An Important Survey On Causes Of Deconversion

[MrSpooky]

So I'm doing some research for a book I'm writing and I'm trying to understand the causes of deconversion. If you guys could please respond to the poll I would deeply appreciate it!

 

And to spice things up feel free to share stories about these circumstances if you wish.

[texmex2003]

I replied other, my doubts and deconversion came as a result of reading the Bible. Logic and reason showed me that it could not be "literally true" and I was basing my whole life on a book of lies.

[BlueGiant]

While the problem of evil was one of the first things to get me to question core christianity, one of the first was the similarity in denominations that I had seen (Catholic vs. Protestant) when I picked up early-on that they were supposed to be majorly different. Got me paring down the doctrine and examining why I believed.

 

When I realized that the only reason I stayed in was out of fear, that is when I swore never to go back. I refuse to buy into something out of fear now.

 

Started exploring other religions in earnest after that (often by accident) and that is how I ended up where I am today.

[Japedo]

So I'm doing some research for a book I'm writing and I'm trying to understand the causes of deconversion. If you guys could please respond to the poll I would deeply appreciate it!

 

And to spice things up feel free to share stories about these circumstances if you wish.

 

 

I think what started me was the hypocrites. Know them by their fruits and what not. My intention was to find the true ™ path to god. In immersing myself in 'seek and ye shall find' I came across a boat load of moral issues with both the bible and dogma in and of itself. From there the layers started to come off so to say.

 

Good luck with your book Mr. Spooky!!

[Deva]

In addition to the primary cause of being exposed to the ridiculous "creation science," the second main factor was the total realization that the Bible was written by humans and entirely the product of human thought. There was no revelation and no divine inspiration.

 

A secondary issue was that I absolutely reject religious authority. The notion that priests, ministers, pastors and deacons were qualified to preach to me seemed ludicrous after a while given my experience of life.

[woodsmoke]

I never really encountered a specific problem that cause me to question. Quite honestly, I just woke up one Sunday while my Dad was out of town* and decided I wanted to sleep in rather than go to church. Not only did the world not come to a screeching halt, I actually rather enjoyed the experience, so thereafter my laziness continued to win out over my piety.

 

Maybe it was because others saw an opportunity to try to open my mind a bit, maybe because I'd stopped going to church or giving much thought to religion overall I was more receptive to heretofore "unconventional" ideas, or maybe it was something else entirely, but shortly thereafter opportunities began arising to learn about things I'd never really thought of before and my curiosity simply took over.

 

*This was a necessary condition, as my Dad has a bit of a temper at times (though it's lessened dramatically as he's aged), and "defying" him like that when he was present and able to do something about it would most likely have seen me either forcefully hauled out of bed and into the car or, if I actually won the battle of wills and got to stay home, having my privileges restricted in virtually every way he could think of.

[Mike D]

I said 'other' .... what started my initial questioning was problems with the Bible.

[Taphophilia]

I said other, what started my deconversion was learning about the pagan origins of Christianity. Then learning what circular reasoning is, pretty much killed it.

[Kirangel]

Moral issues started it for me. But my answers for the first two should probably be switched around, not sure but moral issues has always been a big one for me. I just never could reconcile the injustices of the world with the existence of the benevolent God described by Christians. I started reading through the bible from a different perspective and thought "Holy shit, this is cruel"

 

I should have clicked other as well. The idea of the christian paradigm just didn't make sense and there was no outside proof. People talked about their revelations, they told me of other peoples revelations and then expect me to convert. Uhh, they weren't my revelations. God didn't speak to me from a burning bush, he didn't make the sun dance in front of me, Mary didn't come talk to me in a grove, none of those 'divine' revelations were my own. I wasn't about to deny reason because of stories told to me about the experiences of others.

[LithaB]

I marked social problems for all three answers, because that is what opened the door and tipped the scales.

