Living The Easy Life ...... Or Is It?

[dagnarus]

This person who came here, then returned to Christian fundamentalism, never left. By de-convert, such a person would be talking about leaving a church or walking out on the church community because he or she was disgusted and angry at the time, but still believed. They misunderstand what it means to de-convert.

I feel obliged to point out that this is the kind of faulty reasoning most of us hate to hear from Christians. "If you left, you clearly never believed in the first place."

Is it faulty reasoning? I don't see that it is. By "left", I was talking about the difference between mentally leaving and physically leaving. I physically stopped going to church a long time ago, but I was still a Christian because I still believed. I did not "leave" Christianity until I stopped believing in it.

 

By the same token, someone who physically stops going to church to post here, yet posts here thinking they're sticking it to God or making him mad by doing so, i.e. "Look at me, God, I'm posting on an ex-Christian website! I hope you're crying your eyes out!", still believes in that god. So when they return to church, recommit to their fundamentalist community, etc., they do so not out of a change in anything they believed.

 

There is a difference between belief and action. That is what I described. If there is any faulty reasoning going on, it's not mine.

 

I think the problem is that, unless I'm mistaken you don't even know the person who supposedly returned to fundamentalism. How can you make all these generalizations about his/her experience if you don't know them. You don't seem to have any backing evidence for what you state. If you don't have evidence how can you know why, something happened. Unless you have something to back it up like a statistical survey examining those who leave the church and return and their reasons, or in depth knowledge of the person in question, then sorry it's just some stuff which you made up which you think sounds right. It may truly be the case that what you say is correct, but without actually investigating we can't have any real degree of certainty.

How am I generalizing? Are you saying that it's possible to believe again even after you've dismantled your former beliefs? How would you piece back together everything you used to believe when there's no evidence or reason to support it? I haven't said anything different than what others have said in this thread regarding not being able to believe again; not being able to go back -- but I think the "problem" is that you don't like the way I worded it. Every de-conversion story I've read talks about how the person came to stop believing. Not believing anymore seems to be common to de-converting. Is that somehow not clear?

 

I'm not "making it up" that people can stop going to church but retain the Christian mindset they had when they still went to church, i.e. still Christian, still believing, still maintaining a "relationship with Christ". Similarly, many ex-Christians have not "come out" yet and still take part in Christian activities like going to church, Bible study, etc. Would you say they have returned to the fold? I wouldn't. They have de-converted because they do not believe, but they still have to keep up appearances for now.

 

If you still do not understand, I'm not sure I can explain this in a way that will satisfy you. Frankly, I don't care. It seems like plain English to me.

 

I understand what you mean about the believing/not believing. I fully get the idea that idea that thier could very easily be a person who decided to stop going to church but hadn't taken that final step of actually realizing god, or at least the Christian god doesn't exist. I would term it as being objectively not christian but still subjectively a christian. I do not have issue with this. What I have issue with is the fact that you are stating that this is definitely the case about a person whom, again unless you're not telling me something you don't even know. You are saying that it is impossible for someone to believe again after having dismantled thier believes. How do you know this? Is it simply because you cannot imagine how someone could possibly do this. How is that any different from somebody saying that evolution is impossible because they cannot imagine how the eyeball could evolve? Just because you cannot imagine a scenario other than the one you put forward doesn't mean that your scenario must be the case.

[Guest PhucWadGawd]

 

I understand what you mean about the believing/not believing. I fully get the idea that idea that thier could very easily be a person who decided to stop going to church but hadn't taken that final step of actually realizing god, or at least the Christian god doesn't exist. I would term it as being objectively not christian but still subjectively a christian. I do not have issue with this. What I have issue with is the fact that you are stating that this is definitely the case about a person whom, again unless you're not telling me something you don't even know. You are saying that it is impossible for someone to believe again after having dismantled thier believes. How do you know this? Is it simply because you cannot imagine how someone could possibly do this. How is that any different from somebody saying that evolution is impossible because they cannot imagine how the eyeball could evolve? Just because you cannot imagine a scenario other than the one you put forward doesn't mean that your scenario must be the case.

I refer you back to the quote you picked out of my post a page earlier:

 

"This person who came here, then returned to Christian fundamentalism, never left. By de-convert, such a person would be talking about leaving a church or walking out on the church community because he or she was disgusted and angry at the time, but still believed. They misunderstand what it means to de-convert."

