{"id":333,"date":"2010-06-10T17:08:58","date_gmt":"2010-06-10T07:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=333"},"modified":"2010-06-10T17:08:58","modified_gmt":"2010-06-10T07:08:58","slug":"can-i-still-become-atheist-after-confirmation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=333","title":{"rendered":"Can I still become atheist after confirmation?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Question from Mandi:<\/strong><br \/>\nI&#8217;m 12 and I&#8217;ve gone to a Catholic school for all of my school years. Ever since I was young I wondered if there really was a god. I never was really close to my parents and I don&#8217;t think I would be able to tell them that I want to become atheist. I was wondering if I could still become atheist after I receive confirmation?<br \/>\n<br \/>\n<strong>Answer:<\/strong><br \/>\nYes.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nAn atheist is someone who doesn&#8217;t believe in gods, not someone who&#8217;s gone through some kind of ritual or ceremony to &#8220;join&#8221; atheism.  Whether or not you&#8217;ve had the ceremony to officially become a Catholic is irrelevant.  If afterwards you don&#8217;t actually believe in the Christian god or any other, you may be a Catholic for life in the eyes of the church but you&#8217;ll still be an atheist.  Even if nobody knows but you.<br \/>\n<br \/>\n&#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/smartlx\">SmartLX<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;An atheist is someone who doesn&#8217;t believe in gods, not someone who&#8217;s gone through some kind of ritual or ceremony to &#8220;join&#8221; atheism.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[26,111,112],"class_list":["post-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","tag-atheism","tag-catholicism","tag-confirmation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-5n","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":334,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions\/334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}