Hello!

[LogicalFallacy]

10 minutes ago, TheDeconvertedMan said:

Yep, sure is.

 

Well there ya go. I incorporate some of Mark's material into my weight training. Good to find another member doing the same.

[TheDeconvertedMan]

11 minutes ago, LogicalFallacy said:

Good to find another member doing the same.

It had a huge positive impact on me when I first started. 

[Joshpantera]

10 hours ago, TheDeconvertedMan said:

My best guess right now is it has something to do with someone being more in tune with their own intuition and having higher levels of discernment, even when they're young. But being intuitive, discerning, and wise are usually characteristics of older people. So where do they come from in these kids? Again, I don't know.

 

Personality types is where I've taken it. I never used to pay close attention to it. But my wife is big on it and I started seeing a lot of answers to old questions coming to light through that lens. 

 

There are more and less intuitive personalities. Extroverted, introverted, and so on. I happen to be intuitive. And stopped believing the fairy tales fairly young. Not through research, I was just a kid. Intuitively I figured out it was bullshit by just paying attention. Contradictions. Inconsistencies. Double standards. And soon it was obvious to me that the adults were playing 'make believe' with each other and the teens and children alike. One big game of make believe. Once I saw it, I could never go back to unseeing it...

[TheDeconvertedMan]

3 minutes ago, Joshpantera said:

Personality types is where I've taken it.

That makes a lot of sense. If a kid has intuition in his Myers Briggs type then his bullshit detector may go off sooner than others.

 

I'm an INTJ.

[Joshpantera]

11 hours ago, TheDeconvertedMan said:

That makes a lot of sense. If a kid has intuition in his Myers Briggs type then his bullshit detector may go off sooner than others.

 

I'm an INTJ.

 

I'm an INTJ. 

 

Just by the way you express yourself in the few posts I've read here, I could tell that we had some type of similarity in personality. 

[TheDeconvertedMan]

17 minutes ago, Joshpantera said:

Just by the way you express yourself in the few posts I've read here, I could tell that we had some type of similarity in personality. 

Ha. I've gotten that before. 

[TheRedneckProfessor]

One of my personalities is INTJ; but the rest of us don't talk to him.  What a weirdo.

[Robert_Tulip]

On 3/7/2021 at 5:11 AM, TheDeconvertedMan said:

You essentially have 3 options:

 

1. Those who know religion is a load of crap from the beginning and never believe.

2. Those who believe it at first but then stop believing later.

3. Those who double down on their beliefs and believe for their whole lives.

 

This summary brings me to mention a difference of view I have with many ex-Christians.

 

There is also a fourth option, to recognise that Biblical texts that Christians interpret as literal history were actually intended as parables.  I put all miracles and the existence of Jesus Christ in that category, as metaphorical parables. 

 

That is different from the 'load of crap' atheist view.  It is also different from the 'stop believing' bitterness of ex-Christians which arises by polar reaction against the toxic doctrine of fundamentalist inerrancy.  Reading the Bible as metaphor rejects the binary true/false logic of deconversion.  Instead it finds the meaning of the text in its message for us today rather than its alleged evidence of the existence of a personal interventionist God.

 

Metaphorical reading is a way to salvage moral meaning from the Bible.  For example heaven and hell are metaphors for our real planetary future, defined at the biggest scale by whether civilization prospers or collapses.  Nothing in the Bible should be read as literal Gospel Truth except people and places that have strong external historical corroboration.

[Joshpantera]

14 minutes ago, Robert_Tulip said:

You essentially have 3 options:

 

1. Those who know religion is a load of crap from the beginning and never believe.

2. Those who believe it at first but then stop believing later.

3. Those who double down on their beliefs and believe for their whole lives.

 

14 minutes ago, Robert_Tulip said:

There is also a fourth option, to recognise that Biblical texts that Christians interpret as literal history were actually intended as parables.  I put all miracles and the existence of Jesus Christ in that category, as metaphorical parables. 

 

Robert, I'm going to "INTJ" analyze your post above. I see it not as a 4th category unto it's own, but merely a rendition of the 2nd category. 

 

The reason is because you believed it as literally true at first, but then stopped believing it as literally true later. Just like me. We're not in two separate categories. Reading it as parable equates to not believing it anymore. You don't believe the miracles or existence of Jesus. Neither do I. Neither does anyone in the 2nd category. We have some other way of looking at it aside from being literally true. 

 

14 minutes ago, Robert_Tulip said:

That is different from the 'load of crap' atheist view.  It is also different from the 'stop believing' bitterness of ex-Christians which arises by polar reaction against the toxic doctrine of fundamentalist inerrancy.  Reading the Bible as metaphor rejects the binary true/false logic of deconversion.  Instead it finds the meaning of the text in its message for us today rather than its alleged evidence of the existence of a personal interventionist God.

 

Metaphorical reading is a way to salvage moral meaning from the Bible.  For example heaven and hell are metaphors for our real planetary future, defined at the biggest scale by whether civilization prospers or collapses.  Nothing in the Bible should be read as literal Gospel Truth except people and places that have strong external historical corroboration.

 

The details can vary, as you show above.

 

But at the end of the day, we're just a coupe of guys who used to believe the bible stories who at some point stopped believing them. Taking them as metaphor isn't the same as believing they are true stories or factual, as you've outlined. 

 

The people who used to believe it literally and then stopped, are merely one group of people. Some look at metaphor and symbolism and some don't bother anymore with it at all. But we're the same lot. Those who used to believe it literally who no longer do. 

[Robert_Tulip]

18 minutes ago, Joshpantera said:

you believed it as literally true at first, but then stopped believing it as literally true later

The extent of my previous literal belief was only that Jesus Christ was a real person and that the Gospels were based on real history. 

