Becoming an Atheist in Italy, my personal experience.

Here I am, writing my very first blog to share with all of you, and after thinking deeply about what subject to talk about, I decided to go with my own experience in growing up as an Atheist in my country, which is not really like growing up in any other religious country, I decided to share with the world, what it means to raise as an Atheist in Italy.

Let’s start from the very beginning, I was born in the deep south of Italy, where people are very close minded and still lives their lives like we were in the 50's or worse, of course I don't want to generalise, and of course not everyone is like that, but most of the population is, people there are very ignorant, but not in an offensive way, they are because there is a huge difference between the north and the south, the south is very poor and criminality controls the land, people live their lives in fear and ignorance of what their lives could be if they only had the courage to dare and question.

In the south of Italy there are not many jobs, people often do illegal activities just to get going, and various criminal organisations controls everything, from the people to the police and governments institutions, the rate of corruption in Italy is the highest between all the other European countries, and my country is placed at the 69^th place for the world corruption as you can see from the image below.

For all this reasons luckily my parents after few years I was born decided to immigrate in the north of Italy, for more opportunities of work, live safer and give to me and my sister a better chance for our future, without knowing that yes there, there was indeed more job, but people are not that better in the north, actually we realised that people from the south are much better than northerners.

In the north of Italy laws are actually applied, not always but surely more than in the south, the school system is better and living and growing up there for sure gives you a better chance of doing something good with your life, if you grow up in the south you are basically doomed, but we people from the south we got huge hearts, we are friendly and we like to enjoy our lives, we live with passion and we are totally different from people from the north, is like seeing two different countries, what we realised living there is that northerners are very close minded too, and that they are racist with people coming from the south of their own country, very, very racist, I grew up surrounded by people which were treating me bad only because I was born in the south and not in the north, all this made me understand that Italians are for nature close minded people, racist and very ignorant, in my life I've seen people coming to Italy from other countries with degrees and very good educations been treated like they were the worst human beings ever been born, they were able to find only cleaning jobs, which made me very sad, because someone should be judged not from their nationalities, but from the kind of person they are.

Of course we are not all like this, I am the living proof of this, and I know a lot of people like me, but most Italians are exactly how I described, which makes me very sad, because I am very proud to be Italian, for all what Italy used to be and represent, but very ashamed of what Italy has become.

So said all this, I hope now you all have a better idea of what Italy is, which is very different than that romantic, kinda like fairy tale place that all the people think it is.

When we moved in the north I was three, and for the next three years we lived kinda far away from churches and other people to be honest, we were living in the country side which was beautiful, but when I was six my parents decided to move in a little village, ten minutes away from a big town, so we moved there, right next to a church, thing which I hated when I was small, and I still do, because every time the bells were ringing I was annoyed so much, especially in Sunday morning, when I wanted to sleep and I was waking up with their sound, still unaware that one day I would had to be there when those bells where ringing.

When I became old enough my parents start to send me to what we call in Italian “Catechismo” which is an afternoon school where the priest is your teacher and he basically brainwash children, and I became as well a “chirichetto” which in English you all know as altar boy, I hated so much to do this things because I had enough school in the morning and I wanted to sleep and relax on Sunday, but I had no choice so I had to do it.

But it didn't took me long until I start to question what the priest was trying to implant in my head, and the very first time that I challenged his authority, I was eight and that day in the church school we were talking about heaven and hell, god and the devil and he was explaining us how bad the devil was, and in that moment I raised my hand, that was the very first moment in my life, in which I questioned religion, the very first moment in which I decided to speak my mind, to move away from the masses and be myself, that was the very first moment where my journey began, a journey I didn't even knew started, because at that moment in time, I didn't even know that there could be something like Atheism, I didn't know that you could have actually lived your life without religion, that day my journey to become an Atheist started.

So I raised my hand and asked “why is the devil bad?” I remember the priest getting very serious and he told me “because he is”, that answer was not enough for me so I went on asking “but why he is?” and he replied with “because it's written in the bible” in that moment I had no responses for him, because that answer put in motion my brain, which started to analyse and try to understand the information it just had received, don't forget please that I was eight, it took me few minutes but then I raised my hand again and said “I don't think the devil is bad, god killed millions of people flooding them, the devil killed only ten when he was still an angel because god told him to do so, if the devil was the bad one, then why he was taking with him the bad people? he should take good people and randomly, so it won't matter if you pray or behave he will take you anyway, police they keep society safe taking away bad people, that's what the devil does and for me he's the good guy, not the bad one!” now imagine his reaction, he became red, the veins on his neck start to pump and he start to shout at me, he called me blasphemous, and pretended to see my parents, I remember that in that moment I got that I was in trouble and that he was very angry, but I couldn't understand why, what I did so wrong? at the end of the day I just asked a question, how that could have been so bad?

