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Goodbye Jesus

Backsliding Atheists


Lost

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I noticed that word backsliding is very often use in terms of Christians who don't really follow their beliefs with honesty and devotion. One day they are in church another day somewhere in the secular world.

 

I started wonder if Atheists have also tendency to be backsliders and get away from things that they see as a true through ratonal mind.

 

Do You catch Yourself on coming back and fourth to faith in Your Atheist life?

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Your question probably applies to those who are in the early stages of de-converting & it seems to be fairly common to wobble a bit in that stage. Those of us who have been out for awhile aren't likely to "backslide" because there is nothing in religion we want to return to. 

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I change my mind about lots of stuff all the time. Not about faith though.

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I flirt with gods and spirits, but overall take an atheist view, particularly of anthropomorphic gods. I think there may be a group of something we return to at death, like a drop of water in an ocean, mixing back in with the rest and then evaporating back into a cloud and falling again with other atoms in another place. Or maybe that isn't it at all. I have an affinity for gods like the green man, Cernunnos, or Ostara, and enjoy "seeing" them when I look at nature, sometimes calling on them for rain or to kick out malevolent spirits. Then again, I don't know that I think such things really exist.

 

Once when I was high on weed, I purposefully inhaled enough to knock myself out for a few moments. When I came to, I was mentally speaking to a group, relating my life experiences with being bullied in school and how I had learned that regardless of the bullying, I didn't want to be like them because they were jerks. And then I realized what I was doing and it sort of closed off. I was talking to "them", the other drops.

 

On weed, I often see fields of color separated by a gap, and in the gap are zillions of what look like synapses joining the two fields, and I get the feeling that we are the synapses. Other times I've had lucid conversations with my subconscious, asking it why it is that in a dream I can have an interaction with someone that I know well, have known for years, but when I awake, I realize that I don't know anyone like that. How can a short dream include such a full life? My embodied subconscious showed me a vertical field of interwoven colors, each line had images and represented a life, and each life interconnected with all the others many times. It said that this is "us", and that we move in and out of others lives millions of times.

 

Then again, this is on weed. Sometimes when I'm in nature, I feel a sense of connectedness with the life of Earth, the fungal mycelium in the soil, the zillions of bugs, the plants, the birds, etc. When I die, I'd like my body to become food for them instead of being embalmed and burned to ashes. Humans have such weird rituals and laws around death, some of which are to control disease and to not become a crime scene.

 

So I move back and forth between two ways of being, feeling one way and sensing more to life than just the literal, then moving back into the literal to combat the hogwash of religion.

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Thank You All for Your answers and for Your deep answer Fuego :)

 

That gives me a positive feeling that my posts matter too, although I don't get that much responses.

 

Maybe I just talk about obvious stuff, that for others are boring and old....

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Well. some of us may not have answered because we can't backslide from an atheism we never embraced...

 

Fuego's experiences are interesting.  Probative of absolutely nothing, but fertile food for thought.  And also, unless I misunderstand him, perfectly consistent with atheism (save for the line on Cernunnos et al, perhaps).

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I don't understand what "faith in the atheist life" means. 

 

As I understood it, a backslidden xian is one who can't hack all the strict rules and decides to go out and engage in some sort of pleasure of the 'flesh'. What parallel is there with atheism? 

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For me it was and still is simple. If there is no evidence that a thing is true then there is no way you can ever pretend that it is.

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55 minutes ago, florduh said:

For me it was and still is simple. If there is no evidence that a thing is true then there is no way you can ever pretend that it is.

 

Me too. I get to exercise this a lot lately with today's news. :)

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If you've done some honest research into why Christianity doesn't compute you have no option but to drift more and more away from being Christian.  The only way in which you can embrace Christianity again is to close your mind to its many imperfections.  Thus, no, a truly deconverted atheist cannot easily slide back.  I just gain momentum away from cult toward enlightenment.

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Yeah, You are all right :)

 

Me, personally I am a backslider, cause I am never sure of anything for 100%.

