Comments for What Works in Deconverting Christians? »
Posted By Neophile 1 year, 5 months ago in NewsWhy do Christians deconvert? How can we support or encourage them to do so? This has been the subject of some debate in the Atheist community. To answer these questions I've sat down and considered one of the largest archives of deconversion stories on the internet.
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AtheismIsRealityComment removed: Retracted by user17 Replies
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Candida1 year, 5 months ago
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I may be giving away the punchline, but those who read the comments before reading the article deserve it. I wholeheartedly agree with the conclusion: "Ultimately a person has to liberate themselves from religion, it is not for us to assume the role of atheist proselytes."
I've found that for a person raised in a religion it is an individual and hard process to become an atheist, and it has to come from within. As I was growing up, I questioned many things about religion, but what put the last nail into God's coffin for me was the suffering of the innocents. I had no desire to believe in a god that would allow the Holocaust, the famine in Ukraine, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the burning of Dresden, the killing of the Armenians, and all the other atrocities throughout history.
(BTW, the biggest surprise for me in this essay was that there is an "Atheist community.")
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antibrainwasher1 year, 5 months ago
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I was a skeptic since a child, but it took meeting and talking with other atheists to solidify my understanding.
Yes there is an atheist community out there, you can suscribe to American Atheist magazine, and go to their conventions.
Suprisingly, a huge Indian (In India) Atheist community exists, funding their own hospitals and schools.
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Locky12Comment removed: Spammer, Abusive
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memestryker1 year, 5 months ago
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Unitarian-Universalism welcomes people of all (or no) faith, and they've been around for quite a while. A couple of years ago I read that was the fastest growing religion in Ireland. Another great group of atheists is the Brights--a very active and growing group. The most well-known are probably the Secular Humanists and Ethical Culture Society.
The atheist community is growing. That's a good thing,IMO.
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Dionys1 year, 5 months ago
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"Yes, a unitarian church is a good place to experience the sanity of people who realize there is no invisible god floating up there."
This doesn't tend to reflect the understanding of the majority of UU members or churches I've visited with. But they do embrace people following their own beliefs. Including atheism.
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RickyDawkins1 year, 5 months ago
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http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/
http://www.richarddawkins.net/
http://www.dangerousintersection.org/
http://www.propeller.com/member/rickydawkins/ac...
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memestryker1 year, 5 months ago
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American Atheists http://www.atheists.org/
International Humanist and Ethical Union http://www.iheu.org/
Atheist Alliance International http://www.atheistalliance.org/
Freedom from Religion Foundation http://www.ffrf.org/
American Ethical Union http://www.aeu.org/
The Brights http://www.the-brights.net/
Council for Secular Humanism http://www.secularhumanism.org/
Unitarian-Universalism http://www.uua.org/
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antibrainwasher1 year, 5 months ago
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Atheists are usually not joiners of organizations, however you can suscribe to American Atheists, a quartly journal, and attend the conventions they organize.
I'm finding that the internet and blogging attracts atheists more that organized meetings in buildings.
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vor1 year, 5 months ago
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Atheism is perhaps too simple a conclusion...I definitely prefer the term agnostic. There is surely some greater intelligence out there. Likely nothing we could recognize or understand because we as humans are on such a relatively low plane of intelligence.
As for converting Christians. It is really up to them. They must shed the shackles they acquired from past generations. Learn that what they believe is myth - the fear and superstition of ancient man. That we created God to explain the unexplainable. And created heaven and hell as symbols of glorification and condemnation.
We live on a planet with a cooling molten core surrounded by a magnetic field and with a highly erratic weather pattern. That explains a lot right there. To believe in the Bible is to believe that we are all products of incest. That explains the rest.
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memestryker1 year, 5 months ago
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I'm not certain it's "out there." I'm not an agnostic. I don't think there is a supernatural deity. And that's what the revealed religions, including the Paulist form of Christianity (as opposed to Unity, which is Christian idealism) assert.
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Dionys1 year, 5 months ago
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HmacComment removed: Retracted by user11 Replies
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Melbatross71 year, 5 months ago
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A deconverted Christian is a corrupted Christian who can no longer be called a Christian. Allowing a cultural change in belief systems by way of seeds of doubt has been the method of corruption. Those who comprehend and follow God/Jesus teachings have no doubt and cannot be "deconverted".
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memestryker1 year, 5 months ago
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I think that many atheists have more insight about Jesus' teachings than most who refer to themselves as "Christians." Jesus was a Jew and never stopped being one. He taught people how to be good Jews. Most Christians are actually Paulists.
