Hi Everybody

[Moby]

At least hi to anyone who gets this far.

 

I was raised a baptist in a christian home in MS and maintained my faith until my early 50's. My conversion, or de-conversion, depending on one's point of view, was gradual, taking close to ten years.

 

The beginnings of my transformation started roughly fifteen years ago when I attempted to outline my own apologetic. Eventually, An honest assessment of all I learned during this process forced me to conclude that the entire structure of my belief was built on an invisible foundation. 

 

Though it was hard at first, and there are still issues with family, I feel mentally freer than at any point in my christian life.

 

Cheers,

Moby

[LogicalFallacy]

Hi Moby

 

Welcome to Ex-C! Glad you have made it thus far and found us.

 

Your story echo's the experiences' of many of us. Did you ever have a defining moment where at that point you knew you no longer believed?

[disillusioned]

37 minutes ago, Moby said:

The beginnings of my transformation started roughly fifteen years ago when I attempted to outline my own apologetic. Eventually, An honest assessment of all I learned during this process forced me to conclude that the entire structure of my belief was built on an invisible foundation. 

 

This happened to me as well. I tried writing a detailed, intellectually honest defense of the faith,  and found that I couldn't. And here we are. 

 

Welcome!

[TABA]

Hi Moby - welcome to our community of apostates!

 

I was also in my early 50s when I deconverted - just within the last five or six years.  Better late than never!  That feeling of mental freedom is very familiar to me and to many others here.  Letting go of the entire belief system and no longer having to do mental gymnastics to make things fit  - it feels good, doesn’t it!  

 

Anybody who starts using reason to honestly examine the claims of Christianity - or any other god claims - eventually comes to the realization that it just doesn’t work out.  Some people reach that stage and suppress that realization, continuing in their faith.  You and I and the others here couldn’t or wouldn’t suppress it, and so here we are.  This community has been a huge help to me. It’s always a pleasure to welcome and encourage newcomers as I was once welcomed and encouraged.  I hope you’ll be active here!

 

All the Best,

TABA

[Joshpantera]

Welcome to the club Moby! 

[Insightful]

Hi Moby!  Welcome.  For me it was the cumulative weight of unsolvable theological / biblical problems that I kept trying to ignore.   For many of the problems I encountered as a Christian, I was able to convince myself with hermeneutical gymnastics into thinking they weren't problems, or at least they weren't big enough problems to Rattle me.   But some problems just couldn't be explained to my satisfaction no matter what length I went to rationalize them. One by one they piled up until the cumulative weight was too much.

 

I remembered feeling like I had so many problems that required faith to accept. But then I began to wonder what evidence was providing me with the faith in the first place to be able to accept all the problems on faith...

 

Ultimately I realized I was only continuing on in Christianity because I kept giving it the benefit of the doubt. Until one day I asked myself why am I giving it the benefit of the doubt??

[Derek]

Welcome, Moby...many of us here have had somewhat similar experiences. It all starts with trying to reconcile religion with reality.

[Jagdish]

Welcome

 

[◊ DestinyTurtle ◊]

Welcome to X-Xian, @Moby! I'm so glad that you feel freer now! Cudos on the courage it took over the years to wake up to the truth 

 

[MOHO]

Welcome to Ex-C, @Moby.

Glad you found us.

 

Congrats on your new found freedom and having the intellectual strength to think and research your way out of the mid control. This can be especially challenging in an environment (family, social fabric etc) that is so ensconced in the group think and mental gymnastics. 

 

    - MOHO (Mind Of His Own)

[Lerk]

Welcome! I was 52. (This was 7 years ago.) But unlike you, from the time I had what I call a "wait... what?" moment until the time I didn't believe at all anymore was only about a month.

 

What I've realized since then is that I never actually had faith. I thought I had actual reasons to believe. Having been in a fundamentalist church (the "non-institutional" branch of the Churches of Christ in the US) I had always been told that if you could find one error or contradiction in the Bible, you might as well through the whole thing out. Their belief that the god could have made the Bible 100% true and consistent from beginning to end, and therefore he would have, really helped to speed my deconversion! The only reason it took as long as it did was that I first had to determine whether there was anything to liberal Christianity, but after a few weeks of study I found that I just didn't buy the premise.

 

Anyway, welcome aboard. Looking forward to conversing with you.