Deconversion experiences

So then that is why the divorce rate among conservative Christians is higher than in the general population? And the divorce rate among atheists is lower?Thank you for sullying the loving sentiment of cavediver's post with crass proselytizing. Interjecting assertions about the Biblical record where it was in no way under discussion.

OK, that did it! I now have an avatar.Circa 1968 head-shop issue button. The common fundamentalist proselytizing catch-phrase at the time was "Jesus gave his life for you".

Admittedly, it's been a few decades, but I recall prophesies being fulfilled in The Lord of the Rings, in particular The Sword That Was Broken. And more recently fulfilled prophesies in the Star Wars saga.Would you discount those fulfilled prophesies? For what reason?Do you now begin to understand?
(obviously not, but one can always hope)

My story is simpler than most. And not as filled with family strife.My family was nominally Protestant, mainly from my mother's side, Scottish. Actually, my father's side, Irish (County Mayo) and southwest German (Baden), was Catholic until his normally non-religious father "got religion" in one town and the entire family converted to Protestant and remained so after his father lost his new-found religion after having gotten cheated by the church leaders in a business deal. My grandmother was very religious --Protestant -- for the rest of her long life, but my father had quickly become disillusioned with religion because of the rampant hypocrisy he saw continuously, though for his mother's sake he continued to attend church regularly until his 21st birthday. But in our family he never expressed his religious views; I did not learn of them until more than a decade after the events of my own deconversion, thus he had made no contribution to that deconversion.As I said, we were nominally Protestant. In elementary school in the second half of the 1950's, my mother had signed me up for Released Time Religious Education. I attended church with our neighbors, members of a mainstream Protestant church -- I do not remember what denomination it was except "Protestant". Then when I was about 11 years old, I accompanied church members to a Billy Graham revival in L.A., which motivated me to be baptized in our church.Within a year, I began to strongly feel that I needed to get serious about religion, which first required me to learn just what it was I was supposed to believe. Obviously, I was supposed to believe what was in the Bible, so I started to read the Bible, just as I would any other book (at the time), from beginning to end. Even though it was very likely not required by my church, I took a navely literalistic approach to my reading. It was totally incredible! Really! I could not believe what I was reading. I don't remember exactly how far I got, though I'm pretty sure that I had not made it to Lot's incestuous rape by his daughters (Genesis 19:30+), since I did not learn about that one until a couple-few decades later. So, since I could not believe what I was supposed to believe, I could not be a Christian. My only choice was to leave, which I did.Basically, that was my deconversion. It was a personal choice that I really didn't discuss with anyone, except to let my neighbor know so that she would not expect me to accompany them to church anymore. I didn't really have any family members to worry about. Nobody else in my immediate family attended church, though my older sister and her husband are now fundamentalists. I never brought up the matter with my grandmother and one of my great-aunts, who had converted to Catholocism when she married my great-uncle, never bothered the kids but rather would continually rag on my mother that we non-Catholic kids were going to Hell and it was her fault.Then in extra-curricular reading in high school (I have always been an avid reader, though for the past couple decades it's mainly been technical) I learned more about Christianity's bloody history. As I entered into college, the "Jesus Freak" movement hit, 60's hippies now getting "turned on to Jesus" -- back then, a "freak" was a hippie, usually identified by his/her drugs of choice (as related on History Channel's show on Woodstock, a normal introductory line was "What you got?", meaning what drugs would they share) and a "straight" was a non-freak. A number of friends got "hooked on Jesus" and I became a kind of fundamentalist "fellow traveller" (borrowed from the McCarthy red scare which sought to indict non-communists who had communist friends or acquaintences), in that I learned a lot about Christian fundamentalism while never accepting it. The more I learned, the more skepical I became. It just did not make any sense at all, especially not biblical literalism and their obsession with demonology.It was during that time that I first encountered "creation science", mainly through two claims: 1) living mollusks had been carbon-dated to be millions of years old, and 2) a NASA computer calculating the moon's position back to the distant past stopped at roughly 6000 BC stating that nothing existed before that time and when brought back to the present had a one-day discrepancy which was accounted for by Joshua's Lost Day. That first claim just didn't seem right, plus considering all the other non-creationist BS that I'd been getting from them, it seemed prudent to distrust this one too; in my researching in the mid-80's, I found the source of that claim and found that the mollusks in question were fresh-water living in streams fed from limestone sources such that the vast majority of the carbon they were getting was very "old" carbon from the limestone, not from the atmosphere as carbon-dating depends on, and as the source article itself pointed out and warned about. Now, try to remember back to 1970. Computers were near-mythical machines that virtually nobody was able to anywhere close to, and most of those who did could get no closer than the windows encasing the computer room. But even before I had come to know anything about computers (1977, computer technician training, 1980, computer science degree), I knew full well that what that claim was saying about what a computer could do was complete and total bullshit; even many Christian writers denounce it.Then a decade later, around 1980, an ICR debate was staged at the university near where I was stationed. Amazed that creationists were still around, I started studying "creation science" to learn what evidence they really did have. Instead, I learned that all they had was lies and deception. Three decades later, that story has not changed one single iota.During the time I've been trying to have discussions with creationists (from mid-1980's on), I've found that they must continually guard against certain thoughts. This agrees with what I had learned as a fellow-traveller and with the testimonials of former fundamentalists, such as Gary * , a friend at church (UU). As an atheist, I feel free to pursue any line of investigation and to question anything, as I have done.{* FOOTNOTE:
One day Gary picked up some furniture we were donating and we went for a Korean BBQ lunch. He told me how for many years he had been a fervent fundamentalist. During that time, he would encounter every day things that contradicted his beliefs, things that he had been taught did not exist and could not exist for Scripture to be true. He would just cast a blind eye on such troublesome things, but as each day passed he would have more and more such things to avoid noticing. Finally, all that self-delusion and denial just proved too much for him to maintain. So he applied the Matthew 7:20 test to Christianity and found that it failed miserably. BTW, you should start reading from Matthew 7:15. Now he's self-described "an atheist and a thorough humanist" and he finds that he is so much happier and spiritually fulfilled than he was as a Christian. The only thing he misses is being able to express gratitude to God. But isn't that a small price to pay for freedom and ability to see Truth?
}