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Dionys1 year, 5 months ago
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"I think that many atheists have more insight about Jesus' teachings than most who refer to themselves as "Christians." Jesus was a Jew and never stopped being one. He taught people how to be good Jews. Most Christians are actually Paulists."
You just proved your own statement false. Assuming you claim to be one of those Atheist who has more insight about Christ than most Christians.
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toph19731 year, 5 months ago
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I don't pretend to be an authority on Jesus or the Bible. I guess maybe some athiests would know more than theists. Maybe the old addage keep your friends close, but your enemies closer might apply here.
One thing that I do know for certian (other than god does not exist) is that athiests are much more moral than theists.
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memestryker1 year, 5 months ago
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Paul was a cultural engineer, and most Christian groups look to his teachings for major aspects of their beliefs. He's similar in many ways to Mohammed, and Mao, all of whom are responsible for modern forms of major cultural systems for the masses.
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catstevensComment removed: Retracted by user14 Replies
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markmawn21 year, 5 months ago
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Does Atheism provide order and structure? Having a life mythology is key to balancing one's daily interactions in the world. Without it, there is collapse and chaos. Does it need to be Christian? No. Spiritual? Yes.
What Atheists protest is the selfishness and the "divine" ego that followers of a Religion tend to act out. However, I have seen the same behavior in my atheist friends, and sometimes they act far more aggressively as if they have an axe to grind. Atheists act out in protest to the external trappings that religion projects, it seems. This reaction is usually grounded in trauma, not a longing.
Everyone has a ship to sail. Religion provides a shore to land on for those who believe.
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antibrainwasher1 year, 5 months ago
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there is plenty of order and structure without believing and inventing an absurdist fairytale to narrate yourself into.
You are projecting your absurd beliefs and neurosis onto others.
I don't believe in or need any form of fairy tale, and I'm quiet sucessful and happy, with a wonder full family.
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catstevensComment removed: Retracted by user2 Replies
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catstevensComment removed: Retracted by user20 Replies
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Grrr1 year, 5 months ago
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antibrainwasher1 year, 5 months ago
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Indeed dark matter acceleration of the expanding universe, and theoretical physics being published is stranger than any of the mundane fairy tales written 2000 years ago.
Stranger than virgin births, santa claus, easter bunny, resurection, afterlife, soul, pergatory (where dead unbabtized babies souls go).
Actually, I'm not sure anything can ever be as absurd as pergatory. How anyone can believe in that is beyond my comprehension of the gullibity of humanity to believe anything.
Then again, mormonism is santified pedophilia, poligamy and magic underwear....started by a con man of the highest order who was murdered by a mob in prison. Scientolgy was started by a freaking Science Fiction Writer. Christianity is the worship of a Jew and their jewish fairytales. Hindus believe this planet is an illusion, that they reincarnate into higher planes of existance.
No evidence for any of it of course.
Physicists, on the other hand, have to provide evidence.
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Grrr1 year, 5 months ago
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There is also no requirement that physicists be atheists, either. And a great many are not and find no contradictions there. And neither do I. Facts are facts, and faith is faith. People who try and deny facts because of their faith, though, are having reality problems.
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markmawn21 year, 5 months ago
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The use of the word "program" disturbs me. If Software A produced by Company A produces a bad result, then Company B says they have a better solution, but results in the same problem, I would suspect it is not the software that is flawed, but the hardware it's being installed on.
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Grrr1 year, 5 months ago
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I don't think it does. Hardware problems are medical conditions. Belief is pure software, at least insofar as I do not see faith as a neurological disorder. I tend to agree with Leary and others that belief systems are pure meta-programming. All brainwashing / conversion systems are deprogramming / reprogramming systems. But the longer the program has been resident on the biogram, the more hard-wired it becomes, and the more extreme the deprogramming technique it takes to short circuit it so that reprogramming can commence. Chemicals are often necessary to accomplish this. While that kind of hard-wiring could be called "hardware", I think it obfuscates the terminology and semantics of what is really occurring.
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markmawn21 year, 5 months ago
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Hardware problems are also wiring. And believe me, get the wrong software in an improperly wired machine, and you got whacksville.
Humans are addicted to their own chemicals. Each reaction to the world produces a chemical that is stored right next to the memory center. We actually get addicted to things like Trauma, adrenaline, hate, anger, etc. It's all chemicals. Hardware. The medical conditions result from wearing down the system over time (lest it is a birth condition). Yet as some have proven, we can change it all with a single change of thought. And instantly.
