Can a valid, supportable reason be offered for deconversion

Dawn, here is a history of your lie. These quotes are what you yourself wrote.It started in the Deconversion experiences topic:
Message 220Dr Adequate and I both immediately told you that it was not at all about your own personal deconversion:
Message 222 Message 224When you started this topic, Can a valid, supportable reason be offered for deconversion, your false assumption that it was about your own personal deconversion was still fresh in your mind, with no indication that you had finally realized that it wasn't about you. Indeed, with very few exceptions, each subsequent time you made that same idiotic claim, which you are now lying about having made, you received immediate responses trying to tell you that it isn't about you, but you refused to ever listen. Message 58 Message 61 Message 79 Message 92 Message 115 Message 116 Message 128"I", "I", "I", "I", "I"! Repeatedly and persistently, you kept saying it was about you. Then I directly challenged you to back it up:
Message 118And suddenly with Message 130 you started your current lie of claiming that it wasn't about you and that it hadn't been from the very start. So what was all that "I" stuff about? And when jar also directly challenged you, you started repeating your new lie to him too.But now that you were finally understanding what we had all be telling you all along, that it wasn't about you personally, you continued saying it was about you personally:
Message 133 Message 150Dawn, you are a liar. Possibly a pathological liar, but most certainly a pathetic liar, since it is so easy to expose your lies. Like Bart Simpson, whom everybody had seen doing something wrong and destructive, standing there saying "I didn't do it." Well, Dawn, you did do it and you are lying about it. Why can't you be a man and take responsibility for your own actions? Bart's a kid and can try to get away with it with cuteness, but you can't. Even using a girl's name won't buy you any slack. You have been exposed as a liar and you need to take responsibility for it.If you had actually read the Bible -- since you have been found to be a liar, potentially pathological, we cannot trust anything you have told us to be true -- you would be familiar with the Matthew 7:20 Test:

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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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Dawn, you are that evil fruit. Only one evil fruit out of bushels full of evil fruit (eg, multitudes of other lying creationists), but according to Matthew it only takes one.Repent, while there is still time.

We have already told you that, many times, but you refuse to listen.The general consensus here seems to be that deconversion is caused by the person no longer being able to believe what he's supposed to. There can be no arguing against that. If someone just does not believe a theology, then he does not believe it. Why should that be so hard for you to understand?The actual cause for arriving at that point of no longer believing will vary from individual to individual, which is why each deconversion story must be considered individually. Most do not deconvert by choice and many fight fiercely against the process, doing the Bible study that you prescribe.Whether you agree with their reasons or not, it does still happen. You cannot wish it away nor dismiss it. And you would have known all this long ago, if you had but bothered to read our responses.I doubt that very much. If you were to write in complete sentences, then people could actually begin to understand what you are trying to say. That would dispel much of the confusion that you generate. Which would be counter-productive to your campaign to lie to and deceive the public.No, you will never try to make yourself understood.

2200 post of incomprehensible crap is nothing to brag about.Any sane or moral person would be very embarrassed by your dismal record.

Uff da! His reading comprehension is orders of magnitude worse than any of us could have imagined!

Oh, you mean like this one?

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(KJV) Matthew 2:23
And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.

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And where in the Old Testament is that prophesy located?

In Nort' Dakota, from the MinnDaks there, don'cha know?Stationed at Grand Forks AFB for 5 years around 1980.Recently bought the book, How To Speak Minnesotan, by someone from Prairie Home Companion. Mentions several times how everybody makes sure to turn on the TV at 10PM to watch the news. Not for the news itself, but for the weather report. And that's exactly what everybody used to do when we were there.

IOW, making shit up. SOP for your religion.Dan Barker, former fundamentalist preacher, noticed the same thing. Preachers who didn't know what they were talking about would get up before a congregation and make shit up and the congregation would just eat it all up because "the Spirit was talking through him."Which would include what the Gospel writers did. Knowing some Scripture (meaning OT), they picked out what could serve as prophesies and then make up the fulfillment of those prophesies. And you eat it all up because "the Spirit was talking through them."

