Deconversion experiences

I had trouble believing as a kid, because it seemed like there was so many religions that believed so many different things, and I could never tell if I was believing in the right invisible beings with enough fervency and following the right rubric to win the pass/fail test. No one seemed worried that they were in the wrong religion and no scientists seemed to be doing any testing to find out which one was the right one (Which had the most miracles? Which leaders were the most holy/infallible? The best at prophesy? Whose prayers were answered more? Who prayed for bigger things and got bigger results? etc.?)I ended up putting religion on the back burner, and decided I'd probably figure it out when I grew up. I was afraid to think about it too much, lest I lose faith and suffer for ETERNITY. And I suspect that's the position most believers are in now-- they've just learned not to even think if god might not exist-- they are afraid to think such a thought.I still thought you could "feel" the truth, so I later segued towards new age beliefs because they "resonated" with me. They felt more logical and loving than what I'd been raised with and the believers in such things seemed like much better people than the Christians I had known. The Christians didn't even agree who was Christian-- and they sure didn't share each other's beliefs And I knew enough science to know the creationists were whacked. (I was raised Catholic, so evolution wasn't a problem.)I later figured out that faith and feelings are good ways to imagine you know something, but they aren't good ways to find out the truth at all. Instead they lead you to fool yourself and confirm those biases.I actually lost my faith in souls, first. There is a man named Clive Wearing (you can see him on youtube) who lost the function of his hippocampus due to encephalitis. He can't make any new memories. It's amazingly tragic. He cries because he's missed seeing his children grow up-- only he didn't. He just can't remember anything for more than 7 seconds.It just made me think: If you can't remember anything without a working hippocampus, how can you be anything without a brain at all? And this goes for all those with various sorts of brain damage or seizures or chemical induced changes-- or blind people. If the soul could do something, why didn't it step in and do the job of the malfunctioning organs? When we anesthetize the brain, the person can't feel, think, or remember anything! And if there were any evidence for a soul, why weren't scientists testing, honing, and refining that evidence. As I researched the subject, it became increasingly clear that souls are an illusion. Despite eons and an eagerness to believe in such things, there wasn't even an iota of evidence we could build upon or test or measure and find out more. Compare that to the ever increasing evidence we have regarding evolution and DNA. And the information is the same for everyone, no matter what they believe-- even if they don't accept evolution, their DNA still tells the story of how they got here.So there are no souls... or rather, there is no more evidence for souls than there is for fairies.Without souls, who needs gods? Souls that can suffer eternally are the whole reason you supposedly need gods and faith and allegiance to some church-group.But there is no evidence that any invisible form of consciousness CAN exist-- this makes gods, demons, Satan, and souls as unlikely as Thor, Xenu, Thetans, sprites, gremlins, and all other invisible and or supernatural being humans believed in. There is no reason to believe in some of these beings and not others. If there was such evidence, scientists would be grabbing at it and testing it like mad --eager to learn more for themselves and the rest of us. (Hooray --I no longer had to worry about hell or reincarnation or which divine truths I might be missing out on or whether I might suffer in some afterlife because I didn't believe the right unbelievable story in this life. )Humans are clearly good at making up such beings or attributing things they don't understand to supernatural agents. Humans are also very good at confirming what they've been indoctrinated to "believe in" and manipulating others into their beliefs. When people feel like some transcendent feeling came because of their faith, naturally, they want to share that feeling and they do so by sharing their faith. But that doesn't mean the good feeling came because what they believed had any basis in truth. (Google Tom Cruise and Scientology is you want to see a very successful man who is very convinced that his wacky religious beliefs are responsible for his success.)If scientists cannot know about which invisible undetectable beings are real versus which are not, then that means your priests, gurus, friends, parents, self-proclaimed prophets, indoctrinators, and people on this forum cannot know either. They can imagine they DO know just as the Scientologists, Moonies, and every other religion imagines they know, but they don't know-- they have "faith". And faith is not a means of knowledge-- faith is "belief without or despite evidence". Believers just "feel" like they know. And their "truths" conflict with each other and many other equally heartfelt truths. (Everybody is going to hell according to somebody else's religion.)As far as the evidence is concerned, consciousness without a material brain and sensory inputting organs is as unlikely as sound in a vacuum. It's nonsensical. The "Satan" you are afraid of is as unlikely as the sprites you give no credence to and the Greek gods you hold as myths. Scientists have no reason to think that consciousness can exist absent a material brain. And we have lots of evidence that humans can fool themselves and have horrific stress imagining such things are real. Edited by articulett, : Cleaning up grammar snafus.Edited by articulett, : No reason given.Edited by articulett, : No reason given.