 

Once my eyes were opened though, it was like an avalanche. Suddenly I could see how ridiculous it all was, and there was no turning back.

[pandora]

I think this should be a sticky to refer all Christian trolls to when they assume that all of us left for shallow reasons.

[Mankey]

Moral problems (inability to reconcile evil in the world with the existence of God, etc)

Between my remembering a little of what I read from the bible as well as what church taught me and observing the world. This came first, but I wasn't admitting it to myself....but it was there even though I self deceptively was comforted by the apologies from other Christians.

 

Philosophical problems (proofs of God were insufficient, proofs against God were impressive, etc)

This came last....with the help of one heathen off line. Here is when I started to really read the the bible.

 

After that I went online and interacted with non-believers. This eventually allowed the moral problems to fully surface in my mind. The moral problems became obscenely self evident. A loving Onmi-God is impossible.

[Kalidasa]

The catalyst for me was the scientific inconsistencies and contradictions. After that came the realisation that I just couldn't see where I fit into the giant Christian puzzle, as it were.

 

These days, my bisexuality, my gutter mouth and my liking of Wicca kind of precludes Christianity. They kind of cancel one another out.

[SilentLoner]

I don't remember exactly what caused it, but I'm very sure it started with scientific doubt, evolution to be exact. The very first time I heard about it (I was in the fifth grade) I though "that sounds right" even though I had been rasied with catholic beliefs all my life. Then the incident at the church where I went in for confession and the priest in there must have been in a bad mood because he snapped at me - that was the last time I attended confession.

 

I broke away from religion slowly and over time. Pretty much one day I just didn't believe in it anymore. I didn't become angry about what I had been led to believe until much later.

[Vigile]

I chose philosophical problems as the first cause. However, that's not entirely accurate. I had problems with the unjust application of punishment via the hell doctrine, which led me to initially believe that either the church was misinterpreting god. At that point I decided to spend time in research to see what I really believed. I embarked on a heart-felt search for truth. From there everything unraveled once I was exposed to ToE, early lit (which exposed me to the deistic ideas of many of America's founders), and greek theatre. Greek theatre was the final straw. There I saw what were obvious models for the christ myth, which had predated christ. At that point I knew it was all contrived.

[Luke Wolf]

There were several things that lead to it, and I do not feel that one issue has a stronger hold than the other. The main ones though were history, science, hardships, my parents/hypocrisy, and I am transsexual (non-transitioning though).

 

One of the main issues was Christianity being one of the reasons ancient Rome fell, and alot of Christianity comming from older stories. Science showing the earth is much, much older than 10 thousand years (allthough I dismissed that as being lies of Satan.), my parents beign hypocrites, and the amount of shit I put up with. Maybe I just don't notice it, but the shit has not been nearly as bad since I ditched Jesus. It's still there, but it does seem to have easened up.

[junkpoet]

as far as voting goes, id have to say that im with you fellas.

 

but seriously. as a couple of others have already said, coming from a fundy background (church of christ), the catalyst for my deconversion was realizing the many flaws in the bible. once i suspended my belief in the literal truth of the bible and realized it was written by men, then my moderate knowledge of competing mythologies, my understanding of evolution, and my philosophical questions all began to make sense and get traction. all of this other stuff was in place, but the blinding absolute belief in inspiration of the scripture kept me sort of believing. then i read 'Misquoting Jesus" and it all fell in to place.

[Ouroboros]

I think I saw problems in all areas at the end, but I think the serious doubts started when I saw how corrupt many members of the Church was. I discovered that I could find more honest, nice and helpful people among non believers than in Church, and it made me seriously consider the whole idea that someone had to be "born again" to become a "good" person.

 

Later the second problem was that our situation at home caused a lot of stress and problems for my son, my other kids, my wife and me, and I could never figure out how God could be loving them and yet nothing happened to help them in any way, and I tried my hardest to fix things and were basically killing myself in the process. Did I love my family more than God? Not according to the Bible, but yet here I was alone to help them.

