It wasn't long after that that I realised I couldn't truthfully call myself a Christian anymore, although I didn't know what exactly I was. I told my family how I felt, but they didn't seem to take it seriously, thinking I'd inevitably end up back in Christianity after I got over this phase. To this day, I think they still believe that. Anyway, I spent the next few years trying to avoid religion altogether, but I still had the same questions about the meaning of life and so on that I'd had before, it's just that now I couldn't even pretend I had answers. After I moved out I decided to Find Religion, which was a dismal failure (tried to be a Druid at one point, but while I could get into the whole tree-hugging thing I just couldn't bring myself to believe in magic... tried Christianity again, it worked about as well as the first time).

These days I've realised that the idea of converting someone is ridiculous. If I could make myself believe in gods or magic, I might do it. The idea of a cold, uncaring universe isn't a comforting one and I can understand why people turn to religion... I just don't understand *how* they do it. The world isn't LIKE that. All you have to do is look around. Prayers don't get answered in real life. Bad things happen to good people... and to bad people. Science blatantly contradicts what's in the Bible, and if even one line of the Bible is untrue, all the rest is up for question. There are incredible, amazing things out there, and there are horrible things too, and all of them can be explained without having to resort to a god. So I don't believe in a god because I can't.

I grew up with fairly liberal, moderate parents. I attended sunday school and later the scout movement of our protestant missionary church. I have to say that it was mostly to please my parents, I would have gladly stayed at home. My parents never pushed me to accept their religion or to be baptised (Although they made me sit through years of boring sunday school). I went to church with my parents but really only out of loyalty to them.

I had always been told that if you truly believed and had accepted Jesus, you would feel a whole number of good things. If you was born again you would know it. Since I could never find these feelings in me I reasoned that I didn't belive enough, and I felt a bit guilty and sad about this.

It was my desire to come closer to god that first got me to question the religion I grew up in. In my early teens I decided to read the whole new testament. I got through most of it without finding anything that really made me think about it. The only thing I can remember is having some vauge wonderings about the concept of sin, but I pretty much trundled through it without stopping to think.

But then I read revelations and couldn't get my head around it. This didn't seem like the god I had been told about. Indeed, when I some years later had another bout of wanting to believe, I started ro read the old testament and found the same deeply troubling god. Not wanting to believe in such a cruel and petty god I pretty much rejected the whole old testament and most of the new.

Sometime later I examined my beliefs again and found myself unable to believe in jesus/god and effectively came to the conclusion that if god wanted me he had to convince me himself, because I couldn't. I continued to go to the scout meetings but was never very active.

My first encounter with atheism was in gymnasium (~college) when I read Douglas Adams' The Salmon Of Doubt. I didn't like it. What was left of my christian indoctrination revolted. I felt uneasy about it but came through by essentially pushing the whole matter to the side and refusing to engage with it.

The next time was about two years ago when I watched Penn and Teller thrash the bible. By this time I studied at university and only went to church to meet my aunt (who is a cool aunt and well worth keeping in touch with. Any relative who reads the Smurfs to you when you are small is a cool relative).

It was 2 months ago that I bought The God Delusion on a whim and found myself to clearly qualify to call myself an atheist. Over the course of a decade I had gone from unthinking acceptance of dogma to scientific critical thinking without really making any consious decision. It is probably thanks to my ongoing education in science that my religious beliefs (feeble from the beginning) eroded away.

Well, there you go. Its a lot of words with very little substance but then again so is the bible.:) It is quite ironic that I have taken more interest in what I believe in the past two months than I have done my entire life before now.

Have you noticed any changes in your personality or mood since deconverting?

(My apologies for the clunky wording of what follows. Hopefully it's still easily readable.)

As I noted in my original comment (third from the top), I've had depression for about ten years (a time period which includes my deconversion and a few years before and after). However, I've just recently started treatment for it, so while my moods back then were screwed up (bleak and bleaker), there might be something of value to gain from comparing them to each other.

The biggest thing I remember was the fear of Hell slipping away bit by bit as I read more and more, and the whole Christianity thing just seemed less and less likely. For me, this was a huge thing. I developed very quickly as a child, and asked Jesus into my heart at the age of three. And yes, I was pretty much aware of what I was doing at the time. That said, like several others, I was never really sure that it stuck, so I re-asked Jesus into my heart probably about once a month, primarily because I was so afraid of Hell. Losing that fear, as long and drawn-out a process as it was, was probably the best thing that's ever happened to me.

At the same time, a lot of other things seemed to fall into place: why I had to disagree with my science teachers about something really major, why there are so many different religions and so many sects within them, why I couldn't figure out whether masturbation was okay or if it'd send me to fry for eternity, why the bible clearly and falsely says that anything you'll receive anything you believingly ask for in prayer, and dozens of other things that I couldn't figure out about the world.

The feeling was like the one you get after finishing a really hard puzzle, only it happened almost every time I figured something else out. So, on a daily basis for a while. Add in several generous dashes of "it all makes sense now", and it was a really great feeling. Unfortunately, it combined with thoughts like, "Was I wasting my life all these years?" and "How could I have been so wrong about something so major and so important? What other foundations of my life are completely false?"

So, while I can't say that it was all a bed of roses, I can say that during the deconversion, my depression was easier to handle, and it remained that way for about four years thereafter. There were definitely no lingering negative effects.

As for personality, there was no immediate change. I do think, though, that having had that particular experience, and having viewed the world from two very, very different perspectives, has helped me to look at things from different angles, and see where people are coming from. So I'd like to think that it's helped me be more empathetic, but that might be a stretch. Probably no significant change in personality, although it did remove the guilt that religion had ingrained in me for being myself.