Good websites for ex-Christians: ExChristian.Net
Debunking ChristianityIf you are coming out of a specific religion such as Mormonism, Scientology, or Jehovah Witness, there are specific "ex" sites for those religions.There are millions of people who have been where you are, and many are starting the journey and could use your help.
The Leavers: Young Doubters Exit the Church | Christianity TodayAlso, the Hitchens/Dembski debate for young evangelicals was fantastic: ForbiddenI think the hardest thing is the treatment you get from those who'd prefer you stay in the fold. When you have a "crisis of faith", it scares them regarding a similar crisis. They will try to play on your fears, with Pascals wager-- but I suspect they are really talking about their own fears. I think many believers have to work very hard to keep themselves from understanding that they might be as mistaken as all those other faiths they are SURE are mistaken.Edited by articulett, : typo correctionEdited by articulett, : No reason given.

Tom Cruise is certainly more successful than you-- he credits Scientology. Mormons credit Mormonism.Myself, I am much more interested in what is true. Understanding the really cool things that humans know for the first time (thanks to science) is uplifting to me in a way religion never was. In my experience, every believer imagines that those that believe as they do are more moral and happier-- and they set about confirming those biases just as their indoctrinators have lead them to do. Their indoctrinators tell them that they can't be happy or horrible things will happen if they lose the faith (and, indeed, they often fulfill that "prophesy" by shunning "apostates" of their faith.)But studies show that it's more secular societies and areas of the country that are the most functional: http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html

Where are you on the scale when it comes to demons? How about reincarnation? Angels? Fairies? Bigfoot? If there's a difference, why?Do you fear something "bad" will happen if you stopped believing in some version of "god"?If there was no god and we COULD know this for sure-- would you want to know? What about those other things I mentioned?

Or was it Satan? Or Xenu? Or muses? Or your dead grandma giving you a sign?When you don't know something, does it really make sense to decide you actually DO know-- that the answer is "goddidit"?It sounds to me like a recipe for garden variety confirmation bias... kind of like when Mormons tell you to read the Book of Mormon and pray to God to know if it's true or not. If you feel something (like a "burning in the bosom"), then that is supposed to be interpreted as "proof " from God that the wacky Mormon religion is "the truth". --And if you don't feel anything, you are told to read more and pray harder! I think this method "works" for too many conflicting beliefs to actually be evidence for anything supernatural including the god that you believe in.Edited by articulett, : No reason given.Edited by articulett, : still trying to get the hang of formatting

Certainly any "design" is flawed, right? You admit humans are imperfect. If an intelligent designer created life, he created it imperfectly. And if you believe the Jesus story than this imperfect designer tries to "fix" his imperfect designs by flooding the earth (which didn't work) and then having his son (who is really him) sacrificed (to himself) to try and fix the flaws which he should have known about if omniscient.Nature is cruel, wasteful, and contains a lot of suffering, malformation, deformations, and less than optimal design. It also takes eons to evolve an eye and then eons to devolve them away when they aren't needed any more-- and the DNA from their existence still remains in the organism as do many useless genes. Why not just poof eyes into existence as needed and then away when the designer decides the creature should move underground or in caves where eyes are a liability? And why not just poof out good eyes to those born blind who need eyes? And why all the sex (unless the intelligent designer likes watching) when the designer can just poof out the life forms he wants as needed? Why would a man make trillions of sperm in his life time? That seems like a wasteful design to me when only so few are needed to make gods favorite "designs".How is that indicative of the god you've been indoctrinated to believe in? Why would your god give primates a nonworking vitamin C gene? How does that figure into the design hypothesis exactly? Is the "intelligent designer" a bumbler? A trickster? Does he just like to make it look like things evolved slowly over eons without any help from anything intelligent?Are you really able to convince yourself that life on earth is the result of an omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent invisible designer? Why would he bother making material beings if our true nature is immaterial-- and how are we created in his image if he is invisible? Why not just skip to the immaterial eternity part that he supposedly already knows is going to happen? Why pain, suffering, angst, fear, hunger-- and all that other stuff that seems intricately tied up with having a physical body and physical brain? And if god can make perfect people (Jesus), why didn't he make them all that way?If your intelligent designer created everything, why did he create sin, hell, a devil, imperfect beings, pain, deformations, suffering, etc.? If he could have chosen to prevent the existence of such things, why didn't he? And if he can fix these mistakes, isn't it just cruel, not to? Why would you worship any being that creates creatures knowing that they can suffer forever? What would be the point of that? Or have I just interpreted the bible wrong?If there was no "intelligent designer" would you want to know, or is that too scary to even think about?Edited by articulett, : No reason given.Edited by articulett, : No reason given.

