Deconversion

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I was recently reading this article: http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2010/06/go ... e-god.html

Basically, the author is claiming that deconversion stories are all false by nature:

Now, I think the author is false, but he seems to be one of those folks so dense that words cannot get through to his skull, only plumbing equipment.



As it stands, the author is basically making it such that there is no valid reason to leave pretty much as a matter of definition. Rather, it is true that: "[He's] stacking it in such a way that there is no denying the God of the Bible. [He's] saying we should just believe God because He says we should."

After all, he is casually discounting things, such as inexplicable evil, "apparent" contradictions in scripture, and lack of evidence. The problem being obvious, as if contradictions in scripture are not acceptable evidence, then we could never know if a covenant has been breached in the first place. Even further, given that the number of covenants directly applicable to us is likely limited and difficult to prove the falsity of, the very approach binds us to a possibility that is potentially false, without a real way to practice intellectual honesty.

If this is a matter we are supposed to invest our very souls and beings into, then there needs to be a degree of information necessary to justify an situation where we sacrifice our Isaac, otherwise then the sacrifices we make would be quite horrible of us to make.

The fact is that any honest assessment of truth, we do have to recognize that our answers are potentially false, but the problem is the only faith left after this kind of nonsense is a dogmatic faith lacking any form of intellectual vibrancy.

Is inexplicable evil not a problem? Well, no, even if we say that God commands what is good, we still have CS Lewis's objection:



And the fact of the matter is that almost every evil is inexplicable with a being who could make it snow ice cream. If God is morally perfect (Matt 5:48 ) then we should expect to see moral perfection, otherwise the admonition to be morally perfect like God is perfect is an empty one.

Even further if we lack evidence, or only have evidence that seems to disagree with scripture, it seems that leaving is the only intellectually valid choice. How can it just be intellectually valid to leave something that seems false by any other standard? It doesn't seem it would be, and any measure of truth should recognize this. The same with contradictions in scripture, as I doubt it is just a matter of "oh, they aren't equally clear to everyone" given that even scholars recognize contradictions in the text. Should we just think "oh, those petty Biblical scholars, they just hate God and aren't reading it right?" probably not. Rather, we have to recognize that the very standard being held to errors in the Bible is not honest.

In fact, the real fact of the matter is that our author, Dan Phillips, is pretty much defending dogmatism rather than any real measure of rationality. If pressed, he is likely just one of those fools who will trot off how everything we know about reality is somehow contingent upon his Pink Unicorn, a matter that the rest of us would want to see proven rather than asserted.

As it stands though, I will say this:
Even though the Christian scriptures do not affirm an honest deconversion, just like cults wouldn't have to either, such a thing can exist, and almost certainly does.

This is part of the Awesomelyglorious initiative to recognize the dignity of atheist peoples and to STRIDENTLY show the flaws in their opponents and their views.
(This message has been paid for by the commission to awesomize Awesomelyglorious)

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 02 Jun 2010, 10:41 pm, edited 2 times in total.

AG has very plainly and STRIDENTLY put forth his agenda. Keeping in mind his exaggerated style as of late, and not really taking this exercise terribly seriously, I'll be brief.

The answer about a deconversion from Christianity is a matter of yes AND no. In the sense that there are many Christians out there who are Christian in name only, not a wholehearted devotion to Christian tenets (across the board, not JUST Catholicism), these Christians CAN deconvert simply on the basis that they don't practice a real religion. That may sound funny coming from a well-hated Christian on this forum, but Christianity in that sense is no different than Islam, Buddhism, or any other well-meaning or well-intentioned religion. It's all about being a good person (whatever that means to you) and following a few choice words of wisdom from Christ. Beyond that, it's fairly empty.

In that sense, sure, a Christian can "lose faith" in a manner of speaking and follow another religion or abandon God entirely. I think those who have been misled to believe that there is such a thing as a "fall from grace" are really seeing this kind of thing--someone who hasn't experienced Christ in more than a superficial kind of way.

