Can a valid, supportable reason be offered for deconversion

To quote a fellow audience member of a "Concerts in the Park" performance by a band whose leader just introduced the band as playing all the hits from the 80's: "Well, this shouldn't take long."As I understand it, the Biblical perspective on deconversion is "Don't" and that doing so is deserving of death. And that then brings the entire discussion to a complete end. Nothing left to discuss. All that is left is to close the topic, unless you want to gleefully describe in detail the methods by which the deconvert should be executed.Of course, despite the Biblical perspective, deconversion still happens and is reportedly on the raise. And people still need to deal with the reasons for it happening and the effects it has on them and on their lives. The plain fact is that except for that very stern don't do it!, the Bible really doesn't have anything to say about deconversion. So the Biblical perspective really doesn't add anything to a discussion of deconversion, but rather instead greatly limits any discussion, effectively killing it (which I would assume would be the purpose of taking a biblical perspective).To start with, I would suggest that we define what we mean by deconversion. We were taught in logic class that the first order of business in any debate (in any actual debate, that is) is to define the terminology that will be used in the debate. Otherwise, both sides would just spend the entire debate talking past each other and nobody would have any idea what was being said, not even the audience. Certainly, the same rule should hold in any discussion: we will need to know what the other guy is talking about and want to ensure that we're talking about the same thing.I'll start it off. Obviously, deconversion would be the reversal of the conversion process. It would involve the changing of one's beliefs such that one no longer adheres to the theology that one had formerly adhered to. It might be refered to as "losing one's faith", but that refers to losing one's former faith and really doesn't make any definite statement about one's new faith or whether one has acquired a new faith.Obviously, one deconverts from one's former religion, but does the term require that one deconverts to one specific form of belief regarding religious matters? I submit that it does not. Deconversion stories seem to deal most commonly with deconversion from Christian fundamentalism or Roman Catholicism or Mormonism, but one can conceivably deconvert from any religion at all. Similarly, many stories have the person deconverting to atheism, agnosticism, or deism, but then many other stories have the person deconverting to a more moderate form of the same religion.Dawn, I suspect that you imagine that deconversion always results in atheism. I submit that it does not always, but rather it often results in another more functional (or at least less dysfunctional) form of the same religion. For example, Glenn Morton deconverted from YECist fundamentalism, was driven to the verge of atheism by YEC, and then pulled himself back from that verge through an apologetic that was far less discordant with reality than YEC is. He did not end up an atheist, so does that mean that he did not experience a deconversion? No, it does not; he still deconverted from YECist fundamentalism and to a form of Christianity albeit far removed from what he had deconverted from. Similarly, Steve Smith did not become an atheist, which he called "spiritual death", but he still very definitely deconverted.As for the reasons for deconversion, the details can vary widely, but it really boils down to the deconvert finding that his theology does not work. For example, since YEC relies so heavily on contrary-to-fact claims and YEC-based Christianity requires belief in YEC (which teaches that if YEC is not true, then Scripture has no meaning and God does not exist), it ends up effectively albeit unintentionally teaching that should the world be as it truly is, then Scripture has no meaning and God does not exist. In this case, one's religion "not working" would be that the world really is as it truly is and hence contrary to one's religion which has taught one all to well what the next step is. Other cases could involve one's involvement with his religion being detrimental to his mental health. Or that one's religion leads him down paths that he feels are not moral (eg, Carl Drews leaving his fundamentalist church because the pastor condoned and even encouraged "lying for the Lord" -- not an actual case of deconversion, but it could have been).Another line of investigation could be to distinguish between instances of deconversion and changes that are not deconversion. For example, if one were to leave fundamentalism and become a mainstream Christian, that would be a deconversion, but if one were to leave one church and join another of the same denomination, that would not be deconversion, even if he had left the first church "because it did not work." If one were to leave Roman Catholcism for Judaism then that could be considered a deconversion (actually done by a famous Jewish scholar who had to keep his conversion to Judaism a secret so that he would not be executed for deconverting from Catholicism).But then that raise questions about whether leaving one religion for an entirely different religion, as in that Jewish scholar's case, really is a case of deconversion and not just conversion. What specifically are the requirements for deconversion?Just some food for thought. I'm sure that you will abstain as usual, so I'm offering it for the others.

