Deconversion experiences

You're still relatively new here and so I will point you to my Belief Statement thread found at Message 69.I don't know if it will help but it will give some insight on my journey.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Here is a quote from "The Great Divorce" by C S Lewis.

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"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened. "

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We have free will. We can choose between self serving love or love for all of God's creation.This is from Matthew 7

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21 Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven

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Yes, I believe that someone who truly embraces Christ and embraces the Christian faith will have their heart changed so that they become right with God, but that does not mean that everyone who doesn’t accept that theology is doomed to eternal damnation. On the other hand becoming a Christian, as we can see from the previous quote doesn't necessarily make you right with God either.Incidentally, I don't see "Kingdom of Heaven" in the previous quote as referring to some place where we go when we die. It is the kingdom without borders that Christ established on Earth made up of those charged with spreading the gospel message of love, justice, mercy, truth, forgiveness etc to the world.

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What I'm stating is that since I can find no reason to believe, or to have faith, in a supernatural entity which can (by definition) be neither felt nor seen with any measure of surety, I choose to not believe in said entity. This is where faith comes in, yes?

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Yes there is where faith comes in, but we all have faith in something even if it's only in our own wisdom. There is a discussion on this thread about design. Here is something to consider:
1/ There is something instead of nothing.
2/ The universe evolved in such a way that Earth came to be in a very finely tuned state so that life could exist.
3/ Basic atoms and molecules came together to form incredibly complicated cells.
4/ These cells had to come together in such a way that not only did plant life evolve but so did animal life.
5/ One of these animals evolved into a creature that exceeded the others in intelligence but was also able to make moral decisions.I accept that those things happened, but we have to ask ourselves does it make more sense that all that came about by random chance, or was there an intelligence behind all of it.There is no surety, so yes it is a matter of faith which answer we choose. I do believe in a literal resurrection and in the miracles, but I don't agree that that is what makes me right with Christ and I don't agree that your rejection of them means that you are destined for hell. However, I will say this, there may well be more atheists than Christians that will be part of God's new creation, but it will be Jesus that got them there. If there is a creative intelligence behind the existence of our world, then obviously it took a miracle to get creation rolling. (We can accept the deistic view that after the original act of creation the creator took an extended holiday and forgot about us.) However, if the first miracle of creation happened then it seems to me that other miracles as the Earth evolved are not only possible but likely.I think that the person who has done the most research and has written most extensively on the historical evidence for the resurrection is N T Wright. Here is a very brief synopsis of his views. N T Wright's case for resurrectionIf you are interested there is a lot more material on both sides of the issue available. Not really. I'm suggesting that possibly in getting rid of the legalism that you had embraced, that you actually are better able to humbly love kindness and do justice, (Micah 6:8) than when you saw it as duty and necessary to avoid hell.If God does exist then I would guess it would pretty hard for you to get rid of him. Cheers

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

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

Start a thread on the subject and I'll be glad to discuss it with you.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Sometimes it seems that the atheists/agnostics are the greatest literalists. At the time that was written child sacrifices were a pretty common way of appeasing the gods. I see that story as God revealing that child sacrifice, or any human sacrifice for that matter, was not what he wanted. When the Bible says that Abraham's faith made him righteous it doesn't single out that one event which may very well be metaphorical anyway. The passage in Romans 4 only speaks of Abraham's faith in a general sense. I,ve given several references and I contend that the references I gave are in context. Not right. I guess to put it simply I would say that God is concerned, not with what we do, not with our theology but with the condition of our heart. If we perform altruistic acts because we figure that God will then owe us a spot on the right side of the equation then we miss the point. That is an entirely different scenario than if we perform altruistic acts just simply as an act of unconditional love.

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?

If I understand him correctly, jar is just saying that we should behave better, and not concern ourselves about whether someone is watching over us.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

Kinda.We need to behave as though our behavior will be judged whether or not there really is a judge.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

If I live life and try to act as though one of the things I will be judged on is my choice of religion, what then?And pretty much everyone agrees that this is one of the main things that I'll be judged on. Ask almost any monotheist, and half of them say that I'll burn if I think Jesus is God, and half of them say I'll burn if I don't.And yes, this is related to what you posted because you were talking about Pascal's Wager, and that's what it's all about. Pascal's argument is not an argument for a sort of generalized virtue such as an atheist might practice anyway, it's an argument for a specific faith.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I don't think I can make myself feel unconditional love, but I believe I am capable of it. Everyone is capable of it but not everyone chooses it. Unfortunately, in my case, most of the time it's all about me.

I have given a number of Biblical references in this thread that show that those aren't the choices. I'm a Christian and I don't agree with either option and frankly even the burning in hell bit is metaphorical. Hell is really just an eternity separated from God and that is the choice of the individual.Choose which version of Christianity you want to reject. Will it be Jerry Falwell or C S Lewis? They really are quite different.

The religious mindset distilled down to it's purest form - whether the mindset involved is theist or atheist.The very antithesis of the gospel of grace.Inspired!Edited by iano, : No reason given.

So what you are saying all do good atheists go to hevan while not all do good theists go.

But we actually make more choices than just that one.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!