Coming Soon...

[SquareOne]

Hey everyone

 

I've been writing my ex-testimony for a while, and it keeps getting longer as I feel the need to make it more detailed and deep.  It has become quite an essay.  In its final form it will be both an ex-testimony and the story of how I developed my most serious objections to Christianity, and explanation of those objections.  So it's both autobiographical and argumentative.

 

I'm wondering though whether it is 'too large' to go on this forum.  It's going to be 8,000 - 10,000 words in final draft probably.

 

What do you think?

[DOswalt]

I don't know if it is too long for the site, but I will read it if you do post it.  I have found reading much more enjoyable now that I don't have to watch for non-christian content, so I read much more than before. 

[Guest Pixie]

I will read it also SquareOne. I'll look forward to it.

[Adrianime]

I posted something that was 8000 words on this site yesterday or the day before.  Worked fine.

[mymistake]

If it is going to be over 8000 words maybe you should break it into multiple parts for the sake of the reader.

[SquareOne]

True point mymistake.  Then again.  The reader can choose to break off whenever he or she wants anyway. :/

[HymenaeusAlexander]

True point mymistake.  Then again.  The reader can choose to break off whenever he or she wants anyway. :/

 

"Oh hey, it's SquareOne's extimony. Wait a tick. 8,000 words?"

 

[SquareOne]

[Guest MadameX]

I look forward to it, but put it on your blog and post a link here? Break it into chapters? Make a Cliff Notes version?

[SquareOne]

I've got a solution.

 

As I have been writing it has naturally broken into two parts.  1. The general narrative of my conversion and deconversion, split into six or seven chapters.  2. Analysis of the several significant objections to Christianity that led me to deconvert (prayer, personal relationship, the Bible, the supernatural, hypocrisy).

 

I'm going to use it as something I give to friends who really want to understand my objections.  Maybe then an online blog space would be good, like you say MX 

[mymistake]

True point mymistake.  Then again.  The reader can choose to break off whenever he or she wants anyway. :/

 

 

Well yes, of course.  But if you mark it right then the reader can see where he or she left off and find the place again easily the next day.  That's all I meant.

[SquareOne]

Getting onto deconversion now.  I'm trying to express in words my relationship with God and how it began to deteriorate as I considered that perhaps he did not exist.  This is tough to write.

[Adrianime]

Getting onto deconversion now.  I'm trying to express in words my relationship with God and how it began to deteriorate as I considered that perhaps he did not exist.  This is tough to write.

 

You could just write all of the things you thought and felt about it....and then end with the sentence: "But, It turns out I was wrong." 

 

Just a joke.

[new2me]

My extimony was roughly 5,000 words, which seemed long at the time, but doesn't seem so long now.

 

Whether you decide to break it into two pieces or not, I'm looking forward to reading it!

[kolaida]

Pretty sure mine was long.  I was kind of emotionally vomiting all over the internet at the time (this place seemed to temper it A LOT! LOL). I registered to this site and just spontaneously wrote the biggest things that led me here. There was  a LOT more, but I keyed in on what the catalysts were for my meltdown in faith.  I like typing and find it comforting so I go on and on.  Plus, I think it might have to do something with OCD, too, but I am ALWAYS scared someone will misinterpret what I say if I don't explain stuff thoroughly enough so I try to make sure there are no loopholes or missing pieces.  Oddly enough,  I feel super guilty when I misinterpret someone's posts/words/whatever.  But you can only do so much.  It will feel good to get it out of your system and get some words of comforts. I know it felt exceedingly good for me. 

[QualifiedCommenter]

10k words isn't that long.

 

I don't really have a cohesive de-conversion story right now, but I've been writing about all of the things I have grown to have against Christianity in my blog, http://kindasortadeep.blogspot.com/. I've only had it for under a month and I would be surprised if I didn't cover at least 10k words so far. I also have a lot of things written for the blog that I didn't publish yet.

 

There's a lot to say about this kind of stuff, and to add a personal story in with it, if you go into any great detail, I would be surprised to see a cohesive deconversion story under 10k words. 

[SquareOne]

Up to 6000 now.  That's the basic narrative of my life.  I feel that I'm only just getting into my stride now, as I begin to talk about specific objections.  I'm beginning with miracle healing.  I could write all day on these subjects... 

[SquareOne]

This is a little preview of a section I have just been writing.  Thoughts appreciated.

 

YHWH

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most

unpleasant character in all fiction:

jealous and proud of it;

a petty, unjust, unforgiving
control-freak;

a vindictive,

bloodthirsty

ethnic cleanser;

a misogynistic,

homophobic,

racist,

infanticidal,

genocidal,

filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic,

capriciously malevolent

bully.”