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Grrr1 year, 5 months ago
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Helps to think of it not as wiring, but more like grooves in mud that, say, water follows. It's very elastic, you can use your finger and draw deeper grooves some places, level others, create new grooves. But it's VERY elastic. Over time, the grooves the water tends to flow through heavier become deeper, and more difficult to erase. There is no memory "center". The chemical you mention is actually sodium, if I recall correctly. The more a neural pathway is used, the more builds up at the most used receptors, lowering the activation threshold for that neuron. Neural pathways reinforce themselves this way through repetition. That is the basis for learning and memory. The more you use a pathway, the more 'default' the triggering of that particular path of neurons becomes.
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Melbatross71 year, 5 months ago
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The part that atheists don't get is the part about the Spirit. So whether a person is hard wired this way or that, when a person is guided and strengthened by the Spirit of God, absolutely nothing can dissuede the person from their belief.
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Melbatross71 year, 5 months ago
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The point I am making is that all people naturally can be de/re-programmed. The methods may be more extreme for one and not as extreme for another but all of us will naturally succumb to an altered belief if pressured. It is a matter of overturning depth of proof to an individual. Supernaturally with Gods' Spirit, there is no physical method to undermine belief, and no way to erode strength of loyalty.
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catstevensComment removed: Retracted by user7 Replies
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jaxguy1 year, 5 months ago
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If heaven is perfect and free of all things we perceive to be 'not good', sorrow, anger, sin, etc. then the freedom we experience here known as 'free will' can't exist in heaven. This is because free will allows us to make a choice that may not be in our favor which leads to an adverse experience. So if free will in heaven does not exist then neither does conscious thought, because consciousness allows us to be aware of ourselves and make choices. And if consciousness in heaven does not exist, then life in heaven does not exist, therefore heaven does not exist.
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markmawn21 year, 5 months ago
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One point to make here. You are making the comment from a Time/Space perspective where we perceive the phenomenon called "opposites". In this so-called heaven there would not be a Not Good or a Good. There will just Be. Personality makes the judgement call, not heaven. That is the gift of Consciousness, to play with opposites until we are tired them.
The Universe has no meaning but what we give it. That is our gift!
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Melbatross71 year, 5 months ago
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iaxguy - whew !! you would have had a blast in the 60's. Your chain of rationalizations make whatever way you want to see something a breeze to understand.And Markmawn2 - I can just see you guys sitting down, puffin' and passin' a reefer...dudes!!
Hey, try this perspective - God is omnipresent, right? And the physical creation is a conglomeration of Spirit metaphors, for example we are concieved as two single cells and when they connect you have a representation of the "Big Bang" theory. Cell division to trillions of cells that make up a body - parallel being the universe ! Now the physical realm represented by the universe in its entirety is actually the womb for the development of the fetus(us as humanity) to become spirit beings......so in reality we are inside of God !!! Ain't that coool ??!!
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jaxguy1 year, 5 months ago
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there would just Be? be what? do you really think that the personality we've developed here on earth continues to exist once we are gone? what if you're schizophrenic?. And time doesn't really exist, only in our own minds. It's a sad reality but when we're gone that's it.
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Mutainia1 year, 5 months ago
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Isn't the writer of this article afraid some Christian will now try to carve his head off to mind-less chants of "Jesus is Great!"? No, I thought not. Oh, by the way, there is a title in this story that says something like, "The Problems With Other Religions". Can ANYone find the word "Islam" mentioned in this article? Maybe I didn't look hard enough?
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Dionys1 year, 5 months ago
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You have a strange obsession with Islam.
You should really seek help.
Also to get away from that cult of Mormonism, which contrary to all mormon propaganda has nothing to do with Christ other than stealing Christianity as a base for Joseph Smith's immoral and insane religion.
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Mutainia1 year, 5 months ago
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Watch out, Dionys, the same "angel of light" that appeared to Joseph Smith sounds like it appeared unto Muhammed (pbuh) FIRST, but, in different garb and name. By the way, what got me out of Mormonism was finding out that Smith numbered and labeled pagan Egyptian funeral documents, claiming them to be the "Book of Abraham"...I mean, THAT was the straw that REALLY broke the American camel's back as far as Mormonism went. Being so the case, WHAT would it take you to get out of Arabian Mormonism?
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