My best wishes go out to you, Matt. I don't know anything about you other than your comments here, but I have the utmost respect for you and what you're doing. You're smarter than you realize. Keep doing what you're doing, and I have every reason to believe it will work out quite well for you.

Peace,
Steve

Again, thank you for your responses. I have another question:

Have you noticed any changes in your personality or mood since deconverting?

Thanks)

All the changes in my life since my coming out from religion have been positive. I no longer feel like a square peg being pounded into a round hole. I no longer have to try to explain the unexplainable scriptures. I no longer have to try and 'love' a deity that is so cruel and heartless that no one could really ever love. When one is forced to love on the threat of eternal torment, that is NOT love. It is fear in the cruelest form. I am now free to read and research without someone heaping guilt on me. If there is a god, he would delight in his creation being curious to find out all the truth. He would have nothing to hide. I no longer fear death. Thomas Paine made a very simple statement concerning his thoughts on death and any possible afterlife that has stayed with me since the moment I read it. He said if there is a Creator, he is just and will deal with us as he sees fit. That is good enough for me. Life was meant to be lived here and now. We work hard for what we have and we should be free to enjoy the fruit of our labor, not wait on empty promises in the here-after. I have lived my life the best I could and have never had a desire to hurt another person. I am honest and I am peaceful. If there is nothing beyond this life, I have still lived my life to share my love and leave behind whatever good I have to leave. Being free of the bondage of superstition and hoping to help others be free is my fondest hope.

Satan - really, does that even make sense? God's most magnificent angel, someone who had stood in god's presence, and knew better than anyone how powerful god was, thinking he was better than god and believing he could win in a war against him?

I recently finished reading The Long War Against God (which was largely disappointing) and the author rhetorically asked this question. I mentioned this to my carpool buddy slash new best friend, who is a believer, and he agreed that this was a profound question. He agreed that Morris's answer in the book was disappointing. The answer? Satan believes in evolution.

I mention this partially to share something I find funny, but at the same time, think it' important to keep in mind that just because something doesn't make sense to us, that there isn't a plausible answer. A lot (but not all) of atheist material I find on-line pokes fun at Christianity, but really pokes fun at their own lack of understanding of both sides of the argument. (e.g. there is a list of "funny" Bible verses on a skeptics page which includes "for a wife he kept sheep" - under "sex" (as if he's sleeping with sheep) but realy should have been under "treatment of women" because he was buying a woman with his work.)

Verily I am offended by thine lack of belief in me. Rest assured, Thou shalt receive a visit from me in thy dreams, wherein I shall smite thee. Consider thyself fortunate that I can not smite the in the "real" world ( I have an agreement with all of my fellow gods not to intervene in material reality; that would leave physical evidence and RUIN our whole divine hiddenness cover. We had to b*tch slap that Jesus fellow once 'cause he almost kilt everything for all of us. BTW, this is how we talk to each other. We use thee's and thou's when we need to impress you mortals).

At any rate, thou shalt keepeth thine unbelief to thyself, lest thou infect other mortals with that vile ignorance. Remember that "Fear is the beginning of wisdom."

TheMightyThor has spoken!

First, a P.S. to my last post. I used to say that when I asked Jesus to come into my heart, things just made more sense, When I was finally able to recognize that Jesus doesn't exist, everything made even more sense.

A few years after I "deconverted" (I don't like that term), I started learning Esperanto, which is a language, not a religion. A few people (myself included) have noticed that Esperanto has taken a similar place in my life that my belief in God took before. I think this is simply an aspect of my personality. So in answer to your question, I notice my personality staying the same.

I'll point out here that the difference between being a "Bible believer" and being an "Esperanto speaker" is that I don't believe that people will go to hell for not speaking Esperanto. If someone isn't interested in Esperanto, I can let it go and keep looking for like-minded people might be... and I've never knocked on doors to preech Esperanto.

When I stopped believing, I was a little ashamed that I'd spent seven years as a believer -- reading the Bible more than my school books, writing letters of thumpitude to my family members -- and that I had to admit that I was wrong. My t-shirts and other goodies went into deep storage, as did certain ways of thinking. I've gotten to the point where I can wear my JESUS shirt around the house, or even in the yard. Sometimes the certain ways of thinking come out too.

Here's an example of that. My involvement in the language Esperanto led me to contact the local center for the Baha'i Faith. I've been invited there a few times to talk. In the course of preparing a few presentations about Esperanto for local Baha'i, I have read just about every Baha'i document I can find about a universal language. The proplem is that when I tried to look at Baha'i scripture, I had two ways of looking at them. Not only could I look at it as an Atheist, but I could also dig out my old Fundie way of thinking. Neither one was the "right" way, if I wanted to see the subject from my audience's point of view.

(My way around this was simply to disclose up front this problem I was having, and apologize in advance if it sounds like I'm trying to tell them based on their scriptures what they are supposed to beleive.)

As for the second part of your question -- changes in mood. Probably not, although it's a great load off to finally see that it's not your fault if people around you don't accept Jesus. That's kind of helped my mood a bit. :-)

Again, thank you for your responses. I have another question:

Have you noticed any changes in your personality or mood since deconverting?

Thanks,

matt

I quit praying five years ago, and nothing has changed. I didn't fall into evil habits, or experience less good or bad than you probably have.

I have quit praying and reading the bible for some months now and really have not noticed a very big difference, I think. Of course sometimes I do not notice subtle changes in myself because of my perspective. I guess I just have to trust myself.

Cheers,

Matt