As I understand, the entire tradition of wakes was to make sure that the person was actually dead. This dated back to when a physician might not be able to accurately ascertain that his patient was actually dead; in a comatose state, a person's vital signs could be so weak as to be undetectable by most people. There was a general paranoia about being mistaken for dead and buried alive, no doubt fueled by some popular macabre stories, such that there were inventions created to enable a person buried alive to signal that fact to those six feet above him; eg, a rope tied to a bell in the tombstone.I've heard a song sung by a local Irish band about an Irishman who died, so they held his wake. And it took the sound of the jar of whisky being dropped and broken to revive him.

OH YOU STUPID BITCH!!!!Yes, I know that you are a GUY!!!So why the FRAK are you HIDING behind a WOMAN'S name? DO NOT EVEN BEGIN TO ATTEMPT TO BESMIRCH THE NOBEL NAME OF THAT US NAVY WAR HERO, DORIS MILLER! Why are you cowardly hiding behind a WOMAN's name?Oh yeah! If you POSE AS A WOMAN, then you can MAKE FUN OF THOSE WHO ASSUME THAT YOU ARE A WOMAN!!!!!! Ha, Ha! The JOKE IS ON US FOR FRACKINGGGGG TRUSTING YOU, you quintessential LIAR. Just as when you post nonsense and then insult everybody for not understanding your nonsense. Is that your secret? That you are nothing but a devious practical joker? We accept the lie that you are a woman, so you laugh derisively at us? We try to take your ridiculously illlogical logic seriously, so you deride us for being complete idiots? Even though we would need to be complete idiots to take your idiotic blatherings seriously?Very funny, you frackin' liar!Gee, what do the words of Liars for the Lord tell us about the Lord? That it's all lies? Duhhh????? Yes, by DOING SO VERBALLY. How many such "debates" have you waged and won in a written format?In a spoken format, confusing nonsense, Sid-Caeser-esque double-talk (foreign-language dialogue which sounds to the non-native speaker as if it were in that foreign language, but which an actual speaker of that language immediately identifies as puse nonsense), cannot be responded to, because it is blithering nonsense. But in a written format, then your words can be examined and assessed as to their actual worth. How do your written words assess? As blithering nonsense!.