Joke I heard years ago:
While hiking in the mountains, a man falls off the trail, grabs a branch to stop himself, and finds himself hanging over an enormous drop with no escape in sight. He prays for deliverance from his plight and a voice from Heaven tells him, "Have faith and let go." He ponders this for a moment and shouts back, "Anybody else up there? I'd like a second opinion!"

My question is what kind of "club" are you two talking about? Looks like this might be an object lesson in what I was trying to tell Dawn, that confusion reigns when the different sides use different definitions for the same words.As for me, taking it in Panda's sense (I think), I have very little use for clubs because the music is both loud and lousy and they have forgotten the wisdom that it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. Besides, hardly anybody there knows how to dance (by which I mean partner dance).

I forgot about the "hobby club" definition. Actually, I thought that PD was refering to "club" as a weapon. I've certainly seen a number of religionists who use their religion as a weapon, as a club to beat those they don't like. California's Prop Hate, for example.But your interpretation of what he meant is probably much better than mine. After all, religion can lose its effectiveness as a social club, but never as a weapon.Edited by dwise1, : second paragraph

jar's question was in the conditional mood -- "would" is the indication. He was not making a statement that there is a lack of "unity of doctrine and theme" in the Bible, but rather asking whether your test for rejecting the Koran would also be sufficient test for whether you should also reject the Bible.Dawn, yet again you demonstrate an inability to understand what is written. If you have any GI Bill benefits remaining, please enroll in remedial English classes, but for reading comprehension and for writing. Even if you have already burned up all your bennies, enroll anyway. You really need it.

You see, Dawn . . . No, clearly you do not see, which is why you need to work on your abysmal lack of reading comprehension.You see, in that message you are "responding" to, jar never states that the Bible does not have a unity of doctrine! That is the problem, Dawn, you are falsely claiming that jar wrote something that he did not write!In Message 61, you wrote: There, you gave "unity of doctrine and theme" in a sacred text as a test for whether to believe in the deity of that text.Then jar, in his Message 62, quoted that same text by you and responded with a question: In that question, jar did not state what you so falsely claim, but rather he was asking you a simple and very reasonable question: shouldn't the same test, the same criteria, be applied to the Bible too?Dawn, either you are unable to understand simple English, or you deliberately misconstrue what we write. Which is it? Your guess? Is that what it is? You are guessing what we are telling you?Dawn, there is no need for you to guess what we are telling you. We have written it down and presented it to you. All you need to do is read what we have written. It seems such an obvious concept to us, so why is it so foreign to you? Yet another "evil fruit"? First, it is DWise1. Get your spelling right, Dawnette! Not that you can get anything else right!I have been involved in on-line debating and discussion since the mid-1980's. I also participated in local "amateur night" "creation/evolution" debates. I am also very familiar with professional creationist "debating" tactics, thoroughly dishonest and deception; since IDists have adopted creationist deceptive practices, I have no doubt that your own "public debates" follow the creationist playbook down to the letter -- supported by your own descriptions of your debates and by your persistent conduct here.You may disparage grammar, but then you're just an ignorant monoglot. If you had learned a foreign language, you would have learned that grammar is not an arbitrary set of useless rules (which is how it is taught to monoglots), but rather it is the structure of the entire language and the key to how it works and to how to use it and be understood in it. But since a monoglot has learned language as sequences of sounds and symbols without realization of the underlying structure, grammar appears to be useless to them. But upon learning a foreign language, you realize that grammar is your best friend; I learned more English grammar in two years of high school German than I ever did in 12 years of English:

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Man kennt die eigene Sprache nicht, bis man eine fremde Sprache lernt.
(You don't know your own language until you've learned a foreign one.)
Lessing

