deconversion

Let's see, I started out the year a serious believer in Jesus Christ and end the year a near atheist. Does anyone see a problem here?

Not really. I suppose all of us have gone through this or we wouldn't frequent this site.  But it really is quite something when I think about it.

I knew this would be a year of change for me. I don't know why I knew it, but I did. I was so sure that I told my wife in January that this year I was going to be true to myself and not try to be something I'm not.

It's funny, but this began with me admitting to myself and accepting the fact that I am a pessimist. So I get really pissed when people tell me I have to be happy all the time, look on the bright side, etc, etc. I spent all my adult life trying to do that and it just didn't work. I'm not wired that way.

Well, this morphed into my spiritual life and trying to: A) figure out what I truly believe and B) trying to be true to that belief. And all of that led, among other places, here!

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but the funny thing (to me anyway) is that I wound up on this site via a web search. Thanks Google! Oh, what was I searching? I was searching for sites that could help me honestly prove or disprove the bible. I had decided to critically read the bible and validate the various stories in it with extra-biblical sources. One of the hits was from somebody's post on this site. I clicked it, read some of the testimonials and the rest, as they say, is history!

Oh, how refreshing it was to find that I was not the first or only person to have doubts and questions! I really appreciate(d) that I wasn't and am not treated like an idiot on this site because I believe(d) in god. I appreciate the fact that the regulars on this site have been or are going through the same things I am. All of the doubts, fears, questions, back and forth, belief in god, disbelief in god, being pulled in a thousand directions, dealing with family, friends, etc. I feel like I'm in an AA group! What do we call ourselves FBAs (former believers anonymous)? I like "The d-Cs" personally.

So to all of my formerly believing friends, a very Happy New Year! I look forward to personal growth, peace and maybe a little prosperity for all of us!

I read the introduction...all 20 pages of it! What am I in for if the introduction is 20 pages long?

Two observations:
1) I enjoyed the argument about HIV. Specifically how the mutations of the virus demonstrate evolution at a rapid rate rather than the usual very slow rate. This gives us a chance to study it.  I didn't know there were so many strains and that they are unique to their situation.

2) I was completely fascinated by the arguement our ability to breed dogs is proof of evolution. Huh? The argument is: if species couldn't change at all, we couldn't "create" new breeds. Stop, stop, stop. I've got to think about that one!

More to come...

Well, my book came yesterday.

I'll be reading Darwin's Ghost for the next couple of weeks. I'm one of those who have a running argument with the books I read, so this should be interesting.

I started to buy The Origin of Species, but several reviewers stated that they wished that they had read Darwin's Ghost first so I decided to start with it.

I'm anxious to read it because, as I understand it, Darwin was a christian who, upon initially coming up with his theory, fought it because it didn't square with his theology. It was only after 20 years of research that he concluded that evolution is correct and creationism is not.

I'll post my thoughts and reactions as I read.

Recently I watched two movies.  One was a Hallmark "family" movie, the other was rated R.  What I found interesting about the R-rated movie was why it received the R rating.   Instead of the usual reasons, "language", "violence", "sexuality", the warning had a comment from a critic:  "This rating seems to be an attempt to shelter children from the fact that people are lonely and life can be hard."

Now I am going to describe the two and see if you can tell which movie was the one the ratings board felt children ought not to see.   Movie A was the story of a rodeo champion down on his luck who is trying to live his dreams through his daughter.  As the story unfolds, we see that he does not pay his bills (the gas has been shut off); he gets fired from his job; he mortgages the house to buy a new horse because his daugher's horse is laid up with an injury and can no longer compete.  He lies to his wife when she asks him how he could possibly afford a new horse; but the truth comes out when his wife finds a foreclosure notice in the mail  (so he has not been making payments here either).   So his daughter, who has dreams of college, finds herself having to drop out of high school in order to help support the family.  Unfortunately the new horse turns out to be a lemon and literally drops dead during competition; so that now her only chance is the injured horse.

Movie B is the story of a young woman and her dog.   They are headed for Alaska where she hopes to find work when her car breaks down in Oregon.  She makes one call to her brother in Indiana but he is either unable or unwilling (or both) to help her, so she hangs up.  Having very little money, she attempts to steal a couple of cans of dog food from a grocery store and gets caught.   She is hauled off to jail, leaving her dog tied up outside and when she returns several hours later, the dog is gone and nobody is able or willing to tell her what happened to it.  Then her car gets towed.   Now she is forced to sleep out in the woods while she searches for her dog.  

Which story turned out happily?  Which story was the one judged unsuitable for children?   If you guessed Movie A for the happy ending, you are right.  If you guessed Movie B as the one not suitable for children, you are right.

