deconversion

Being a new decon, I have been reading various testimonials on the web from others who have deconverted. I have noticed several people talk about what I will call an "A-ha!" moment when everything came together for them and they were able to finally and completely shake off their religion and move on with life.

I have not experienced such a moment. I am no longer a christian because it just didn't work for me. I find that the longer I'm out of the fold, the more I read honest criticisms of the bible, the more I am able see that it isn't the "truth", the "word of god", etc.

I am still not very far on this journey. I still have days when I think, "I just don't see how all of this came to be without a creator", but there are other days when I think, "The universe is just too vast to think that some being just made it all". ARRRGGGGGGG!!!!

So my non-belief is very definitely a daily decision. I know I have 40 something years of indoctrination to overcome and I am impatient, but I truly want to find some equalibrium in my worldview.

My question to those of you who are farther along than me is: Did you experience an "A-ha!" moment? Will you share it with us?

No 'ah ha' moment for me. More of a prolonged 'oh crap' process. Since my wife and kids remain in the faith, I won't totally shake it off I suppose, but somewhere along the line in the past few years I definitely did cross a line and no longer have any thoughts about there being a god. It's just too flamin' obvious now.

Hey Warning! Firstly, goodl uck on your journey. Stay inquisitive and hold no resentments, and well done for continuing to seek answers. I can't say I had a distinct A-Ha moment, where it all fell apart, but rather after several years of serious seraching and learning, I simply realized how much of it I didn't believe anymore. For me it was simply continuing to grow and learn, and then Bam: I was there. Considering and living with the consequences was a bit of a wake-up call but otherwise, not a lot of 'a-ha.' In regards to equilibrium in your world view, I can only offer where I've come to: I am a mere man, but I exist in a an incredible universe. With the very small that I have been granted, I will do my best to enjoy and experience and ultimately appreciate the grand existence that has been afforded to me. As for God, I do not claim anything of him, but am just merely grateful that he has enabled my Life, and will express that through the appreciation of life, and continuing to seek him, whatever he is.

No a-ha moment here either, just a long slow fade-out of belief. First taking the ancient religious stories literally didn't make any sense, so by high school I had decided they were probably myths. Then all the other details of xianity didn't make sense either, so I stopped any church-related activities, in about my senior year of college. Then over years of agnosticism, and much reading about other religions that followed, I simply never saw anything that would lead me to believe any of them had any answers. I finally settled into a comfortable atheism. There's probably no god. Until such time as someone comes up with some real evidence that there is, I'm not going to spend any time prostrating myself before somebody else's invisible friend.

Thanks guys. I'm glad to hear that I don't necessarily need to wait for a magic moment. If I have one, GREAT! I'll let you know.

I am finding that as every day goes by my agnoticism becomes more comfortable. Mainly because God doesn't seem to be doing anything to bring me back into the fold. The longer I go, the less I believe.

It's becoming cyclical. God hasn't done anything since I left. That reinforces my agnosticism. The longer I go with God not doing anything, the stronger my tilt towards atheism gets.

I'm to the point now that even if God DID do something, I wouldn't believe it was God. It's been too long.

For me, every one of your stories is evidence that God doesn't exist. According to my former theology, if you were a believer and "disobeyed", God would "chasitise" you for that disobedience. Well, I can't think of anything more "disobedient" than walking away. Yet that is what we have all done and we are all still here. Hell, some of us are actually happier now than when we were believers!

Poor God, He can't win.

Yeah. Poor tooth fairy too. And I don't believe in Santa anymore, and he never punished me by putting any coal in my stocking!

@Warning!: That's a really interesting thought...

I'm to the point now that even if God DID do something, I wouldn't believe it was God. It's been too long.

What kinds of things (if anything) would categorize an action or event it as coming from above to you?

@Warning!: That's a really interesting thought...

I'm to the point now that even if God DID do something, I wouldn't believe it was God. It's been too long.

What kinds of things (if anything) would categorize an action or event it as coming from above to you?

That really is a good question. I don't know. Well, let me qualify that: NOW, nothing.

