What Made Us Different?

[Vigile]

Yeah, it's not necessarily about intelligence. I'm no more intelligent now as when I believed the BS.

 

OTH, you did deconvert while you probably know many who still believe and will continue to do so. You may have deconverted directly due to your intelligence.

 

It's about whether and when someone is willing to engage an open mind.

 

I wonder if this isn't a component of intelligence.

 

In fact, the differences here may be based on types of intelligence. Personally, like others, I have my strengths and weaknesses, perhaps we all share a similar strength that we just haven't pinned down yet.

[Vigile]

I am sure we all know quite intelligent, highly educated people, who are deep thinkers who are still Christians.

 

The two former yes, I'm personally not convinced of the later. Certainly not amongst the fundamentalist brand. I've met some deep thinkers in Italy who are still Catholic. I doubt I've ever met a deep-thinking Baptist. I did know an old Baptist pastor who had the capacity to be a deep thinker, but like the rest, he started from the idea that he was right and worked backward. At the very least, this makes him intellectually dishonest, IMO, as he was certainly educated enough to understand how problematic this type of intellectual approach is.

 

In fact, I would argue that Christianity at its core invites a lot of deep thought.

 

I see your point, but I'm not sure this constitutes deep thinking. Rather, these are subjects that traditionally-deep thinkers famously contemplate. On a ven diagram, these areas might overlap with deep thinkers, but deep and shallow thinkers can both think about these things if others suggest they do, which the xian meme absolutely encourages. Where they part, IMO, is over the easy answers. Shallow thinkers easily accept easy answers where thinkers continue to pause, finding them less than satisfying.

[Overcame Faith]

I am sure we all know quite intelligent, highly educated people, who are deep thinkers who are still Christians.

 

The two former yes, I'm personally not convinced of the later. Certainly not amongst the fundamentalist brand. I've met some deep thinkers in Italy who are still Catholic. I doubt I've ever met a deep-thinking Baptist. I did know an old Baptist pastor who had the capacity to be a deep thinker, but like the rest, he started from the idea that he was right and worked backward. At the very least, this makes him intellectually dishonest, IMO, as he was certainly educated enough to understand how problematic this type of intellectual approach is.

 

I know what you mean about starting from the idea that they are right and working backwards. I used to do that, too. It was only when I finally left Christianity that I was able to flush that way of thinking when it came to Christianity and start without a preconceived notion and then seeing where my reasoning took me. So when I say deep thinkers, I recognize this flaw and agree it is intellectually dishonest. But the problem for true believers is that having this flaw seems to be endemic.

 

 

In fact, I would argue that Christianity at its core invites a lot of deep thought.

 

I see your point, but I'm not sure this constitutes deep thinking. Rather, these are subjects that traditionally-deep thinkers famously contemplate. On a ven diagram, these areas might overlap with deep thinkers, but deep and shallow thinkers can both think about these things if others suggest they do, which the xian meme absolutely encourages. Where they part, IMO, is over the easy answers some offer up. Shallow thinkers easily accept easy answers where thinkers continue to pause, finding them less than satisfying.

 

I agree with a lot of what you say. But I don't think I necessarily accept that it constitutes shallow thinking. For example, I know some who have graduated from theological seminaries who struggled with what they were learning and which ran counter to what they had so naively thought was true prior to their seminary education. These people about whom I am thinking, engaged in a lot of soul searching and a lot of thinking even to continue their educations. They weren't shallow about it because these particular institutions didn't accept shallow thinking.

[Vigile]

I agree with a lot of what you say. But I don't think I necessarily accept that it constitutes shallow thinking. For example, I know some who have graduated from theological seminaries who struggled with what they were learning and which ran counter to what they had so naively thought was true prior to their seminary education. These people about whom I am thinking, engaged in a lot of soul searching and a lot of thinking even to continue their educations. They weren't shallow about it because these particular institutions didn't accept shallow thinking.

 

This is a better example than what I offered or experienced with others, so I'll grant you I may indeed be wrong here.

 

I do continue to wonder if it isn't a component of intelligence that many of us share. IOW, all things being equal, why do some deconvert while others do not? I mentioned my cousin and I a few posts back. We grew up in the same community, had the same family influence, have roughly the same intellectual capacity and levels of education, yet he never wondered and to this day doesn't wonder, while wondering pretty much defines me as a human.

