Ok. So you know what a "real" Christian is and I am not a real Christian so nothing that I say counts. That seems to be your message here.

I think you have made a strawman out of Christianity, and you need that strawman to target and punch at. You have not beaten up on Christ. You've only defeated a self-created conception.

I know exactly what the creation museum is. I know it isn't important to my faith in any substantial way. What is important is that believers love one another as Christ loved the world. What is important is loving God above all. What is important is having faith. What is important is seeking righteousness and right-standing.

Those same fundamentalist churches run food pantries and youth programs for troubled teens. They shelter people down on their luck and their staff ministers slip a 50 into your hand when they hear you are having a tough financial time (This has happened personally to me). They surround their members with support, prayer and charity when someone falls ill. You are fixated on the nominal, superficial, media-reckoned portrait of what goes on there.

You aren't even talking about the same thing as I am.

OK my turn (definite tl;dr territory). I don’t really appreciate how Doggg is derailing a thread by imputing motives to other people, but I digress… fwiw, PZ Myers has a "Why I Am An Atheist" series of testimonials on his blog, Pharyngula.

I was raised Catholic, complete with weekly Church attendance, 13 years of Catholic education, duties as an altar server (insert pedophilia joke here, pun intended... but nah seriously I never got molested), lector, retreat leader, etc. My family is "devout," but not overly serious, conservative, or closed-minded. In spite of all these things, I never really considered myself all that religious. I mostly went through the motions, and participated in Mass duties to save myself from the crippling weekly boredom. I was raised on Bible stories of course, but also Greek mythology, the great legends of Western Civ, CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, the works. I never really thought there was much of a difference between these stories--frankly, the Bible ones just weren't as good. I mean, Jesus seemed like a nice guy and all, but I didn't see any reason to regard his magical powers as particularly more "real" than Gandalf's, except I knew I was "supposed to."

I always hated Mass. It was boring. I never cared much for the tremendous sexual hang-ups that Catholicism was trying to shove on me and my contemporaries (some of which I obviously still got, because while I considered myself enlightened and forward-thinking among my peers, when I got to college I realized how vanilla I really was). I didn't care for the anti-science vibe that I was getting from general Christianity, though my education and upbringing was still pretty pro-science. By the time I was old enough to understand what homosexuality was, I didn't see the big frickin' deal everyone was making about it or why it was some kind of pressing moral issue. At the time, I sympathized with the pro-life cause, but only because I was under the impression that all abortions were of the “partial birth” variety (thanks to the intellectually dishonest propaganda of the Church), and I was rather ignorant of embryology and what pregnancy and childbirth actually involved. I’d be disabused of this position by the time I was 16 or 17 and I actually talked to women instead of a bunch of stodgy old priests and youth ministers. Talking to people who did not share my background, especially the older siblings of friends (I was an only child) was big part of my realization process (I won’t call it a “conversion” because I think that is the wrong analogy to make).

By high school, I was questioning most everything, as every intelligent young person should. The formal theology and Bible history courses I took in high school was making me less religious, not more, because it was exposing the deliberate choices made by authors and Churchmen in assembling a text rooted in history, rather than a set of holy prescriptions handed down from on high. Overall I’d say I was an “apatheist” by that point, but the study of other religions was rapidly making me realize I was not a Christian in the same way many of my contemporaries or teachers were. Nonetheless, I had a very positive experience with the senior-year retreat, and even volunteered to be a leader later on. I got hooked on the whole “God is love” thing, and was convinced I’d finally “got it.” God, I thought, was much more internal than external, a metaphor if you will, for that which connects us to each other but is also greater than us. But within a few months I realized I hadn’t “got it,” because my theology teachers were still talking about a personal being, a creator deity, an actual and physical resurrection of a God-made-flesh Palestinian Jew in the first century, sacred truths in a text (albeit a text full of metaphor and nuance), and the authority of a priestly elite. I realized that I didn’t believe in any of that, so clearly I was not a Christian. I was some kind of heterodox theist. About that time, I also read some Kierkegaard, and he discusses at one point the belief in Christ’s resurrection. If you really believe in the truth of the resurrection, he says, that belief must be so special and so great as to totally transform as aspects of one’s life. One cannot simply be a Sunday Christian. So I thought about it, and realized that no, I didn’t really believe in the resurrection, because it inspired no kind of faith or transformative experience in me.

