A few deconversion questions:

[Angra Mainyu]

Hi, I'd like to ask non-theists who deconverted from some religion some questions about their deconversion:

a) Which religion did you deconvert from?


b) Did reading arguments here or in other forums play a part in your deconversion?


If the answer to 'b)' is 'yes', then:

b.1) Where did you read those arguments? (e.g., Rational Skepticism, Secular Café, FRDB, TheologyWeb, etc.)


b.2) What are the arguments that persuaded you? (e.g., Evidential Argument from Evil, arguments based on evolutionary theory, geology, etc., arguments against the resurrection of Jesus, moral arguments against Christianity, arguments from religious diversity, etc.)


b.3) Do you remember who made some of the arguments, and/or where I could find the posts?

Thanks

 

[Prolescum]

Although never having needed to de-convert myself, I think we'd be remiss if this thread weren't noted.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Although never having needed to de-convert myself, I think we'd be remiss if this thread weren't noted.

Thanks, I'll take a look.

 

[FiverBeyond]

A.) Mormonism.

B.) No, I'm semi-proud to say that I wasn't deconverted by hearing particularly strong arguments, but rather by considering them for myself (if anything, reading Mormon apologetics probably made me more likely to leave the faith than anything else).

 

[Anachronous Rex]

Hi, I'd like to ask non-theists who deconverted from some religion some questions about their deconversion:

a) Which religion did you deconvert from?

Episcopalian (which is to say Anglican) Christianity.

b) Did reading arguments here or in other forums play a part in your deconversion?

Not so much, it was more that I just realized I didn't believe it anymore. There wasn't any clear moment when I decided to abandon religion, it just became harder and harder to take seriously in light of everything I had learned, and its proponents began to seem more and more insane.

Then, for a long time I would believe in a really vague sort of anthropomorphic deity, but only when it suited me (say a few days before that looming mid-term paper was due), and go back to not believing afterwards; which made me both a hypocrite and an ingrate. Eventually I decided that this was probably not healthy, and that if there was a god it certainly wasn't being fair to him, so I stopped.

I will say though that even after I stopped believing I still didn't call myself an atheist (I still prefer not to, for various reasons, but it looks shady if you try to dodge the accusation.) It wasn't until I got involved in the creationism debates on youtube that I started associating with atheism and atheists.

If the answer to 'b)' is 'yes', then:

b.1) Where did you read those arguments? (e.g., Rational Skepticism, Secular Café, FRDB, TheologyWeb, etc.)

As I said, I'm not sure if this applies to me, but just college I suppose. Lots of classes on Medieval History, or just world History, and a few others.

b.2) What are the arguments that persuaded you? (e.g., Evidential Argument from Evil, arguments based on evolutionary theory, geology, etc., arguments against the resurrection of Jesus, moral arguments against Christianity, arguments from religious diversity, etc.)

Well I suppose one sort of important moment was when I realized in History of Christianity class that, at no time in history, does Christianity resemble even the same type of Christianity from any other time in history.

Modern Catholics would be shocked by the Affective Spirituality movement of the High Middle Ages, and no Christian would recognize the 4th Century Ascetics. I realized that this means either Christians are - for the first time in human history - correct in their practice and emphasis today, or one of these historical interpretations is correct, or (in my view the most likely) none of them are because there is no authentic Christianity.

b.3) Do you remember who made some of the arguments, and/or where I could find the posts?

Thanks

Well you're going to have to pay an absurd amount of money if you want to attend my alma mater. But I can say that AronRa was the one who forged me into a weapon against creationism. His video An Archaeological Moment in Time is still my favorite on youtube.

 

[australopithecus]

Which religion did you deconvert from?

Christianity, specifically Catholicism.

Did reading arguments here or in other forums play a part in your deconversion?

No.

 

[SirYeen]

a) Which religion did you deconvert from?


b) Did reading arguments here or in other forums play a part in your deconversion?

a) Christianity
B) no. Science and hitchens did the trick.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

FiverBeyond, Anachronous Rex, australopithecus, SirYeen, thanks for the replies.