[Overcame Faith]

I do continue to wonder if it isn't a component of intelligence that many of us share. IOW, all things being equal, why do some deconvert while others do not? I mentioned my cousin and I a few posts back. We grew up in the same community, had the same family influence, have roughly the same intellectual capacity and levels of education, yet he never wondered and to this day doesn't wonder, while wondering pretty much defines me as a human.

 

It's the grand question. But I use myself as an example. I am intelligent and well-educated, but I was held captive by the religion for more years than I care to admit. I engaged in apologetics and believed what I was saying. But it wasn't an intellectual awakening for me that led me away from Christianity. It was a terribly traumatic personal event (not related to Christianity) which led me to question many things, one of which was eventually Christianity.

 

But I will say this. Once I firmly renounced Christianity, my mind blossomed with my new found freedom of thought. I did all sorts of things that I hadn't done before. I began thinking about physics, like what is the nature of gravity and time and things like that. I don't have an education in physics so I'm sure if a physicist heard my thought, he or she would laugh at what I had thought about. But the point wasn't to get it right, the point was to exercise my mind which the religion had stifled for so long. And once I turned my attention to the Bible, what I read in that book was like dry wood that all I had to do was strike the match in my mind to set it on fire and destroy it.

[Vigile]

But it wasn't an intellectual awakening for me that led me away from Christianity.

 

I suppose it's a question of categorization to at least a degree. For me, deconversion was absolutely an intellectual awakening that was what I believe was likely a predictable result based on my particular personality type. I've always had within me a need to know and always had questions I didn't notice in my peers who seemed easily satisfied with trite answers if they experienced interest in deeper questions at all, which many seem satisfied not to do.

 

My issue when I was younger was that I didn't have the intellectual tools to frame my questions properly. Once exposed to basics of critical thinking, it all (faith) fell apart for me.

 

Not to discount the experiences of others, I continue to think too that education and intelligence are highly coordinated to the faith/no faith equation. For example, while there are physicists and biologists at the doctoral level who do believe, the majority do not. It must be inescapable for most in these professions simply due to the fact that xian reasoning and scientific reasoning don't mesh, nor do accepted facts. It takes a degree of intellectual capacity to see the implications of human discovery.

 

Anyway, these are just ponderings. I haven't represented a valid, testable hypothesis here.

[Vigile]

Let me express this another way. If you were testing correlation and causation, I believe results would reveal a statistically significant correlation to both intelligence and level of education with deconversion or just simple lack of faith. Such studies can also test for other factors, such as trigger events and other factors you mentioned. These too could indeed have statistically significant correlation to deconversion, and this fact wouldn't discount other factors that also correlate.

 

E.g., If my question is, what causes high crime rates? I might find that education, poverty and joblessness strongly correlate. This would then implicate that as poverty rose, education and or joblessness declined, crime would rise. This would not indicate that other factors too contribute to higher levels of crime. Likewise, these results would not mean that just because someone is poor, jobless or uneducated he will necessarily engage in crime. Just that he is more likely than average.

[freeasabird]

All of the intelligent people I know who go to church regularly are either Luke warm Christians who only talk about religion for that hour of the week, or ones who go more for community than anything else.

[hereticzero]

God did not keep his promises. I also studied church and bible history and came to the conclusion neither was worth the time to read or study. There were many things that lead to my deconversion. I left it all for good around 2005, though I had probably mentally left many years before then. Once I discovered one lie, it lead to the discovery of many deceptions, and according to the babble, god doesn't lie but according to reality, it's all a bunch of intertwined deceptiveness.

[Guest Xtech]

Great points you all make about who it is that can up and leave a religion.

 

A psychological type that tends to be authoritarian is very attracted to dogma, whether political or religious. On the other hand, if you are a 'question authority' type you are not going to be happy with so-called fundamentalist 'truth', period, dot, now go home and shut up.

 

I often wonder what makes one authoritarian, and recently heard a fascinating podcast about the subject, which referred to the divergent mental archetypes of disciplinarian father/ nurturing mother. A person may have had an upbringing in an authoritarian disciplinarian family, or been attracted to/molded by groupthink such as the military (sorry for the crude overgeneralization). This will set the person up for the easy answers provided by fundamentalism.