I apologize to everybody for that outburst. The sheer audacity of Dawn's false boast coupled with his long history of pathological cluelessness (whether inate or done deliberately) caught me at the wrong time.Though it's not entirely his personal fault, but rather he's being influenced by his religious community which engenders lies and dishonesty, encourages dishonesty, and discourages its members from seeking the truth and from even trying to correct falsehoods, but rather encourages them to avoid the truth and to support the liars among them, even if it's no more than to remain silent. Of course, I'm talking about "creation science" and its new face, ID. And in decades of studying "creation science" and dealing with creationists, I have observed those things going on all the time. Including an incident in which I was able to demonstrate without a shadow of a doubt to a friend of a local creationist activist that that activist was deliberately lying. The friend admitted the truth, that the activist was deliberately lying, and he agreed that lying was a sin, but he refused to talk with the activist about it nor to warn his fellow Christians about the lies. Even the activist admitted that many claims made by his idol, Kent Hovind, were so bad and obviously false that they "make your eyes roll", but he not only would never question Hovind about those eye-rolling claims but he would use them himself.When I've pointed out the misconduct of creationists, other creationists would admonish me to not judge Christianity by the misconduct of a few of its followers. Rather, I could see that it was the religion and its theologies that create the environment that either encouraged such bad conduct to come out or actually created that bad conduct. This presents a very serious obstacle for any honest person to consider conversion to such a religion.

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Matthew (KJV):
7:15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's
clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
7:16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes
of thorns, or figs of thistles?
7:17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a
corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
7:18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither [can]
a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
7:19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn
down, and cast into the fire.
7:20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

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We see the evil fruit, creationist misconduct and its encouragement, that the tree, "true" Christianity, has brought forth. Therefore, according to Jesus, what kind of tree is that? And what does Jesus say should be done with that tree? (see 7:19)I'm sure that it has been noted, and I admit it readily, that my reason for deconverting was a wrong reason. However, the decision was still the right one.

I have posted an apology. Well since your real name is Moron, then thank you for finally giving it."Dawn" is a girl's name, Moron. I have. You cannot write. You cannot put coherent thoughts together. Nobody can understand you. And you refuse to make any attempt to communicate. For that matter, you vehemently oppose the very thought of being asked to try to communicate. Before I could even begin to consider it, I would need to insist on certain conditions to which you would need to be very strictly bound. Here are a few to start with:1. It would need to be written rather than spoken. That is to prevent you from breaking into a series of incoherent Gish Gallops. Not that you wouldn't try it anyway, but at least when it's in writing then we can still have some chance of trying to extract some kind of meaning from your incomprehsible blather.2. You would need to stop spewing bullshit. Yeah, I know, if we take that away from you then you won't have anything to say.3. You would need to make an actual effort to communicate.Since more than 2200 posts by you have demonstrated that you are incapable of meeting any of those conditions, ... Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.

I am making no concession whatsoever. I am insisting that any debate be an actual debate.Instead, you are refusing to engage in actual debate, or in any actual discussion for that matter, which you have consistent been doing ever since you first posted on this forum.So you are conceding that you have no intention of engaging in an actual debate and that your "challenge" is nothing more than the rest of what you post here, bullshit.You left out the rest of my post, in particular: In an actual debate, you will need to put coherent thoughts together, something that you have proven yourself to be incapable of. In an actual debate, you will need to express your thoughts and arguments in such a manner that they can be understood, something that you have proven yourself to be incapable of. In an actual debate, you will need to communicate, something that you have not only proven yourself to be incapable of, but you vehemently oppose the very idea.Actual debate, Dawn, not the bullshit con-job that you normally pull on the public.But you concede that you have no intention of engaging in an actual debate. Not man enough for it, eh?In the meantime, you still need to provide an actual case of ID using the scientific method. I understand you refusal to provide it, since you know of none.thing, that your case does not really exist, and that you are no

Bullshit! I laid out the truth for you and you reject the truth.Name members of this forum who have been able to understand your gibberish. Your writing is almost universally regarded as unintellible gibberish.When have you ever tried to communicate with any of us here? You have vehemently opposed my request that you communicate. Communication includes accepting feedback on whether you message got across and to resend it in a more intelligible form when it doesn't. When have you ever done that? Instead, you invariably insult the person requesting clarification, a practice which directly opposes communication.Now, Dawn, if you disagree, then please explain how you think that spewing double-talk bullshit and constantly insulting your audience is supposed to qualify as an actual debate or discussion. I gave you a short list of just a few of the many things that are needed for you to engage in an actual debate or discussion and you reject them outright. Since you reject conditions that are absolutely necessary for actual debate, you are rejecting actual debate. That isn't just bullshit, but it's a flat-out lie. You never have provided an actual case of ID using the scientific method. If you had, then why did Admin have to make this demand, repeatedly? (Message 323):

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Please stop posting to this thread until you can provide an example of ID research following all the steps of the scientific method in the point-by-point style requested by Bluejay:

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• An example of a researcher making observations of the natural world.
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• An example of a researcher formulating an ID hypothesis based on those observations.
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• An example of a researcher experimenting to test that ID hypothesis.
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• An example of a researcher forming an ID theory based on the results of the experiment.

