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Deconversion

Could anybody help me with deconversion?

godlesssouth09 3 June 16
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1

Here is my story [patheos.com]

@GuyK, Tragic but so true.

I read your story, I am so sorry to hear of the losses you've experienced on your journey.

0

what version of deacon do you have?

0

There is also The Atheist Experience on You Tube if you prefer discussions.

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GODLESS: HOW an EVANGELICAL PREACHER BECAME ONE of AMERICA'S LEADING ATHEISTS
Book by Dan Barker. This may help. He has been where you are now.

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Helping you with deconversion?
Maybe it would help us if you could tell us what you were converted into and what you would like to be deconverted into.

1

Just be careful not to throw the baby out with tha bath water as they say.

If there are bits that work for you it’s not necessary to ditch them. You can mix and match if you want.

If religion, and I am assuming Christianity, has been deeply ingrained you will feel a massive loss and have to go through a period of emptiness like grieving if you just ditch it overnight.

As other posters have said read alternative ideas. You don’t have to drop everything and you can let new ideas unfold. Move gently and you will find another way of thinking or a deeper interpretation of your current faith.

Most of all there is nothing to prove to anyone, not even yourself.

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To or from metric?

3

Welcome to the asylum. Enjoy your stay.

Personally, I think one of the best ways to work through your return to logic and
reason is to read the histories of religions and "holy" books.
Read about how the bible was actually created, and how it's been altered every
single time it's ever been translated, or copied.
Read about how the powers that be within different religions made conscious
decisions about how the masses would be allowed to access their "holy" books.

The more you learn, the easier it is to see how it's all just so much bullshit.
ALL gods are man-made. Not a single one of them has ever existed in reality.
The whole "Highlander" mindset, "there can be only one", is a perfect example
of how ridiculous the whole concept of gods really is.

The Ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, Norse, and others, all had multiple
gods that handled different "jobs".
The christians came along and insisted there was only one god, but he was
actually three entities. How absurd is that?
Historically speaking, the whole thing is obviously borne of ignorance.
It's continuation in modernity has become an accepted form of mental illness.
Believing in things that don't exist is delusion.
Delusion is a BIG symptom of mental illness.

Good luck going forward.
This community is an excellent source of support.

0

The Sagan standard is an aphorism that asserts that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" (ECREE).

An extraordinary claim is one which is not supported by the available, or ordinary, evidence. Support for such a claim must therefore come from newly observed evidence, or a new recognition of existing evidence, which is extraordinary.
[en.m.wikipedia.org]

There are way too many extraordinary claims in the xtian and numerous other bibles for us to go around disproving all of them. It’s up to the various believers to provide proof.

1

My biggest help in the way out of Christianity was to discover that the bible as we know it today came into being some 300 or more years after the time of Jesus. It was decided then to put the 66 books together into one big book. Many other books were done away with or discredited.The appearance is to show a beginning and and ending of everything but this is not real. Putting all the books together is also why you find discrepancies in the bible. It's simply like getting a lot of people to write a story. You also have to understand that Saul of Tarsus (as St. Paul) is credited with writing two thirds of the NT and he did not know Jesus and never met him. Paul also could not tell if he was in or out of his body when he received all of his revelations. Right there is enough for any sane person to simply forget god ideas as far as I'm concerned. This is when I got away from others that babble and wave their arms around even if they do tend to make you tingle.

Would you believe that 9 people were raised from the dead in the OT and that one such man came alive again after touching Elisha's bones? We need to find those bones and let hospitals use them today to cure others. Angels have wings and in the Koran the prophet flew to heaven on a winged horse. So many people see their way out of this sort of nonsense but still pick and chose what they believe. This is why we have so many religions. There is no proof that any scriptures worldwide are written by gods and no proof of any gods trying to be in touch with you. Die-hard believers still tell you that our Founding Fathers believed but they fail to see that most of them were Deists. Without science as we know it today an unknown god as a first cause set everything in motion and then disappeared. Deists also believe there is no way to know this god or have a personal relationship with it.