 

http://www.pointofin...ts_old_and_new/

 

The sense of belonging and being bonded to those in a group such as a military outfit, or those of a faith is incredibly powerful. Again - more so for some than for others. I think many people value highly loyalty to the group, and whether the group is behaving morally or whether the group's beliefs are true or correspond to reality do not matter. This plays out again and again in misguided wars, religions or cults that hold wacky beliefs (have you read the Book of Mormon? now THAT's a colorful tall tale).

 

Those who leave a such a group are courageous, or lonely, or almost un-naturally a-social. Some risk everything - their family, their community. Most won't even consider doing something like that, because the personal cost is too high. The churches are FULL of these people who are going through the motions, rather than rock the boat. For some, the cost is less; their family or tradition may be much more about gathering socially, or about doing good works, than it is about funky beliefs.

[Vigile]

period, dot, now go home and shut up.

 

cute.

 

A person may have had an upbringing in an authoritarian disciplinarian family, or been attracted to/molded by groupthink such as the military (sorry for the crude overgeneralization). This will set the person up for the easy answers provided by fundamentalism.

 

Very interesting stuff. I'm looking forward to listening. My mother was/is very nurturing and my father was/is kind and not authoritarian, which may explain why my brother was just not that interested in religion and I balked at the fundamentalism when I did believe. I've never considered it from this angle.

 

Edit: I just listened and interesting or fascinating are words that just don't do it justice. I certainly have a lot to ponder here. By far the most interesting, again, for lack of a better word, and thought-provoking thing I've read or listened to in years.

[freespirit]

I like to flatter myself to think I am more honest than some.

[freeasabird]

I like to flatter myself to think I am more honest than some.

 

I totally buy that. It takes a huge amount of intellectual integrity to put your hypothetical eternal soul on the line by saying all of religion is bullshit.

[freespirit]

I like to flatter myself to think I am more honest than some.

 

I totally buy that. It takes a huge amount of intellectual integrity to put your hypothetical eternal soul on the line by saying all of religion is bullshit.

 

Kind of ironic how churches that teach honesty encourage dishonesty.

[Vomit Comet]

Now that I think about it, I think part of it is that I'm kind of a drama queen with bipolar tendencies. Pentecostalism absolutely exacerbates that, and the recurring depressive/this-fucking-sucks episodes more and more outweighed the I'm-the-spiritual-fucking-Hulk!!! episodes. The fact that my faith effectively prevented me from getting any pussy was the number one cause of my angst and discontent. Why did I let my faith stop me? I was honestly afraid that demons would attack any girl I fucked and proceed to destroy her soul. Like, they'd exit my dick with the cum shot and go directly up into her, through the condom and everything. I honestly believed that!

 

Well, that wasn't the whole of it but it certainly made me a fertile field for the seeds of doubt. I started to want out of it. All I wanted was mental health and some poon-tang, not in that order. Everything I'd been suppressing for years with mental gymnastics--the hell question, Darwin, etc.--came to the fore. And the arguments of "the other side" kept sounding better and better.

 

I'll only give myself a little bit of the customary ex-Christian backpatting for having a good mind (despite all the anguish and nuttiness). I think a lot of it was that the lows just kept getting lower whereas the highs kept getting less high, which set the stage. Years before I deconverted when my faith was in tip-top shape, I admitted to myself that the one thing that could knock me off the Rock would be a woman. That's kind of how it happened. The major part of it.

[lostman42]

Oops. Double post.

[lostman42]

Being rejected by other christians was a major reason I was able to deconvert. I was 16 at the time and I was completely different than the other people in my youth groups(I went to 3 youth groups a week).

 

The other people in my youth groups had a lot of things in the common.

- born in upperclass, christian families

- hung out with only other christians

- perfect grades

- lived in the same small town their whole lives.

 

My families poor, I've always hung out with nonchristians, I get mostly C's and I've spent a lot of time living in st.Louis.

 

The more they got to know me the less they liked me, and rejection hurts like a bitch.

[Chikirin]

I've got some social phobias, not severe, but enough to have made a difference in me both going to church and leaving church.

 

I found church to be a refuge during my teen years since I didn't fit in too well at school and the neighborhood. But since I was not very social I never took part in the youth group or interacted with anyone at church, I would go, take sermon notes, and then read christian books in the church library.

 

Then in college I overcame some of my social phobias and got involved for the first time with regular witnessing and stuff like that.

 

Then after college, it was all over and I couldn't find any church where I felt comfortable. So when I missed services, no one ever noticed I was gone.