 

de-conversion = no longer believes

not de-conversion = still believes

 

Consider the mental journey one has to take in order to stop believing. Once you know that the Bible was written by men, that there is no evidence for a historical Jesus, that an all-knowing god who creates mankind only to condemn most to hell is inconsistent with the notion of a loving god, that a loving god who creates mankind then discovers that he will have to send most to hell is inconsistent with the notion of an all-knowing god -- you cannot trick yourself into thinking thinking that the Bible was written by God, that Jesus exists, and that God is both all-knowing and loving. Yes, I am asserting that it is impossible to believe again when faced with irrefutable evidence to the contrary. That's how I know.

 

You talk about evolution as a belief. It is not a belief in the way that faith in God is a belief. Belief requires faith. Faith, by definition, does not require evidence. Evolution does not require faith because it is supported by evidence. One does not need to "believe" in evolution in order for it to be true, whereas one has to take a leap of faith, without evidence showing it to be true, in order to believe in God.

 

Consider this person who posted both here in the forums and on the main blog.

[Vigile]

Two words: Humpty Dumpty.

[Guest PhucWadGawd]

Two words: Humpty Dumpty.

So succinct -- that's it! Why didn't I think of that?

[dagnarus]

 

I understand what you mean about the believing/not believing. I fully get the idea that idea that thier could very easily be a person who decided to stop going to church but hadn't taken that final step of actually realizing god, or at least the Christian god doesn't exist. I would term it as being objectively not christian but still subjectively a christian. I do not have issue with this. What I have issue with is the fact that you are stating that this is definitely the case about a person whom, again unless you're not telling me something you don't even know. You are saying that it is impossible for someone to believe again after having dismantled thier believes. How do you know this? Is it simply because you cannot imagine how someone could possibly do this. How is that any different from somebody saying that evolution is impossible because they cannot imagine how the eyeball could evolve? Just because you cannot imagine a scenario other than the one you put forward doesn't mean that your scenario must be the case.

I refer you back to the quote you picked out of my post a page earlier:

 

"This person who came here, then returned to Christian fundamentalism, never left. By de-convert, such a person would be talking about leaving a church or walking out on the church community because he or she was disgusted and angry at the time, but still believed. They misunderstand what it means to de-convert."

 

de-conversion = no longer believes

not de-conversion = still believes

 

Consider the mental journey one has to take in order to stop believing. Once you know that the Bible was written by men, that there is no evidence for a historical Jesus, that an all-knowing god who creates mankind only to condemn most to hell is inconsistent with the notion of a loving god, that a loving god who creates mankind then discovers that he will have to send most to hell is inconsistent with the notion of an all-knowing god -- you cannot trick yourself into thinking thinking that the Bible was written by God, that Jesus exists, and that God is both all-knowing and loving. Yes, I am asserting that it is impossible to believe again when faced with irrefutable evidence to the contrary. That's how I know.

 

Your quite correct it is quite a journey. But two of my experiences from being in religion was firstly a complete devaluing of the mind. I.E. the indoctrination that anything which came from my mind not from God was faulty. The only thing which I could possibly trust was that which came from my spirit, everything else came from the enemy. What came from the spirit was of course a nebulous concept because, well there isn't one, but this doesn't stop one from being completely fucked up second-guessing every thought which comes into your head especially anything which doesn't fall in line with what is taught to be absolutely true. I'm not certain whether such teachings are common to many sects of christianity but I can definitely see how having such a thought deeply inbedded in your head somewhere could be a ready made beach-head for a re-conversion. Sure I realized all the stuff you said just before but shit that stuffs all just from my fallen satan infested mind, God's ways are not our ways don't you know I just have to have faith and trust in my spirit. Shit I on some level realized all the stuff you just mentioned while knowing absolutely that God was all-loving, all-knowing and all every other thing, I just suppressed it, sure it hurt my head and it fucked my conscience up but hey if I did it once why shouldn't I believe that it's possible I could do it again. Second while in the system one of the things which I noticed was the ability to know that something was absolutely true, truer than anything else in the entire world yet at the same time realizing that it's absolutely bullshit. One guy I knew believed absolutely that he was experiencing God even though he admitted that he felt nothing, nothing at all, his deep subjective experience of christ was in a whole nother realm beyond anything he could even sense, why because the bible said so and if our experience seemingly doesn't line up with it then we just don't realize it. People who gave testimonies about how now that they had learned to enjoy and experience christ as thier everythnig, they were set free from being under the bondage of the law and not being able to make it and so forth, by and large gave the impression that they were under the bondage of the law and couldn't make it. This all leads me to the conclusion that I shouldn't underestimate the human brains ability to delude itself. Just because I don't see how I could possibly fall into that mess again doesn't mean that it's impossible that it could happen. Who knows I might have everything in my life suddenly turn to shit, have a mental break down, and in my moment of despair looking for comfort suddenly be struck by the revelation "This was all caused by my Father's loving hand steering me back to the fold. I was foolish and turned my back on him but he never gave up on me". After all it's quite probable that if I hadn't assumed that people couldn't know two conflicting things at the same time I probably wouldn't have got sucked in as deep as I did in the first place.

