Christian conversion experience: descriptions/analysis/links: input invited

Hello Ifen, Agree. Faith can fail through a strong emotional experience (perhaps a "crisis of faith") that can work as a de-conversion experience. Faith also often fails when submitted to intellectual scrutiny, minus all of the thought control and re-inforcement techniques. This process can be a slower evolution as described by many ex-believers in this forum.I don't believe that I can develop a de-conversion experience to undo the original conversion experience, short of submitting the subject to a major life crisis! Detailing and rationalising the very real-world physchological process that is the conversion experience will help convertees identify the process and become immune. It will also assist converts trying to shed the yoke. Otherwise a steady intellectual analysis of faith and it's tenets is the most realistic path from faith or path from fundamentalism, and forums like this play an invaluable role in that regard. It's at the top of my list, although I am aware that it is 100 years old and that I will invaribaly disagree with William's conclusions.

Arach,Listen to your mother! I don't think Julian qualifies as a crackpot though I can see why you might catagorize him as such. His book was such a brilliant tour de force. I don't recall him claiming a physical change so much as a functional change. His idea's might be useful in understanding some conversion experiences. The major problem with Jaynes theory is that I can think of no way to test or falsify it.I remember in college studying the Iliad how the point was made that the Gods did everything. That redundancy of the action at the human and divine level was a major puzzle. I was enthralled with Jaynes proposal that Homer was literally describing their experience. There was a ton of scholarship in his book and I think it's an intriguing but again unprovable explanation of prophecy and prophets.Anyway, I love the book and will reread it sometime. Tell your mother I agree with her. She is on to something.lfen

I've been impressed with the few Quakers I've known. I was also impressed that in the US prior to the civil war they lived their religion risking their farms and freedom helping with the underground railroad to hide slaves moving to Canada and freedom. I thought that was sincere and courageous and living one's faith and values. I also respected Canada and still do.My sample is small though and I live in a pretty liberal community but it's just a thought.lfen

Hello Faith, I agree with this assessment. IMO those groups using compelling conversion experiences, theatrics, demonstrations of "spirittual gifts" are some of the most influential and fastest growing. These features give them the ability to rapidly facilitate an emotional conversion, and then pour anti-intellectual doctrine down the throats of the converts.I'm generalising, but those churches that do not use such process tend to be more liberal, more rational (ie, not rejecting science) and have less political sway and ambition. An effective and powerful conversion experience can have a very intelligent and sensible fellow swallowing doctrinal nonsense quickly and easily. IMO this phenomena needs to be studied anaylsed and de-powered. In order to understand one must experience the process personally. I have undergone many different conversion process, in some cases multiple times. I declared what I was aksed to declare. I did not fall if I did not want to fall. I understand the context of these experiences the pressure and compulsions involved, and the sensations that can be experienced. Coversion experience, conversion process, enlightenment process, being born again: the manufactured scenario wherein a convertee is made susceptible to an emotional experience (manifesting in a multitude of ways) that is rationalised as an experience of "God" and which facilitates conversion into a particular faith. Most defintely, I agree. It is very subjective. It doesn't really matter what the convertee actually experiences, although they will be strongly encourage to perform, feel, and respond in a certain way, the experience is rationalised by the church as an experience of God. The experience is very personal, very variable, very subjective. And arguably very physchological and very much residing in the chemistry of the brain. Agree. In many cases rhe convertee behaves in the common and anticipated way. Often nothing happens or the convertee has an experince at a later time, maybe when alone. As usual there is no positive outcome that is not explained in terms of God and no negative experience that is not explained in terms of a defficiency of the individual. I am least addressing these individuals. They are a depressing category unto themselves. Sometimes they still have an experience when exposed to the standard conversion process, in line with the church's expectations. A conversion process, other than for ritual, is generally not necessary because faith has been fed to them from birth: tragically they have never had any other mindset. These people can still be uncoverted though and it also assists to de-mystify the conversion process they have witnessed others undergoing for the span of their lives. These un-documentable and unverifiable anecdotes oft float around various churches. Some have basis in fact; often mythically embellished over time. In this case it refers to one of the most vulnerable convert profiles: the drug addict.Thanks for all of your other notes and thoughts. I will address the conversion experience applicable to the church in question, but I am also analysing alternate processes to get a full understanding of the phenomena.

I only agree partially. When I made the decision to determine just what it was that I believed in my mid thirties, I started out by reading C.S.Lewis. I found his arguments convincing enough that I came to the conclusion that the basic tenets of the Christian faith were probably true. With that questioning faith I started church, prayed infrequently and worked at living by a Christian standard.Shortly after that I found that I actually was looking at the world differently. I have no doubt that I had some experience of God in my life, (nothing in the least spectacular) and that things were different particularly in my dealings with others.It's all pretty straight forward and mundane but I after years of experience I don't doubt my Christianity. Frankly I wasn't, and I'm not looking for psychological comfort I just want to get as close to the truth as I can.What I am very curious about is how God did it. As I don't have a scientific or biological education I am dependent on others to garner information as to just how it did happen. If it is by evolution or by instant creation doesn't really matter to me, I would just like to have some idea of how he actually did it.

