Arian Foster, the Atheist NFL Star

[TheRealJoeFish]

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Given the reason I'm here, [Foster] laughs at the notion of celestial involvement in the [Houston flood]water's path. Where some might see the hand of God, Foster sees physics and engineering, the slope of the road and the elevation of the homes in relation to a swollen runoff canal that bisects an arterial a few hundred yards away.

Science and faith. They've brought us to this place, where Foster is ready to tell the story he's been leading toward for as long as he can remember.

It's difficult to imagine that any current or former teammate of Foster's will be surprised to learn that he does not believe in God. He openly discusses religion in the locker room, and opposing players often introduce themselves by saying, "I hear you're different." And yet he's spent six years in the NFL shielding his nonbelief from the public out of fear of being misinterpreted or -- even worse -- mislabeled. "This is unprecedented," says Todd Stiefel, chair of Openly Secular. "He is the first active professional athlete, let alone star, to ever stand up in support of gaining respect for secular Americans."

Arian felt he was living a lie every time he knelt to pray. His prayers carried intensity only when he faced turmoil. If you can just get me out of this jam. It was meaningless and dishonest; he didn't believe there was anything or anyone out there capable of helping him. He read the Bible and the Quran in search of evidence that would override his skepticism. The concept of an omnipotent being nagged at him. Why is this relationship so one-sided? Why would a loving God create evil? Why would he allow eternal damnation? Foster felt like "a contestant in his game show."

During his time in San Diego, elbow to elbow in that room with his father, he inched closer to releasing his secret. Discussion followed discussion, and still Arian could not be convinced. There was backlash to consider then too: Carl Foster might have been an open-minded, well-read man, but religion was important to him. Finally, toward the end of his junior year, Arian summoned the courage to tell his father he did not believe -- only to see his father nod knowingly and say, "Go find your truth."

"It was a proud day," Carl says. "We raised our kids to be free thinkers. We wanted them to be their own people."

"I get the devil-worship thing a lot. They'll ask me, 'You worship the devil?'" he says. "'No, bro, I don't believe there's a God, why would I believe there's a devil?' There's a lot of ignorance about nonbelief. I don't mean a negative connotation of ignorance. I just mean a lack of understanding, a lack of knowledge, lack of exposure to people like me."

His 6-year-old daughter, Zeniah, knocks and enters. Dinner is finished, and she wants to know if it's OK for her to eat the ice cream her grandmother has promised. As she skips away, free to indulge, Foster mentions -- his voice betraying an I know, I know tone -- that Zeniah just finished kindergarten at a Catholic elementary school.

"Every once in a while she'll mention Jesus or God," he says. "One time she likened God and Jesus to Zeus and Hercules. She did it on her own. She said something along the lines of, 'They're the same. They're both stories.' I thought it was brilliant on her part to be able to distinguish it."

Before the game, he nods along to the ubiquitous God-bless-yous that register as white noise to everyone but him, and afterward he hears the postgame shoutouts to God, a standard reflex in most interviews with the triumphant.

But if God is helping you win, Foster wonders, isn't he by definition ensuring that the other guy loses? As is the case with Foster's street, the water must choose a side. "If there is a God and he's watching football, there are so many other things he could be doing," he says. "There are hungry children and diseases and famine and so much important stuff going on in the world, and he's really blessed your team? It's just weird to me."

The separation of church and football -- not to mention church and public education -- blurred at Tennessee, Foster says. Coaches, led by head coach Phil Fulmer, scheduled trips to Sunday church services as team-building exercises. Foster asked to be excused. He was denied. (The school confirmed that these team-building exercises to churches took place.) Word spread: Foster was arrogant, selfish, difficult to coach. "They just thought I was being a rebel and didn't want to participate in the team activities," Foster says.

"I was like, 'No, that's not it. Church doesn't do anything for me. I'm not a Christian.' I said, 'We can do other team-bonding activities and I'll gladly go, but this doesn't do anything for me.'

"So I went, probably five times. I don't want to bring race into it, but we never went to any predominantly black churches. We went to a lot of those upper-middle-class white churches, which I always found interesting because the majority of the team was black, so I thought the majority of the team would relate to a black church. I would rather go to a black church, honestly, because the music is better to me. If the majority of your team is black, why wouldn't they try to make them as comfortable as possible? But I guess when you're dealing with religion, color shouldn't matter."

Neil deGrasse Tyson said any time you attach yourself to a group or an '-ist,' you get all the stereotypical baggage with it. I'm not going to picket the White House lawn to get atheists a voice in Congress. But I have questions and concerns on our origins as human beings, and the best way to go about that is through science.

"There's no dogma in science itself. Scientists? Yeah, any human can have an ego, but if you take the human beings out of it, there's no ego in science itself. It's built on 'prove me wrong.' But religion can be like, 'We're right, and if you're not in the boat, you're going to hell.'"

Foster smiles and says, "Yo, check this out." He holds his right arm up to show the word self, then holds up the left to show made. "Self-made," he says, drawing it out. "Look, I believe my hard work did get me here, but as a 28-year-old adult, I understand you had to have a lot of help, and you had to have a lot of luck. A lot of things factor into it, but I got that when I was an arrogant little kid."

He's got another one: against all odds. It's like a greatest-hits album of an 18-year-old's tattoo choices. He laughs at this one too. "When I was growing up, I felt like I was always against all odds," he says. "Then as an adult, I realized there were a lot of obstacles, Arian, but you caused a lot of them."

His next tattoo will depict a mummified American flag. "She's just hurting," he says. "America's hurting."

The words hang. The rain has stopped. I head out, past the cabinets and carpet and curtains. Two hours later, a racist with a gun will be welcomed into a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and an hour later, a gun will be pulled. Dylann Roof now stands charged with killing nine of the worshippers. The question will be asked: "How could God allow such a thing?" And God's mysterious ways will once again be invoked. The congregants of the church will draw strength from their faith and express their truth through words of forgiveness for the shooter. At the time the murders occur, Foster will be in an auditorium in Houston, listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson give a lecture on the cosmos, an entirely different set of mysteries, equally unknowable.