I'm still Christian

[Guest dozer]

I havent come here to evangelise. I have come here to learn and try to keep an open mind. We are all human after all. Labels can be problematic to good communication.

Are there many ex catholics on here? I am still Catholic though not a very good one at all. We Catholics were brainwashed I guess but I tend to stick to what I know. Its familiar and feels like home.Maybe Catholics didnt have as bad a time than the more rigid sola scriptura Christians. thats just my guess.

anyway look forward to whatever

[LogicalFallacy]

Hi, welcome to Ex-C

 

We welcome all who wish to learn and have an open mind.

 

I think there are more ex protestants here, but might be a few Ex Catholics... hands up anyone?

 

I think it's true to say that all religions indoctrinate their member to lesser or greater degrees. I was brought up in a very fundamentalist household so the indoctrination was very strong. It's certainly true that it's uncomfortable to challenge your worldviews, perhaps discover that what you've been taught since birth is not true. Some people look at that door and decide not to go trough it, for others the truth is more important than how it feels and so they walk through the door. Each must do what is best for themselves.

 

So do you have any questions in particular regarding religions, ex Christians etc?

 

Cheers

LF

[Orbit]

About 30% of the personal testimonies on here over the last 5 years are from ex-Catholics, so we're bound to have some ex-Catholics around.

[Margee]

25 minutes ago, dozer said:

I havent come here to evangelise. I have come here to learn and try to keep an open mind. We are all human after all. Labels can be problematic to good communication.

Are there many ex catholics on here? I am still Catholic though not a very good one at all. We Catholics were brainwashed I guess but I tend to stick to what I know. Its familiar and feels like home.Maybe Catholics didnt have as bad a time than the more rigid sola scriptura Christians. thats just my guess.

anyway look forward to whatever

Welcome  to Ex-c dozer. So glad you found us. Doesn't really matter what church you are coming from because the christian religion has 100 versions of doctrines that we have been brainwashed with and one of those is the Catholic church. So glad you are hear with an open mind. Ask all the questions you want! Looking forward to hearing more from you!

[Guest dozer]

29 minutes ago, Orbit said:

About 30% of the personal testimonies on here over the last 5 years are from ex-Catholics, so we're bound to have some ex-Catholics around.

useful stats thanks

[Guest dozer]

23 minutes ago, Margee said:

Welcome  to Ex-c dozer. So glad you found us. Doesn't really matter what church you are coming from because the christian religion has 100 versions of doctrines that we have been brainwashed with and one of those is the Catholic church. So glad you are hear with an open mind. Ask all the questions you want! Looking forward to hearing more from you!

sounds good.

would you say fundamentlist Christians can become fundamentalist atheists? sorry that might sound disrespectful

[Guest dozer]

42 minutes ago, LogicalFallacy said:

Hi, welcome to Ex-C

 

We welcome all who wish to learn and have an open mind.

 

I think there are more ex protestants here, but might be a few Ex Catholics... hands up anyone?

 

I think it's true to say that all religions indoctrinate their member to lesser or greater degrees. I was brought up in a very fundamentalist household so the indoctrination was very strong. It's certainly true that it's uncomfortable to challenge your worldviews, perhaps discover that what you've been taught since birth is not true. Some people look at that door and decide not to go trough it, for others the truth is more important than how it feels and so they walk through the door. Each must do what is best for themselves.

 

So do you have any questions in particular regarding religions, ex Christians etc?

 

Cheers

LF

im interested in the kind of person who leaves Christianity? any one particular personality  type? stubborn loner? lateral thinker? 

[Joshpantera]

26 minutes ago, dozer said:

sounds good.

would you say fundamentlist Christians can become fundamentalist atheists? sorry that might sound disrespectful

 

They often do. 