On FaceBook, Ed Babinski, deconverted extreme fundamentalist, posted a link to a Christian article reviewing a book about church youth deconverting in droves: WordPress.com -- because of the web filters here at work, I cannot open it to copy and post excerpts from it here. One polling source cited a large percentage (that I cannot remember, but I think about 60%) of people raised in "conservative Christian" churches deconverting by age 22 and the conservative Chrisitan (and surprisingly honest and frank) No webpage found at provided URL: Barna Group as estimating 80% deconverting by age 29. And they also cite that instead of those deconverts moving to a different Christian denomination, a rapidly growth proportion of them is leaving Christianity altogether.From my quick scan of the article this morning, it tries to classify the deconverts into several different groups depending on what it sees as the general cause of their deconversion. It also tries to call upon churches to study this problem and try to find ways to reach potential deconverts and prevent deconversion from happening.I believe that, like Dawn, those churches will just go into denial and blame the deconverts for what the churches themselves have caused. Of course, from my own cre/ev perspective, I would largely blame the problem on those churches choosing to base their theology on "creation science" and ID lies and deceptions, such that massive disillusionment sets in when those kids grow up and learn some actual science and discover that they had been systematically lied to all their lives. But there are many other reasons for deconversion than that.

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This article demonstrates yet again that deconversion is a very real phenomenon and not something that Dawn can merely poo-poo away, like he does the rest of reality. And that it is indeed a very great and growing problem for churches, one that they must take very seriously.Edited by dwise1, : added paragraph on end.

Well, it's relative. It's not a problem if one wants to encourage deconversion. It is a problem for the churches that they are deconverting from, and can be a source of problems for the deconvert.If the deconvert is driven to becoming an atheist, what kind of atheist will he become? Everything he knows about what atheists think and do has been taught to him by his church. I'm sure you've been lectured by fundamentalists about what atheists think and believe and do, some really sick and twisted nonsense that couldn't be further from the truth. Do you really want to see these kids deconvert and follow what their church had taught them about being able to do anything they want, have no morality at all, not be responsible for anything they do, and destroy themselves and those around them in hedonistic excess?I am an atheist and I do feel that deconversion is a good thing. However, I don't want someone to deconvert until he is ready to. I do not want to see someone forced prematurely into deconversion by the stupidity of his religion and religious leaders. It might be different if there were an established atheist community that could inform deconverts the truth about atheism and to serve as models and mentors for the new deconverts, but that does not exist yet. Indeed, when I first heard Dan Barker (former life-long fundamentalist, former ordained fundamentalist preacher, named "America's leading atheist", and co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation) speak at a meeting of Los Angeles' Atheists United (I heard it on their 15-minute weekly radio show), he briefly related how he had lived in Southern California all these years and went through his deconversion here, alone and isolated, and didn't meet any fellow atheists until he moved back to Michigan: "Where were you guys when I needed you?" New deconverts transitioning to atheism normally do not know where or how to find other atheists -- especially true in Dan Barker's time (1980's), but fortunately increasingly less so now with the internet.