Naturally, I became a student of history and philosophy when I left for college, now firmly an agnostic. I’d been brought around to this position by reading a fair amount of cosmology and physics (Hawking, Green, Sagan, the works)… there might have been some brief flirtations with Ayn Rand (hey, I never said I had good taste when I was younger), but those were quickly abandoned for real philosophy. I began then to realize that the “God is love” business could simply dispense with the God part, since I clearly didn’t actually believe in any divine being. Humanism was enough of an alternative. Furthermore, my study of history showed me that the “greater than us” problem was endemic to every human society, and there were as many answers to it as there were cultures. Frankly, the Western monotheistic answer seemed the worst and least plausible of the alternatives. By the end of my freshman year in college, I considered myself an agnostic atheist, which is still what I consider myself a decade later.

I’ve had conversations with my parents about it. We don’t talk much about it—they know I don’t go to Church and don’t consider myself Catholic. They know my partner isn’t religious, and that it isn’t a major issue in our lives. When asked, I usually tell my folks that I just don’t consider the “God” question to be all that important relative to all the other questions of life. Certainly, philosophy has taught me, God is neither sufficient nor necessary for living a moral life, and science has taught me that he isn’t necessary for answering questions about nature, and that the “ultimate” questions of an afterlife or a creator are beyond the capabilities of empirical science and are of an inherently subjective nature. In other words, they aren’t pressing questions for me, since there are so many questions about the world we actually have a shot at solving.

So while I guess consider myself an agnostic atheist by definition, I don’t usually self-identify as that. I self-identify as a skeptic—in the proper sense of the word—a humanist in the way I consider ethical questions, and a secularist in my orientation toward religion. I am not out to convert everyone away from belief systems. I believe that secular culture is inherently beneficial not just for heathens like myself, but also for religious people because it keeps religion personal and private, preventing other religions from imposing their beliefs on rival believers and non-believers alike.

I still find religion a fascinating subject; I am now an adjunct history instructor at the community college level, and I most frequently teach Ancient History, in which I use the genesis and evolution of the major religious traditions (Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Hellenistic religions, Christianity, and Islam) as lenses for viewing cultural experiences. I think it is incredibly important for believers and non-believers alike to understand both the core “facts about religion” as well as their roots in history.

So that’s my story. The “New Atheists” were not significant influences in my discovery process. Your mileage may vary.

I'm not imputing anything. I'm simply reading the evidence.

Not even your testimony makes any sense to me.

In fact, I'll not even continue here, but start a new thread altogether on this. Reading these testimonies has been eye-opening to me. I don't see a single post here where Christianity is adressed at all. I see a lot of scientific jargon, and liberal idiom. But I digress... tonight or tomorrow.

Ok. Here's my TL;DR...and I'm leaving out a ton of details:

I was raised in the fundamentalist Church of Christ denomination. This particular sect is a very legalistic, fire-and-brimstone denomination. The Bible is interpreted literally. The creation story, the flood, etc, are taken as indisputable fact. Salvation is only through baptism by complete emersion. Instrumental music is considered a sin. Hell is a real place, where torment is unimaginable and everlasting. I went to Church 3 times a week (Sunday morning and evening, Wednesday evening.) I memorized hundreds upon hundreds of verses, and felt very comfortable with the Bible from a very early age. Most folks are salt of the earth types who would give you the shirt off their back, always provide a meal, and come to the immediate aid of anyone in need. I have a loving and supporting family…my folks were at every game/ceremony/function…very supportive and encouraging. I am still very close to my parents.
Sometime around my junior year in high school, I began having serious doubts about the nature of my denomination. I questioned a lot of the dogma, but never the inerrancy of scripture. I was by no means considering leaving the faith, only questioning why the different denominations were so different. I ended up going to a Christian University (which was predominately Church of Christ), where I had the advantage of in-depth Biblical classes. Even though the professors shared my particular denomination, I was learning that not all Churches of Christ were so legalistic. They had biblical interpretations which were less legalistic, and it helped renew my faith. As I continued to study and learn the scripture, I began to lean more charismatic. I began surrounding my life with the Church. I began praying constantly. I spoke in tongues. I developed a gift of discernment (a prophetic gifting), where I could interpret dreams and visions. I worshipped in the presence of God until I could not stand, and would lie on the floor in euphoric bliss surrounded by the love of God. Everything in my experience completely expelled any and all doubts. I knew the truth. I experienced God. Evolution was a tool of the enemy to dissuade. It was a time in my life like no other. Belief had always been difficult for me, but my new experiences removed all doubt.
I don’t remember what the exact catalyst was, but sometime around my mid-30s, I began to question scriptural inerrancy (again). I was already an active member on 2+2, so I’m sure that had something to do with it. A good friend of mine (who was a believer) told me to dive head first into an investigation. So long as I was in pursuit of truth, it would lead me to God. God is the author of truth, so all paths to truth must lead to Him, right? Well, I didn’t like what I found. I had never truly explored both sides of the issue. I started reading up on the Bible’s authorship. When I found that the canon was chosen by vote, I was more than a little disturbed. When I learned about how the gospels were written, with authorship in question and written decades after Christ, I was shocked. I read Armstrong and learned about documentary hypothesis, and I was terrified that it made sense. I read Ehrman, and his arguments resonated. By contrast, I found the apologetic defenses to be hand-wavy and dismissive.
Then I decided to actually study and learn about Evolution. I had never learned anything about it in school (graduated in ’92). Up to this point in my life, it was simply ‘Darwinism’ and a story of how man came from monkeys. It was foolish and easily dismissed. I even had one of these on my car:

First, I learned what Evolution is. It’s not a crockaduck. Not a flying cow or any other some crazy combination. Simply, it is genetic descent with modification. I learned how rich the fossil record is. I learned about ring species. I learned how every branch of science agrees with and rely upon the Theory of Evolution. I also learned that the only people who oppose Evolution do so based purely on their religious bias. To this day, I have not heard a single argument against the Theory of Evolution which did not come from someone arguing for their religion.
I studied other religions, and learned about their experiences. There are all manner of experiences which people claimed verified the truth of their own faith. They sounded remarkably similar to my own experience. How could my own subjective experience be authentic?
I tried adapting my faith to something more progressive. Theistic Evolution maybe? The more I tried to get the pieces to fit, the more I realized I was shoving a square peg into a round hole. I think the Human Genome was the final nail in the coffin. I could not reconcile my theology to this discovery. There was no Adam, no Eve. No garden, no talking snake. No original sin. There was no 1st Adam, so there could be no 2nd.
Over a period of months, the cognitive dissonance melted away, and I was left with anger and frustration. I had been lied to. I had let myself be duped. I could no longer believe. It took a while before I could process the implications of walking away from my faith. What did it mean about my sense of morality? My community? How I loved people? Upon examination, I realized that none these things found their basis in my faith…the Church had just said they were. My morality came from my empathy. My parents didn’t teach me to be moral because the Bible said so, but rather by explaining why moral behavior was needed. I realized other people who never shared my faith held the same concerns regarding morality, community, and love.
I haven’t believed for a little over a year now. I still haven’t told anyone who is close to me. All of my family believe. Faith is very important to my wife. I think she knows my faith has wavered, but she doesn’t know I don’t believe. I’m sure it will come up at some point, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Good story.

So where are you now in your belief in a God, or in a divine consciousness, or something? Would you consider yourself an atheist at this point?

I'm still wavering between atheism and...well, something else. I don't think there was a creator of the universe but I wonder if there is some sort of cosmic consciousness. Perhaps consciousness pervades things that we cannot prove yet. I get this feeling because of meditation. There are moments when I meditate that I really feel like I am tapping into a consciousness that is bigger and more intelligent than my own.

One thing that has been really spooky when I meditate is my ability to solve problems afterwards. There is this puzzle game that I beat that is really hard. Here's the game. On a whim one day I decided to try to use meditation to help me solve a puzzle that I was stuck on. I emptied my mind for 15 minutes and returned to the puzzle. The answer just popped into my head. I tried this again and again and again and it worked every time within a few minutes. I realize that a skeptic will say that my subconscious mind solved the puzzle while I meditated, but it really felt like I was tapping into something.

I guess, at this point, I am 80% convinced it can be explained by something not involving a divine consciousness of some sort. But there is 20% of me that wonders. Especially when taken together with the times that I've experienced pure bliss from meditation. Whatever the answer is, there is something very positive going on with meditation. I'm thinking about making a thread about what I know of mindfulness. I've been reading a lot of eastern philosophy lately. I don't think that eastern spirituality is represented enough in this forum.

Good stuff. I enjoyed that.

Thank the God! Good riddance.

Wow, thanks for sharing coolman. It always impresses me when someone can think their way free of that kind of upbringing - suffused with religion and surrounded by loving people - I don't know if I would have the courage to make that journey.

I don't call myself an atheist, but rather a skeptic. I actually wavered on the border of deism for a while, and while I hold to the notion that a God could exist, I don't believe in any particular god or gods.

I think this is fairly common. If you watch Evid3nc3's series on youtube, he describes something similar.

I've been in this place, but I've come to realize that we do not give our sub-conscious enough credit. I love Rubik's cubes...I have a collection of about 15 different shapes and sizes. I like to solve them when I have a particularly difficult problem at work (I'm an engineer). I usually solve the cube, then have the solution to my other problem. There are also a lot of times I go to sleep thinking about a problem and wake up with the answer. I suppose I'm tapping into some sort of mindfulness. I'm convinced I've not tapped it's full potential.