 

It's called, "New Atheism." And comes with many problems, same as christianity. For a more informed conversation about atheists and general, classical atheism, you've come to the right place. For instance, claiming, militantly, to know that god doesn't exist, is just as untenable a claim as claiming to know that god does exist. Neither are very truthful or truth seeking representative. And members here that veer off too left on the theistic spectrum generally get spanked for it by the more well understood members. It's like a peer review among non-believers. What can not be truthfully claimed, tends to get exposed. Whether its for or against god belief. 

 

You may enjoy your stay here.......

[Margee]

23 minutes ago, dozer said:

sounds good.

would you say fundamentlist Christians can become fundamentalist atheists? sorry that might sound disrespectful

Certainly people can go from one extreme to the next. Especially after they realize that a lot of stuff (doctrine) that has been pushed down our throats has been a lie. I've gone through many phases deconverting from religion. Right now I feel fairly balanced by just being a 'non-believer' until someone can give me definite truth and evidence. I'm OK not knowing. But I do get sad sometimes because I wanted  god to be real. And I don't think ''he/she/it'' is.  

[Guest dozer]

this place has a good vibe already.

[◊ Weezer ◊]

16 minutes ago, dozer said:

this place has a good vibe already.

 

WELCOME!  Hopefully it will stay that way, but occasionally some bad vibes get started.  Just hang in there if they do.

 

I am not Catholic, but was in a "Church of Christ" that claimed to be nondenominational.  They claimed to be THE church that Jesus founded, and that you needed to go through certain rituals to be saved.  So in that way they seem to be similar to the Catholic church. 

 

I think I was born with a curious and logical mind, and my "de-conversion" took roots when after years of questions, and eventually being confused about which church was the "true" church, I prayed to find the TRUTH about religion.  To make a long story short, 10 years of study led to my being agnostic.  My leaving religion was not due to bad experiences at church.  It was due to life experiences, inconsistencies I saw in the Bible (and at church), and a study of the history of religions and Gods.  Look through the TESTIMONIAL section for different peoples stories.  Mine is called TRUTH: A GRADUAL AWAKENING.   

[◊ Weezer ◊]

1 hour ago, dozer said:

im interested in the kind of person who leaves Christianity? any one particular personality  type? stubborn loner? lateral thinker? 

 

We seem to be a VERY diverse group.  The commonality seems to be an open mind, and desire to find truth.  And some, if not several, have had abuses that seemed inconsistent with Christianity that helped to drive them away.   

[midniterider]

15 hours ago, dozer said:

I havent come here to evangelise. I have come here to learn and try to keep an open mind. We are all human after all. Labels can be problematic to good communication.

Are there many ex catholics on here? I am still Catholic though not a very good one at all. We Catholics were brainwashed I guess but I tend to stick to what I know. Its familiar and feels like home.Maybe Catholics didnt have as bad a time than the more rigid sola scriptura Christians. thats just my guess.

anyway look forward to whatever

 

G'day.

 

It seems to me that the Pentecostal sect that I belonged to was more rigid than what I imagine the Catholic church to be , as we were expected to have a personal relationship with Jesus and consider some thoughts to be crimes. See Mt 5:28+ And confession wasnt really an institutionalized thing like the Catholics have. So it was a more emotional guilt-laden thing to confess your sin because you weren't supposed to be doing it in the first place.

 

I remember listening to something on the local super-fundy radio station about how once you are saved and your sins are wiped clean, you are not protected against further sinning (according to the speaker's draconian interpretation of the bible). As if people were able to just not sin anymore, right? What a crock of nonsense. 

 

Of course now I just feel that biblical sin itself is nonsense.  Thoughts aren't crimes. Actions can be, but not thoughts. 

 

p.s. Glad to have a not-very-good-Catholic onboard here.

[Guest dozer]

1 hour ago, midniterider said:

remember listening to something on the local super-fundy radio station about how once you are saved and your sins are wiped clean, you are not protected against further sinning (according to the speaker's draconian interpretation of the bible). As if people were able to just not sin anymore, right? What a crock of nonsense. 