And yet Movie A, the wholesome family movie, has a subtle message running through it.  Actions don't matter, there are no lasting consequences, it will all turn out right in the end.  The injured horse pulls together to win the championship and everyone lives happily ever after.  In Movie B, we last see the young woman boarding a boxcar for Alaska with little more than the clothes on her back.  For the price of two cans of dog food--dog food that we learn she had the money for but chose not to pay--she ends up losing everything.   There are no happy endings here.  Only more trouble down the road.  The message here is that actions do have consequences and that it doesn't always come out right no matter what.  This is the movie that children should not see.

I don't know about anyone else, but something seems wrong to me.   Despite the fact that the father in "Every Second Counts" has repeatedly proven himself to be untrustworthy and unreliable and willing to sacrifice other people's happiness and well-being (not to mention the roof over their heads or his daughter's future!) we are asked to believe that now everything will be all right from here on out.   The bank will hold off on foreclosing, the daughter will still be eligible for her scholarship, and so on and so forth.  Meanwhile, in "Wendy and Lucy," Wendy, the homeless woman, gets inappropriate advice at best and the cold shoulder at worse, and when she makes a misttep, there are only hands reaching out to take what little she has left.   I just wonder, how many "Wendys" are out there, ignorant of how the way the world really works, because they were seduced by the lie that God/the universe is a friendly place and that no matter where you go or what you do, you will always be protected and everything will work out in the end.

Don't get me wrong, I am not against "inspirational" stories.  But more and more I find myself disliking  "inspirational" stories that lie about life, that perpetuate myths.  And I find it disturbing that these are the stories considered safe for children, while a "dark" story like "Wendy and Lucy" is not. 

Readers of my posts will know that I have been struggling with "first things". Having been a fundamentalist christian all of my adult life, creationism seemed the most probable way the universe got started (the Genesis account notwithstanding).

What I've been having trouble getting my head around is "first things". I can accept natural selection although I'm still having trouble with some ideas (invertabrates evolving into vertabrates, etc), BUT I'm reserving judgement on that particular question until I read Darwin's Ghost and Origin of Species.

Earlier today I was reading Atheism Explained by David Ramsay Steele and I'm at the point where he is discussing The First Cause Argument when...it clicked.

If I understand it correctly, the problem with the entire first cause argument is, "yeah, but what was before xxx" or "yeah, but who created xxx". And this debate can go on forever because, thus far, there is no way to satisfactorily resolve it.

Therefore, it becomes a matter of belief. Naturalists will naturally reject any supernatural explaination because IT IS supernatural! And supernaturalists will reject the naturalist argument BECAUSE it specifically discounts the supernatural. Seems that we are at an impasse.

Deism notwithstanding, it seems to me that if I'm going to base my philosophy on reason or at least reasonable assumptions, I will have to come down on the side of the naturalist simply because I have no demonstratable reason to believe in a god. Any god.

Now this is an uncomfortable place for me and I haven't yet satisfied myself that THIS is a reasonable position since I haven't finished reading, but the mere fact that I am open to it says something.

So-should I be saying, "AH-HA!" or "UH-OH!"?

I woke up early this morning which isn't too unusual for me and started thinking, which again, isn't too unusual for me,  after all,  I wound up here didn't I?

Anyway, I got to thinking about some of the things that started me down the road to my deconverstion. So, I decided to come clean and tell you guys the truth.

I realized one day, several months ago, that I hadn't really changed in a fundamental way with my so-called conversion experience. I was the same guy I had always been. I mean, sure some things had changed, but at the core of my being, I was still who I was.

After this revalation, I began to observe others and I realized that they too were whoever or whatever they were, period. Oh, it was dressed up in christian garb, and, I'm quite sure they were sincere about it, but they were still who they were.

If they were extroverted, people persons, they were still extroverted people persons, if they were introverts, they were still introverts. If they were manipulative bastards, they were still manipulative bastards. If they were compassionate, they were still compassionate.

Now stay with me...

Keeping in mind that I am who I am (with apologies to YAWEH) one of the things I noticed is how that christians dress things up. Language for example: Fuck becomes frick or freak. Son of a bitch becomes son of a biscuit. Hell becomes heck, etc.

Now, to my knowledge, no one every investigated WHY it was necessary to do this. I mean, isn't the real question why one gets to the point that one feels the need to use such a word?

Anyway, aware of the hipocrisy of this, one of the REAL reasons for my deconversion was my favorite word.