The replies seem to be in line with the evidence I had so far, but I'm trying to get an idea of how frequent (or rather infrequent) 'yes' replies to 'b' actually are, and in such cases, which specific argument were persuasive); so, the info is appreciated.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

I was a catholic. And forums haven't really made that much of an impact because by the time I came into contact with skeptic circles I was pretty much done.
But it did help me consolidate some ideas and flush out the indoctrination. In particular James Randi debunking things made me more sensitive to the fact that sometimes unbelievably fantastic can sometimes have very simple down to earth explanations without any need to invoke the supernatural.
And I don't remember who said it, but I was also made sensitive to the fact that when we are under religious thinking we very often throw reason out the window in favor of the unreasonable belief that it must be real, if there was any conflict it was my reason that was wrong (or that it didn't matter, or that God was testing me because he could do anything including confounding reason) not that God didn't actually exist.
Now you combine this with a religious phase of my life where I wanted to know what God really was and what he stood for without my personal biases (or anyone else's for that matter) pressed against it, plus that I really cared for what was actually true or not (despite sometimes going down the abandon reason road), it was a one way thicket to deconversion.
I feel that to really have cared about what was true or not despite of what other people said, played a bigger contribution then anything anyone said.
And of the impact that I took about what other people said, it was rather the sermon of the choir than the words of other atheists that made the most damage to my faith. I still remember to this day going to church and hearing a sermon that I probably had heard several times before (it was the passage where Jesus turned water into whine), from a Priest that was highly regarded as an authority figure and I felt that most influenced me in my religiosity. But because I was committed in learning the Bible and be interested in it and I actually started to read certain passages, I made the mistake of actually paying very close attention to what he was saying and how everything connected. In the end of the sermon I was speechless because there I was listening from a man who has taught everything I knew about religion and when you play very close attention he was mad, he mashed everything with analogies in convoluted cryptic language and forging a moral teaching that had absolutely nothing to do with the narrative. I just felt an urge to jump out of the pew and say "you are wrong! That is not what the text says, you are just making that up as you go along", but I didn't. If that guy didn't had a clue, how could I believe in what he said? Not long after that I started developing pantheistic ideas.

 

[Squawk]

Catholic.

Was well past my religious days when I turned up here, but membership of this and the RDF forums forced me to consider my position to a far greater extent than I would have done without the input of others.

 

[DepricatedZero]

a) Which religion did you deconvert from?
Catholicism

b) Did reading arguments here or in other forums play a part in your deconversion?
No. Reading Ayn Rand did it for me.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

a) Which religion did you deconvert from?

Roman Catholic.

b) Did reading arguments here or in other forums play a part in your deconversion?

No.

What help me convert was two things, becoming a skeptic and finding out that one could be an atheist. I started becoming very interested in James Randi and Michael Shermer, watching anything that had them in it. I started taking their skeptical tool kit to my beliefs and watched as one by one they all came down. At around the same time, I was in middle school and met a student that was an atheist. Until that point, I never thought someone could not believe in a god of some sort. Both of those two factors converted me.

 

[The Felonius Pope]

I used to be Lutheran.

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

I deconverted from Christianity into Paganism.
But that absolutely nothing to do with this forum - I assure you. :lol:

 

[Visaki]

I was technicly a Lutheran for the first two decades of my life. "Technicly" because I was a member of our national Lutheran church though I can't remember a time I really thought that god was real. I first didn't think about it and then when I did I realized I was an atheist.

And no, my conversion to atheism from... atheism I suppose didn't have anything to do with these or any other forums. Hell, back when it happened BBS's were where all the action was and "forums" were something very new, very kludge and very, very high tech.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Master_Ghost_Knight, Squawk, DepricatedZero, he_who_is_nobody, The Felonius Pope, )O( Hytegia )O(, Visaki thanks for the info.

 

[Dogma's Demise]

a) Which religion did you deconvert from?