 

You talk about evolution as a belief. It is not a belief in the way that faith in God is a belief. Belief requires faith. Faith, by definition, does not require evidence. Evolution does not require faith because it is supported by evidence. One does not need to "believe" in evolution in order for it to be true, whereas one has to take a leap of faith, without evidence showing it to be true, in order to believe in God.

 

Consider this person who posted both here in the forums and on the main blog.

 

I wasn't comparing belief in evolution to a believe in God. I was comparing the fallacious reasoning that "I can't comprehend how an eyeball could possibly evolve via natural selection so it must be impossible" to what in my few is the fallacious reasoning that "I can't comprehend how somebody who seemingly genuinely shed thier believe in YWHW could possibly return to believing in YWHW so it must be impossible."

[Neon Genesis]

But it is easier not believing, much easier. Asceticism is never an easy route to take. The fact that it all adds up to nothing just makes it a stupid one. Just because something is easier doesn't mean it's wrong. It's easier not to rub salt in my wounds and it's easier not to stick pins in my eyes and no, there is no honor should I choose to do these things to myself anyway.

I don't get why people think something that's easier is always wrong either. Certainly it's wrong if you're doing something like cheating to take the easy way out that way, but sometimes taking the easy way out is not wrong, it's just practical. If you're lost and trying to find your way home before it gets dark, and you come across two paths on the road; one a difficult, rocky path, and the other an easy, smooth one, you're not going to purposely take the most difficult path that could even cost you your life if a wild animal comes after you. You're going to take the easier path because it's the quickest and most practical way home. To assume we're somehow doing something bad just because we're not purposely making our lives more difficult when they don't have to be is just ridiculously absurd. Besides, most xtians living in America don't know what a difficult life is like and have it easy compared to the rest of the world. If they want to see difficult, they should try being a Muslim woman living in a middle eastern country sometime and then maybe they won't complain about people taking the easy way.

[Pandora Moon]

 

Indeed all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,

2 Timothy 3:12

 

"If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 15:19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 15:20 Remember the word that I said to you, 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also.

John 15:18-20

 

I remember passages like that from my time with the Jehovah's Witnesses and they have a real persecution complex which seems to breed paranoria too hell even I got paranorid!. But the JW's seem to bring it on themselves a bit with their rules on the people you can and can't hang 'round with like you're not suppossed to be with "worldy people" aka non-JWs too much which is a problem if the rest of your family aren't JW's!.

[Guest PhucWadGawd]

 