 

After that all the different reasons started to pile up, philosophical, scientifical problems and so on, some of them presented by other doubting or secular Christians, and one day I felt I had no belief anymore and I ended up with just one challenge for God, to give him a chance to do something to convince me. And that was the last prayer (out of desperation) to God and I'm still waiting to be "wow"-ed by the big guy in the sky. It seems he didn't take my request seriously. If God exists, and if he needs my attention, then he needs to find a way to impress me.

[R. S. Martin]

It's pretty hard to categorize my reason. I would say there was one Big Question and one only. It started from the first time I heard the story about the plan of salvation and it was the pursuit of my life until finally at the age of forty I realized that if there were an answer I would have found it. Since I cannot lie any longer, and since it is the central tenet of the Christian religion, I had no choice but to deconvert.

 

The central tenet is: Jesus died so we can go to heaven.

 

Okay, I accepted that without problem. But how does it work? What changed when Jesus died? How does Jesus dead body benefit human souls?

 

No answer. It makes no sense to my brain. I cannot believe something that makes no sense. In order not to lie I was forced to deconvert. As to the question about God's existence, that was a whole different category of thought and basically unconnected with this one. Two diferent sets of Christians, when they found out that I so much as considered Paganism (which is not atheist), kicked me out. That definitely helped me decide that I was no longer Christian if the Christians won't have me anymore. Re God's existence--when I read a science article about an experiment that can produce the "God feeling" I concluded there is probably no god and that it all begins and ends in the human psyche.

 

Is that philosophy, science, theology, moral, social, other?

 

Rightly or wrongly, I voted philosophy in the first section and other in the next two.

[trashy]

In order to remain a creationist in today's world full of scientific information, available at your very fingertips, you have to make some adjustments. Either God created the universe to look old, or perhaps scientists worship at the altar of evolution and thus skew all the data to match their beliefs, or maybe the truth is out there and has not yet been discovered (like maybe finding Noah's Ark, etc.). But I always held on to the idea that God worked through natural processes as much as possible. When it came to the flood of Noah, I took the literal words of Genesis to state that the water which created the flood came from the sky (normal evaporation process and rain) and from the 'deep' meaning underground. But when you look at the numbers involved you end up with a problem. As the waters receded to pre-flood levels, where did it all go? If you add all the evaporated moisture and oceans and lakes and underground sources together you *still* don't have enough to kill the whole world by flood. That's where it started for me, just the math.

[par4dcourse]

My religious teachers said the world was a few thuosand years old and created in under a week. My public school teachers said a billion years at very least and a few million for life to develop. I'm willing to give or take a few percentage points in any calculation but even at a tender age I knew somebody was just plain wrong in this argument.

[Light_of_Reason]

My main reasons have always been philosophical in nature. Of course, I was an extremely curious and independent minded child, so deep thinking wasn't a large step for me later in life.

[Mongo]

There are elements of my experience in your survey but the essence of my reasons are not listed. I can see around 15-20% are expressing similar thoughts.

 

My interest/attraction in religion was that when I was introduced I believed it as the true way of life and that fulfillment was to be found in xtianity of which the source would be bible god.

 

The bible makes promises like seek and ye shall find. I sought answers to the questions of how we should live to be good people and be like god. For example:

 

"There hath no temptation taken you but such that is common to man. But God is faithful who will not tempt you beyond that which ye are able but will with that temptation make a way in which to escape." ~1 Corinthians 10:13~

What I discovered was:

1 ) God was not faithful to me. I wondered if it was just me so I spent time observing my brothern. Listening carefully to their words and seeing deeper into their experience.

2 ) I found god was not faithful to many others. My third observation was shocking...