[JadedAtheist]

There were quite a few factors and every time I think about it I think of a different thing being the main cause of my departure. If I were to think of a few:

 

1. I always sought honesty in defending the faith. I couldn't just assume something to be true and argue from there. I had to be able to defend from the very foundation why I believed Christianity was true. During my studies it became obvious to me that my defenses were based on Christian authors with an obvious bias. In order to be "honest" I wanted to be able to use books within the NT that were agreed to be authentic by secular sources to "reconstruct" the NT story. Essentially, my argument was look at Paul, these letters are agreed to be authentic and look at what he says. From this we can construct the following timeline and people involved. Since he is talking to people he knew, they could verify whether or not he was lying and so therefore, these stories had to be true. Then one day as I was finishing up my "thesis" on this issue it just hit me, out of nowhere "Paul could've lied". I started looking at all these charismatic preachers who claim to raise people from the dead and heal people left, right and center and people believe them. In this day and age, people believe them. They have the ability to find out and verify if the claims are false, yet they still believe. How much more would such things happen 2000 years ago?

 

 

2. It seemed rather convenient that there was always an excuse for why God didn't pull through in a promise. Oh, you weren't praying according to his will. You were in sin. He will answer, just not yet.

 

3. It seemed rather convenient that God revealed himself in such a way that you could never disprove him (or prove him).

 

4. Dissonance played a part I guess, I was in constant conflict with my sexual urges and what I knew to be moral in Christianity.

 

5. Very few people lived like "true Christians" and the ones most like "true Christians" were people who were assholes.

 

6. Little support structure, outside of church meetings I basically didn't socialize with Christians.

 

All I can think of t the moment..

[espresso]

I haven't really thought of it like this before, but I am definitely not the person you could predict would become an atheist. That makes me laugh.

 

I was the good girl, "spirit-filled," went to a Christian college, didn't ride in cars with boys or rock the boat in any way. Basically my parents dream-child. I mostly emoted, rather than thought, about my religion, and the emotions going away was what started me on my way out of the fold. I knew several professors whose mental capacities I still hold in awe, and they encouraged me that Christianity was compatible with honest and rigorous intellectual scrutiny. I don't know how they manage it, but I'm glad I had them for the journey because I can be sure I've exhausted every option.

[Googledotman]

On the whole, I think what makes me different was that I was willing to see the other side of the Christian/non-Christian coin. I had a willingness and an open mind to look at what the atheists thought, and soon I discovered it was more compatible with my beliefs.

 

BTW, what the heck is cognitive dissonance? I have no idea what it is but I have read it 10 billion times since I was on this thread.

[Thought2Much]

The Wikipedia definition is: "Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously." It's something that Christians have to do a lot of the time to keep their faith when, for example, the Bible contradicts observable reality.

[Thurisaz]

...and many of them then retreat into something neatly described by a certain author, albeit in a political context.

 

Orwellian doublethink

 

I tell you, morontheists make perfect citizens of Orwell's Oceania (or Eastasia, or Eurasia - doesn't matter). Just replace gawd with the Big Brother™ and they're every bit as much a slave as those inhuman nations want one.

[Suzy]

...and many of them then retreat into something neatly described by a certain author, albeit in a political context.

 

Orwellian doublethink

 

I tell you, morontheists make perfect citizens of Orwell's Oceania (or Eastasia, or Eurasia - doesn't matter). Just replace gawd with the Big Brother™ and they're every bit as much a slave as those inhuman nations want one.

 

 

 

 

One Xtian told me on my blog that "faith is a higher level of rationalism".

 

 

I only answered to him: "Orwell, 1984", because it made me recall that in "1984" the Ministry of Love was people were tortured, the Ministry of Peace was the ministry that dealt with wars etc. So when he told me that faith was a higher level of rationalism, it made me think of these Ministries in "1984".

 

 

[Mike D]

I guess what made me different from other Christians is that I need to validate things as true before I believe them, not the reverse.

 

Most Christians I know seem to accept it as true and then either don't do any validation, or the standard they use to validate it is so weak (mostly based on "feelings"), that they pretty much just accept it and that's that.

 

I tried for years to validate it, I even begged god/jesus/whatever to reveal himself/theirselves to me so that I would have some thread of evidence that it was true. But, apparently god and jesus couldn't be bothered.

 

Finally, after years of this, I had no choice but to conclude it wasn't true and move on.

 

That's pretty much it.