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And the fact that you refuse to comply is further evidence that you do not intend to engage in actual debate or discussion. And that fact that you lie about it is further evidence. It is a sentence fragment left over from the editting; such fragments tend to accumulate at the bottom of the edit buffer and are not noticed and cleaned up in time. It was not intended to be part of the message. Please disregard.However, you certainly have no right to complain about it, since you have posted sentence fragments and then demanded that I respond to it, repeatedly. Hypocrite.

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Many deconversion stories I've encountered over the years gave the reason for their deconversion as the discovery that they were being lied to by their religion and/or their religious leaders. That includes the gross dishonesty of "creation science" and now of its new deceptive face, ID.And the problem that creationists and IDists create for Christianity is not just adding fuel to the spread of deconversion, but also of erecting barriers that keep non-believers from converting in the first place.

Obviously Buzsaw automatically agrees with Dawn because of their apparently shared beliefs, but not because of Dawn's alleged arguments. Early on, Buzsaw admitted to Dawn that he could not understand what Dawn had written and so asked for clarification. Dawn's response was the same as always (at least when he doesn't "respond" by insulting): he blew Buzsaw off. An occupational hazard of participation in creation/evolution discourse is becoming thoroughly disgusted with the dishonesty of creationists and allowing that to color our perception of the entire religion. While we all too often have to deal with the worst of the worst, many creationists (in particular the much larger number who are followers and would not attempt to engage in c/e discussion except in misguided moments of hubris) actually do value truth, truthfulness, and honesty.The problem for those creationists who value truth, truthfulness, and honesty comes when they start to encounter the dishonesty of "creation science". Nor is it an overnight awakening, but rather tends to be a long process, such as bluescat has described, in which questions arise which lead to study and thinking, which leads to more questions, etc.For example, Dan Barker, "America's Leading Atheist", grew up a fundamentalist in a fundamentalist family -- eg, his mother would sing in tongues as she did her housework. He was personally called by God to the ministry and after graduating from bible college became an itinerate preacher, songwriter, and performer (he still gets royalties for his fundamentalist Christian songs). He started out believing there was only one way to believe, but as he visited different fundamentalist and "Bible believing" churches, he noticed that each congregation's beliefs differed in some way, such that something that he had always believed was absolute, wasn't. In a kind of a slippery slope, each such encounter took his clearly defined line of demarcation between what he believed and didn't believe and it moved that line slightly. Then the next encounter with another church also moved it slightly. And so on, until that line had moved greatly and he was finding himself thinking about and questioning most of what he believed. It took at a bit over two years before he finally came to questioning the most fundamental aspects of his former theology, including whether God even exists or not. His church's reaction to all his questioning probably did more to seal his fate than anything else as they effectively threw him out -- when I first heard his story on the radio, shortly after it had happened, his church had urged and convinced his wife to leave him; she fares much better in his book. His mother tried to talk him back into the fold, but a few direct questions from him caused her to realize that she really couldn't believe either. His father, a professional musician who had to give up his music when he converted, followed suit and was able to return to the music that he loved.Glenn R. Morton, who has participated here in the past, is a professional field geologist and former YEC. Prior to starting work, his sole training in geology was from the ICR and he had written a number of articles for the Creation Research Society Quarterly. He hired a number of Christian Heritage College graduates (hence they were effectively ICR-trained as well). As a result, they were all subjected daily to rock-hard geological facts that they had been taught did not exist and could not exist if Scripture were to have any meaning. As a result, they all suffered crises of faith; Morton himself was driven to the verge of atheism, pulling himself back only by adopting a theology that was much more scientifically sound. His testimony can be found here, The Transformation of a Young-earth Creationist , and here, Why I left Young-earth Creationism, through his page, Personal Stories of the Creation/Evolution Struggle, which links to many other people's stories.Carl Drews is a fundamental Christian and theological evolutionist whom I met on-line and he pointed me to his testimony, My Story. He had learned very early on that evolution poses no real problems for Christianity and his first encounters with "creation science" (via Chick Pubs' Big Daddy, the original, I'm sure, not the Kent Hovind rewrite out now) proved that they were lying through their teeth. He and his family joined a fundamentalist church whose work they loved, until the pastor started pushing "creation science" and actually advocated using lies and deception to do the Lord's Work, after which he could no longer remain there. I saw him in industry news recently wherein he had been studying the effects of wind on rivers as part of trying to understand the Parting of the Waters.I also met Ed on-line and he pointed me to his story, My Search. He had converted and became a YEC who described it as a junkie would his drug. One day, he got a new series of tapes by a YEC (I seem to recall him later identifying that YEC as Kent Hovind) and was blown away:

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After viewing them, I found my jaw on the floor. I truly expected these evolutionists to roll over and die after being presented with this battering of "facts" - they didn't! I was truly numbed and frankly, pretty upset with the manners of this "young-earther." I was forced to come to some serious conclusions that day.