I just didn't like pretending.  And christianity denied me the proper use of one of my favorite words. It is, at least in some circles, a very vulgar word. But its so powerful! It's short-one syllable and that gives it PUNCH! It's versatile: it can be a noun, a verb, an adverb, an adjective. What other word can be so useful?

While I was a Christian, people were always upset that I would ocassionaly slip up and use my favorite word, but I couldn't help it. It simply expressed the power of the emotion I felt. The christian ecquivalent just didn't measure up. Not the same punch! Ya know? Interestingly, no one ever, not one time, tried to talk to me and figure out why I felt it necessary to use my favorite word.

So there you have it! The real reason I deconvered is so that I could use my favorite word without getting all of the dirty looks and gasps.

As a side note: I know that I am not alone in my love for this word. If you have ever watched James Lipton's "Inside the Actor's Studio" you know that one of the questions he asks his guests is, "What is your favorite curse word?" You would never guess that most of the guests like the same word I do! Wow! What a coincidence!

I've rambled on long enough, but this is what happens when I wake up at  five o'clock in the morning!

Where you able to guess what my favorite curse word is? I dropped a couple of hints here and there. If not, read it again very slowly and I think you will begin to fucking see it.

PS I know all of this was unnecessary, but, MAN, did it feel good!

When does one stop looking back?

I was a Christain for 30 years.
I was a true believer to the best of my ability and knowledge.
Through several events at various points in my life, I began to question and doubt Christianity and the Bible, but always with a view of restoring my beliefs.
Finally, as I approached my 50th birthday, I realized that I had to stop lying to myself and figure out what I truly believed.

Little did I know where that journey would lead.
I would have NEVER, NEVER believed that I would be thinking that atheism is a reasonable position! Oh! How the mighty have fallen (and are still falling, I think). Had I not found a place where doubters like me could go and voice our doubts without being referred to as fucking idiots for believing in the first place, I honestly don't know what I would have done. I suppose I would have gone on for a while, "rededicated my life to the lord", and started the whole cycle over.

But now I know that I am not alone. Now I know that my misgivings where my BRAIN trying to say, "Wake up, stupid! This can't be reality!" Now I know that I am not a bad person for wondering about things.

I don't want to look back any more. I want to look forward.

So my questions are:

When did you stop looking back at what you were and just let it go?

When did you stop thinking of yourself from a Christian worldview?

Hell, when did you stop having that occasional feeling spiritual things exist? I *know* there is no devil and demons, but every once in a while, something startles me and immediately my mind thinks of devils lurking about. I have to tell myself, "Stop it! There's no such thing. Let it go."

When will I get comfortable enough with my deconversion to forthrightly tell people? Especially people who knew me as a believer?

I like the feeling of unburdening myself of accumulated "stuff" from time to time, so occasionally, I go on de-cluttering sprees.  Yesterday, I was going through some old file folders that I had removed from a file cabinet, and came across one in which I had stuffed away some old journal entries that I guess I hadn't quite been ready to part with at the time.  

One, dated  12/12/05, started out with this:

"Either I am going to end up an atheist or a deeply religious person." 

At the time I wrote it, I was truly hoping the latter would be the case.  As I looked over other journal entries, made shortly before and after the time that it really hit me that I didn't have faith (Easter 2006), I was saddened by the anguish I witnessed scrawled across page after page.   

I wanted so desperately to believe.  I wanted there to be a benevolent God that loved me.  I wanted there to be some bigger reason for my existence.  I wanted to be some integral part of the plan.   I wanted to be in the club.

But even then, in 2005, I must have known I wasn't.  I didn't know the secret handshake, and no matter how many people tried to teach it to me, no matter how many times they showed me, no matter how hard I practiced, I just couldn't get it.  I couldn't get past the sheer absurdity of virgin birth, casting demons into pigs, spit and mud healing blindness, and the biggest one of all, resurrection.  I couldn't  understand why God would punish us for being, well, human.  I couldn't understand why the suffering of children was a necessary part of "the plan," or why God needed to sacrifice himself (but not really) to "save" us, and why it hadn't seemed to work, as humanity wasn't any better off after the crucifixion than we were before it.  And the words, "It's a mystery," just didn't cut it for me.  

So, was my prophecy true?  Have I become an atheist (since I most certainly haven't become deeply religious)?  I don't know.  It seems people argue over what it means to be an atheist.  It's not that I don't believe in God (or gods)--it's just that I have no beliefs about God (or gods) whatsoever anymore.  I don't know if that's atheist or agnostic.  And I don't really care.  I'm trying to move beyond the label game.  

I look forward to feeding those pages of pain and anxiety into the shredder.  That part of my life is behind me now, and unlike Lot's wife, I won't be looking back.

hello