 

I have never believed that miracles are possible, or that a literal God exists, although I did puzzle over whether the resurrection might be possible in my twenties.

 

Belief in miracles is a moral affront to the grandeur of the laws of physics.  

 

My deconversion from Christ realism, courtesy of the great Earl Doherty, occurred in 2009 when I first encountered the powerful logic of his argument that Jesus Christ was entirely a fictional invention. 

[Joshpantera]

38 minutes ago, Robert_Tulip said:

The extent of my previous literal belief was only that Jesus Christ was a real person and that the Gospels were based on real history. 

 

I have never believed that miracles are possible, or that a literal God exists, although I did puzzle over whether the resurrection might be possible in my twenties.

 

Belief in miracles is a moral affront to the grandeur of the laws of physics.  

 

My deconversion from Christ realism, courtesy of the great Earl Doherty, occurred in 2009 when I first encountered the powerful logic of his argument that Jesus Christ was entirely a fictional invention. 

 

That's belief enough I suppose. To where you believed some form of it and then stopped. Whereas someone from #1 never believed any of it. And someone from #3 always believed all of it. 

 

Person #1 is a rare type around here.

 

But I have met someone who claims they grew up in christianity but never believed any of it was real. Not even as a little kid. She is quite the exception. I'm impressed with her, actually. That's really insightful for a christian kid, raised in a church, to simply not believe what everyone is claiming. Extremely insightful. 

[★ Citsonga ★]

On 3/6/2021 at 1:11 PM, TheDeconvertedMan said:

You essentially have 3 options:

 

1. Those who know religion is a load of crap from the beginning and never believe.

2. Those who believe it at first but then stop believing later.

3. Those who double down on their beliefs and believe for their whole lives.

 

4. Those who aren't sure if they believe but go along with it to play it safe (i.e., Pascal's Wager).

[◊ Weezer ◊]

On 3/6/2021 at 8:36 PM, TheDeconvertedMan said:

 maybe these kids had a healthier sense of self and never felt like they needed saving from something external to them.

WELCOME! 

You are onto something there.  It takes some ego strength to question "authority".   It helps to have your natural curiosity as a young child encouraged, and to have someone you admire as a role model who isn't afraid to question the preacher and elders, etc.  As a young child I remember my Grandfather arguing with preachers about scripture interpretation, and saying everyone had to work out their own salvation.  That very early conditioning as a child has a powerful effect.  And a bad effect when fear based.  Don't think, don't feel, shut up and do what I say, and what God says, can mentally cripple people for life. 

[TheDeconvertedMan]

21 hours ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

One of my personalities is INTJ; but the rest of us don't talk to him.

As an INTJ, I don't blame you if you want to avoid INTJs

 

19 hours ago, Robert_Tulip said:

Metaphorical reading is a way to salvage moral meaning from the Bible. 

I actually agree with you in that I think it's unnecessary for people to dismiss the entire Bible after they deconert (although I completely understand why they do at first). There IS valuable stuff in there and there always seems to be something new to learn about it.

 

For example, I recently listened to a guy who's going through the Bible and pointing out where so much of it are metaphors for astrotheology. Very interesting.

 

18 hours ago, Citsonga said:

4. Those who aren't sure if they believe but go along with it to play it safe (i.e., Pascal's Wager).

That place sucks. I went through it myself when I was deconstructing. It helped me to realize that I didn't want to have faith in a God that could be fooled by Pascal's Wager.

 

10 hours ago, Weezer said:

It takes some ego strength to question "authority".

Agree. It sucks that as children we are raised under authority rather than leaders or mentors. Leaders and mentors are chosen. Authority is meant to be obeyed under penalty of punishment. These young kids who pushed back just didn't seem to fear the punishments.

 

10 hours ago, Weezer said:

Don't think, don't feel, shut up and do what I say

The hallmark of authority right there. We grow up learning this is how it's supposed to be. When you get older and are no longer under certain authorities (like graduating from the Christian high school, for instance) I've noticed there can be a tendency to go through life seeking out new forms of authority.

[florduh]

9 minutes ago, TheDeconvertedMan said:

I actually agree with you in that I think it's unnecessary for people to dismiss the entire Bible after they deconert (although I completely understand why they do at first). There IS valuable stuff in there and there always seems to be something new to learn about it.

Any good, common sense ideas in the Bible very likely were lifted from another source. In any event, there's no need to search through that pile of shit to find the occasional kernel of corn. Wisdom can be found in writings from the Eastern religions, popular fiction, the daily horoscopes and fortune cookies.

 

FTR: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/06/myers-briggs-type-indicator-does-not-matter/3635592002/

 

[TheDeconvertedMan]

3 minutes ago, florduh said:

Any good, common sense ideas in the Bible very likely were lifted from another source.

I agree. I think it's a good thing to identify these not because someone needs instruction for how to live a good life, but to connect the dots between these stories, metaphors, and parables in the Bible with the original places in which they appear, like other religions' books or stories. Doing this helps see how it all came together rather than just focusing on the origins and content of Christianity and the Bible.

 

6 minutes ago, florduh said:

FTR: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/06/myers-briggs-type-indicator-does-not-matter/3635592002/

I'm aware that Myers Briggs isn't scientific at all. I still find it fun.

[Joshpantera]

9 hours ago, florduh said:

Any good, common sense ideas in the Bible very likely were lifted from another source.

 

I'm not even sure how much, if any, of the main biblical themes were original. Most of what people think of as original to the bible were taken from previous sources. Even to the extent that we're looking at the astrotheology of the bible. It's wasn't invented by the jews. They learned it from others. No different than the golden rule, which, predate's christianity as well. Hero savior figures, a dime a dozen in those days. 

 

Locating true originality is quite a venture it would seem...