I have been silent for too long. Not silent, in the literal sense, of course. I mean, women aren’t going to have video games explained to them on their own, right? Regardless, I come to you today with my story of lost faith and a little game I like to call Minecraft. Yes, you heard my correctly. I have now devoted myself to my atheist faith and I owe that directly to Minecraft and more specifically its creator, Notch. Thank you, sir, for putting me on the path towards enlightenment.

 

First, I want to make sure everyone is familiar with the different elements I am bringing to this story, so let’s begin with some definitions:

 

Minecraft is a sandbox video game created and designed by Swedish game designer Markus “Notch” Persson, and later fully developed and published by Mojang.

 

Atheism is described as the absence of belief in the existence of deities, the rejection of belief that any deities exist, or specifically the position that there are no deities whatsoever.

 

Due to this sandbox video game, I now fall into the ladder category where I no longer believe in deities whatsoever. Now that you have a more basic understanding of what I am talking about, let’s get into the tale.

 

I had the day off from my job at GameStop, so I figured I would put a few hours into Minecraft before my usual 10:30 est SJW rant that was scheduled for later in the evening. I decided it had been awhile since I had made a new world, so I went to the Minecraft subreddit and found a seed code to start my world from. What happened over the next hour changed my life forever.

 

I spawned into my new world and immediately felt a sense of déjà vu, almost like I had been there before. “That’s weird,” I thought to myself, but I didn’t think any more about it. Instead, I went searching for trees to cut down, the first step in any game. However, when I looked around the small village I had started in, I realized that there were no trees, and not only that, but the houses in the village were nothing like normal Minecraft houses.

 

Again, that strange sense of déjà vu. Without fully thinking about it, I followed the line of houses down street after street, unsure of my destination but confident in every step. As I turned the next street I looked up and almost dropped my controller in disbelief. Standing in front of me was the first tree I had seen so far in this world, but that wasn’t what gave me pause. The tree was in front of the exact house I grew up in, and that very tree was where I used to pretend to be a ninja when I was 7.

 

I did a full 360 and realized the reason I was feeling like I had been in this world before was that I had, but in real life. The neighborhood I had been walking through was a block for block replica of the area I grew up in in Arlington, VA.

 

At the time, I again didn’t really think too much on it, but then I started wondering, how could this have happened? Rationally, I knew that someone could be playing an elaborate prank on me. I was pretty popular in this particular subreddit and I would have to give them credit, it was a good prank, but I don’t think that’s what was happening.

 

I believe that I was being shown something truly profound. This world had been randomly generated in a computer program and it came out identical to my own, flesh and blood world. Notch, the creator of Minecraft, had given every single person the ability to be a god in their own world, meanwhile he himself had a certain Zeus-like quality in his ability to create and destroy worlds. I knew at this moment the truth that I have held to ever since.

 

If we are all gods, then none of us are.

 

So yeah, now I am the head moderator over at the atheism subreddit and I have never been happier. I love telling people my story and I hope that you were as enlightened as I was by it. Check out my latest rant, “Why Women Should Be Happy That I Smile,” on Reddit under my username JudgmentDay47 (don’t call me a hypocrite, it’s not a religious thing, I just really love Terminator 2).

 

This article was written by Nathan Ellwood, who is too busy playing Minecraft to tweet, but follow him anyway over there @NPEllwood.