Mike Dulak grew up Catholic in Southern California, but by his teen years, he began skipping Mass and driving straight to the shore to play guitar, watch the waves and enjoy the beauty of the morning. “And it felt more spiritual than any time I set foot in a church,” he recalled.
Nothing has changed that view in the ensuing decades.
“Most religions are there to control people and get money from them,” said Dulak, now 76, of Rocheport, Missouri. He also cited sex abuse scandals in Catholic and Southern Baptist churches. “I can’t buy into that,” he said.
Though it is a great way to catch up on sleep! Back when I was a “true believer” a lifetime ago I used to catch some serious Z’s during a sermon, because even then I realized that the way sermons work requires an inaccurate view of the Bible as a cohesive work rather than an internally inconsistent anthology. Had there been an iota of academic or historical rigor I might have taken longer to become an atheist. But actual church history is anathema to faith, which is why pastors have to pretend the text speaks for itself and is timeless, rather than a collection of texts representing the thoughts of various groups, some of which were almost certainly diametrically opposed to each other (e.g., even the so-called synoptic gospels present vastly different conceptions of the “point” of Jesus, if you have eyes to see).