I'm curious how many people in this forum have once believed in God and now no longer do. I'm also really interested in hearing your deconversion story. How has this forum affected you?

If you don't feel like writing up your story, feel free to just post that you did lose your faith and leave it at that.

It's no easy feat for someone to reverse a belief that is as powerful as a belief in God--especially with the threat of eternal torture looming over you. Most people are not capable of something like that and I think being able to do something like that is something to be proud of. So let yourself be recognized.

I'll write up my story in a little bit.

I was raised as a Southern Baptist, and as a child my father did quite a bit of preaching. Later, as a young teen I began questioning the miracle claims in the Bible, which was mainly the result of an interest in magic (card/coin sleight, large illusions, etc). Once I realized I could, through trickery, recreate a lot of the biblical claims (including resurrection!) I came to realization that I would require more proof than the witness accounts that were available. Later still, I was learning that the scientific evidence contradicted the fundamentalist interpretation that I was raised with, and this put the proverbial nail in the coffin. I have, of course, moved passed that simplistic understanding, but it certainly got the ball rolling.

Let me ask you something. Do you feel angry about your indoctrination as a child? I do and it is something I have trouble reeling in. My whole family is still Christian I have a hard time concealing my contempt for the religion. I know the right thing to do is say nothing and let them keep their safety blanket, but I can't help but try to destroy their faith. I kind of feel bad about it.

How do you interact with your family on the question of faith? How did they react when they learned that you rejected the faith?

I was brought up in the Evangelical church and my second-eldest brother (18 years older) was the captain of a missionary ship. I didn't have any specific moment where I lost my faith. By the time I left home I guess I would have described myself as agnostic, though with some leanings towards Christianity in a sort of Pascal's Wager way. Through my early and mid-twenties I drifted from Christian-agnostic to something approaching deism, although I wasn't aware of that word or belief system at the time.

In the last year or two I started hearing about Dawkins and "The God Delusion". Something about his certainty really rubbed me up the wrong way and I started thinking more about what I believed. One day I was waiting for a train and, anticipating a long journey, I stopped by a bookshop. I picked up Dawkin's "The Ancestors Tale". By the time my train journey was over my mind was blown by how incredible and TRUE evolution was. Within a few months I'd read everything he'd written and watched a ton of lectures on by guys like Sam Harris, Lawrence Krauss, Neil Tyson etc.

Now I consider myself an atheist and am planning to return to education and study biology.

I have no anger towards my family for the childhood indoctrination. They were doing what they thought was best for me, and it produced no lasting effects that I'm aware of. My younger brother (21) is also an atheist, due mainly to the discussions I've had with my father when he was present.

I try not discuss faith with any family member over, let's say 50. Generally they're too entrenched in their beliefs and it just causes a lot of grief when I could just enjoy the time I'm spending with them. As an example, my grandmother just died (84) and I wouldn't dream of disagreeing with my mother when she talks about seeing her in heaven. It would only serve to strain the relationship.

Both of my parents know I'm a non-believer, and it was one of the worst days of my life when my mother finally put two and two together. Seeing my mother cry because she believes I'm going to burn in hell is not something I would ever want to do again. She now believes I'm "searching" and I'm willing to leave it at that.

As an aside, I would most likely have a different answer if my parents weren't fundamentalists (six days to create the universe, 6000 year old earth, Noah's ark, etc.) because there's nothing to discuss if they're not willing to accept simple scientific facts. I'll agree it's most frustrating to have to bite your tongue when you hear someone espouse nonsense, but for me, it's the best I've got, so I'm willing to grin and bear it. Fortunately it comes up almost never and is virtually a non-issue.

You guys are so concise. Mine is going to be a major TL;DR.

I just hope that someone who is on the fence might read it and something in it can help them get some peace.

Still writing.

You're wiser than I am. I wish I didn't have the feelings that I do. I feel like the kid who believed in Santa Claus until he was 12 and then had a sudden and precipitous deconversion. I became very bitter.

This thread jogged my memory:

During sixth grade lunch I remember meeting my first "out" atheist. I'm not sure how the discussion got slanted on the issue, but I remember this, somewhat lithe and definitively gothic girl, saying that Jesus never existed. Despite already believing that God was unlikely to exist, saying Jesus never existed proved to be a huge shock to my system. I suppose anthropomorphizing God causes an additional layer of belief because I clearly remember defending Jesus in spite of not really believing in the Bible that spoke of him.