In another sense of the word "Christian," there are many of us (myself included here) who believe that if one is truly saved, that person will remain saved eternally. In that sense, a true Christian CANNOT deconvert. OK, well, how do you know the difference? The Bible tells us "you will know them by their actions." Good works flow from the Spirit of God indwelling within those who believe. Works don't save, just provide evidence that one is a child of God. It's a genuine, willful thing. Sure, there are good people who do good things "for goodness' sake," but many people do good works for their own motivations, not simply as inspired by God. So it follows that some who do good things might be assumed to be Christian, while Christians may do good things and NOT be recognized as such. Still, someone who publicly acknowledges that they belong to Christ AND does good works, often in the absence of other external motivations (money, recognition, and so on) MOST LIKELY is the real deal. Because they DO maintain their faith, and because their devotion is wholehearted and unwavering, their faith will survive any doubts they may have or any tendencies they may have to stray from their faith. It would be impossible for those people to deconvert, even at the threat of death.

A funny things about religion in general, not just Christianity, is that EVERYONE loves a martyr. Christians survived so well in Jerusalem because relentless persecution of Christians so soon after the Church had been established had a profound psychological effect on the people around them, which didn't bode well for their persecutors. That so many throughout the Roman Empire, who was even more guilty on a larger scale for Christian persecution, kept their faith in the face of horrible death spoke volumes to those who watched them die. In the end, more Romans realized the futility of their actions, and the practice ended in large part with the conversion of Constantine and the creation of a Roman Christian theocracy.

The difficult question here is instances where people who you would think shouldn't convert do. There are many people who have dramatic conversions. There are many people who are so devoted that they even go to seminary to study their faith in depth and serve the church. At what line do we conclude that a person is not faking?

I mean, a number of atheist figures such as Hector Avalos, Dan Barker, John Loftus, Bart Ehrman, Ken Pulliam and others have been through the center of Christianity and spent significant periods of time believing and working as a believer until they left. It seems that such occurrences leave the notion of "no deconversion" effectively falsified, at least if one still holds to the possibility of knowing one's salvation. After all, either one should be saved and know it, and thus would enter and stay in ministry on this basis, or one is not saved and this can be detected, and they shouldn't be granted any authority or go as far into Christian theology and service as many of these people do.

Evid3nc3's deconversion on YouTube is fairly thorough.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSy1-Q_BEtQ[/youtube]

@ AG
Basically the blog says the bible has many contradictions and not supported by evidence, but just believe anyway

@AngelRho
No true Scotsman again. How do you know you are not going to de-convert tomorrow? 10 years later?

This is my main objection to these kind of claims. I spent a long time arguing with a Muslim over various issues, and one thing that really struck me was the extent to which Muslim apologists have mastered the No True Scotsman argument. They even go so far as to claim that any Muslim, no matter how devout in their belief, who ever violates anything in the Koran is not actually a Muslim, or at least they cease to be a Muslim while they are sinning.

There's no clear-cut answer here. I mean, sure, you can conceivably have a lot of "fake" Christians that you cannot detect as false and who may never deconvert, at least not openly, anyway. At the same time, you might have true, born-again Christians you'd never guess were believers. Something I MEANT to say in my earlier post, but forgot to, is that anyone who claims to "deconvert" or who "loses their faith" or "falls from grace" or otherwise "denies God/Jesus/Holy Spirit etc." was never truly saved in the first place.

As far as me possibly deconverting in the future (I won't) goes, this relates to what I've just said here. I have believed from a very early age, just as I do now, and I've never had any significant reasons to doubt. Believing in something as a child and reinforcing those beliefs makes it easier to hold onto those beliefs longer into adulthood. I think more Christians are probably saved as adults, partly because it takes so much more time for them along with different experiences in life that cause them to seek God. I hear more from people who say that maybe they spoke with their parents or a friend, felt some kind of pull to get back into church, and then figure out that all of a sudden everything makes sense. That was never my experience, though. I never doubted my "fire insurance," in other words, throughout various circumstances. What I DID doubt was the extent to which what I'd been taught about my faith was really true, and that has to do with my conservative upbringing--something I've mentioned in other threads.

One GOOD example was having to listen to too many fire-and-brimstone revival preachers that spewed garbage about what a saved soul was SUPPOSED to be like, what experiences with God and the Holy Spirit were SUPPOSED to be like. The whole time I'm thinking that what I experience is NOTHING like that, so yeah, those kinds of things held a long, dark shadow over my security in my faith. It's hard to get into specifics because that was a long time ago, so suffice it to say that NOTHING should contradict the idea that faith alone is required for salvation. Any message that indicates that THIS should happen or THAT should happen and such things deviate from a simple faith is a misleading message and only serves to evoke emotional responses from the congregant. The purpose of a sermon to a believer is to affirm faith and instruct, not cast doubt. For the unbeliever, the purpose is to convict and persuade. I personally found that church services in which the speaker was sending us ALL to Hell were especially mentally and spiritually excruciating. Once I got into college, I avoided "revivals" like the plague.

