I Think I Have Forgotten The Mind I Used To Have As A Believer.

[Guest Valk0010]

I find myself in a situation where I have forgotten how to put my Christian hat on. Well recently I have be rethinking about my reasons for my lack of belief, because i have a cousin who might be doubting her Christianity. She is 21. I have found myself discovering more reasons why what I used to believe is absurd. The scary weird thing is, these new ways of looking at the question, does a god exist, make perfect sense, post indoctrination and post belief. They may not even technically convince a believer, but they are soundly rational as far as I can see. I find myself, trying to think as if I was a believer, and try to examine things like, what i believe and why and i find I can't do it anymore. I have tried and I can't. Alot of the shit that used to be a red alert alarm in my head as far as believers responses, no longer seem rational in my head. They just seem like deluded in the bubble thinking(things like god is always right no matter what he does, god wants faith,you can't know the mind of god, you are egotistical for question, and the rest of the bullshit of that variety). This is a first for me. I am surprised and a bit happy by this. I can say things like "religion is a fairy tale" and not cringe slightly. Not that I am a huge fan of the god delusion. I used to scale to around a 5, but I feel closer to 6.5 now. I am don't know how it happened, it was like one day something just clicked in my brain, and it was like my former self was not just controlled, but gone.

 

I think its because I have up trying to please my former self, the person who would say things like, god is greater then you so therefore you can't know his mind. But that person can't be pleased, because that person is not rational. They look for anything they can to conform there worldview to criticism(so it can be protected from criticism). In fact I was reading about a christians attempt to square the truth of the gospel with the nonexistence of moses. Its the same god darn thing. It isn't rational nor logical and I can't understand it at all anymore. Is this a good thing, or am I just close minded? I am not sure. But it feels good to not have to appease stupidity and cult like ex post facto rationalizations for questioning. And you can find those traits in just about any other religion. Its absurd.

 

RELIGION IS FAIRYTALES FOR KIDS and i say that proudly.

[antix]

Funny thing is after you leave, you still have your morals and values, even more so.

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

I no longer have my old morals, I have better ones. A christian, me and 2 kids ended up sitting on the bus near eachother today. We don't know eachother. We've never seen eachother before either. Well...

 

One kid asked his brother where his pizza went. He said it fell. As I dug into my wallet to get a $5 to get him a new slice, knowing how much that sucked when something like that happened to me, I felt bad and wanted to make him happy by giving him money to replace that slice. Well... The Christian who got on the bus saying "God Bless" to everyone, said it's too bad and that he should've picked it up off the sidewalk and ate it, "the 5 second rule" (how to get yourself unbelieveably sick....). I told him never to do that, there are alot of diseases, and I handed him the $5 and told him that Arby's has a really good Chicken Cordon Bleu sandwhich they now seem to only sell at the nearby mall.

 

She said,"Aww... How sweet.... That was so nice, God bless you!"

 

I acted like I didn't hear her, and said you're welcome to the kid (who did thank me, it made me happy I did that).

 

I felt myself murmur, perhaps a little bit too loud, "God ain't got nothing to do with it".

 

I didn't at first realize why I was so annoyed, but I kind of felt bad for giving her the cold shoulder, and did end up saying to her to have a good evening (albeit after she said it without including "God...God...God..." in what she said.

[lilcoppertop]

Yeah, I have a lot of the same morals that I had before when I was a christian, only now they're MINE. I kept them because I saw value in them and not because some deity said I need to do or not do things. I have found it has also allowed me to be less judgemental of people whose morals are different from mine...which I think has made me a better person.

[Guest Valk0010]

I am talking about thinking in general, not just morality.

[silentknight]

I can honestly say that, as an adult, I never believed a word of it. I never found anything christian to be sane, I just forced myself not to examine it, because I felt I had no choice.

 

Then one day I said "screw this, I do have a choice" and I made it.

[pratt]

well, i may not have been reading the bible religiously or visit churches for years, I do still remember the days of my faith, why i believe, what excuses when i encountered those moments of crisis of faith (god works in fucking mysterious ways, and those irrational reasons 1001),,,,,, it does bring smiles many times when i remember those moments,,,,, AM i NIUTs during those years??? hahaha

 

BTW, my christian years are NOT bad at all,,,,,,,

[★ Citsonga ★]

I'm in the same boat. I'm so far removed from the religious mindset that I can no longer think along the exact same lines. It takes indoctrination to think that religious arguments are valid.

 

The one thing I disagree with in the OP is this:

 

RELIGION IS FAIRYTALES FOR KIDS

 

It should be: RELIGION IS FAIRY TALES FOR ADULTS

[Wings]

Valk, so glad to hear you sounding confident about your thoughts in that post! Hope everything is going equally well in life

I totally agree with everything you say! My personal morality and ideals changed while I was still a christian, and I think it's one of the reasons I just couldn't stand it anymore. My Christian years weren't horrible at all, but like you, I can't go back and understand what I was thinking then. Things that I know used to make sense to me make no sense at all! The inconsistencies are glaringly obvious and everyone nodding along drives me crazy-- I want to yell the FAIRYTALES at everyone. I know they won't "hear" me if I do... but as I told my mom, I feel like I was a product packet in a vacuum-packed sealed package. There was a cut made, I burst out and good luck trying to fit me back in!