Orthodox Christianity

b) Did reading arguments here or in other forums play a part in your deconversion?

League of Reason did not exist at the time of my deconversion but other sites and forums (both atheist and Christian ones) did play a role. (Though it would not have been possible without my natural skepticism. I was already having doubts before I started to look into this matter more closely.)

If the answer to 'b)' is 'yes', then:

b.1) Where did you read those arguments? (e.g., Rational Skepticism, Secular Café, FRDB, TheologyWeb, etc.)

Honestly I don't remember all because I didn't just read one source. But some of the first I came across were: EvilBible and Bogus Beyond Belief.

b.2) What are the arguments that persuaded you? (e.g., Evidential Argument from Evil, arguments based on evolutionary theory, geology, etc., arguments against the resurrection of Jesus, moral arguments against Christianity, arguments from religious diversity, etc.)

All of the above arguments had a role and several more as well.

I think the theists themselves also played a role in persuading me that their worldview was not plausible. There were questions they could not adequately answer which damaged their credibility. (Note I'm not saying they were somehow lying, just that they could not adequately defend their claims of supernatural.)

b.3) Do you remember who made some of the arguments, and/or where I could find the posts?

Honestly I never really cared much for who made the argument, a concept is valid no matter where it originates from.

 

[GeologyJack]

a) When I finally gave up religion entirely I was a practicing Buddhist.

b) No, I had been engaged in finding my faith for awhile and never was quite able to settle on one; the idea of the universe being all that there was, no magic, no mysticism, that was a scary thought at first but I challenged myself and let go of it and have felt content since that point.

 

[Noth]

a) Which religion did you deconvert from?

A form of protestant Christianity.

b) Did reading arguments here or in other forums play a part in your deconversion?

No, I was an atheist before I discovered this forum. But discovering this forum via Youtube videos did strengthen by unbelief, as it were.

b.2) What are the arguments that persuaded you? (e.g., Evidential Argument from Evil, arguments based on evolutionary theory, geology, etc., arguments against the resurrection of Jesus, moral arguments against Christianity, arguments from religious diversity, etc.)

Deconversion for some is swift. For me it was a gradual process. I was so firmly rooted in my Christian life I did not begin to think about it this critically until around the age of 16. When I told my parents I didn't want to go to church any more (to them, and to me at the time, not going to church was roughly the same thing as not being a Christian any more) I did still believe in god. And I don't say a god because at that time I still thought there must be one.
At first it was largely the 'problem of pain/suffering' that led me away from Christianity. Even now, after having read so much more and understand so much more, I still haven't come across a half-decent Christian explanation that would have satisfied me then.
From then on it snowballed. I went from still somewhat Christian, but without a church, to a kind of deism, then pantheism and a mild paganism, until there was a turning point where I had shed so much of my old previously-held-dear beliefs that I was able to assess all my remaining beliefs critically. 't Was then I also stopped believing in any form of the supernatural. I think I was 21 or so when, with hindsight, I could have called myself a full-fledged atheist, even though I called myself an agnost as I didn't yet understand the semantic subtleties of those two terms.

Arguments that, so to say, 'helped me on the way' were moral arguments, historical arguments (unreliability of biblical events), geology (wtf Noah's arc? and evolution),

 

[routaran]

a) Which religion did you deconvert from?

Hinduism

b) Did reading arguments here or in other forums play a part in your deconversion?

Nothing in particular. I watched a LOT of star trek growing up and I always found it fascinating that every time a "god" would show up on the show, eventually it would get found out as being some form of trickery or extremely advanced technology. As a kid, I couldn't help but think that if the characters from the show who were supposed to be so advanced could get tricked, what chance would our stone age ancestors have.
I guess i never accepted the idea of an all powerful, all knowing, all whatever entity. I figured they wouldn't be entirely different from us because of just how involved they have been in, at least in the stories people told me about them. Then as i grew up and learned more about the methods science, thus how things really work, I found better explanations and the religion & gods became superfluous.