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If god was real, you would think he would recognize the fact that certain humans will automatically not believe it for the very reason it was written by humans. And for good reason, humans have proved to not be the most trustworthy species on the planet throughout time. So I guess those particular humans are just doomed for no apparent good reason? And what about faith? To have faith in god, you must first have faith in humans, because humans wrote the Bible which is instructing you to have faith [in god]. Whether it was inspired or not is irrelevant, because you still need to first have faith that the humans who wrote it really were god inspired when they said they were. But, isn't having faith in humans exactly what the book we're supposed to have faith in tells us we not supposed to have faith in? The whole thing seems circular and illogical and flawed to me - why anyone other than a nutcase would believe it's the "word of god" is beyond me!

In my experience being called out on bullshit only breaks the glass when you've reached the point of change, the precipice. It also helps build to that breaking point. Some people never change though.

Hello all. I'm new to this site, and I figure I'd share my story about de-converting from my religion (Christianity of course.) It might be a bit boring, but it honestly was very hard for me. And I'll explain it all. I'm going to make some things short, because explaining them in detail would take ages, and I honestly don't want to re-live those memories. I'm 17 years old. I'm from an area where most if not all people are Christians. I've only had one non-religious friend in my life, and she is Agnostic. And of course, I was born into a Christian family. My parents are both very conservative. They're not exactly fundamentalist, but they're pretty darn close. I also have a sister, who is moderate with her beliefs. Obviously, my parents brought me along to church every Sunday as a kid. They made me stand during worship, listen to the preacher, and I would get in trouble often because I would draw or do something else while the preacher was talking. Now I just want to say right now, while I did believe what I was being told, I was not interested at all in religion. I called myself a Christian, and the more I was told about God the more I accepted it, but I never really cared, if that makes sense. The fact that I was gonna go to Heaven after I died was good enough for me. As time went on, I started to experience teen issues. I was maybe 13 or 14 at this point. By "teen issues" I'm sure you all know what I mean. Voice changing, hormones going crazy, zits, crushes, etc. But maybe a little differently then some people, I started to experience strong depression. I would be so down sometimes that I would cry myself to sleep, for no other reason than I couldn't find a reason to really be happy. On top of that I was sort of a outcast in my School. It was a jock school, and I wasn't interested in sports at all. My areas of interest were art, music, gaming, movies, etc. So the fact that I only had maybe 2 or 3 friends made me sad. Eventually, my parents figured this out. The fact that I came home everyday from school, went right into my room, locked the door, and didn't say a word the rest of the night, made them a little worried. So to make a long story short, they told me I should pray, come to church more, and just really give my life to Christ. Instead of "not caring". So, willing to do anything to be happy, I did what they said. I started going to my church, making an effort to make friends there, and praying. The longer and longer I did this, the better I felt. As a result of this, I decided to say a prayer to Jesus, asking him to be a part of my life. And from the moment on, I did care about Christianity. Since it made me feel so good, I figured "This must be true! Jesus saved me!" I'm going to fast forward about 2 or 3 years now, to me being 16. At this point I was attending Church as often as I could, and youth group almost every Wednesday night. I still got depressed every so often, but every time I did, I would pray and turn it over to God, and it would make me feel a lot better. Because of this, more and more I believed my religion was true, because I figured it had to be God. There was no good explanation for why I was feeling so good, when previously I was depressed for so long. I was great friends with my youth pastor and friends at church. Great friends. I loved seeing them and talking with them about our lives, and things like video games, what we did that day, etc. For some reason though, I was starting to get depressed again. Day after day it was getting worse, and I wasn't sure why. I was praying.. but for some reason the feelings weren't going away. I wondered why this was. I prayed for God to make this better, even if it took awhile, and to help me learn a lesson if I needed to learn one. This is where my doubt started kicking in. My Mom had been talking to a Christian friend at her work, and she had 2 daughters that she wanted me to meet, since we had similar interest. And my Mom thought it would be a good idea for me to make some new friends, since I was going through a hard time again. This was almost 2 years ago now. I met the younger sister first. About a week before the older sister. We had formed a friendship in just one week, and it made me happy to know maybe God was working with my life to make me happy again. Here comes the changer. I met the older sister. I don't know how many of you believe in love at first sight.. but that's how I felt. I saw her.. and for some reason, I felt so good about her. We talked and started becoming friends as well, and everyday I woke up excited to hopefully talk to her again. I decided to pray about it as well, was this someone God wanted me with? To make a long story short, (it's still hard for me to re-live this.. don't wanna go into great detail) almost a year later, I was almost positive God wanted me with this girl. We had many, many deep talks about depression ( she had it too often), how the world works, what we both enjoy, etc. I was in love with her. Now I want to make this very clear, this wasn't a typical teenage crush. I've never had a true girlfriend before. I've had crushes, but this wasn't a crush. I felt like I was in love with her. I prayed about her everyday, and everytime we talked I felt better about her. And at this point in my life, I was on fire for Christ. I decided it was time to talk to her about these feelings, and tell her how I felt. Needless to say, it didn't go well. Right away she told me she suspected I liked her. And right then and there she told me we could never be anything more than friends, and she didn't feel comfortable talking to me when I had these feelings and she didn't. I was heart broken. I couldn't believe it. For the next few weeks I did nothing but laid in bed, went to work and school, and locked myself in my room. Questioning began. Why did God make me feel so good about this if it wasn't true..? She didn't even want to be friends anymore.. we had been great friends for a year.. and all of that fell apart in a ten minute conversation. Why did god do this..? For the next few months, I started looking for answers. This only lead me to looking for more answers. And this lead me to ask more questions. I honestly was questioning everything. Why does God send people to hell? Why is he so unjust? Bigots go to heaven but nice people go to hell? Why do we have to be forgiven for a sin that was caused by the first humans? I couldn't get any good answers for these questions. So I started looking on YouTube for arguments for God. The only good arguments I came across were atheist arguments. Those like dprjones, NonStampCollector, TheAmazingAtheist, TheAtheistExperience, EdwardCurrent, etc. I started being skeptical. And as time went on, I decided it was time to call myself an atheist. I couldn't be depressed and confused about something, but force myself to believe it because I was taught it was true. It has now been about 7 months since that night I said outloud to myself "I am an atheist." I'm so much happier now. I haven't talked to that girl for months, and I no longer have feelings for her. To be honest, I've lost many friends because of this. But a few of my friends from church still support me and talk to me on a regular basis. I still have yet to tell my parents, and I don't know if that day will come anytime soon. But, what I do know, is that "God" answered my prayer. I prayed for him to teach me a lesson out of all the stuff that was happening in my life, and to lead me in the right direction. And that's exactly what happened. I no longer believe. I no longer have to cry to God and ask.. "Why?" I now know that shit happens, and that's life. If you got this far, thank you so much for reading this. I hope to be a member of this site for awhile, and to get to know many of you.