Circa 1969 and half a decade beyond, I was a fundamentalist "fellow traveller"* . While not becoming a fundamentalist myself (I had become an atheist some 7 years before by having started to read the Bible myself and finding that I could not believe in what I was reading), I did have close associations with fundamentalists during the "Jesus Freak" movement of circa 1970 which swelled the ranks of Chuck Smith's Calvary Church movement. I was extensively exposed to their teachings, even though I remained skeptical throughout. That was also my very first exposure to "creation science", through claims of evidence for Noah's Flood (never investigated at the time, though subsequently shown to be false), "living molluscs found carbon-dated to thousands of years old" (I have subsequently read the actual scientific article behind that claim, in which fresh-water molluscs had been found to be using "old carbon" from dissolved limestone to build their shells), and the infamous "NASA computer program has found 'Joshua's Lost Day'", which at the time was the basis of rejecting the "creation science" claims being presented to me. Even in that time when the only exposure to a computer that anyone had was through a glass window, I knew about GIGO ("garbage in, garbage out", the basis of the US Navy's Data Technician rating badge showing three arrow of unprocessed "garbage in" and one arrow of "garbage out") and knew that there was no possible way for a computer to know that nothing existed past some arbitrary point in history ... unless a human programmer had put it there.One of the things that I was taught as a fundamentalist Christian "fellow traveller" was that a sure test of a prophet was how he was received. A true prophet tells you what God thinks. So a true prophet tells the people what they don't want to hear, which makes him very unpopular, whereas a false prophet tells the people what they want to hear, which makes him popular.{* FOOTNOTE:
I get that term from a German play we had studied (In der Sache J. Robert Oppenheimer) and which was my first exposure to J. Robert Oppenheimer. He was the leading physicist at the Manhattan Project, but because of his pre-war university contacts was questioned by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, wherein he was accused of being a "fellow traveller" of the Communist Party. The funny thing was that, during that time, the 1930's, the Communist Party in America was one of the very few organizations that opposed Adolf Hitler.
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General warning to all forum members who have their irony meters connected: Either set your irony meter to its highest range or disconnect it! The irony spike that will occur when Dawn posts will very likely burn out the meter's movement -- AKA "will peg it to oblivion". Word! But more specifically, drawing from my own Greek classes, there were two very different verbs for speaking: lego and lalao (please pardon my not knowing the bbcodes for rendering foreign alphabets). Lalao was for making the noises of speech, like fundamentalists yelling "la la la la" while plugging their ears in order to block out what they don't want to hear. OTOH, lego is related to our English verb "to lay" (Anglo-Saxon "lagan", related to modern German "legen", "to lay"), which in reference to speech is to set words in a deliberate pattern so as to make sense, hence the extension of the root to "logic", the setting of thoughts in a structured manner.The thing is that language is not only structured by thought, but thought is also structured by language, as most students of foreign languages have experienced first-hand (at least those who had made the transition to thinking in that other language). While Silly Millie (AKA "Dawn" -- if she/he feels free to frak with our names, then it's open season on hers) makes repeated claims of using logic in her/his posts, every time without any supporting documentation, we have never seen any indication that she/he even has any idea what logic is. Indeed, when she/he has been repeatedly challenged to offer any support of her/his premises, she/he has repeatedly refused to offer any such support. If Silly Millie truly believes that she should not have to ever support her premises, then truly Silly Millie has absolutely no inkling of what logic is. But then why would that surprise any of us?Structured speech should indicate structured thought processes, right? Message 390 Just what the frak is that supposed to mean? Is there an English translation pending? I would think not, since Silly Millie's goal is to generate confusion. That has always been the goal of creationists and IDists alike, to generate as much confusion as possible, so that the truth might never be able to come to light.It's late and I'm tired. Has anybody been able to find a coherent line of reasoning by Silly Millie in English? I surely haven't been able to. I doubt that anybody else has been able to either. Well, if Silly Millie has proven herself/himself incapable of generating any coherent line of reasoning in English, let alone in any other known language, then I submit that Silly Millie is incapable of logical discourse.Therefore, for Silly Millie to invoke "logic" is the height of hypocrisy. Has Silly Millie ever bothered to read the New Testament? I don't mean the Paulist crap, but rather the "Gospels." I have read it (the Paulist crap as well), even though it's questionable whether Silly Millie has. Jesus had some very definite things to say about the hypocrites. Is Silly Millie aware of those?

Silly Millie, you eternally clueless bitch (regardless of your actual gender, but since you perpetually present yourself with a female name. And for which I perpetually curse you, you male falsely presenting yourself as female).Gee, Silly Millie, should we look at what you chose to leave out?