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I talked to my pastor (a young-earther), about my new discoveries. He warned me as so many other "creationists" have, that to continue on this path was dangerous and would only lead to me falling away from the faith. At times, that notion seemed true! He asked me, "do you want to end up like "R" (a college student) who now denies the faith after he tried to pursue scientific understanding?" That question hit me hard and weighed heavy on my heart; however, I would soon discover that that line of reasoning was also imaginary. Since then, I have corresponded with several Christians who have traveled the same path as I have. One thing that is always agreed upon is the damage young-earth creationism can do to souls; how many believers they have seen fall away. We have been taught that the Bible demands a young earth interpretation and when the facts of nature become inescapable - our faith becomes shattered! My pastor was wrong, and the opposite was the case. If "R" had been offered an alternative from the beginning, he would never have experienced the turmoil he went through. When "R" could no longer deny that the universe was billions of years old, the only option left for him was to deny the Bible. How many others have been disheartened in a like manner?

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I met Merle Hertzler on CompuServe. Of the creationists there, he was unique: he was honest and actually engaged in honest discussion. Within one year, he was still there engaged in honest discussion, only now he was arguing for evolution instead of against it. Unfortunately, the link to his site is broken, but he made the switch when researching intermediate fossil claims and discovered that while he had been taught that none existed, the library was chock full of example after example in great detail. He had been lied to and was supporting a lie. His story taught me that honest creationists do not last long: they either stop believing in YEC, or they stop trying to argue for it, or they stop being honest.I have several more, but I've gone on for too long already.

Which tells us that you obviously did not read those articles. Or just could not understand them. If you need, please have somebody who knows how to read read them for you and tell you what they say -- be sure to have them first read your assessment quoted above. No wonder some many forum members thought that you were a non-native English speaker with minimal English skills. OK, so you're also ignorant about your anti-evolution allies, the YECs. Well, there's a simple remedy for that. Oh yeah, that's right, you don't believe in actually learning something.The YEC position is firmly entrenched in specific interpretations of the age of the earth -- "If the earth is more than 10,000 years old then Scripture has no meaning." John Morris, now President of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), at the 1986 International Conference on Creationism -- and in Noah's Flood. To them, the only alternative is atheism. That includes your own wishy-washy unbiblical (to them) attempts to undermine the Word of God.Now of course, to the general public they will do as IDists do. They will avoid getting into any details as to what their "creation model" actually is. They will even foist their "Creator" off as some generic idea when in reality they mean and will only accept their fundamentalist idea of YHWH. Actually, they are very much like you and other IDists in that respect, as IDists make a big show to the public that ID also accepts non-supernaturalistic design having been conducted by space aliens, whereas in reality they really only mean their Designer to be supernatural, specifically their own ideas of God, albeit not as strictly defined as It is for YECs. Having so much in common with YECs, it's amazing that you understand them so poorly. BUt then, why should they fare any differently? One of these days, Dawn, if you are really lucky, you will finally get a clue. It will change your life so much for the better.The YEC mentality is extremely black-and-white, either-or. They preach constantly that if the earth is older than 10,000 years, then Scripture has no meaning and you should become an atheist. If Noah's Flood never happened, then Scripture has no meaning and you should become an atheist. If even one single error is found in the Bible, then none of it is true and you must throw it in the trash and become an atheist. Sure, they are very seriously mistaken and wrong in holding those beliefs, but if you try to help them see reason then they will viciously rebuke you and cling to those self-destructive beliefs in spite of any and all efforts to help them.So when a YEC does start to learn that the earth is older, that the Flood didn't happen, that the Bible is not perfectly free of error, what choice do they have. Sure, we could try to show them other alternatives, but these are YECs we're talking about. It has been firmly and deeply ingrained in them throughout their fundamentalist religious experience, which for many of them has been their entire life, that their only choice, their only option, is atheism.Why, then, do you have the audacity of acting surprised when a YEC deconverts to atheism? Not that they all do; for many the deconversion is to another form of theism, yet you paint them all as having abandoned God, even though you should have known better and would have if you had actually done that reading that you claimed to have.The other side of the coin is why an atheist would ever want to convert to fundamentalism or even to less severe forms of Christianity. Long observed dishonesty, mainly from creationists and their Siamese twins the IDists. The Christian environment that condones and even encourages dishonesty, lies, and deception (read Carl Drew's story yet?). The Christian environment of hatred for and intense fear of the truth. Having to embrace teachings that I know for a fact are false (eg, the claims of "creation science"). Having to overcome a multitude of theological difficulties that I have with Christianity. And finally, having to become a monster in order to embrace the belief that dead family members whom I love dearly will suffer eternal torment -- it was examination of this belief that turned the tide for Dan Barker's mother.Dawn, observe, listen, think, try to understand. Try to get a clue.