It's not a valid point that Craig makes. In chapter 11 of his book "Not the Impossible Faith," Richard Carrier decimates the argument that women were not considered valid sources of testimony about the gospel. Here is an excerpt from pages 300 and 301: Christian apologists seem to be the worst people in the world at profiling unknown people that came out of a 2-3rd century C.E. cultural milieu.

I viewed this part of the video as looking back and trying to make sense of what was happening. Yet at the same time describing the confusion about the way things were changing and not being able to understand what was happening as you were going through it. On an unrelated note, I forwarded your series to my pastor brother-in-law. I was expressing to him that had someone like him taken notice of your struggle, he might have been able to help you make sense of it. Granted you still probably would have left the church but at least there would have been a compassionate ear to help you through it. I also reminded him that just because someone is in a leadership position doesn't mean they don't need help. Hopefully, it might help him to help someone in your position.

Thank you for this, I want people to tell me these things because I want the videos to be as effective as I can make them. One of my fears when uploading, especially part 4, was that it would come across as self-pitying. You asked what the 'great objection' was and I wish I could just answer that. If it were that simple, I would have just said it. Worship was a big one (I talked about in part 3). But mostly what it was was having my faith slowly bleed to death and there was nothing I could do to stop it. A lot of Christians (like Evid3nc3) when they deconvert it is for intellectual reasons. I came from Young Life which is so relationship oriented. Relationship with Jesus is everything, and that broke in me and continued to pull out of me and I was helpless to stop it. I can't be alone in this experience. There have to be others who deconvert in this way. They are the ones I want to represent through making the series. I don't want this to just be my story. I want it to be everyone's story who has lived it.