deconversion

In the 15th century, Nicolaas Hartsoeker, after squinting though his microscope at ejaculate, became so convinced that each sperm was actually a little man (homunculus), he produced detailed drawings as shown on the right. When his imaginative drawings were brought into question by those suggesting that such a notion leads to an infinite regress as [...]

For several of the many possible reasons, I realized that I could no longer hold fast to the faith that I once built my life around. When this realization struck me, it was emotionally painful. Worse, most of the ways I had coped with pain and grief before were no longer open to me, as [...]

Wow, my titles are getting more depressing though I think my content is more hopeful. This post should not be an exception - I hope. The more I've been thinking about dealing with the arrogance versus humility issue, the more it has pried open an issue which, ironically for me, has become somewhat tautological. Suppression. I'm pretty sure that every person deals with this on a daily basis, but I'm also pretty sure that conservative Christians are masters of exacerbating it. In fact, I was heavily on my way to becoming a guru when it came to suppressing everything I felt and wanted. And here is how I have been setting myself free. For the most part I've identified two major areas of suppression in my own life: physical and emotional. Intellectually I suppressed some things - like how I considered evolution to be beautiful and immediately thought it was the devil speaking to me. But for the most part, I did not feel like the intellectual side of my mind was hindered too much by the Christianity with which I grew up. And if my intellect was suppressed, I feel that I have sufficiently dealt with that. Many of you may notice the change in tone of my posts - that I used to be much more analytical. So that leaves me with physical and emotional suppression. Physical suppression revealed itself most strongly in sexuality. I remember distinctly being terrified of my first sexual thoughts. In my early arrogant Christian days - at around the age of 9 - I remember looking up to the teenagers around me in disgust. Who are these apes, gallivanting about all stupid and shit? I won't be like them. I'm a good Christian. I'll never look at porn. I'll never commit adultery. I will never have sex before marriage. I had not yet learned that only the arrogant say "I would never"...

The topic of humility versus arrogance has been - for the longest time - a major blocker in my own thinking as I am sure it has been for others. I remember wrestling with this issue for years as far back as when I was thirteen or fourteen. At that time I would hear others talk about it and try to sort out what it means and how to achieve it. As I remember, the struggle went something like this. I had been told multiple things about humility - and as with all Christian doctrine - I noticed through recurring headaches that there were strong contradictions in what I was taught. One of those major contradictions was the impossibility of pursuing ones ability to be humble if a humble person does not think about their humility. A lot of people told me not to think about being humble, but I knew I was commanded to be humble. This, naturally, made me introspect to figure out whether I was. Then I would remember that a person who is humble cannot know it. But how am I supposed to pursue humility if I cannot think about it? Naturally I wanted to resolve this contradiction. I mean, if it hurt my head that much surely resolving it would help others, right? But there was a problem. The Bible. The Bible was the problem. First of all, the Bible never said that a humble person does not recognize his humility. In some places it implies the opposite. If you believe Moses wrote Deuteronomy, then you have to believe that a humble man can honestly - and in humility - write that he is the most humble man on earth. Noticing this, I began to garner a general distrust for Christian memes, since it seemed like people were ultimately pulling their end ideas out of their ass and these normally contradicted the Bible in some way...

Hello everyone, I'm back - if not only for a short time - to discuss something that has been bothering me for the last month or two and with a small discovery I hope will be helpful to others still dealing with the traumatic reprogramming necessary to leave the church you once loved. It has come to my attention recently that I am an extremely self-deprecating person. When people compliment me, I find it difficult to just casually accept their compliment without either having a completely inflated ego as if starving for attention or wanting to dismiss their genuinely kind words as unnecessary flattery. In other words, I don't really like to think about myself except in a negative light and as a result of the lack of confidence I tend to rebound the other direction on occasion in full-on arrogance. Now, I'm sure a decent number of people struggle with this and perhaps you are one of them. What I've realized recently is that the Christianity I grew up with almost encouraged this type of thinking. And here is how...