Your quite correct it is quite a journey. But two of my experiences from being in religion was firstly a complete devaluing of the mind. I.E. the indoctrination that anything which came from my mind not from God was faulty. The only thing which I could possibly trust was that which came from my spirit, everything else came from the enemy. What came from the spirit was of course a nebulous concept because, well there isn't one, but this doesn't stop one from being completely fucked up second-guessing every thought which comes into your head especially anything which doesn't fall in line with what is taught to be absolutely true. I'm not certain whether such teachings are common to many sects of christianity but I can definitely see how having such a thought deeply inbedded in your head somewhere could be a ready made beach-head for a re-conversion. Sure I realized all the stuff you said just before but shit that stuffs all just from my fallen satan infested mind, God's ways are not our ways don't you know I just have to have faith and trust in my spirit. Shit I on some level realized all the stuff you just mentioned while knowing absolutely that God was all-loving, all-knowing and all every other thing, I just suppressed it, sure it hurt my head and it fucked my conscience up but hey if I did it once why shouldn't I believe that it's possible I could do it again. Second while in the system one of the things which I noticed was the ability to know that something was absolutely true, truer than anything else in the entire world yet at the same time realizing that it's absolutely bullshit. One guy I knew believed absolutely that he was experiencing God even though he admitted that he felt nothing, nothing at all, his deep subjective experience of christ was in a whole nother realm beyond anything he could even sense, why because the bible said so and if our experience seemingly doesn't line up with it then we just don't realize it. People who gave testimonies about how now that they had learned to enjoy and experience christ as thier everythnig, they were set free from being under the bondage of the law and not being able to make it and so forth, by and large gave the impression that they were under the bondage of the law and couldn't make it. This all leads me to the conclusion that I shouldn't underestimate the human brains ability to delude itself. Just because I don't see how I could possibly fall into that mess again doesn't mean that it's impossible that it could happen. Who knows I might have everything in my life suddenly turn to shit, have a mental break down, and in my moment of despair looking for comfort suddenly be struck by the revelation "This was all caused by my Father's loving hand steering me back to the fold. I was foolish and turned my back on him but he never gave up on me". After all it's quite probable that if I hadn't assumed that people couldn't know two conflicting things at the same time I probably wouldn't have got sucked in as deep as I did in the first place.

 

I wasn't comparing belief in evolution to a believe in God. I was comparing the fallacious reasoning that "I can't comprehend how an eyeball could possibly evolve via natural selection so it must be impossible" to what in my few is the fallacious reasoning that "I can't comprehend how somebody who seemingly genuinely shed thier believe in YWHW could possibly return to believing in YWHW so it must be impossible."

Thanks for sharing all that, dagnarus. I'm familiar with the concept of "splitting". It's very common to believers. It goes hand in hand with cognitive dissonance. I was a believer for 19 years (rounding up a few months), and in that time I often felt like I was thinking with two minds. It created a lot of conflict. Every time I wanted to throw in the towel, I was torn in two directions. I considered that I was backsliding. Then I would recommit myself to Christ. It wasn't until this final time that I shed the other mind and never went back. That's when I de-converted. For me to believe again, I would need actual evidence. It wouldn't be up to some airy fairy notions in a very flawed book, fear, catastrophe, etc.

 

"I can't comprehend how somebody who seemingly genuinely shed thier believe in YWHW could possibly return to believing in YWHW so it must be impossible."

 

Again, I made the distinction between belief and knowledge when talking about the difference between belief in God and accepting that evolution is true based on evidence. I made no reference to someone who "seemingly genuinely shed their belief". You're putting words in my mouth in an attempt to show "fallacious reasoning". Midnight mind-wanderings put it well when she wrote:

 

"I think (some) that deconvert and then reconvert don't stop getting spoon fed answers to their questions. I have known a few people that have very little backbone or ability to think for themselves. They deconvert after a few conversations of sense with an atheist and the first time a christian challenges them on their disbelief they have nothing and get easily talked back into it. These people are also the type who decovert and loose all sense of morality because they are the type that did only refrain from idiotic behavior because their god told them to. So these people, when reconverted, have all these horror stories of what its like to be non-christian, when their real problem is that they are sheep always. Again, christian or no, they are unable to make their own decisions and simply follow the loudest voice wherever it leads them. It must be frightening to be such a person..."

 

If you no longer believe, then you have de-converted. If you -- faced with knowledge of how the Bible was written and compiled, the myths from which Christianity borrowed, the lack of evidence for a historical Jesus the Christ, the inconsistencies in the Bible, the inconsistencies in the nature of God, etc. -- can return to the fold in the face of all the evidence contradicting belief, it is your reasoning that is fallacious; faulty.

[★ Citsonga ★]

Regarding the debate about whether an Ex-Christian could become a Christian again, I thought I'd toss in my two cents' worth.

 

For those who have thought this stuff through for themselves and fully realize that it's just a bunch of bullshit, no more believable than Santa Claus, then I would have to think that (barring some mental disorder) such a person would not likely go back to believing.

 

However, there are other people who really just don't think for themselves. They can be very impressionable. They may have believed the religion they were taught, and then heard someone give persuasive arguments against it and stopped believing in religion. Then this impressionable person could hear someone else give persuasive arguments for the religion, and then return to it. A person like this would not necessarily be dishonest with either change, but just doesn't really think things through and apply logic and reason on their own.