When I took my first few tentative steps away from faith, I wondered (I can't really say I was afraid) whether or not some catastrophe would happen.

I don't know that I expected anything specific, its just that based on what I was taught in church, I thought that God would do some disciplinary action. The churches I went to taught that if one went far enough, God would even take you out to protect his name!

But the longer I went as an unbeliever, the more I realized that nothing HAD happened and that nothing WAS GOING to happen for, in my opinion, if God even exists, he does not normally interfere with the goings on of this world.

I definitely understand what you're saying about it sometime not seeming like God is doing anything. Do you think the concept of a higher being presented by Deism is more accurate or agreeable?

I certainly can't say Deism is more accurate. I have no evidence that Deism has any validity, just as have no evidence that any other religion has any validity. But I certainly think that Deism is a more reasonable position. A hands-off "prime mover" who is unconcerned with the day-to-day goings on on our small planet is more consistent with the world as we see it than is the biblegod who helps believers find their keys while allowing poverty, famines and natural disasters.

As I read deconversion stories online, often I read that going through a period as a Deist is a fairly common experience for deconverts. Even though they've discarded all the dogma and superstition, the idea that there is "somebody" out there is very tenacious. Lots of deconverts get as far as Deism and stop there, which is fine. I don't think anybody ever flew a plane into a building, or started a holy war, or tortured heretics because they wanted to please the "celestial clockmaker". As religious opinions go, Deism has a very low probability of doing anybody any harm. And it certainly lets people live their lives without the cognitive dissonance that is a factor in most other religions.

I find Deism emotionally agreeable. However, when I think about it, I wonder if it's not just a lame excuse to not embrace atheism. I say that because, from my studies, the only real difference I see in Deism and Atheism is the question of origin (and therefore the existance of God).

Other than that, they both argue the same arguments, especially against what Deists call "revealed" religions. So I don't really see what the point of it is other than the fact that Deism still acknowledges a god. An absent or uninvolved god, but a god nonetheless.

So I hover somewhere around athestic leaning agnosticism. And I have trouble with that because I just can't get my head around evolutionary progression. I'm planning to actually read "On the Origin Of Species" next. Maybe that will click with me.

Yeah, I think I agree with you to a point. There are a lot of functional Deists out there that choose it for good reasons but I would be a large segment do choose it because the idea of a Master Timekeeper does present some comfort. Maybe it's that deep down someone is watching, caring and maybe someday vindicating?

Needing a divine being to exist implies some kind of internal dependence on that being on our part. And the dependence has to be rooted in things that we believe (however correctly or incorrectly) to be true about that being that gives it some kind of supreme, greater power. Otherwise, we are the most powerful beings in our universe and have no need for a Watcher.

I don't think I had an AHA moment where I suddenly realized that there was no God. Like a lot of people here, it was more of a "whimper" than a "bang". However I do remember the moment when I realized I'd gone past the point of no return.

I was reading the book "The Shack" and there is a scene where the main character is watching his dead daughter dancing in a field of flowers in heaven. God is there with him and assures him that the two of them will be together again. At that point I found myself crying as the realization hit: "That's never going to happen." If something horrible happens to me or my family there will be no divine justice, no father figure on the other side to wipe away our tears, nothing to make it okay. That was my AHA moment I guess, and it wasn't a fun one.

When I was 10, I was sitting in church and had an image of all the prayers of the congregation going up to the ceiling and bouncing around the top of the room. Before that, I had believed like the child that I was. My parents said that there was a god, so there was. My parents said that god answered prayers, so he did. But in that moment, I realized that nothing tangible in my life supported those beliefs.

Even more importantly, nothing in the lives of the congregation supported those beliefs. I didn't know many non-believers, but even from the few, I could see that the Christians weren't more healthy. Their marriages weren't better. Their careers weren't more successful. Their children weren't more obedient. They didn't seem to have any more happiness in their lives. When we prayed for physical things, the same things happened that would have happened to a non-Christian who hadn't prayed at all. And when I prayed for spiritual things, I got emptiness.

It took me 15 years to face up to what I'd realized at 10 and deconvert.