 

it is. Just goes to show that we humans can swallow anything as "logical" or 'reasonable" if we are in the mood to please or fit in. Ive visited a few conservative catholic sites and they can be just as rigid as anyone.

[Guest dozer]

Im guessing I am in the minority here. And will have to defend my faith. Seriously want to avoid apologetics if possible. maybe because im not good at it.

I cling to my faith. I need God to exist. there is something about the power of belief I like. 

From a gratitude point of view, God exists for me. The creator of all things seen and unseen. Gratitude is one way of escaping  depression and depressing thoughts.

I would hate to think I am on my deathbed with no faith. Nothing to look forward to. If this life is the only one, a lot of things don't make sense to me. So the rich and successful win? and the rest of us die with envy and annoyance?

Dostoyevsky said that if God doesn't exist, we can do anything. there is no judgement day, therefore anything is permissible. That sounds too chaotic to me. Unbelief and atheism sounds like chaos to me. I don't like chaos.

[TABA]

16 hours ago, dozer said:

I havent come here to evangelise. I have come here to learn and try to keep an open mind. We are all human after all. Labels can be problematic to good communication.

Are there many ex catholics on here? I am still Catholic though not a very good one at all. We Catholics were brainwashed I guess but I tend to stick to what I know. Its familiar and feels like home.Maybe Catholics didnt have as bad a time than the more rigid sola scriptura Christians. thats just my guess.

anyway look forward to whatever

 

Hi dozer, and welcome to our community!  This is a good place for somebody who wants to learn and keep an open mind.  

 

I'm an ex-Catholic, but also an ex-fundamentalist Christian!  Was raised Catholic, started to lapse in my 20s but through some good friends developed an interest in the Bible and ended up being baptized (by full immersion this time) into the Church of Christ.  At that point I kinda turned off my critical thinking when it came to religion and spent the next 20 years on auto-pilot, in terms of belief.  But I always had some doubts and around the age of 50 I finally faced them, did a lot of reading and thinking, and deconverted just within the past 5 years.  I feel like my beliefs (or lack of belief in this case) finally match who I am as a person.  It feels good.  Interestingly, I attend Mass again regularly now, but as a non-believer: my wife, who was also raised Catholic, wanted to go back and I find it much more tolerable than a fundy church.  Maybe in a sense I'm still culturally Catholic: I like the feeling of mysticism that the Catholic church has and which others lack.  I like the candles, the stained-glass, the organ, the incense.  But I'm very much an agnostic atheist!

 

Looking forward to hearing more from you!

[TruthSeeker0]

15 hours ago, dozer said:

im interested in the kind of person who leaves Christianity? any one particular personality  type? stubborn loner? lateral thinker? 

There's no one type of person that leaves Christianity the people here are varied and diverse. The one thing we do seem to have in common is an open and questioning mind. 

 

Welcome to ex-c. 

[TruthSeeker0]

18 minutes ago, dozer said:

Im guessing I am in the minority here. And will have to defend my faith. Seriously want to avoid apologetics if possible. maybe because im not good at it.

I cling to my faith. I need God to exist. there is something about the power of belief I like. 

From a gratitude point of view, God exists for me. The creator of all things seen and unseen. Gratitude is one way of escaping  depression and depressing thoughts.

I would hate to think I am on my deathbed with no faith. Nothing to look forward to. If this life is the only one, a lot of things don't make sense to me. So the rich and successful win? and the rest of us die with envy and annoyance?

Dostoyevsky said that if God doesn't exist, we can do anything. there is no judgement day, therefore anything is permissible. That sounds too chaotic to me. Unbelief and atheism sounds like chaos to me. I don't like chaos.

It makes more sense when you realize that we too are part of the animal kingdom and aren't completely exempt from what Darwin referred to as the survival of the fittest. 

I don't think it's chaos for you. I think it's meaning. 

