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Goodbye Jesus

Examination of my de-conversion


Poonis

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I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about my de-conversion. I am wondering if there is a pattern to be found in the way beliefs that were held and the order in which they were lost.

 

To those who have fully de-converted from christianity (into agnosticism and preferably atheism):

 

1. What was your first belief or set of beliefs that you lost?

2. What were your middle-of-the-way beliefs that you lost?

3. What was your last belief or set of beliefs (deepest-rooted) that you lost?

 

Examining my de-conversion, I have found something interesting, and am wondering if others' deconversions may follow suit.

 

1. My first set of beliefs that I let go of where those beliefs that were the most absurd, and coincidentally, most unimportant to my christian faith in general. For example, being told and thus believing I'd go to hell for smoking pot and that halloween is when witches and satanists try to take over the world. Beliefs such as these were entirely non-biblical and had nothing to do with christianity, and all to do with family tradition and politics of following the law. In a word, these were the most obvious superstitious beliefs.

 

2. My middle-of-the-way beliefs surrounded what I had been taught about the bible and read therein. These were the core of my faith, and thus comprised the majority of my beliefs; this is what I 'needed to believe' and were the teachings of the church. For example, that jesus died for my sins and you have to be born-again to get to heaven. This phase of my de-conversion could not have happened without dissolving my first set of beliefs, as my investigation into my first set of beliefs was the beginning of my self-education into understanding my life.

 

3. The deepest-rooted beliefs that I had, coincidentally stayed the longest, and were the most foundational of all. The last beliefs of mine to go were the vestigial fear of hell and the desire of heaven. After asking myself why it is that (1) I want to go to heaven and (2) I do not want to go to hell after I die, I discovered that the desire to go to heaven is my psychological compensation for not wanting to go to hell. Being the fear of dying is the fear of the unknown, it is only my fears the drove me to believe this in the first place. Upon investigation, I have found there is nothing in the ideological christian heaven that I desire, nor is there anything in the ideological christian hell that I fear. Having overcome my fear of death (evident not by lip-service but by my lack of beliefs and actions), I have completed my de-conversion, and have overcome all my beliefs.

 

The whole of my de-conversion can be summed up into this: my christian world-view showed me that what I believed was reality, but my de-conversion showed me that what I believed (my christian world-view) was the product of my personal fears. Reality has stayed the same, it is only I that has changed.

 

Some may think I am angry at God. I am not, because I do not believe in God (or any gods for that matter). I am angry at those who forced me into christianity at a young age, too young to understand or know any better, and angry at myself for not understanding this sooner in my life, and therefore wasting that part of my life, and, entropy given, will never get it back.

 

I write this in my understanding that it will aid me in helping others de-convert from this mental illness known as christianity.

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Fear and emotional responses are how they teach you, how they keep you, and how many find the door.

 

I didn't ever get into it, so I didn't have to get out of it. The beliefs foisted upon me were from the OT. I was a doubter from the time I could talk, I was the blacksheep of the family, the one who didn't go along with everyone.

 

My parents taught me to do what I did, but their intent was otherwise and it backfired on them, but good for me.

 

They lost me in the Land of Nod, that was it, everything else was downhill from there. My parents told me I had a condition where I "have to look where the feet grow". My GP a few years ago told me I must have OCD because "I have to have EVERY DETAIL to understand everything".

 

So let me get this straight. God makes Adam and then Eve, a talking serpent tells Eve to eat a fruit that would make her die on that day, she doesn't die, so he didn't lie. Ok, great, so they get thrown out of this wonderful garden. They have a kid Cain, and then Abel. Cain kills Abel, so now there's 3 people. Cain gets kicked out with a mark on his head so OTHERS won't kill him.

 

OTHERS? HELLO? A+E=C+A C-A=C->OUT OTHERS? WHERE? There's nobody else.

 

Then Seth comes along, great, WHERE did he get a wife from? I was still lost in the Land of Nod. None of the other 'stories to answer kids questions' cut it either. Noah, yeah, right, ok. Babel? Hmmmm... reverse answering, why do we have many languages? Ah, we MUST have had a Tower of Babel, why ELSE?

 

Well, that was it, and that was around age 10, or younger.