Wow. That is very interesting. It's funny how odd religious conditioning manifests itself.

I considered myself an agnostic for a number of years (teens onwards), then I started lurking around this internet thing you may have heard about. Anyway after reading debates between creationists and people in touch with reality it was clearly demonstrated to me what a frightening cause of cognitive dissonance religion is. I decided that atheist was a better description of my belief system than agnostic. So I guess a combination of talking to people online, seeing how religion causes people to think like ****ing morons and just generally growing up and no longer believing in myths and fairy tales just because they are popular.

You're not alone. The internet is a huge source of people giving up their god beliefs. Just type "religion is" in your search engine and see for yourself...

Good to see!

Actually I don't really care whether people become irreligious or not, I mean it's a positive thing of course but many religious people are perfectly decent.

This is so ****ing TL;DR and I bet no one will read it but whatever, here's my story.

I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family and the story of hell always bothered me. Because of this I was very vocal about my faith and tried to save everyone I could. After I joined 2+2, I wanted to get in on the debates about God and more specifically about Christianity. I quickly learned that I was in over my head. So I decided to study evolution so that I could disprove it in an articulate way to all the people who used it as a major reason to disbelieve the bible.

So I went on YouTube and watched everything I could about evolution--every major debate and every apologetic video. It was a little bit troubling. The pro evolution people seemed to make better arguments and win the debates. I wasn’t deterred though and I dug deeper. The deeper I dug the clearer it became that the intelligent design proponents had very bad arguments on their side and the pro evolutionists had a lot of good evidence on their side.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I learned that Michael Behe, one of the major intelligent design apologists, was being knowingly dishonest in one of his arguments. In 2005 there was a trial in Kansas on whether intelligent design should be taught besides evolution in public schools. Behe took the stand to argue that the principle of irreducible complexity should warrant teaching intelligent design because it proves evolution wrong.

The argument of irreducible complexity states that there are some systems in the body that are so complex that they couldn’t have evolved. An example that the intelligent design folks gave of this is the bacterium flagellum. Intelligent design proponents say that evolution could not have possibly produced the bacterium flagellum because if you took only one part of its mechanism away it would be useless. Therefore it couldn’t have evolved. However in the trial the pro evolution side showed that this is not the case and there was an example of a bacterium flagellum that had a part missing and instead of being a way to move, the flagellum became a way on injecting DNA into a cell. Behe then admitted that this was true and that the bacterium flagellum was not an example of irreducible complexity on the stand, under oath. To this day Behe still uses the bacterium flagellum as an example of irreducible complexity. He is lying. There is no other explanation. He admitted that the bacterium flagellum is not irreducibly complex under oath. Later I found that this is common operating procedure for the intelligent design folks.

So I could no longer disprove evolution in my attempts to convert people. This is when major doubt started to creep into my mind. I was taught that the bible is the infallible word of God. But evolution directly contradicts the bible. If the bible got that wrong, what else did it get wrong? I had to admit that the bible was fallible.

At this point I didn’t believe anymore but still clung to the religion out of fear--a Pascal’s wager kind of thing. What finally gave me enough courage to admit my disbelief was a Joe Rogan bit on Noah’s Ark. HERE"S A LINK TO THE BIT In the bit he destroys the validity of that story by saying that not even a ******ed person would believe that story. He then goes on and impersonates a skeptical ******ed person and how he would destroy a biblical apologist in an argument about it. It’s a pretty funny bit. Somehow that bit gave me the courage to have my “eureka” moment and finally admit to myself that the bible is bull****.

I then went on to watch Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris videos on YouTube. I was an atheist. But it didn’t last. The dark power of Christian fear still had a hold of me.

Several years later I was browsing another forum that I frequent and someone posted a video about a guy who had a near-death experience in which he went to hell. For some reason this brought to the surface all the fear that my Christian conditioning had instilled in me. I decided to reconvert. Looking back at it now I can’t believe that this happened. It’s embarrassing. I think it goes to show how powerful fear conditioning can be.