Add to that even when things were going well, i.e. just another Sunday morning and Sunday evening, I had to be in church EVERY time the doors were open. It's more than a little exhausting. I'll even admit that if I weren't employed by a church, I wouldn't feel quite the obligation that I do. It's also had the effect of keeping my OWN family in church every time the doors are open. One particular church program (a kind of group study unique to our church) that my wife and I have been deeply involved in has actually put a strain on our family because of strict childcare procedures. Not only that, but for the two years we've been involved, we've been the youngest couple in our group with no others of even comparable age. It's horribly demoralizing. We've discussed this at length and even had fights over it, but ended up staying with the program for the duration. In the end, we have decided it best not to continue in what amounts to a "house church," though we will explore other ways in which we can be involved in church life, perhaps at a different church but without compromising or abandoning our obligations to our current one.

The point by telling all this, to be fair, is that a believer must acknowledge that certain aspects of church life (as opposed to believing but not taking part in "organized" religion) aren't easy, practical, or comfortable. There are good reasons to take part in corporate worship, though, something my family has come to value greatly in spite of one or two inconveniences (and at one point even adversity. Yes, some of us CAN be absolutely horrid in their treatment of others less fortunate than themselves). Trust me, I've lived the life long enough to understand what it is to have doubts. If I was ever going to deconvert, I'd have done it already.

Well, ok, but AngelRho, the problem is that you are sacrificing the doctrine that proclaims that people can know their salvation. This is a common historical doctrine based upon passages of 1 John and other places within the body of scripture.

As it stands though, you make the intervention of the Holy Spirit unverifiable or falsifiable, and to me that seems a clear intellectual problem in your beliefs. There is nothing to your assertions but dogma.

It's not sacrificing anything.

Consider: Faith in the God of the Bible, Christ's atonement is required for salvation. Someone who abandons God/Jesus violates the requirement for salvation. Therefore, they can "know" that they aren't saved.

Likewise, one who DOES accept Christ CAN (and should) know that they are saved.

That doesn't mean that one can't have doubts. Christians are as much subject to doubt as they are to temptation. One who IS saved won't fear their doubts because in the end, their doubts don't (can't) don't lead to a permanent rejection of Christ. One who has NOT genuinely and permanently accepted Christ as Savior has no such guarantee.

Acceptance is actually a lot easier than you might think. I think the difficulty is more often for the more sophisticated thinker more thoroughly indoctrinated in secularism (or whatever you want to call it), seconded by (perhaps) those who have been burned by religious experience. As to dogma and assertions--those are simply conclusions I've drawn from my own study of the Bible and various sermons on the topic over the years. I'm not convinced you really know what you're talking about because you lack faith. Going on and on about dogma is probably just part of your campaign effort, so I'll leave that one alone.

Right, but before, they thought they were saved. The problem is that they were wrong earlier, and really were never saved. This is still a knowledge problem.

I've known plenty of Christians in various churches I've attended who came forth to confess that they didn't believe before. When they realized that they had made a mistake, that their profession of faith was false, but that they did indeed now believe on Jesus, they would come forth and make that known. I've even known people who felt it necessary to go through baptism again because they wanted their baptism to be genuine. Those people could just as easily decide NOT to come forward and to continue to reject the Gospel. Many false Christians very often do. They "think" they are saved when they are only just following the belief that is most convenient at the time.

Not that it is a BAD thing on its own. I mean, if a person blindly believes and genuinely holds himself to faith, it amounts to the same thing--it's basically what we've all done as little kids when we come to Christ. But I've also spent a lot of time among people of a more ecumenical background. While it did challenge my thinking a bit, I somehow kept coming back to the same conclusion.