What exactly do you think happened regarding this so-called resurrection? Did Jesus rise from the dead, open his tomb and walk about town causing other dead folk to do the same? Or did he just float up to the sky? Was he zombie like with his wounds (so that doubting Thomas could touch them) or was he all poofed back into unwounded form? If you looked into the sky could you see him floating up? How can heaven be "up" if we live on a round earth? Humans on earth don't have the same "up". How many people do you think saw Jesus after he died and came back to life? Why are there no contemporary accounts of this amazing occurrence? Did Paul see a reanimated corpse or just a vision? What exactly counts as a resurrection and do you know how many people (and gods) there are resurrection accounts for? Do you think any other resurrections actually happened? Why is the resurrection so important to the story? Doesn't that make the whole sacrifice thing a lot less of a sacrifice? Does the crucifixion only save those that believe in the crucifixion? Does this mean Christians can sin freely now that their sins are paid for while the non believers will be punished just because they don't believe? Even when I was a theist the story never made sense. (My solution, at the time, was not to think about it much, lest I lose my faith.)And one more thing... why does the story say he rose on the third day?-- If he was crucified good Friday and rose Easter Sunday morning-- that isn't even 2 days. How do you decide what to believe is true, and why would a god care more about what you believe than what you do?

I've read the bible, and as I recall, that is not what made Abraham right with god-- being willing to kill his son upon god's orders is what did so.I think you may be cherry picking regarding how one makes oneself "right with God"....When one imagines their eternity depends upon following some god's will, they will do anything they can be convinced that god wants, right? Especially if they believe the punishment for disobedience is eternal suffering

You don't need to tell people. It think supernatural beliefs should be kept private-- and then it would be unnecessary to say which ones we do and/or don't believe in. (I could assume everyone was rational the way Christians think everyone is Christian!)When the conversation turns religious, sometimes I just say, "I wish there was just some good evidence for the existence of souls"-- but mostly I stay quiet. Rocking the boat is often not worth it.Practice online for now.

The Pascal's wager thing bugged me for a while too. It made me stop thinking about my faith, because I was afraid where it was headed. But then I realized that EVERYBODY is going to hell according to somebody's religion. There are many sects that believe only members of their sects are saved. According to the Muslims, Christians are going to hell for worshiping Jesus as a god-- (there is no god but Allah). Islam is a truly a montheistic religion and Muslims don't buy into the idea of a 3-in-1 god. They take the commandment about not having other gods very seriously. And Jehovah Witnesses are sure that only worthy Jehovah Witnesses are saved. Lots of Christians think that only those that believe the Jesus story are saved. Fred Phelps thinks we're all damned except for his clan. (I wonder if he's a creationist?) Mormons will tell you that only Mormons get to go to the highest heaven. (And the most faithful Mormon males will one day be gods on their own planets!)There really is no way to win with Pascal's wager because there really is no way to tell the right religion from the infinity of wrong ones. Everyone imagines they are in the right one after all.I segued into Eastern sorts of beliefs and reincarnation for awhile-- it just made more sense to me and felt more fair then this whole pass/fail life test for eternity thing. Heaven and hell and invisible good guys and bad guys all seem so childish, primitive, mythical and man-made to me. They're a part of so many myths. I desperately wanted to believe in souls... I liked the idea of souls coming into bodies to evolve and experience different lives on their way to "nirvana".Of course, wanting something to be true, doesn't make it true. I'd hear new-age claptrap saying something like, "what does it matter if it's true or not?" But after a while, I realized it did matter to me. If souls were real, then I wanted to be on the forefront of discovering more. But there was nothing there to discover. It was just a bunch of self appointed gurus with conflicting feel-good "secrets" using the usual confirmation bias to gain allegiance to the beliefs they were selling. The scientists seemed to be increasingly coming to the opinion that souls were an illusion. That made sense to me. Science makes sense in a way religion never did. And you can test it and probe it. The only punishment for not "believing it" is ignorance. Plus you can learn about the ways people fool themselves; I could learn about the ways I fooled myself to avoid doing so in the future.Pascal's wager keeps a lot people calling themselves believers even when they don't know what they believe or why --it also encourages people to stay "on the fence" defending faith-in-general (just in case). As such, it's a very powerful religious meme, and I'm not surprised to find some version of it amongst the most virulent and widespread religions. It will be good when humans no longer inflict these teachings on each other.