3 ) Ninety percent all of the people I observed fell into one of two camps:

A ) Those who professed god was faithful but had noticable character flaws (aarogant, rude, over bearing, given to exaggeration/lying, gluttons, engaged with worldly things, etc.) These people also were most likely to be intellectually dishonest and perpetuated "church myths". This group was most likely to condemn group "B" hence the very true saying, "Christians are the only army to shoot their wounded".

B ) Those who struggled with their humanness and felt that they did not live up to god's standards. This group (me) was clearly the most sincere and honest in their pursuit of god. These people were most often the more god like group. They were the ones most likely to fall away.

 

Ultimately I concluded that god did **not** answer prayer. There was no god.

 

Your survey contains important elements of my experience.

 

Not answering prayer is an important theological point. The hypocritical behaviour of the class "A" brethern was important but not in the sense you mean. People who had affairs didn't bother me. They were the exception. People who professed god healed them and then talk about the irrelevant headache that god cured did because that was intellectually dishonest and **true** children of god would seek truth not deception. This bothered me more because this kind of hypocracy was generally accepted.

 

So in the same vein, phychological coersion of children (it would be a sin to deny a child their free will which god gave them) to the fold was a more relevant hypocracy than the odd preacher's kid who drank or swore because the coersion was generally accepted. This kind of hyprocacy clearly meant that they did really not trust in god.

 

In the end, the only truth of life I could gain from the experience is that we humans are a combination of selfish and kind and we should accept ourselves, each other and our flaws. This was entirely incompatible with xtianity.

 

The overall cognitive disonnance was unacceptable.

 

It was such a relief to leave and still is.

 

Mongo

[quicksand]

What factor caused you to BEGIN questioning your religion?

• Scientific problems (Creationism was full of holes, etc)

 

note: Early on for me. This is the strength of basic public school science that helped seed my earlier skepticism and rejection of Christianity and religious claims in general.

 

What was the BIGGEST factor that caused you to deconvert?

• Philosophical problems (proofs of God were insufficient, proofs against God were impressive, etc)

 

note: these factors lead into my deconversion from theism as i progressed into high school and college.

 

General Grab Bag: List the top reasons (UP TO THREE, PLEASE) for your deconversion:

• Philosophical problems (proofs of God were insufficient, proofs against God were impressive, etc)

• Moral problems (inability to reconcile evil in the world with the existence of God, etc)

• Scientific problems (Creationism was full of holes, etc)

 

note: all reasons why I have not returned back to christianity or theism.

[twincats]

The first "crack in the wall" was the 'retirement' of my beloved music director after I found out she actually had been pretty much ousted for disagreeing with the new pastor. I had never in my time at that church (from age 5 to age 27) ever experienced anything like that. It sounds silly, but it was like being slapped upside my head! I found myself looking at my church in a completely different way; as a bunch of regular people, as opposed to a congregation.

 

What prompted me to start peering through that crack in the wall was a few years after that incident. I took Western Civ in college and learned some things about Martin Luther and the Reformation I never knew before (I was a Lutheran, born and raised, so this was another big shocker!) Also because of that class, I saw how historically religion had been used as a way to keep the poor powerless by using fear. At this point, I had little respect for religion left, but was still maintaining my "personal relationship" with Jesus.

 

When I met my fiance a few years later, who was pagan, I started studying pagan religions. It was then I found out that I had been lied to by my religion about that. I wasn't shocked or surprised, but I was resentful, since they had been all about the "truth." The crack in the wall widened. At some point, I decided that paganism made every bit as much sense as Christianity, so I followed Wicca for a while. The wall started to fall apart. I could step through the big holes, and freedom was wonderful!

 

I found ex-christian.net year before last and have been coming back regularly ever since. I now consider myself a pagan agnostic. The wall is merely rubble now. I will have to start cleaning up the mess sometime.

 

This process was never what I would consider traumatic and I am thankful for that. I have been happy in all of my various stages of belief and disbelief. The only snag is that I don't feel I can tell my still religious side of the family of my apostasy, but this doesn't bother me much.