 

When I was 12 I hung out with a group of 16, 8 guys, 8 girls. We hung out on the 8th floor landing and pondered the 8 sideways -> infinity. We looked up at the stars and pondered what was out there. The ones taught in their Churches had these wild answers to the questions. They didn't make sense.

 

So that was that for me, always been on the outside looking in, wondering why people believed those things. My parents never let me believe Santa was real, but couldn't understand why I didn't buy any of their other stories either.

 

They told me to not believe anything I read and only half of what I see, and then they wondered why nothing they said after that had an impact on me.

 

Always had questions nobody had ONE answer to, and the multiple answers were always obviously wrong to me.

 

I never thought God was the issue, but always what others wanted me to believe

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First to go for me, was belief in the end times prophesies. A heated debate with a preterist did it for me. Collapsed my faith.

 

I briefly held a few other beliefs, including that those "outside" this belief system would go to hell. That was painful for me, because I loved many who were "outside."

 

Hell went next. I just couldn't believe that those who didn't believe, or may have never heard would go to hell. Therefore, hell must not exist.

 

If hell didn't exist, then there was no need of a sacrifice to keep people from going there.

 

The rest just unravelled like my knitting when the cats get hold of it..

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1. My first set of beliefs that I abandoned was "the xtian way" was the only way to truth.

 

2. There really weren't any

 

3. The last "set of beliefs" that I let go of were:

There is a supreme being (aka god) and there is a life beyond this one.

 

For me it was a very short period (maybe a month) of time from god-believer to

athiest. There's so much information available on the internet that it didn't take long to see the BS of theism.

 

Thanks for this thread, Poonis.

If any questioners read this and would like more info, feel free to PM me.

 

Dan

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0. I always had a problem with Creationism, although when I was younger I was into Hovind (but never could find a reason to believe him given what I knew about evolution). My attempts to meld evolution and Creationism grew more elaborate as time went on. I also always had a problem with the virgin birth because I truly believed God was spirit and beyond physical existence.... I more had theological problems with it as opposed to disbelieving in the miracle.

 

1. Loss of belief in the virgin birth and belief that those who hadn't heard the gospel were going to hell. My position on evolution what that God did it through evolution, but that there was still a garden of Eden when god planted "souls" to make us human, otherwise how could one explain atonement without original sin??

 

2. Belief that anyone gets sent to hell for believing differently than Xtianity says to... although I did think you had to be devout to whichever religion you subscribed. The concept of hell was a difficult one for me, I eventually decided to believe in annihilation for those who didn't desire God in the end. Began to doubt the historicity of the New Testament more fundamentally, especially the historical Jesus. Loss of believe in any sort of Adam and Eve, but I still thought God did it through evolution.

 

3. Loss of a belief in the resurrection and all other fables and myths in the Bible. Loss of belief in the notion that god guided evolution (this was directly related to my belief in miracles and such). I basically became a deist.

 

That was it... it took about three years to happen (if you dont count the things I never was comfortable with, like the virgin birth and resurrection and Creationism).

 

It was interesting to watch my husband go through a similar process. I will outline it here just so you get another example (cuz he doesn't like message boards)...

 

1. He was a bio major, so he believed in evolution. He took Philosophy 101. The prof challenged his belief in god significantly. He wrote an essay where he "proved" that evil can exist etc etc... through using a Biblical account of the history of the world. Even though he was pro-Bible in his paper, he had to use some form of Creationism with Adam and Eve to make his point, and he knew that was bull given his beliefs on evolution. So basically, without Adam and Eve and original sin, he saw major problems in the salvation doctrines of Christianity.

 

2. Loss of belief in miracles and such.

 

3. Loss of belief in the Jesus of faith through the study of the historical Jesus.

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1. Tithing - this was many years ago but was first serious break with traditional teaching - thinking for ourselves and all.

2. "Word of Faith" theology - caused me to begin looking at ministers and teachings with a more critical eye

3. Preterism - made a lot more sense than traditional eschatology - involved historical-critical hermeneutic as well

4. Noah and flood - had to give up global flood after looking at math of water required - couldn't go with local flood either

 

after that it was all downhill :grin:

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