When you leave Christianity you learn to find meaning in life, not meaning outside of life. 

[florduh]

1 hour ago, dozer said:

Dostoyevsky said that if God doesn't exist, we can do anything.

All evidence is to the contrary.

[LogicalFallacy]

18 hours ago, dozer said:

im interested in the kind of person who leaves Christianity? any one particular personality  type? stubborn loner? lateral thinker? 

 

I don't think there is a 'type' so to speak. But certain attributes are necessary. Curiosity, an open mind, a willingness to challenge your preconceptions and biases. I think if you don't have those attributes you are liable to stay stuck in any dogma or ideology - not just Christianity.

 

2 hours ago, dozer said:

Im guessing I am in the minority here. And will have to defend my faith. Seriously want to avoid apologetics if possible. maybe because im not good at it.

 

I'd say you are correct - this afterall an Ex-Christian site. Note its not an "atheist" site, though many of us are. This is what many Christians don't understand when they come here. They come here with the mindset quite often that we are atheists with no knowledge of Christianity which fails to recognise that we actually come from all stripes of Christianity from fundamentalists, to Catholics, to Mormons... wait any ex Mormons here? Ex laestadians etc.

 

Quote

I cling to my faith. I need God to exist. there is something about the power of belief I like.

 

Ok... but what if God doesn't actually exist? What we want, and what is actually the case often don't match. I want dragons to be real - been fascinated by the idea of them since childhood. I can even come up with 'evidence' for their existence. Sadly it just isn't the case.

 

Quote

From a gratitude point of view, God exists for me. The creator of all things seen and unseen. Gratitude is one way of escaping  depression and depressing thoughts.

I would hate to think I am on my deathbed with no faith. Nothing to look forward to. If this life is the only one, a lot of things don't make sense to me. So the rich and successful win? and the rest of us die with envy and annoyance?

 

I think you 'win' if you have a happy life and do your best to live honestly by your values. As far as nothing to look forward to - did you look forward to your birth for the billions of years you didn't exist? No. So will it be after you die. It's jut religion has told us that there is something to look forward to, and when we think that isn't the case it upsets us. But why? You didn't care about the billions of years you didn't exist before you were born, why care about the billions after you die?

 

Quote

Dostoyevsky said that if God doesn't exist, we can do anything. there is no judgement day, therefore anything is permissible. That sounds too chaotic to me. Unbelief and atheism sounds like chaos to me. I don't like chaos.

 

Dostoyevsky , and by extension, Jorden Petersen is wrong. We can't do just 'anything'. There are consequences in this life - the one we know we have.

 

Under a religious view I will face the same punishment as the likes of Hitler and Stalin and yet I would bet my salvation that I live a more moral life than 90% of Christians... depending on how fundamental we take morals as. And yet I get eternal damnation along with Hitler and Stalin. Why? Simply because I don't believe any gods exist. Under your worldview where is the justice in that? You might think atheism is chaos, but Christianity is immoral to the highest degree.

 

Something to think about? 

[Orbit]

18 hours ago, dozer said:

im interested in the kind of person who leaves Christianity? any one particular personality  type? stubborn loner? lateral thinker? 

 

There's a difference between leaving Christianity and leaving fundamentalist Christianity. People's experiences with it, and reactions to it, are going to depend on what kind of religious community, if any, they were affiliated with. There are all types of people on Ex-C. I did a content analysis of a random sample of 5 years' worth of "extimonies" (stories of leaving the faith) posted here, and there was no one "type" of person. There were highly committed pastors, highly committed Christians who were embedded in deeply Christian families and communities, there were people who started to question their religion as they became more educated in college, there were people who just couldn't reconcile the Christian attitudes towards LGBTQ people, there were those who had a crisis of faith because of unanswered prayer, I could go on but there were single people, married people, young, middle aged, and older. In short, there's no one pattern to a type of person that leaves the faith with the exception of one bit of research (not mine) that showed those who scored higher on the Big 5 personality test on the dimension of "openness to new experiences" were more likely to deconvert.