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Message 390

Silly Millie writes:

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And if neither were inspired, who cares anyway correct

Just what the frak is that supposed to mean? Is there an English translation pending? I would think not, since Silly Millie's goal is to generate confusion. That has always been the goal of creationists and IDists alike, to generate as much confusion as possible, so that the truth might never be able to come to light.

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OK, you Silly Millie, just what the frak was your un-English supposed to mean? Does it represent your blazingly obvious inability to express anything in a logical manner? Of course it does!

This was very much a part of my own "fellow-traveller" fundamentalist education. As taught by the original Chuck-Smith "Jesus-Freak" movement. One of the best tests of a true prophet was his popularity. The more popular a prophet was, the more likely he was false. Because a true prophet would tell the people what they didn't want to know.What do the televangelists tell the people? What they want to know. Because they need to please as many people as they can to garner as much monetary income as they can.So Silly Millie has aligned herself/himself with those who have told her/him what she/he wanted to "know". So that she/he would never need to have to actually think.

Oh, Silly Millie. Do you even have any idea what the topic and subject at hand is? For even though we have repeatedly give you a valid, supportable reason for deconversion, you refuse to deal with it. And instead, you attempt to divert this topic away to a confrontation between your own theology's self-serving maunderings and the clear reading of Scripture.We have given you the answer to the topic, several times, but you refuse to see. How more blind could you possibly be? (the reason for your self-delusional blindness is well-known and will be discussed in another reply).Silly Millie, have you not read my message, Message 242, in which I wrote:

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On FaceBook, Ed Babinski, deconverted extreme fundamentalist, posted a link to a Christian article reviewing a book about church youth deconverting in droves: http://thechapel.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/6885/ -- because of the web filters here at work, I cannot open it to copy and post excerpts from it here. One polling source cited a large percentage (that I cannot remember, but I think about 60%) of people raised in "conservative Christian" churches deconverting by age 22 and the conservative Chrisitan (and surprisingly honest and frank) Barna Group as estimating 80% deconverting by age 29. And they also cite that instead of those deconverts moving to a different Christian denomination, a rapidly growth proportion of them is leaving Christianity altogether.
From my quick scan of the article this morning, it tries to classify the deconverts into several different groups depending on what it sees as the general cause of their deconversion. It also tries to call upon churches to study this problem and try to find ways to reach potential deconverts and prevent deconversion from happening.

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I believe that, like Dawn, those churches will just go into denial and blame the deconverts for what the churches themselves have caused. Of course, from my own cre/ev perspective, I would largely blame the problem on those churches choosing to base their theology on "creation science" and ID lies and deceptions, such that massive disillusionment sets in when those kids grow up and learn some actual science and discover that they had been systematically lied to all their lives. But there are many other reasons for deconversion than that.

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Since I am not at work at this moment, I can post the opening excerpt from that article:

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Young people aren’t walking away from the churchthey’re sprinting. According to a recent study by Ranier Research, 70 percent of youth leave church by the time they are 22 years old. Barna Group estimates that 80 percent of those reared in the church will be disengaged by the time they are 29 years old. Unlike earlier generations of church dropouts, these leavers are unlikely to seek out alternative forms of Christian community such as home churches and small groups. When they leave church, many leave the faith as well.

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Add to that a quote offered by Kent Hovind (the creationist spokesman whose claims even made creationists' eyes roll in their heads, until he recently started serving a 10-year sentence for tax fraud):

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"75% of all children raised in Christian homes who attend public schools will reject the Christian faith by their first year of college."
("Let My Children Go" video by Caryl Matritiano of Jeremiah Films,
as quoted by Kent Hovind on his fourth seminar tape at 42 minutes and 55 seconds -- with all due respect, the content at Hovind's website has always been inconsistent and that particular seminar tape might not currently be available)