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Oh, that's right, you don't want to be understood, nor to understand. Which makes total sense, since the last thing a creationist wants is to be understood. The harder it is to be understood, the more confusion gets generated and confusion is a creationist's life-blood. The last thing a creationist wants is for others to understand his claims. No, that's the second to the last thing; the last thing a creationist wants is to have to discuss and support his own claims. I have seen that so many times in the past 25+ years.But I'm more inclined towards discussion rather than debate. Instead of getting caught up in a win-lose situation, I'm more interested in the exchange of ideas and information. Of course, creationists hate the idea of discussion. The problem with trying to discuss a creationist's claims with him is that he does not want to. One basic reason for this is that there are basically two kinds of creationists: 1) the follower who just repeats claims he's heard and really knows nothing at all about it and so cannot discuss it, and 2) the professional who created the claim and doesn't want to have to discuss it because he knows full well that it is total bullshit. Well, there is a third kind, the professional who just repeats bullshit claims that he's heard; eg, Kent Hovind, whose defining moment was when he repeated as gospel truth to a church audience a false claim that he had just heard, Oate Man (Onyate Man to monoglots) which was a April's Fool joke intended to gauge creationist gullibility (most creationists were skeptical, except for pros like Hovind).A couple notable cases in point, Daniel of the TheologyOnLine forum, claimed that industrial pollution affects radioactive decay rates. I had never heard that claim before, so I asked for more information. He became extremely beligerant, the on-line version of violent, and made several extreme and false accusations.Kent Hovind made claims about the rate at which the sun is losing mass "as it burns its fuel", claiming extreme amounts of mass thus lost, whereas no more than a few hundredths or thousandths of a percent of the sun's mass has been lost in the past 5 billion years (I did the calculations and would need to refer back to them). I requested more information from him, including what his calcuations were if he had originated the claim or, if he had not originated it, then what his source was. He did everything he could to avoid discussing his own claim, even trying twice to pick a fight with me over my screenname (same as here).In an extended email exchange with a local creationist activist, I tried to discuss his claims with him and he did everything he could to avoid it. Turns out he was something of a bully. I had started because an acquaintence had made contact with him, but didn't know enough about creationism. At first, this guy would come on great guns and mock his opponent unmercilessly (that is what he did to my acquaintence and also to me at first), but the moment he realized that I had some idea of what I and he were talking about, he immediately become very mild-mannered and tried to disengage. Typical creationist mentality.The things to note about the vast majority of my postings is that I have information or ideas to get across and I write as clearly as I can to get them across to my audience. And if anybody has questions or needs clarification on any point, then I will go out of my way to respond. That is called communication, something else you despise ... excuse me, that you abhor. That is basically what distinguishes us from each other: I'm in it for the information and for the truth, whereas you are in it for the cheap win for your god, regardless of the cost. Which brings us back to the perennial question I ask creationist and which they avoid: what is Christian doctrine about "lying for the Lord"?BTW, ironically, Allah, YHWH, and your "God" ... they are all one and the same. So if you believe in "God", then you cannot also not believe in Allah. Same god, different names, different theologies. Or is it that you really believe in the theology, not the god?Edited by dwise1, : Getting the double negative right

Verily it has been written, by an atheist, no less:

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If my fundamentalist neighbor believes that if not for God he would be a mass ax murderer, then by all means I want him to continue to believe in God.

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Theists sure believe the darndests things!

Dawn, if you had read my first posts here, you would see that I was trying to establish some definitions of terms, which is what I was taught in logic class was the first step of any debate or discussion.What I was seeing was that while we have deconversion, those deconverts end up somewhere. So it would appear that for every deconversion from one theology, there was a conversion to another theology. But that would equate deconversion with conversion and I do not think that is correct. I would think that conversion would mean that you switched theologies (or "switched gods" as per Redd Foxx in Harlem Nights -- watch it on a movie channel or DVD, because BET completely edited that line out as would other channels) because of the appeal of the target theology, such you leave your old theology solely because of the appeal of the new one. OTOH, deconversion involves such dissatisfaction with the old theology that you have to leave it, such that your arrival at whatever destination theology is more an afterthought rather than the prime motivation.Which got me thinking. Dawn, your position seems to be that once you are in a particular theology, you must undergo years of intense study in order to come up with theologically valid reasons for leaving. Well, most of the posts here share a common reason: if you can no longer believe, then it's time to leave. You want to prevent that by placing extra and stringent requirements. Well, why not make such stringent requirements applicable to conversion as well?The evangelical model for conversion is much looser. They use hard-sell tactics, mostly emotionally based, even relying heavily on the fear of death. They want you to ... no, they insist that you make an eternal decision right then and there -- I lived through the rampant street proselytizing of the 1970's "Jesus Freak" movement; the local Jesus Freak church was not just based on Chuck Smith's church, it was Chuck Smith's church. No study beforehand, no thought beforehand, immediate decision now. Exactly the same as when creationist "balanced treatment" is used in the public school curriculum -- and which is also in store for us when ID gets there too.I would like to make a modest proposal, one which has nothing to do with Irish babies (don't worry, I'm sure that one went right over your head like everything else does). Before anyone can convert, they must engage in several years of intensive study. After all, the requirements for joining your religion should be more stringent than your requirements for them to leave it. That way, nobody would get suckered in only to learn how big of a mistake they had made.