I did watch that and I loved it! I think it deserves an Oscar. It's really great film making.

I didn't catch it when he talked about pantheism or panpsychism. He mentioned it in one of the videos but didn't really break it down. Maybe I missed it though. Has he completed the series? Because when I watched it, it seemed to end abruptly--like he wasn't done with it yet. He had not gone into depth on pantheism, panpsychism, or deism.

Next time you are stuck on a problem try meditation. Get a timer and set it for 15 minutes. Just focus on your breath and the sensation it gives you. Don't worry about the times when your mind wanders. Just gently bring it back to your breath. It's actually very good when your mind wanders. It gives you a chance to exercise your meta-attentional muscles. Each time you do this you will increase your ability to achieve mindfulness.

You might just find a very efficient way to solve your problems quicker. Plus there is all sorts of scientific evidence that doing this will increase happiness and concentration. Like I said, I intend to make a thread about all I know of this. There really is some intriguing science behind all this.

What do you think about this today? That's a beautiful description of God IMO.

So many Catholic stories including mine went like this whole post. I liked the Kierkegaarde thing - how if they are true believers what it should really mean for their life.

agreed, would make for a good thread

Dogg, most of us Atheists never chose Christianity. We were born, told by our parents that god is real, and believed it till we were smart enough to think for ourselves. We chose Atheism. Christianity was just a hand me down sweater we were forced to wear till we could buy our own clothes. There was never a fire of faith.

I would also suggest you stop, endlessly, suggesting that you know what atheists think about anything, or what we are. You've proven yourself to be wrong in almost every instance.

I don't think there is anything supernatural about love. The love and compassion people share with each other does not need to be some external force. I still believe in human compassion, but I don't think there needs to be some mystical dimension to it. I certainly don't believe in a creator deity, sacred texts, a physical resurrection, or all the other things that must be added onto "love" that form a religion.

I was raised in a Christian family but it was more a Sunday School for daycare and to keep the Grandparents happy as a kid and then pretty much an Easter and Christmas thing as I got older. At some point I just gradually quit it all the way to the point of recognizing myself as agnostic and claiming that. Later I ended up converting to Hinduism. Took an Eastern Religions class and really ended up just being interesting in the reading. A lot of it matched up to the way I "feel" about the world. It eventually went from that to practicing Hinduism. I still feel like an Agnostic Hindu if that's a term, .

It's most certainly a valid term. Agnosticism or gnosticism only refer to absolute knowledge meaning that most every (rational) person would refer to themselves as agnostic, believer and non-believer alike.

However, I tend to think that the term is rather unnecessary. When asked if you believe in leprechauns, I doubt you would clarify your position by adding that you are technically agnostic as well.

Like anything else, Eastern spirituality is great as long as you don't take it too seriously. Remember the stories of the laughing Buddhas and the crazy wisdom! If you want to know why I lost my religion, or never had one in the first place, it's probably because they're all so grim and serious. As I see it, we have two choices: we can laugh at a universe which laughs at us, or we can be grim and serious for no reason. I choose laughter. May the Force be with you. Hahahahahahahaha….

I think you need to have a sit down with Mr Muck McFold. Might do him some good.

So I've been following this thread religiously (ba dum cha) until I finally "caught up". I hate writing on things that the group has collectively "moved past". Glad to see that Splendour and Doggg have faded. And seriously if you are reading this, don't reply. Just start a new thread and we will find you and we can throw around science articles and Bible verses all day, but this is not the place.

Just want to direct this to kb coolman: same denomination, same family (type), and likely the same university. PM me sometime and we can commiserate/reminesce. I'll give my somewhat similar deconversion story but it will also be tl;dr. I have the last test of my first year of medical school in less than 36 hours and I've already wasted WAY too much time on this forum.

Anyway, encouraging to hear your stories and simultaneously perplexing and entertaining to watch Doggg randomly pull disjointed thoughts out of mid air and see Splendour's Google skills in action. I'll catch back up on this thread later.

Oh why not?

The forum rule is no strictly atheist or strictly theist threads.

I ought to know. I tried to run a couple and the atheists would never stay out of them.

reread all the rules BEFORE that one. You're violating nearly every one. And no one says no theists allowed, just that they can't derail and attack like you are.

Oh you want to carp at me staying on topic, huh?

I do.

I take exception to the most basic assumptions though.

I guess that's why I'm so hated. You can't control the questioning any longer when the assumptions are faulty and I'm always so quick to point it out.

I'm turning the other cheek. (_!_)