To me, there is a downside to thinking what you believe or do will effect your eternity. Just look at the hijackers-- they were sure that they were doing exactly what was needed to earn paradise. Can you really say society benefited from their belief that they were being watched over and advised and judged? Was this belief harmless?When you believe that some eternity is affected by what you believe or do on earth, then you are vulnerable to anyone who can convince you they know something on the subject. We have no way of telling a real god from a hallucination, voice in the head, misperception, etc. We have no way of telling a real prophet from a fake one or a real holy book from a fake one. So clearly this is dangerous. And the odds are never in your favor anyhow, since there are so many religions that believe only members of their sect are going to be saved that if any one of them are right, the vast majority of humans that ever lived will be suffering forever. No matter how you slice it, the people who are wrong who think they are right vastly outnumber those who could actually be right. Yet every believer thinks they are in the "right" group. Are you supposed to follow the religion where the threats for not following are the scariest? Or just assume you stumbled into the right belief system to win "happily ever after"? In Pascal's case, it was Catholicism. He was looking to confirm his biases that it made sense to believe in Catholicism. I did that when I was a kid. I figured that the fact that Catholics had "verified miracles", stigmata, and Mother Theresa proved it. Of course, I didn't know anything about confirmation bias back then. But I did know the Mormons were telling people to read the book of Mormon and pray to know if it was true-- you'd "get a sign" I was told. I wondered why scientists weren't testing the various religions since everybody's ETERNITY was supposedly at stake.There are an infinity of wrong beliefs, but only one truth. So far, the best bet for finding the truth is through the methods of science-- not Catholicism or any other faith.Don't get me wrong-- if you or others would do nefarious things without the threat of hell or the idea that you are being spied on, then I want you and those others to have faith. But I don't need such manipulations to behave morally, and I suspect most others don't either. And I think it's immoral to threaten children with hell.From my perspective, being afraid of some religion's version of hell is a very big deal. And that's the whole pull behind Pascal's manipulative wager isn't it-- this idea that you will suffer FOREVER for not believing the right thing? If there is no hell (and there is no more evidence for hell than there is for Valhalla) then it's wrong to be manipulating people and their beliefs with threats that they can spend eternity there.If there are no such thing as souls, is it right to be manipulating people with this idea that there are-- and that they can suffer forever if people don't BELIEVE the right unbelievable story? Or should scientists start preparing people to live in a world where we are not the center of everything? How long must we pretend that it's good to believe such things? Edited by articulett, : No reason given.

Then why are there pedophiliac preists? Surely they believe that they are being watched; I imagine they believe in hell too.I can see why such beliefs might curb some bad behavior or encourage some good behavior, but I'm not sure the effect is positive over all. I think religious people just use confirmation bias to conclude god wants what they want and that god has the same prejudices as them.Plus, I'm much more interested in whether there really are invisible beings that can watch over us (without eyes.) If so, why can't we test and find out more about these beings? Why should we think that anyone can know any more about these beings than anyone else if they have no measurable qualities and are (apparently) indistinguishable from the nonexistent? I don't like the idea of being manipulated into belief because others believe it will make ME act better.I'm all for faith if it makes you feel good or helps you behave better. But in my experience, the faithful just imagine themselves as behaving more morally than those who don't share their faith. As Fred Phelps illustrates, morality, is clearly in the eye of the beholder. I do believe that some people would be miserable without their religious beliefs, but my point in posting on this thread, is to encourage those who are willingly leaving it behind as I did-- the same way you'd encourage someone leaving Scientology or some other religion that you felt was manipulative and untrue.I don't find Pacal's wager a valid reason to believe anything supernatural. But I understand the fear it invokes and why it keeps people beholden to their indoctrination.