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Again, while Jeremiah Films wants to promote home-schooling by blaming public schools as being anti-Christian, that is not what we who have eyes see. As we have read in countless deconversion stories, those children upon learning the truth will realize how their parents and churches have lied to them. Fundamentalists have been able to survive in previous times because they could keep themselves and their children isolated from the truth, but that is no longer possible. Now the only way that a fundamentalist can defend himself against the truth is through self-deception. But that self-deception requires eternal vigilance, such as we observe you employing.Silly Millie, even you must have to admit that there is a deconversion crisis in progress. Why are the children raised in the Word abandoning it in droves? Shouldn't you be trying to understand deconversion, rather than trying to wish it away? Because deconversion is happening, whether you want it to or not. And to the very ones you believe it should not be happening to, those raised on The Word.What the frak is happening, Dawn? How can you explain it, Dawn? Why are you avoiding it, Dawn?Here is what I have observed. Christians are oh so absolutely concerned with the souls of non-Christians, whom they "love" so much that they will put those "unrepentent" souls through all kinds of infernal torment in order to convert them. And yet when a fellow "Christian" strays and is incontrovertibly committing mortal sin, such that that "Christian" is damning himself to Eternal Damnation, then all Christians, even though they may be "friends" of the endangered one, are bound by Christianity to not mutter even one warning to that endangered one of his immenent eternal Damnation. Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot, Oscar? Well fuck that stupid shit!

Some years ago, I participated on a Yahoo Groups forum, until the only moderator left was a creationist whose only concern was to defend the other creationists at all costs. Before that killed the forum, a creationist had repeated the "sodium in the sea" PRATT ("point refuted a thousand times", since I know how clueless you are, Millie), to which I not only responded factually, but also asked him why he had to resort to such unconvincing claims. His response was a "light bulb illuminating" moment for me. He told me that I was not convinced by that argument because I was not already convinced. Whoa! That one candid creationist response resonated on so many levels. The simplest levels showed that creationists are only concerned with claims that are convincing-sounding (at least to creationists' ears), but it goes so much deeper than that.Now, whom are the creationists trying so desparately to convince? Scientists? Ha! Anyone with any kind of education in science can immediately identify their nonsense as nonsense. The general public? Yeah, some of them may fall victim. But who is the real target? The creationists themselves!Silly Millie, you yourself provided the clue. When you proclaimed everything that was written in the New Testament as "inspired" and hence superceding everything that the prophets of the OT had actually said, and that they superceded everything else. As well as your other statements that everything else was "magic".Now, you will be required here to actually think, which I am quite sure you are incapable of. You have created a theology in which you believe. That is nothing unusual; everybody creates his own theology. For the most part, each theology is based on each individual's own misunderstanding of what was being taught to him, which in itself is the teacher's own misunderstanding, etc, etc, etc. Your own personal theology depends on several rationalizations, such as the one you presented us regarding the Gospel authors being "inspired" (according to your own particular meaning of "inspired" which is not shared by others).OK, Silly Millie, here is what you have done. It really is no different from what countless others have done before you. You have created your own personal theology. True, you have tried to pattern it after an existing doctrine and you may have been able to remain true to it to some extent, but you did not truly understand it, so your understanding is imperfect. For that matter, since your understanding was based on your teacher's imperfect misunderstanding of his teacher's imperfect misunderstaning, etc, etc, etc, etc, ... .So, you have your own personal theology. Obviously flawed. But you believe it to be true and you must support it in every way you can. So you do so. You rationalize everything you can. And you are convinced about every single rationalization, because you are already convinced. Furthermore, you need to be convinced. Because if you were to ever cease to be convinced, then the whole web of your theology would fall apart. After all, why do you think that you fight so hard against Archaphilia and ramoss and others showing you what the OT prophets are really saying?Dawn, did you start out a fundamentalist? Or did you convert?Because a convert is safer than one who was raised a fundamentalist. To be able to protect one's contrary-to-fact fundamentalist against reality, one must have emplaced some pretty powerful coping capacities. A convert can be mindful enough to install what he needs to deflect reality. But one who is born into that mindset grows up actually believing it to be true. And is utterly unprepared for reality when it inevitably hits him. Which accounts for the extremely high rate of deconversion among those born into fundamentalism.