I just got your joke last night. Dawn, the perpetually incomprehensible, called clearly and intelligibly written essays "sloppy". You can't make up irony like that! I arrived at my assessment from your statements about those articles which demonstrated conclusively that you did not know what they said. Now with this post I am truly astounded at the depth and extend of your total lack of understanding plain English. To paraphrase the Organian leader, it is truly painful to watch beings such as yourself flounder helplessly and cluelessly. Yet again, it's incoherent Gish-Gallopping Dawn saying that. How much more irony can we stand? Just what the hell are you talking about? That particular idiotic statement seals the deal: you have absolutely no idea what those articles said. Obviously, we have to explain it all to you. Though I have no doubt that you will yet again be totally incapable of understanding plain English. Please excuse me for a moment while I stifle my inner Organian again.The people in those stories were YECs. That stands for Young-Earth Creationists. Despite your totally ignorant assertion (Message 208 "No where does one need to conclude that God is not real and the Bible is not accurate, because some may have been to hasty in thier conclusions and interpretations of the age of the earth, the flood and other examples."), among YECs it is simply not the case of some having been to {sic} hasty in thier {sic} conclusions and interpretations of the age of the earth, the flood and other examples. Rather it's the entire fracking movement! What part of young-earth completely escapes your grasp? And they've not been hasty, but rather they have been very industrious making up false claims to bolster their young-earth teachings -- which are actually almost purely anti-evolution and anti-any-other-science-that-conflicts-with-YEC -- , continuously organizing campaigns to sway public opinion, deceptive "debates" to fool the public into supporting their cause, authoring state laws, and pursuing court cases. You know, all that stuff that IDists have learned from the YECs. Those false young-earth claims and beliefs are not abberations, but rather they lie at the very core of the YEC belief system. And it is what they raise their children on. Those articles show what happens when those children are exposed to reality and realize that they had been lied to.BTW, I agree with your basic assessment in that sentence, as I stated, but you were typically being too busy being completely clueless to notice. I agree that YEC's false YE claims should have no bearing on questions of God's existence or the Bible's accuracy. Those YEC beliefs are the product of fallible human interpretation, including that most pernious YEC belief that if YEC is not true then the Bible is a lie and God doesn't exist. Rather, if those fallible human interpretations are wrong, then that just means that they are wrong and need to be either corrected or dropped in favor of interpretations that do not depend on contrary-to-fact claims. But YECs are instead taught that they need to abandon their faith, effectively that those fallible human interpretations are infallible.The authors of those articles started out YECs. Then they learned that YEC is false. What was it that threatened their faith? YEC. What did they deconvert from? YEC. What is the basic message of those articles? That YEC poses a very real danger for faith.Oh, and what did they deconvert to? Yes, some became atheists, but did Glenn Morton? Or Steve Smith? No, they did not. In fact, I would be very surprised if some didn't deconvert to a form of Christianity virtually identical to your own form. Since you present yourself as being so dead-set against deconversion, does that mean that you are dead-set against a YEC with beliefs that you clearly do not agree with deconverting to your own form of Christianity?Dawn, please, try to get a clue. It really is very painful to have to watch beings misbehaving as incredibly cluelessly as you do. {OFF-TOPIC - NO REPLIES, if for no other reason, what is said in message 225 just below. - Adminnemooseus}Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Red "off-topic" message.

The individual who had started the Can a valid, supportable reason be offered for deconversion topic is fixated on the idea of one single reason for deconversion.General question: thinking back on your own deconversion, was it really just one thing that caused it? Or was it many things, which added up to the point of making the final decision? Or one thing that had started the process of discovering many other things that added up to the point of making that final decision?