Professor Richard Dawkins (2006)

When I first heard this quote in my early years as a Christian, I found it to be deeply offensive.  It was a horrendously insulting description of my heavenly Father.  I knew that my Father was a loving, self-sacrificing servant; whose love for me and all of humanity was overwhelming and unending.  The image Professor Dawkins conjured was completely at odds with the God that I knew and loved, and who loved me.

 

And yet, I knew why Prof. Dawkins had made this statement.  It was based on an interpretation of the character of God as presented in the Old Testament.  I decided that this atheist professor had come to this conclusion based on a mere cursory reading of the Old Testament, and that his theological insight was not deep enough, so he was not qualified to make such an assessment.  I shoved his criticisms to one side, and set my eyes on Christ: merciful, all-loving, and forgiving.

But the problem would not go away.  It had existed since I had first read the Bible as pre-teen, it had persisted when I was born again, and it continued after I heard this; scathing attack on the character of God.

 

Based on my own personal experience of myself, and others, there is not a morally decent Christian alive who can claim to have not struggled with some of the acts attributed to God in the Old Testament.  Rightly so!  Yahweh of the Old Testament is a truly terrifying character, and I firmly believe that on some level every Christian knows this.  Yet they shove it aside, lock it up in the recesses of their mind and throw away the key.

 

During my years as a Christian, I asked my Christian leaders why God did things in the Old Testament times that seem to be wrong to us in the modern world.  Why were his followers ordered to slaughter nations of people, down to the last child?

‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came
up from Egypt. 

 Now go,

attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them.

Do not spare them;

put to death

men

and women,

children and infants’

                                                                        Yahweh, 1 Samuel 15: 2-3

Why did God kill the firstborn child of every Egyptian family when his problem was with the Pharaoh’s stubbornness?

“At midnight tonight I will pass through the heard of Egypt.

All the firstborn sons

will die

in every family in Egypt,

from the oldest son of Pharaoh, who sits on this throne,

to the oldest son of his lowliest servant girl who grinds the flour.

Even the firstborn of the livestock will die.

Then a loud wail will rise throughout the land of Egypt,

a wail like no one has heard before

or will ever hear again."

 

I could understand the logic of killing Pharaoh himself if he did not do what he was told.  At a push, one might understand the sick, twisted logic of killing Pharaoh’s son, cruel and unusual though it would be, in order to coerce Pharaoh.  But to kill everybody’s eldest son – down the baby boy of the flour grinding servant girl?  And why the firstborn of the animals?  That’s a special kind of lunacy.  Christians regard this sort of behaviour as evil when someone else does it – like Herod – but seem to have no qualms with God doing it.

The troubles he sent on Egypt were but a trifling matter compared to the unfettered genocide that God unleashed upon every human being on Earth (except Noah and family).

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the
human heart was only evil all the time. 

The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth,

and his heart was deeply troubled.

So the Lord said,

“I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created

—and with them the animals,

the birds and the creatures that move along the ground

—for I regret that I have made them.” 

 

Yahweh, Genesis 6: 5-7

Was the wickedness of man so severe that God really had to kill every living thing on the planet in the Flood – including little children? And why death by water?  If he had to kill them – why not just stop their hearts, or obliterate them in a flash?  Was it necessary to put them through the trauma of drowning?  I picture the mothers, crying out as their children are snapped up by the fast-flowing currents, and swept away out of sight.  Consider the agony of their hearts, at seeing their children die, before they are themselves swallowed up by the waves and plunged into the abyss. 

I do not care that intelligent Christians see this story as allegorical.  The revealed nature of God through this metaphor is no less hideous simply because it did not literally happen.  He is content for us to understand his nature through this picture, and was content for less-informed human beings to understand this as his literal nature before we had a better understanding of earth history and science.  It is horrendous enough that one could consider this the act of a loving and just God.

Yahweh is a fiend; one of the worst villains in all human literature.  He acts with a similar attitude towards foreigners that human Kings and other leaders have displayed throughout history: total annihilation of everyone who gets in his way, not sparing the children.  Ghengis Khan pales in comparison.  Adolf Hitler does not come close to Yahweh’s thirst for blood.

[new2me]

Very well written, and spot on.  I look forward to reading the rest!

[RipVanWinkle]

God regretted making humans? Then why did this supposedly all knowing god create the human race in the first place? Xtians respond to this by saying it was allegorical. Do they mean he, in fact, knew that humans would be evil but created them anyway? So that he could kill his son and send the majority of people to hell? What a guy!