Jar9-11 was religiously based. We have recordings of the hijackers praising Allah on the way down. They believed they were fighting a holy war. Their family members had dreams of them in paradise and thought it was a message from their loved ones. (We also have recordings of Christians praying for the plane to land safely; they weren't as eager to go to their "happily ever after" that day.)I don't like the way the faithful refuse to take responsibility when horrors result. When someone prays for their kid instead of seeking medical attention, and the kid dies, that is a result of faith. God says he'll move mountains... why not show you have faith by putting a dying kid in his hands?If you believe that kids automatically go to heaven, then you believe the same as Andrea Yates. She made sure her kids went to heaven by killing them before they could be old enough to sin enough to go to hell (maybe they'd grow up to be gay or atheists!). So she ensured their "happily ever after" at her own expense (she knew she'd probably go to hell, but she thought she was going to go there anyhow and that it would be moral to save her kids from such a horrible fate.) From my reading of your holy book she had more faith than you did. She REALLY believed it. (If I believed that someone could suffer forever, I'd never have a kid.) From my reading of your holybook, Andrea Yates made a much bigger sacrifice (ETERNAL damnation) than your invisible savior did (a day and a half of suffering). (She also believed that god wouldn't give you more than you could handle.) Yes, she was mentally ill-- but her FAITH was the reason for doing what she did. Her horrors makes sense through the lens of Christian beliefs. What's the point of life, after all, except to get to the "happily ever after" part without accidentally going to hell instead?Faith was the reason for the Pogroms and the Inquisition and the Crusades-- and the Catholic/ Protestant horrors in Northern Ireland. Let's not pretend these were about something else. Things get ugly when people imagine that god is on their side and against those "others" who "believe differently".I am always amazed at the way people want to pretend that faith never causes any harm. I think that's one of the biggest ways religions brainwashes people myself. Religionsists bend over backwards to imagine harms from lack of faith while blinding themselves to the horrors that results from those who have more of it than everyone else.If god wants your faith more than anything else... and the only way to prove your faith is by doing things you'd never do without it-- then it's the extreme faithheads that would be god's favorites right? So long as they managed to stumble into the right magical belief system and are really in touch with the right invisible guy. When I was a kid, I couldn't figure out why my dad (Catholic) would make fun of the holy rollers-- after all, if all my religious teachings were true, it was the extremists that were taking out an insurance policy towards getting into heaven, wasn't it? Why take chances with eternity?Maybe theists can convince themselves that faith causes little harm and lots of good, but, then, they are afraid something bad will happen if they didn't think so-- if they questioned faith as a means of knowledge.I think most believers are perfectly fine people and most aren't dangerous in any way, but they do support a dangerous notion-- this idea that there are divine truths that some people have "tapped into" --not to mention the idea that people are moral because of what they've been indoctrinated to "believe in". I'm glad that deconversions are becoming more common. The Leavers: Young Doubters Exit the Church | Christianity Today

Jar,Sorry for the confusion on pedophiliac priests. I was just pointing out that believing you have someone watching over you, doesn't necessarily make people behave any better. Nor does threats of hell.I guess I misunderstood you.And I disagree with you that Pascal's wager is harmless and I disagree that faith wasn't the cause of 9-11 (and many other tragedies).But mostly I just joined this thread to share my deconversion experience and encourage others going through similar experiences. I didn't feel like you were telling me what to believe.I'm just passionate about the truth, and there is no evidenced that faith is a means of finding it.It's probably best not to read my posts if they bother you, and I'll try and ignore the "defenders of faith". I just don't think that faith is a virtue nor do I find it worthy of respect. I tend to treat religious beliefs the way religious believers treat the beliefs of cults and superstitions they don't subscribe to. Edited by articulett, : No reason given.

Do you think you can make yourself feel "unconditional love"? If you don't feel it, and you can't make yourself feel it, do you think your god gives points for acting like you feel it?