From my old quotes page:

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Conrad Hyers, The Meaning of Creation: Genesis and Modern Science, John Knox Press,
Atlanta, Georgia, 1984, page 26:

"It may be true that scientism and evolutionism (not science and evolution) are among the causes of atheism and materialism. It is at least equally true that biblical literalism, from its earlier flat-earth and geocentric forms to its recent young-earth and flood-geology forms, is one of the major causes of atheism and materialism. Many scientists and intellectuals have simply taken the literalists at their word and rejected biblical materials as being superseded or contradicted by modern science. Without having in hand a clear and persuasive alternative, they have concluded that it is nobler to be damned by the literalists than to dismiss the best testimony of research and reason. Intellectual honesty and integrity demand it."

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Gregg Wilkerson, co-founder of Students for Origins Research and former young-earth creationist, at the 1990 International Conference on Creationism:

"Creationism by and large attracts few to the gospel, but it turns many away."

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Stop changing the subject! None of the deconversion discussion here nor in the other topic has ever been about you personally deconverting. Where the hell did you ever get that crazy idea?Oh yeah, you guessed it into existence. Rather than actually read what was written, you created your own imaginary version, detached from reality.For once in your life, get a clue! Then you might stop to be treated like the idiot that you keep presenting to us.

Dawn, please stop acting like an idiot. The topic has never been about you personally deconverting, rather whether those who have deconverted had good reason to. Stop making up nonsense!Yes, my logic teacher did indeed teach us that the beginning of a debate must include establishing the definitions of the terms that we would be using. Something that so far you have been dead-set against -- so much for your claim of extensive debate experience.Please stop trying to bullshit us yet again.

His problem with sentences may be more diagnostic than we had thought. A sentence contains a complete thought. Since Dawn so often does not write sentences, but rather fragments of sentences, that would indicate that he has very few complete thoughts. And what fragments he does present are low in contents. OTOH, especially with my German background (my first foreign language), my complete thoughts pack a lot of content. Just too rich a diet for him to be able to handle.

OK. Here it is: Can a valid, supportable reason be offered for deconversionNow, just where the hell does it say anything about making Dawn deconvert? It doesn't. So I repeat my question that you evaded, Dawnette:
None of the deconversion discussion here nor in the other topic has ever been about you personally deconverting. Where the hell did you ever get that crazy idea?Ain't rocket science, though it does require reading comprehension of you, something that you keep proving that you sorely lack.Answer the question! And please stop acting like an idiot.

Read Message 115: That is only one instance of you repeatedly demanding that we give you reasons why you personally, Dawn, should deconvert. Despite our repeatedly telling you that nobody has suggested such a scenario and that that is not what this topic is supposed to be about.And now you are trying to claim that you had never asked for reasons why you should deconvert? You lying hypocrite!Now quit stalling and answer the fucking question!
None of the deconversion discussion here nor in the other topic has ever been about you personally deconverting. Where the hell did you ever get that crazy idea?No more lies!message 115,

For your information Dawnette, I was the one trying in vain to break through your idiocy and inform you of that same thing, that the topic is not about trying to make Dawnette deconvert. Yet you kept demanding to be told what would make you personally deconvert.Now suddenly you try to switch the tables and claim that I'm trying to make it only about you. That is a complete and utter lie!And in the midst of committing that lie, you have the gall to return to making it about Dawnette deconverting: Message 150, 14-Dec-2010 8:30 PM: You are nothing but an unprincipled liar. Why don't you try to be man enough to own up to your actions? But, no, you are not man enough. You will just continue to try to hide your lies under even more lies, even though everybody can see what you are doing.The decades I have tried to deal with creationists have left me with absolutely zero tolerance for liars.