Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Deconversion stories

I'd like to hear some of your deconversion stories, from theism to atheism. I was born and baptized catholic, but then around 10 years old I switched to non-denominational christianity. I use to proudly call myself a bible-believing fundamentalist as a teenager, and would argue incessantly against gays (oh the irrational hatred I had at that time) and bash liberals (lol my parents politics) without a second thought.Anyways I turned 18, joined the army, met all sorts of people from different parts of the country, finished my 3 years tour and then went to college in so cal. Those years proved to be truly mind expanding for many different reasons and I finally came to cast suspicion upon the beliefs I was spoonfed as a child. I actually met a gay person for the first time in my life (in the army no less) and all the hatred of my teenage years just seemed so childish. I thought to myself, hey this is just a person, do I really have to hate and despise him?? Is all this misdirected hatred I carried with me worth it? The answer was no and, I came to accept gay people for what they are. So why would god hate that which he created? Things didn't make sense.I finally began to take a critical eye to my beliefs, and things were not adding up. Why is religious belief so entwined with geographical location? Do kids born to muslim parents have a choice in what they believe? Why would an all caring god banish to hell those who were brought up in beliefs so foreign and alien to christianity. They didn't have a chance! Another thing which bothered me immensely, why did all the fantastic stuff in the bible happen in the distant past? Why don't all these miracles (burning bushes, parting seas, sun standing still, plagues killing a whole nations first-born) happen today? Because we have recordable media to document and ascertain the validity of such claims?I use to pray alot, but when I really thought about it, what was prayer actually accomplishing? If God didn't answer your prayers there was always the cop-out that it wasn't his will. So basically flip a coin, prayer would get answered, or not answered (and the things i prayed for a that time were far from selfish). I stepped back and noticed that having a god that answers prayers so haphazardly (despite the whole ''ask and ye shall receive'' deal) was just the same as there being no god at all. Of course there are tons of other reasons that began poking wholes in my faith, such as why a loving god would literally put 99% of all humanity in a place of eternal torture, just for not acknowledging his son/self as the true god? And why would a god have a ''chosen'' people in the first place? It sounded more like a jewish tribal god than a god that came to save all of humanity.As you can imagine these thoughts were causing quite a mental commotion, almost physical pain, as they were soo contradictory to what I whole-heartedly believed growing up. It literally made me feel sick when I was able to finally muster up the courage to say ''I don't believe in Jesus anymore'' in my mind. Seriously! it was truly a life changing paradigm. For a while I thought that maybe all this religion stuff was just man's way of trying to understand some universal truth, but after a few months of introspection it became clear to me that all spirituality/religion was just BS. You know what? I never felt more free and just happy to be alive after casting off the shackles religion imposed on me. The world finally began to make sense.Well thats a brief snapshot into my deconversion process (TLDR!), now how about some of y'alls? Obviously if you were raised in a free-thinking household you probably don't have much to share, but I know many of you have gone through something similar to what I experienced. Please share!Deconversion stories
Well, I was born Mormon, and then I eventually decided, ''Hey, this is stupid.'' Now I'm an Agnostic Theist :DDeconversion stories
I wonder why the bad guys took so much time and effort into making that cross and putting Jesus on it, instead of killing the prisoner as usual.

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