I have to inform you, I guess, that it was a tongue-in-cheek description by my pastor, his own parody of this kind of story, since you seem to have missed the joke. But the examples you have given, as I have said, are NOT of conversions. You haven't yet said one thing to show me that you know what conversion is. You seem to be enthralled by the signs-and-wonders effects promoted in the charismatic churches, which do not represent Christianity as a whole, but they are not conversions.

Hello GDR,Thanks for your input.Whether one can convert to Christianity through an intellectual or emotional conversion is outside the scope of this thread. I know I addressed the issue too! but I'll leave it be.If you did undergo a conversion experience, I would love to hear about it.

Faith wrote, It's exceedingly hard to tell with you guys. Not conversions by your understanding/interpretation. Where you have someone who does not profess a belief in God, and would not consider himself a Christian, undergoes a process wherein 30 minutes later they claim to have experienced God and now believe in Jesus; I call that a conversion.In general, I do not have an issue with Christianity as a whole. I have issue with Christian fundmentalist cults that have a negative impact on their adherents, deny science and rational thought and seek to have their religious beliefs enforced on others. The more dramatic and emotive the conversion process, the more receptive the convertee is to swallowing cultist bunk.

But what you have described aren't conversions. I agree that the theatrics and other phenomena of the charismatic movement can produce false conversions and in fact they draw people to a false idea of Jesus Christ. Exposing those things would do the church a favor. But being an unbeliever, you don't seem to have the necessary perspective to discriminate between the true and the false that would make your study useful. The charismatic movement HAS been studied by many Christians and much of it exposed as false. You should certainly look into that literature. I'll do a search later to see what I turn up.Perhaps your "de-powering" might separate false conversions from true, although on the other hand you may merely interfere with a new believer's mind in a very cruel way, simply forcing your own indoctrination on someone who has just barely begun to believe in Jesus Christ and isn't grounded in the Bible yet. Back to the first hand, when I was a new believer (completely from reading books, without any contact with a church or with Christians) I would have laughed at you, having spent most of my life to that point already indoctrinated in all the anti-religious views you could possibly dream up -- but I was in my forties, and would have had the luxury of seeing through your beliefs and intentions, which a younger person might not.Incidentally, I read William James' Varieties of Religious Experience in that same period and thought how sadly deluded he was. But this is nonsense. These aren't conversion experiences for starters. Conversion is believing, and since you didn't believe even for a moment you don't know what you are talking about. This is a mockery both of belief and of science. If at all points you maintained the investigator's perspective you have NO idea about any of this. At best you may be able to judge that certain communications could put pressure on people, but anybody should be able to judge that much from a description of the process. The idea that you with your investigator's POV intact "experienced" anything that is truly definitive of it is ludicrous. But as I've said, baptism, declaring one's faith to the congregation, or falling over backwards, are NOT conversions, OR conversion "experiences" or anything of the sort. There may be emotional accompaniments to any of it, especially if there HAS been a real conversion prior to the public declaration of it, as knowing that you belong to Christ and have been received into His church is deeply moving.I'd be open to the thought that the falling over backwards phenomenon is an empty emotional "experience" but even then if a person truly believes in Christ they may be wrong about the meaning of the experience and yet appreciate it in a truly Christian way. I think you misunderstood me. I was saying what Arachnophilia also said. It's interior in the sense that it is BELIEF. It is a change from unbelief to belief, a change in viewpoint, in understanding of everything. Before you believe in Christ things look different from the way they look afterward, when now all things are interpreted in light of the works of God that had previously not been appreciated. It is a change of MIND, of VIEWPOINT, of UNDERSTANDING, and in that sense it is an INTELLECTUAL change, whatever the accompanying emotions may be.And again the proddings you are describing are strictly a charismatic thing, and again you might be right to focus on those things as psychological pressure, but in no way are those things about true conversions. The charismatic churches ARE very psychologically manipulative, and that is NOT a good thing, to say the least, but I'm very doubtful that you can judge fairly between the superficial emotional effects of that kind of pressure and a genuine conversion. You are right to pinpoint the folly of this kind of thinking that puts blame and guilt on the person, for a lack of enough "faith" perhaps? -- that's charismatic manipulative technique, but again I'm not sure you can discriminate between those effects and something genuine that may also be going on. And again I have to point out that what you are calling conversion experiences simply are NOT conversion experiences -- Baptism, falling backwards, testimony to the congregation. If you a priori rule out the possibility that faith can be both genuine and justified, your study is simply an exercise in confirming your own prejudices, and as such is false science. If, on the other hand, you were to focus on the psychological effects of some charismatic techniques, and carefully try to understand the difference between false conversions and true, that could be interesting and useful.