 

So, I do think we should refrain from saying that nobody who goes back to Christianity was ever a "true Ex-Christian" (which can be seen as just as stereotyping as the Christians who say we were never "true Christians"). For those who are thinkers, though, I would find it highly unlikely for such a re-conversion to happen (apart from a mental disorder setting in).

[dagnarus]

Thanks for sharing all that, dagnarus. I'm familiar with the concept of "splitting". It's very common to believers. It goes hand in hand with cognitive dissonance. I was a believer for 19 years (rounding up a few months), and in that time I often felt like I was thinking with two minds. It created a lot of conflict. Every time I wanted to throw in the towel, I was torn in two directions. I considered that I was backsliding. Then I would recommit myself to Christ. It wasn't until this final time that I shed the other mind and never went back. That's when I de-converted. For me to believe again, I would need actual evidence. It wouldn't be up to some airy fairy notions in a very flawed book, fear, catastrophe, etc.

 

I tend to agree. The thought of going through "splitting" for the rest of my life is and was terrifying. One of the key things in my deconversion was the realization that I actually found that I was far more frightened of that than what God had in store for me.

 

"I can't comprehend how somebody who seemingly genuinely shed thier believe in YWHW could possibly return to believing in YWHW so it must be impossible."

 

Again, I made the distinction between belief and knowledge when talking about the difference between belief in God and accepting that evolution is true based on evidence. I made no reference to someone who "seemingly genuinely shed their belief". You're putting words in my mouth in an attempt to show "fallacious reasoning". Midnight mind-wanderings put it well when she wrote:

[\quote]

 

Again I think you misunderstood me. I wasn't trying to suggest that anybody who reconverted could be doing it for good reasons. Nor was I suggesting that the belief in YWHW was somehow comparable to the belief in evolution. Maybe my use of evolution in the analogy was misleading. What I was trying to suggest was that just because I can't comprehend how somebody who had genuinely shed there believes could possibly return to them is comparable to a believer not being able to comprehend how somebody who genuinely believed could then shed that believe. Again I make no statement as to the validity of those beliefs. I think there bullshit.

 

"I think (some) that deconvert and then reconvert don't stop getting spoon fed answers to their questions. I have known a few people that have very little backbone or ability to think for themselves. They deconvert after a few conversations of sense with an atheist and the first time a christian challenges them on their disbelief they have nothing and get easily talked back into it. These people are also the type who decovert and loose all sense of morality because they are the type that did only refrain from idiotic behavior because their god told them to. So these people, when reconverted, have all these horror stories of what its like to be non-christian, when their real problem is that they are sheep always. Again, christian or no, they are unable to make their own decisions and simply follow the loudest voice wherever it leads them. It must be frightening to be such a person..."

 

If you no longer believe, then you have de-converted. If you -- faced with knowledge of how the Bible was written and compiled, the myths from which Christianity borrowed, the lack of evidence for a historical Jesus the Christ, the inconsistencies in the Bible, the inconsistencies in the nature of God, etc. -- can return to the fold in the face of all the evidence contradicting belief, it is your reasoning that is fallacious; faulty.

 

Again I wasn't trying to make any statement as to how good the reasoning of the person returning to the faith was.

 

On a side-note I would have to say that if I were to return to the faith it would be because I don't believe that just because a God happened to present himself as being both all loving at the same time wouldn't mean that that is an inconsistency in that God's nature that would just mean that that God was an asshole. After all humans can be seen exhibiting the same behavior all the time. Furthermore if you accept that God doesn't have to be a nice guy, how do you know that on a whim because he wanted to make the whole situation a bit more interesting he'd make it so that the holy-book was a mess, the historical evidence was little to none, and the inconsistencies were prevalent just to make things harder, sure it's the sought of thing an asshole would do but who says god can't be an asshole. Then following on from that we could say that God must be a really nice guy because well he says so, and who are you to argue with a guy who can't sentence you to eternal torment.

 

Would that be a rational belief? no. In the end it seems no more rational than a superstition that if I happened to count all the grains of sand on a beach I will achieve salvation. That said who needs rational belief when you have irrational fear.

 

P.S.

I generally agree with your assessment about the ability to return to faith, If it weren't for the existence of irrational fear, and the ability for people to be completely irrational in some things even while they might be completely rational everywhere else.