[kclark]

I've only admitted to myself I didn't believe anymore a little over a year ago, and left the church for good back in January of this year, so there are still times that I find myself reverting back to believer mode--like when that shooting happened in Colorado, a "Why would god allow this?" thought popped up in my mind. But then I thought "because he doesn't exist, and if he did exist and allowed this happen when he the foresight and power to stop it, then his existence don't mean much" and that smacked the religious Wack-A-Mole down.

 

And sometimes when an unexpected money issue comes up, a "maybe I wouldn't go through this if I tithed," thought comes up, but I realize that everybody goes through that, atheist and believer alike, and smack it down.The same when I'm in a roomful of believers (i.e. family functions) and them laughing/talking/relating to each other about the world in a way I just can't anymore, and I feel like an outsider. Then I remind myself how much it sucked the 80-90 percent of the time when I was an insider (i.e. being frustrated/worried I was not "getting it", the mental gymnastics of rationalizing random acts of evil/natural disasters, thinking I was going to hell for being gay, being a closeted church musician and so on) and realize I just want someone to commiserate with (I live in a small town that's extremely religious, so there aren't a lot of nonbelievers to interact face to face with).

 

One thing that I've noticed is that I find myself more in touch with my emotions. Before when a tragedy like the Colorado shooting or the earthquake in Haiti happened or I heard about starving children dying or lost a relative, I'd feel bad about it, but I think that everything would be ok if they believed. Or even if the didn't, god would sort it all out somehow. But now I realize that when human life is lost, those people aren't going anywhere. They're just gone. A harsh fact, yes, but it's made me value my life and others' more.

 

All this is to say it was hard at first, but I find it's getting easier to leave my old mind behind.

[freeasabird]

My mind is completely rewired for the better. I almost never have any more temporary moments of delusion.

[FeelHappy]

I was just thinking this, for the longest time I was a believer who just couldn't accept things. I still had the believers mentality, but now I find that I can't even fully remember what it was like to actually believe the BS I bought into for so long. I don't even fully remember what it was like expecting to hear from god or to pray more. All I see now is how divisive and hateful christianity is and I'm glad to be away from that. Now I struggle most with being quite when I hear my old fundie friends.

[thetourist]

One kid asked his brother where his pizza went. He said it fell. As I dug into my wallet to get a $5 to get him a new slice, knowing how much that sucked when something like that happened to me, I felt bad and wanted to make him happy by giving him money to replace that slice. Well... The Christian who got on the bus saying "God Bless" to everyone, said it's too bad and that he should've picked it up off the sidewalk and ate it, "the 5 second rule" (how to get yourself unbelieveably sick....). I told him never to do that, there are alot of diseases, and I handed him the $5 and told him that Arby's has a really good Chicken Cordon Bleu sandwhich they now seem to only sell at the nearby mall.

Awesome stuff until you sent him to Arby's. Poor kid has probably had a stomach ache ever since

 

But seriously, I don't understand the ethics of modern Christianity. They think the most ass backwards things are moral.

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

 

But seriously, I don't understand the ethics of modern Christianity. They think the most ass backwards things are moral.

 

With them, its always been this way. Except, it was worse before secularism gained a foothold in the west.

[LifeCycle]

My faith couldn't move mountains... I'd pray and it was only my voice echoing inside my head or the room. My "godly-relationship" was very one sided (now I know why) and circumstances never made sense even if it was to "strengthen my faith" (what kind of bullshit is that?!). Officially, I've only been de-converted for weeks now but I've been detaching myself from the faith for over a year. It's just that it wasn't until recently that I could call myself an unbeliever. I'm slowly rewiring my mind as well. I've still prayed as of recently but it's less and less and less. I mean, we build this image up of this imaginary person we converse with and we fill in the blanks in a sense, speaking for him and to us it's normal. It was all me - a somewhat insane, me... A myth I built and my life centered around it for 90 percent of my life.

 

So yeah, I'm still dealing and haven't gotten there yet... But I can tell I'm perfectly capable and it is happening. It's just slow-going.

[roadrunner]

valk you hit it on the head. I think the start of being able to grasp any argument is the day you look in the mirror and HONEST say "What if I'm wrong..." only then do you give an extraneous argument a second thought. then its a downhill slide from there. I think we read of people like lee strobel, william lane craig, and cs lewis and a few others but for the most part once rational thought kicks in its away with christ from there. these are teh stories you don't here these people never go on to write a book they happily go on to a life free from religion.

[florduh]

Just as well you've forgotten that mind. It wasn't working anyway.