I still had a problem and it was the story of Noah’s Ark. So I decided to come to this forum to get help from the believers. HERE"S THE THREAD How do they reckon the obvious BS of that story with their belief? I did not get the answers that I wanted. It’s obvious that it is a BS story and if I can’t believe one thing in the bible, I can’t believe anything as far as a matter of faith.

It was Kb Coolman who “saved” me from my fear. He posted a video in my Noah’s Ark thread to a lecture by John Shelby Spong called “The Terrible Texts of the Bible.” HERE"S A LINK TO THAT VIDEO> Something about this resonated with me. It was great to see a biblical scholar point out all the horrible things that are in the bible. You can’t believe in a benevolent god and believe in the god of the bible. That video opened my mind and I read more and more on this forum and the atheists on here slowly chipped away all my fears.

So I have to give special thanks to Kb Coolman. I also have to give thanks to all the Atheists on this board. What you guys are doing is not in vain. There are some people who read these forums who are haunted by a fearful faith and your contributions can help to free us. I can’t thank you people enough.

That made me LOL, it must have been quite distressing for you when you realised you had been lied to.

The only reason I know anything about evolution is because I realised I wasn't equipped to argue with creationists, I mean I knew they were wrong but I couldn't demonstrate it. So good job creationists, way to fuel the fire.

I think it's too bad you came to this forum jokerthief. Because chances are you never studied all the evolutionary positions and you never studied all the hell positions.

Yeah, I got angry. I could forgive ignorance but it is so very clear if you really dig deep into the evolution vs. intelligent design debate that the intelligent design proponents straight-up lie. I gave the one example of Behe but there are many more that I just didn't feel like getting into.

Although I am glad that the intelligent design people did lie. It probably snapped me out of my delusion quicker than what could have been done.

Who was your mediator? Behe or Jesus Christ?

I always think its a failure of critical thinking when you attribute fallen men's actions to the Lord Jesus Christ.

There are times when I won't agree with a pastor or religious leader but I never confuse them with Jesus Christ.

Good story, and don't worry, it wasn't a TL;DR. The Joe Rogan intermission helped to keep the story fresh.

"I'm not that ******ed!" hahahaha

No, I did and I wanted to believe, trust me. But after careful study, there is a TON of evidence that supports the theory of evolution. And the intelligent design arguments are horrible. Really, really horrible. I was a holy roller. I wanted to change people's minds. Yet the evidence for evolution is so strong that it convinced someone who was as partisan as me. I really wanted to disprove evolution but the evidence is indisputable and if I was to be intellectually honest, I had to admit that there was good reason to believe in evolution.

Did you study theistic evolution? Theistic evolution hasn't come up on this board in quite a while and no one here is proficient on it.

Did you compare hell doctrine with annihilationism and universalism?

Are you talking about the gap concept in Genesis?

Raised in a catholic family, did the church and sunday school up until i was 16. I never actually bought in and believed (though if asked I would have ID'ed myself as Catholic) in part i think because of the general wackyness of the catholic church. When it came time to get confirmed i choose not to go through with it because i didn't believe.

My Grandparents are strong believers, my parents believe but never forced their belief onto me, i have 2 older brothers and not one of us has ever believes today

What evolutionary "positions"?

He doesn't agree with the literal interpretation of a lot of the stories of the bible (like Noah's ark). As we learn more about the universe around us more and more Christians are resorting playing God-of-the-Gaps. Even the Catholic Church allows for man evolving from earlier bioligical forms (1). I'm not really sure how long Christians can keep this up without becoming something closing in on a pure deism.

Theistic evolution is the idea that God guided evolution. I haven't seen anyone make a solid case for it on this board. But Dobzhansky the developer of the Evolutionary Synthesis and Francis Collins the former head of the Human Genome Project are theistic evolutionists.

The last solid annihilationist was Concerto....It's been a while since he posted. I posted most of the Christian Universalist interpretations but people are so locked in tradition I'd be surprised if they reviewed it. Imo universalism is the nuts but you have to have the nerve to buck the establishment.

The only argument I've heard is that you can't definitively say that evolution isn't guided. Of course, you could say that about any physical phenomenon, including something like gravity. It's a nonsensical position.

Most atheists, myself included, try not to concern ourselves with non-testable theology like hell interpretations. In the end, it's just not important to God claims. Well, I suppose it would be important to someone trying to use Pascal's Wager, but barring that, not so much.