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Goodbye Jesus

Who deconverted you?


ConsiderTheSource

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A combination of things.

 

I was raised catholic, but I remember having questions from a very early age.  I was about 4 years old and heard the Abraham/Issac fable for the first time.  Although I had no reason to think so, I was terrified that my parents would kill me if God told them to.  I asked them and they assured me that they would never do such a thing.  But I wasn't satisfied with what my parents said.   I had to know if other people out there would kill their kids.  I was worried that my cousins and friends would be killed.  So for months I asked my aunts and uncles, friends of my parents, even strangers in the grocery store what they would do.  Thankfully, nobody answered that they would kill their kids.   However when I asked why would God EVER ask such a thing, I never got a satisfactory answer from anyone.  Ever.  A test of faith?  That never settled well for me.  

 

When I was in catholic school in 6th grade, we learned about Greek and Roman mythology.  The catholic slant on all these gods was that it was humanity's attempt at getting back to God after The Fall.  We assigned all these traits to various gods.  In the end, the One True GodTM, Jesus, had all these traits wrapped up in one supreme being, so there was no need for the mythological gods anymore.   I, in all seriousness, said maybe that's why the name Jesus sounded so much like Zeus, as in Hey-Zeus.   My teacher was speechless, which was probably lucky for me.  But that thought stayed with me.  

 

In public high school in 10th grade World History, we had a unit on the world's religions.   There were so many religions, all of which believed they had the truth.   That was also when I read the bible in its entirety. I found myself shaking my head during much of the time.    

 

 

   

 

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22 hours ago, ConsiderTheSource said:

MOHO on another thread stated "I have had zero success in deconverting anyone".

 

This prompted me to ask everyone here this:  Who deconverted you? 

 

I ask this as a lot of us here are pained daily due to folks we care about being under religious delusion, and our natural desire to "fix" this somehow.  My guess is the vast majority of answers to my inquiry will be "myself"....and hence points to the futility of even attempting  making a major attempt to deconvert anyone.   But, maybe I will find my hypothesis to be wrong.  

 

So, everyone, who deconverted you?

 

My answer is not like most of the others my friend. For I found my deconversion upon a spiritual journey which lead me to the all knowing one, his messiah, and his disciples filled with knowledge of all things. 

 

The all knowing one and great oracle of instant wisdom whom we will call "Google" has answered many questions of mine in past times. And I have found the wise Google provides me with much information for my questioning and troubled soul. 

 

There came a time in which I called upon all mighty Google to explain to me various things of biblical history. The almighty and all knowing Google informed me that the bible was a great ancient heap of camel dung which humans have mistakenly taken to be the truth, through indoctrinated ignorance.

 

The great and powerful Google has shown me many visions through his son and messiah "You Tube"! He has shown me many truths in these visions. These visions have comforted and rested my troubled mind even tho this wisdom comes at a price. For the worshippers of the great heap of camel dung hate the truth. Many of these dung worshippers of whom I once was will spit at and revile those who have been enlightened by Google, his apostles, and his disciples.

 

These disciples can easily be found at "The congregational not so faithful church of Ex-Christian.net." These Googlenian disciples are wise beyond words themselves and lead me to much more knowledge and pointed me to the writings of some of the apostles such as Dawkins, Ehrman, and Price. 

 

As such my journey continues. While I may be buffeted by dung worshippers from time to time I know that the truth is with me. And finally having truth for once in my life is worth it.

 

Dark Bishop

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22 hours ago, ConsiderTheSource said:

MOHO on another thread stated "I have had zero success in deconverting anyone".

 

This prompted me to ask everyone here this:  Who deconverted you? 

 

I ask this as a lot of us here are pained daily due to folks we care about being under religious delusion, and our natural desire to "fix" this somehow.  My guess is the vast majority of answers to my inquiry will be "myself"....and hence points to the futility of even attempting  making a major attempt to deconvert anyone.   But, maybe I will find my hypothesis to be wrong.  

 

So, everyone, who deconverted you?

 

Three people were indispensably helpful in my journey out of indoctrination.

 

Me, myself, and I.

 

I pondered a childhood's comment that all religions think they are the one, and only true religion.

I reflected for years after my nephew remarked, when I was maybe 10 or 11, that god is a myth.  