I went home and told my parents that the priest was angry at me and wanted to see them at once, they came and spoke with the priest for few minutes, then they called me in, their faces were very serious, and they asked me how could I had asked something like that, I was eight so I really couldn't understand what there was so wrong in what I did, but I replied that I didn't know why I asked it, I was just saying what I was thinking, my parents apologised to him and we left, on the way back home my parents didn't told me anything, we actually never spoke again of that episode, which left me even more confuse to be fair.

That day was the moment in my life where as I wrote before I started my journey, a journey that brought me to the point when I was twelve to say for the first time to a friend that I didn't believe in god, I was actually afraid in saying those words, and I remember his shocked reaction, like I was totally wrong and I was talking crazy, looking back now, I don't know if it was more like a rebellion act, or I really understood what I was saying, but when I was twelve for the very first time in my life I said “I don't believe in god!”.

What I know is that event put me on a path that changed my life forever, and that forged my personality and the person I am today, I realised with time that my family never been very, very religious, and with my family I'm talking about my father and mother, which I'm very happy about it.

It then came the time that as all the children in the church school I had to do something called “Comunione” or Holy Communion, which is a ceremony that all the kids has to do, I didn't understood really what that was, but I remember that all my family was there, grand parents, uncles and aunts and I received presents, in that occasion I received a portable cassette player, which made me a very cool kid so I kinda were happy that I had to do that, but then it came the moment I had to do another of this ceremonies, this one was important for them because without it you will never be able to marry in a church, called “Cresima” and on that one I remember that I strongly opposed myself and won that battle, and I didn't had to do it, it was probably my first victory as Anti theist, still keep in mind at that time I didn't even know the existence of the word Atheism.

That was my first battle for my freedom, and every time I was fighting against this mind slavery, I got stronger and more confident in which was the direction I had to follow in my life, there were many episodes where people belonging to the church tried to convert me, or that treated me very bad, but all those occasions just helped me to clear always more the fog I had in my mind, and free me from any doubts I could had, I won't write about any specific episode because otherwise this blog will get even longer than what it is already, but I can tell you this people were very rude and bad to me, and what they did to me, making me feel like I was made wrong, that I was abnormal, just stoke the fire in me to achieve my freedom.

The 25^th on January 2013, was one of the most important day in my life, the day for me in which I reborn, as a free human being, free to take any decision for myself, that day was the day in which I canceled my baptism, useless to say the troubles I had to go trough to get it, it would be very long to explain the process between get it and the aftermath with the reactions of my family members, like my grand mother, when I told her that I don't believe in god, she was very upset, you need to understand that she's very, very religious, imagine her house it's full of holy statues and she never miss a mass in church, I remember she told me to don't let her choose between me and her god, because I couldn't had won, and my answer was that I love her and I am real, she can touch me, and she would prefer to keep something she never seen in her life, instead than something that she can see and touch? of course her answer was yes, god would always come first for her, even before her family members, I don't know what you all think about this, but for me it's simply insanity, my father that time got very angry at me, he told me that she's old and religion is all what she has, and so I should lie to her, telling her that I believe in god to don't upset her, but my answer was of course negative, because that's who I am, and I won't lie to please anyone, and if she really loves me she would accept me for who I am, love is unconditional and if someone doesn't love me for who I am, and doesn't want me to be happy, they have no place in my life.

I felt lonely in this battle for long time, but this never made me even think about giving up, but when I found the biggest Atheist association in Italy I felt really happy, finally I had somebody with which I could had shared my ideas and opinions, and I thought I was finally surrounded by smart and free people, but unfortunately I soon realised that most Atheists in Italy seem like they are just running away from one religion to another, like if Atheism was another religion, with strict rules to follow, so their idea was that if you are Atheist you must stay inside those rules or canons, like if they had enough of Christianity and they wanted to try the newest coolest thing out there, like in the 90's when a lot of people became Buddhist, because a lot of famous people they start following this religion, but being Atheist is not about following some rules, we are all different, we are all Atheist in our own special way, they only thing that we all have in common is that we don't believe in any deity, and being Atheist it doesn't mean that you need to follow a certain political view, because they are two completely different things or have all the same ideas about everything, so that's what most of Italian Atheists are in my opinion, so I didn't was part of their association for long, because one day I had a different point of view about the terrorist subject and I got banned from their group, which made me realised how Italian Atheist are ridiculous, of course not all of them, but Atheism is all about freedom of speech, and to ban someone from an Atheist group only because they have a different point of view than yours is just really absurd, not just banned, but some of them followed me on other Atheist Facebook pages and start to write a lot of comments about how stupid I was and stuff like this... yeah I know what are you thinking, this people were Atheists.

I've spent my life fighting for my freedom of speech and for my beliefs, and I will always do it, even if I will be the last Atheist on Earth, I will keep fighting, even if I will die fighting, I will do it because that's who I am, and if there is a person I have to be honest to, that person is myself, and I will always fight for my freedom, that's why two years ago I opened my own Atheist Facebook page and my own YouTube Channel, to fight for this and to share with the world my opinions.

Thanks everyone for taking some of your time to read this blog, feel free to comment and share your ideas about it, I will be honoured to answer you.