[midniterider]

 

 

3 hours ago, dozer said:

Im guessing I am in the minority here. And will have to defend my faith. Seriously want to avoid apologetics if possible. maybe because im not good at it.

 

If you assert that God exists you will be asked to show evidence. 

 

Quote

I cling to my faith. I need God to exist. there is something about the power of belief I like. 

From a gratitude point of view, God exists for me. The creator of all things seen and unseen. Gratitude is one way of escaping  depression and depressing thoughts.

 

I'm agnostic so I dont mind thinking some supreme being may exist. But if I think too much about it , like applying logical, reason, digging for evidence ... then the God idea falls apart and no actual God ever steps in to show me the truth. 

 

Quote

I would hate to think I am on my deathbed with no faith. Nothing to look forward to. If this life is the only one, a lot of things don't make sense to me. So the rich and successful win? and the rest of us die with envy and annoyance?

 

On the one hand, I would like to have continuation. But if I'm dead then I'll have no further wants. One entertaining idea though is that I will reincarnate, or perhaps go to a pagan Summerland. A lack of afterlife seems about as unlikely as my birth in a universe largely hostile to life. That's just conjecture, but I'm ok with it.

 

What will you do in heaven? Forever and ever? Pray? Praise God? (Yawn). Just sayin. I think Christians tend to be more concerned about 'getting' the prize than considering what the prize really is. An eternity with the guy that got pissed and drowned everyone in a Great Flood... Hmmm.

 

Quote

Dostoyevsky said that if God doesn't exist, we can do anything. there is no judgement day, therefore anything is permissible. That sounds too chaotic to me. Unbelief and atheism sounds like chaos to me. I don't like chaos.

 

People do anything they want as it is, dont they? People still commit murder and kidnap children for sex slavery. Under the watchful eye of God? 

 

 

...

 

Faith may provide some benefits .... or rather, attending church as a luke-warm believer (tending towards non-believer) might have a social/cultural benefit... I just wouldnt allow myself to be controlled by it (anymore).

[♦ ficino ♦]

Hello dozer, I am an ex-Catholic. At one point I was planning on entering the Benedictines. I'm not culturally brought up as Catholic, though, since I started out "getting saved" through the Assemblies of God. I became a Catholic later on, when it seemed clear that the Reformation didn't have a firm basis for the break-away. But after that, I gradually drifted out of Christianity/Catholicism altogether. Some philosophical types think there are compelling arguments to be made for the existence of a first unmoved mover, but I think those arguments rely on unsupported premises. I think the particular claims of Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, that it is the one true expression of a first unmoved mover's nature, and of our and the universe's relation to the FUM, are extremely poor, and some of them are downright self-contradictory. I value a lot about the Catholic tradition and its effects on the world, but there is much else that I think is harmful.

[Guest dozer]

im in a hurry. just scanned some answers.

some of them kind of ridiculing which is disappointing tbh.

As i said i wont win any debating contest. I will never be able to prove Gods existence. Faith is more right brain than left anyway. 

But you wont be able to prove Christians wrong either. If the idea is to shift my pov from Christian to non Christian , some need to work on their skills of persuasion. sorry gotta go

[Orbit]

9 minutes ago, dozer said:

im in a hurry. just scanned some answers.

some of them kind of ridiculing which is disappointing tbh.

As i said i wont win any debating contest. I will never be able to prove Gods existence. Faith is more right brain than left anyway. 

But you wont be able to prove Christians wrong either. If the idea is to shift my pov from Christian to non Christian , some need to work on their skills of persuasion. sorry gotta go

 

We can prove that the earth was not created in 6 days like the Bible says. There's lots of stuff we can prove, but the way that you ask your questions shows you haven't thought much about it in depth. I think people are just reacting to that.