I held many a speaker in contempt during my forced Mormon years growing when those speakers attempted to bolster the doctrine with their   own absurd and unbelievable accounts of their own experiences.

 

Lastly I took it upon myself to READ the Bible with an open mind. That attitude is continuing with my self immersion in the works of Ehrman, Dawkins, and Hitchens.

 

Excellent topic, @ConsiderTheSource !!!

 

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1 hour ago, buffettphan said:

When I was in catholic school in 6th grade, we learned about Greek and Roman mythology.

 

 

   

 

 

You were lucky to have studied that so early. I didn't study these until university. I was already deconverting at the time but was still in that stage of the nagging feeling "what if I'm wrong" when I read Oedipus Rex in theater class. That sealed the deal for me. It was like the man behind the curtain was revealed. The play was written some 600 years before year 0 and the story of a son of a king sacrificing himself to save the members of his kingdom from God's wrath was just too close to the gospel story to have been a coincidence. I came away from that class with a confidence that the whole thing was just bullshit that the nagging feelings never returned.  

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14 hours ago, sdelsolray said:

 

From what I have observed over the years, although not from my own personal experience, religious peer pressure is the largest and most forceful impediment to deconversion.  Of course, the intellectual aspect of deconversion, which is an internal and personal journey, has to occur first and before the peer pressure aspect arises. 

Yes and it's very subtle sometimes and all encompassing. Because you don't even realise that unacceptable boundaries have been created when you grow up in such an atmosphere. Only when you grow away and continue to get that pressure in the form of inappropriate prying into your private life and questions that you know are veiled comments meant to ensure that you are still "in the fold" do you realize how large of an impact that pressure has had on your decisions. Many of us can't cut the final strings until we are ready to face a future that involves alienation from all the social support we have known, because that's the other side of the coin. 

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     Me.  The short version is I had basically worked my way out over a few years without trying or even realizing it.  I had no idea what not being xian meant.  So I just lived a life of not believing but not not being xian.  I'm not Catholic but I was in limbo. ;) It wasn't until I finally had to accept that there wasn't a god, full-stop, that I tried exploring a few other options over a few weeks, maybe months, but found it pointless, tried an equally short stint as agnostic, deistic and finally tossed it all.

 

          mwc

 

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I'll jump on the bandwagon. It was a combination of me starting to dislike christians more and more, wanting to have answers for my faith since I was so uncomfortable evangelizing, and discovering people like Matt Dillahunty, Bart Ehrman, and Christopher Hitchens who just made sense to me. 

 

So...me with help?

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I deconverted after first ending up in a situation that made me think "this God cannot be on my side, all this guidance and I could have died or gone extremely crazy following it to the end", and then months later I figured out that all my "evidence", "conversations with jesus" etc was just my own, powerful but quite troubled, mind.

 

The latter was ignited by an authority figure asking me some good questions, but the first situation was me feeling lonelier than ever. No one else could make me see it earlier.

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What opened the door and got it all started was reading Bart Ehrman's books: Misquoting Jesus and Jesus, Interrupted. I came from the bible is 100% perfect and there are no flaws in it sect of christianity. So when I found out that the bible contained scientifically wrong info, that god's mighty prophets were actually false one's who's predictions never came true, countless contradictions, discrepancies and out right forged books...I deconverted. I would say books and educating myself on christianity and science is what de-converted me. There was no person in my life personally that did it. 

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  • 1 year later...

Common sense and logic

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Like most people its a lot of information from many sources.  I would say the one document that stands out in my memory was The Atheist Manifesto but Jeff Clark (from what I can tell he was an Australian student when he sent his 3 page bullet point list of problems with religion).  I have no idea how I came across the document, it would have pre-dated the internet so maybe on a disk from someone...  it wasn't the arguments on the document, but it gave me numerous questions that I looked into. It opened my eyes to potential avenues of questioning.

I still have the document, it says it was written Sept 1995.  Not well written like Dawkins or amusing like Hitchins, but just different enough to me to spike my interest.