 

I'm jealous that You are such a strong individuals on this forum :)

 

I'm just shy, worried girl from infamous country.

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3 minutes ago, Lost said:

Me, personally I am a backslider, cause I am never sure of anything for 100%.

So you still think there might really be a Santa Claus?

 

Seriously, since we can't be 100% SURE of anything, perhaps we should also become Muslims, Scientologists, Satanists and Voodoo practitioners. Just in case... :P

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1 hour ago, Lost said:

Yeah, You are all right :)

 

Me, personally I am a backslider, cause I am never sure of anything for 100%.

 

I'm jealous that You are such a strong individuals on this forum :)

 

I'm just shy, worried girl from infamous country.

 

Backsliding is common, as mentioned, and we as a group around here do quite well with coaching people through it. Because most of us have been there, done that, and for specific reasons have sort of transcended that particular aspect of early deconversion. As a matter of fact we have several running discussions going around now with a member who struggles with this type of 2nd guessing himself, and essentially fighting backslide tendencies. And he's a tough case, really. He's really suffering from it and the problem is that we can only put people in front of the right information for the cure, so to speak. The rest is entirely up to the individual. If you find yourself struggling there's a lot people around here that can be extremely helpful showing you different paths towards being immunized against christian backsliding. 

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1 hour ago, Lost said:

Yeah, You are all right :)

 

Me, personally I am a backslider, cause I am never sure of anything for 100%.

 

I'm jealous that You are such a strong individuals on this forum :)

 

I'm just shy, worried girl from infamous country.

 

Our confidence didn't come easy. Confidence comes from knowledge, and knowledge requires some work in the form of study and research. It isn't like Christianity where you allow some preacher or Sunday School teacher to indoctrinate your mind with a bunch of myths disguised as history. And then threaten you with eternal damnation if you don't believe them.

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It took me ages to get away from the black hole that we call Christianity.  Years.  In the beginning I was constantly second guessing myself.  But now I have gained momentum and it is difficult to turn back again.

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Hey, @Lost,

 

For the sake of argument I'll assume that by "backsliding" you mean having second thoughts about leaving the fold. Yes. I did have second thoughts. So I had a chat with Mrs. MOHO's pastor who said "you just have to believe and trust the lord!"

 

I have this a shot a couple years ago and it worked! For about 20 minutes. Then reality began to creep back in.

 

I continued to pretend for two more years to keep the piece in the household and to try to avoid looking wishy-washy. When I came out again last week the piece was not disrupted as much as I thought it would be and the Mrs. indicated she had doubts about my xtian beliefs anyway.

 

I hope this makes you more comfortable in your journey and content with the understanding that it IS a journey. Tell you what, though, I am considerably more resolved after my second coming out - or admitting to others that xianity is horse shit, than I was on the first attempt. 

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@MOHO   As a fellow unequally-yoked, I'm glad you don't have to pretend anymore!  

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A backsliding Christian is one who goes to church but who sits near the back and leaves as soon as the service is over. They aren't really interested in that life anymore but they show up at church as an obligation.

 

In that sense, there was a period when I didn't feel the need to frequent this site or to listen to atheist podcasts, so I suppose I back-slid there for awhile! But the Christian culture I live in is so relentless that I find myself needing some of this again.

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My experience has shown that the more I process the world through the rational cognitive portion of my mind the less the more "primative" reactive brain sections take over my conclusions and decision making.  Now in year 7, "backsliding" is next to impossible.  Oh, and my personal sense of well being is through the roof.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi Lost,

I'm a new member, but joined this site long after my "wobble" stage. And I did flirt with other spiritual ideology after leaving "the church" which I think is normal.

 

When I felt unsure, for me humor always helped. For example, I would watch Ricky Gervais,  Louis CK, and George Carlin concerning god and religions . Anything that could point the finger of absurdity at religion. Also watching Richard Dawkins or Christoper Hitchens debate believers helped me as well.

 

Good luck and only you can set yourself free. I'm rooting for you!

 

 

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