my example and influence, she might ultimately convert. I also attended Mormon seminary classes all four years in high school. All of this led up to my attending Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

At the time, BYU was the perfect fit for me. It has an outstanding Middle Eastern Studies program, many of my friends were also going, my dad was an alumnus, and I had been awarded a full-tuition scholarship due to my grades and test scores. Every student at BYU, Mormon or otherwise, is required to live in Church-approved housing. There are a number of requirements to meet Church approval, such as having segregated genders and well-defined visiting hours during which members of the opposite sex are able to have supervised visits. I decided to live in the dorms with the majority of the other incoming freshmen. Each dorm has a dorm mother and father, an elderly couple that lives in the dorms to oversee the students living there. The residential advisors are highly engaged in the lives of the students on the floor, having mandatory weekly meetings and other activities.

I became close friends with many of the other boys on my floor at BYU and had a wonderful time. It was a great environment to be a young Mormon — the BYU campus is an extraordinarily isolated place, both physically and behind internet firewalls, and thus we didn’t encounter anything from the outside that challenged our faith. Our friends all believed the same things that we did, so any conflicts we did have were often small, simple, and easy to resolve. We had good, clean, Mormon fun, such as playing video games together, going hiking, or watching movies at the local dollar theater. Sometimes we would get a little crazy and watch PG-13 movies, go to Denny’s at 3:00 in the morning, or sneak off campus to get energy drinks, as there is no caffeine sold on the BYU campus.

Not everything was wonderful at BYU, however. Since Mormon girls were taught that they ought to weigh the spiritual fitness of their potential husbands, boys at BYU tended to try to out-Mormon each other to compete for female affections. One, for example, might decide that it was not righteous to listen to music with foul language, so he would dramatically smash his explicit CDs in the hallway and challenge his floor-mates to do the same. Soon, half the dorm would be putting their similar CDs in pillow cases and smashing them against doors. Public shame and guilt were pervasive, and students didn’t hesitate to report any unbecoming behavior of others to the dorm leaders.

Though I strived to follow the rules and live virtuously, I believed that the spirit of a law was more important than the letter thereof, and I found it grating when I would bump up against some of the more arbitrary ones. I was turned away from the cafeteria several times, for example, for not having shaved recently enough. I would occasionally rebel against interpretations of rules and Scriptures that I deemed to be too strict — I even made fun of those who decided that they couldn’t stay out past midnight on a Saturday, believing that to do so would violate the Sabbath.

I enjoyed having philosophical discussions with friends on how best to adhere to the ordinances and principles of the Gospel. Consequently, I began to question many of the key admonitions and rules that had been given to me. I found it interesting that other Christians saw no problem with the consumption of alcohol in moderation, while Mormonism expressly forbids all consumption. I couldn’t find a moral reason that made total abstention better than controlled and moderate drinking and ultimately determined that the only bad thing about having a single glass of wine was that it would be disobedient to what God had instructed. Being a 19-year-old boy, I also thoroughly questioned sexual morality, particularly regarding masturbation and premarital sex. Everyone wanted to know exactly how far they could go with a girl before it became inappropriate in the eyes of God, and I was no exception. For most questions, I was able to find moral justifications in the rules given to us by the Church — masturbation, I thought, must be immoral because it causes us to have lustful thoughts, which are forbidden by Jesus. I believed that it could also lead to a heightened desire for pornography, which could cause people to objectify women and might transform individuals into sexual predators.

The pinnacle of my freshman year of college was in the spring, when most of us would receive our mission calls. Like most Mormons, I had been raised with a desire to serve a mission in order to bring the Gospel to the world. Mormon men sitting around a campfire on a camping trip tell stories from their mission the way that other men discuss their days in military service or at college, calling it the best two years of their lives. I couldn’t wait for mine. As a child, I liked to spin a globe and push my finger onto the surface until it stopped, imagining that I would serve a mission wherever my finger happened to land. Nothing excited me more than the possibility of traveling to a foreign country. One by one, the other boys in the dorm got their calls. They would hold parties with all of their friends present and with their family members on the phone or connected via the internet, opening and reading the fateful letter to noisemakers and applause. My excitement was overwhelming when I received my call to the Singapore mission, which included Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and other nearby areas as well. I was to report to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah on June 16th, 2006!