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The people in the church deconverted me...tripping over their tongues trying to answer my questions. To be honest, I used to ask questions of them just to watch them struggle with answers. It was entertainment for me. :D

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4 hours ago, Derek said:

The people in the church deconverted me...tripping over their tongues trying to answer my questions. To be honest, I used to ask questions of them just to watch them struggle with answers. It was entertainment for me. :D

 

You sick, twisted FREAK!  :eek:

I LIKE it! :58:

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1 hour ago, MOHO said:

 

You sick, twisted FREAK!  :eek:

I LIKE it! :58:

Thought you might. :D

 

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1 hour ago, Burnedout said:

Nobody deconverted me, but rather I deconverted myself.  I first noticed, when I was paying attention, that what was promised never happened, then when I realized that, I simply started to look at what was said and how it was very incongruous.  After that, I started to ask questions of verses that were a problem and the people who were SUPPOSED to know just tried to sidestep and divert.  

 

Very similar to my process. 

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On ‎10‎/‎4‎/‎2017 at 4:39 AM, yunea said:

I deconverted after first ending up in a situation that made me think "this God cannot be on my side, all this guidance and I could have died or gone extremely crazy following it to the end", and then months later I figured out that all my "evidence", "conversations with jesus" etc was just my own, powerful but quite troubled, mind.

I am still going through the strong and very painful  emotions and trying to fully accept  that " God is NOT on my side and NOT helping me and whoever or whatever exists out there, IF anything does, probably NEVER will help me"...I am alone, I am all I have . This is the hardest part of deconversion for me.

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On 10/3/2017 at 10:38 AM, DarkBishop said:

 

My answer is not like most of the others my friend. For I found my deconversion upon a spiritual journey which lead me to the all knowing one, his messiah, and his disciples filled with knowledge of all things. 

 

The all knowing one and great oracle of instant wisdom whom we will call "Google" has answered many questions of mine in past times. And I have found the wise Google provides me with much information for my questioning and troubled soul. 

 

 

I'm going to go with Dark Bishop here. Of course, it had to have a start.  I had published a religious "E-Zine" on GeoCities back in the early days of the World Wide Web. The 'zine was compiled by two preachers who had others write articles for it each month. The WWW was used very early as a way of "spreading the Gospel" and I, sadly, was a part of it. That was long before Google. At some point when I began to question the specific doctrines my church taught (like the idea that taking one sip of alcohol is a sin) the Internet proved to be a very quick way to find information. (In those days, I was using MetaCrawler as a search engine, which would submit your query to multiple search engines.) The history of Welch's Grape Juice  and the "Temperance Movement" is interesting! But mostly I used the Internet to help me refine the doctrine that I already believed.

 

It was one morning in church when I randomly noticed there was no "Satan" in the story of Eve and the Serpent (Genesis 3) that I set out on my path to deconversion. Then, Google really became the oracle I needed. The next day I gave up fundamentalism, and within a month I was an atheist. Had it not been for the Internet I might have spent hours and hours in the local library, I suppose, but I probably wouldn't have bothered. So thanks to the availability of Google, I know the truth and the truth has set me free.

 

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The lord deconverted me.  god is truly good.

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3 hours ago, Lerk said:

 

I'm going to go with Dark Bishop here. Of course, it had to have a start.  I had published a religious "E-Zine" on GeoCities back in the early days of the World Wide Web. The 'zine was compiled by two preachers who had others write articles for it each month. The WWW was used very early as a way of "spreading the Gospel" and I, sadly, was a part of it. That was long before Google. At some point when I began to question the specific doctrines my church taught (like the idea that taking one sip of alcohol is a sin) the Internet proved to be a very quick way to find information. (In those days, I was using MetaCrawler as a search engine, which would submit your query to multiple search engines.) The history of Welch's Grape Juice  and the "Temperance Movement" is interesting! But mostly I used the Internet to help me refine the doctrine that I already believed.

 

It was one morning in church when I randomly noticed there was no "Satan" in the story of Eve and the Serpent (Genesis 3) that I set out on my path to deconversion. Then, Google really became the oracle I needed. The next day I gave up fundamentalism, and within a month I was an atheist. Had it not been for the Internet I might have spent hours and hours in the local library, I suppose, but I probably wouldn't have bothered. So thanks to the availability of Google, I know the truth and the truth has set me free.

 

Same. The internet is a wonderful thing, I would still be stuck in the bronze ages without it. 

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