The older and more experienced I got, the easier it became to talk about it (another one of those things that was a problem for me when I was younger, those speakers I mentioned would say "If you don't share the Gospel, then yew hate Christ and yew are going to HAYELL!! !"). One of my Wiccan friends tried to challenge me on it, for which I'd give the best answer I could. I wasn't quite as knowledgeable of the Bible as I am now, but I completely OWNED the guy, and he never could quite figure out how I managed to get the upper hand in our debates. It was a twofold problem: I understood the basics, and he was about as insecure in discussing his own faith as I was when I was his age, believing but not really understanding why. He didn't really know what he was talking about when it came to the supposed evils of Christianity, nor did he understand his own version of Wicca in any kind of meaningful or mature way. I, on the other hand, had PLENTY of years identifying with both other Christians and our critics. I've had plenty of opportunities to change my position, not to mention plenty of reasons. Sure, I've made adjustments along the way, and sure there's much left to learn. But if I ever wonder why it was I was never so easily swayed, ultimately the answer seems to be that it isn't possible. I spoke the truth to this guy, and he knew it. Every couple of weeks or so he'd come back with some stereotypical trash talk that he'd call "new ammunition" and I'd shoot it down just as easily as I had before, leaving the poor guy mystified that he couldn't trap me on anything.

AG, if I was so successful in engaging this guy, you'd probably have had him curled up on the floor in the fetal position, the difference being that I didn't go on an all-out attack on his religion the way he tried to do with me. You would have had a lot more fun.

But as far as thinking you were saved at one point and being mistaken about it... I don't see that there is a problem. Anybody can have mistakes in their thinking that prohibits them from sure knowledge. I mean, that's just a fact of human life. You never really "lose" faith, the idea here being you can't lose what you never had in the first place.

Ok, the real issue is just that it is a significant doctrine, but whatever, apparently not one of yours.

My deconversion was honest.
A priest DID "save" me.
And it was the realization of what the "saving" was, that deconverted me 12 years afterwards.

Deconversion I firmly believe can come from new information put into the mix - whether that's evolution, the ability to conceptualize what the world would be like without a God, what that would mean, especially if someone's used to seeing social darwinism, seeing how we behave like animals on a lot of levels, and most importantly if they've never caught record of a miracle that was fully validated as being something beyond mere delusion.

That said though - what that is IMO is a point that hits a lot of people, they may deconvert or simply just stop going to church for a while, but its mostly that their amount of biblical understanding was surpassed by worldy understanding. Once they take all of their worldly understanding into account and read the bible again though, usually it reads a bit different and - I at least - have found it to be so far on a level playing field.

As for the morality of a God who allows evil to happen to the extent it does; I can't answer this one, I've wondered about it often enough myself. My best guesses though - he's not in our position and literally can't be (except that Jesus did take our form and took billions of times the pain we could - on our behalf - to send us a message), in reading the bible 'life' is meant in a more Spartan direction - ie. life is tests, it comes down to matters of faith and spiritual health, people's lives were in enough turmoil to be skirting death on a regular basis or, like in the case of John the Baptist being executed or Peter also being nailed to the cross, we're here supposedly - by that message - to keep ourselves growing in spirit and wisdom come hell or high water, which the early saints saw a lot of both here.

I think what's genuinely confusing for us though, late 20th and early 21st century - we're in quite a cushy world, it 'feels' like such rules of reality have changed entirely or that they just don't apply, which changes the emphasis of what we're willing to buy as valid thought/philosophy/theology some, its largely because of that that we have a harder time relating to the bible on a gut level anymore. On the other hand though 1st Corinthians seemed like it was a letter to a church which found itself in a cushy situation - mainly because cushy societies seem to find themselves more buried in social conflict (sectarianism, etc.) which is a paradigm that societies struggling to keep their heads above water can't enjoy as often.

That guy is trying to defend a quasi-doctrinal notion of "once saved, always saved".

To deny that a deconverted wasn't really a Christian or a devoted Christian seems nonsense, I understand that inside a christian doctrine, ANYONE can fall for WHATEVER reason, therefore no one can guarantee your salvation, I, at least, learned as a Christian, that salvation wasn't never a guarantee. I was a conservative christian, and probably that has a lot to do with my apparent "deconversion".

It has much to do with other things, such as a personality and psychology and given that, their own faith weakens due to some circumstances, may have to do in few cases with weak personality, I admit I am insecure and do have a weak personality and that probably was easy for me to wonder about my beliefs, I can't say wether I am that deconverted though but I started with a faith crisis.

I believe I used to be a devoted Christian, I wondered why my fellow christian mates didn't behave christ-like, as I supposed then that as a Christian either you honestly would try to imitate Christ or get the hell out of church.

But heck! given that all religious dogmas seem to be very questionable, that concept wouldn't matter much, would it?