Perhaps because although he was exaggerating for the sake of humor, it's not that he meant to say such dramatic experiences are necessarily false. I guess it's a bit subtle. OK! THAT finally makes sense of it!! But until this point you did not provide that crucial piece of information.So you do mean to say that you've witnessed someone claim that before BAPTISM they didn't believe but after it they did?? Baptising an unbeliever is a very wrong thing to do, but obviously they baptized you so it must happen.You also DO mean to say that you've seen similar before-and-after change FROM UNBELIEF TO BELIEF from testifying to one's faith before the congregation? Very very odd, since such a declaration of faith would not be asked of someone in most churches who didn't believe.I can see that an unbeliever who has the falling-over-backwards experience, if it's as real as many claim it is, would be awed by the supernatural power involved, and at least come to believe in the supernatural. Beyond that I'd tread very carefully in trying to understand what really happened. Well, you must be very very careful about what you mean. I for instance consider myself to be pretty clearheaded about reality, and Christianity as a whole in its historical traditional expression to be highly rational and in fact the very source of empirical science, but I deny evolution. Many unbelievers simply make a kneejerk equation between a denial of evolution and irrationalism. To be fair, you need to make extremely careful distinctions. But also the more likely the process is to be false and the person in thrall to a false religion and/or subject to a great disillusionment somewhere down the road.You with your preconceptions based on your unbelief should tread VERY carefully in this territory. It isn't all as it's likely to appear to you.This message has been edited by Faith, 06-07-2005 01:00 AM

Nicely described.Your experience is actually quite similar to mine in that you read C.S. Lewis and he convinced you. I had to read a ton of stuff starting with Eastern religions and finally working up to C.S. Lewis a year or two later before I was convinced of Christ. On the way there I encountered the supernatural in the form of the occult, which I do not recommend to anyone.But then you recognize the truth. I recognized it in many Christian sources. I may have needed many sources to convince me out of the nonChristian sources I'd also been reading, but also once I knew Christianity was the truth I was hungry for everything I could get my hands on to read about it.Then you are convinced and then you find yourself looking at the world differently. Exactly.Has absolutely nothing to do with being led by an emotional need for comfort, as you say, has to do with recognizing truth.Even those who may be led through an emotional experience, however, if their conversion is true, have come to a knowledge of truth, not just a comforting illusion. If that were the case as soon as they got through the hard times they'd lose their faith.

Yeah, they might even find themselves with a psychotic need to twist scientific evidence to support a literal reading of Genesis, because they had lost so much faith in the Bible that they desparately needed to have it confirmed by outside evidence.Oh, wait.

well, i specifically asked my last psych teacher (college level, and a professional psychologist, mind you) what she thought about his work, in a very non-leading question. she basically said he was a crackpot, and didn't properly understand the chemistry or biology of the human brain.i see no evidence that people were any different, even biblical times. and yet the odyssey is blatantly challenging the gods. and winning, i might add.

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there's this song by incubus i have on my random playlist somewhere in which i think their dj out speaks-in-tongues some religious guy. it's kind of funny.now, it'd be one thing if these people were speaking aramaic, or ancient hebrew, or any real language. yeah. i think if it were god, his purpose would be more easily served by having us speak his words, in english. of course, the same for the devil, right? i'm not sure if i mentioned in the last post, but i had one such experience recently. i knew what it was, and was able to control it. it certainly explains alien abductions.but i really just meant it as analogy about the sort of things our brains can create under certain conditions. quite similar. i've decided that whether or not demons are real that i don't believe in them. there was a good one that hbo ran a while back on satan, and the ritual abuse crisis in this country. it was terrifying. not in the aspect of "omg devil's gonna git us!" but more "what are these people letting these pastors and psychologists do to them?" that's strictly metaphysical. well, so did they. no, not exactly. i'm sitll open to finding a good church. i just have not. i'm starting to think, however, that what i'm looking for does not exist. i used to joke (yes, even back then) that i would start my own church one day.and as for traditional christian bible interpretation, i was causing problems even back then. i'm not really interested in interpretation, actually. just what it's actually all about.my youth group pastor failed to justify to me when i ask him once how selling tapes of the sermon outside the sanctuary door was any different than the money changers outside the temple in jesus's day. he made up an interpretation, but couldn't answer my question. interesting. glad you got away. i don't mean to get off on a rant here, but that's a trend in a lot of christian churches. christianity in general has this idea of an original sin that damages us all, and that sin revolves around a tree called "knowledge." i've been to any number of churches that find knowledge dangerous, for this and the reason you mentioned.and this is also the key point of our debate. i'm after the knowlegde regarding the bible, not the edifying faith.

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this is a really good point, although probably not the way you meant it.this does require a certain degree of familiarity with the subject matter, regarding this cultish practices. and that's probably what he's looking for.

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