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My way out of religion was intellectual. Matthew 7:15-20 warns us against false prophets and tells us that by their fruits you will know them. Similarly, Deuteronomy 18:20-22 tells us that if a prophet makes a prediction in the name of the Lord, and the prediction proves to be false, he is a false prophet, and should be ignored.

I studied the prophets, and especially the main ones: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel & Daniel. In each of them, I found predictions made in the name of of the Lord that never came true, and the time for fulfillment is past. My conclusion is that the biblical prophets had no divine gift for predicting the future.

If you would like further detail, I would be happy to send you my reports. Just ask for them and tell me where to email them. 🙂

Here are the titles some of my reports:
Fearless Bible Study
Judging the Prophets
Isaiah Was a False Prophet
Jeremiah Was a False Prophet
Ezekiel Was a False Prophet
Daniel Is False Prophecy
Jesus Falls with the Prophets
Phony Fulfillments
Contradictions in the Bible
The Satire According to Matthew
Christianity Debunked
Morality
Why I Cannot Be Christian

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For some people it is easy. For others it is a struggle. But it is some eye opening shit.

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Yes, very easy, what you once believed was a result of brainwashing, even your parents, and the environment that surrounded you since you were barely a baby, would constantly hammer you with religious crap. You then, in a brief moment of clarity or rebellion or iconoclast logic, chose to challenge that crap. You finally started to use your brain and think, reason, question all the bullshit that you were fed every fucking day of your life, and you took the only viable common sensical conclusion that is also based on facts and logic. You chose to eliminate religion from your mind. You've done the hard part already, now it is time for you to not feel guilt, or shame that most everybody around you will try to make you feel. You got the power of facts, reason, logic and common sense to support you, along with an indisputable fact: all religions, without exception, were created by men, so if it is not a tangible creation, it is definitively fiction.

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No one can tell you what to do. That is the way the religions do it. We have faith but it is faith that you can work this out yourself -with help as above and below of course.

1

We can try to guide you, but you'll have to do a bit of work 🙂

Take a look at [recoveringfromreligion.org] they have a list of interesting resources that can help a lot.

Watch YouTube clips by some of the well known atheists, you'll learn a lot in a short space.

Some suggestions for YouTube:

  1. Matt Dillahunty hosts a show known as the Atheist Experience. Matt is one of the sharpest atheists and one of the best debaters. If you watch his previous shows you'll soon see the fallacies people employ to justify their beliefs.
  2. The Thinking Atheist, Seth Andrews, as well as Dan Barker
  3. AronRa
  4. Richard Dawkins
  5. Christopher Hitchens was probably one of the most eloquent atheists.

Of the above Matt, Seth and Dan Barker were all at one stage fervent believers, so it will help if you listen to them to understand how their thinking has evolved.

Welcome to the good side, let us know how this is going!

Corden Level 5 June 16, 2019
3

Read , read and read ....richard dawkins , sam harris , christopher hitchins oh and if you havent already the bible . When you have finished with them popular science books just to get a better understanding of the world .

Simon1 Level 7 June 16, 2019
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Jump on in. You are safe here.

Amisja Level 8 June 16, 2019
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Possibly, but you could help by letting everyone know what it is that you need help with.

I’d start by thinking about it as waking up for the first time.

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I’m sure a lot of us can, but you’ll have to be more specific, what stage of doubt or acceptance are you in right now, how long since you didn’t consider yourself Christian? And what specifically are you struggling the most with outside of faith? Lack of community, lack of purpose in life, fear of the unknown? Probably a little of all of it? It’s normal but talk a little about where your heads at please n we’ll see what we can do.

I'm started not believing almost a week ago.

Yes

@godlesssouth09 so where are your thoughts at on it? What are you struggling the most with?

@godlesssouth09 - I recall feeling like I was spinning out of control inside when I was in your position - racing thoughts, intense anger coupled with fear and guilt, etc. It took a while for it all to calm down. Reading helped. I tended toward subjects about how we form and hold onto beliefs. At some point, I realized I missed the feeling of certainty that I knew the answers for my life, but a feeling of certainty is just that - a feeling. When I realized how easily my feelings could be manipulated, I undetstood how uncertain I was of most thing I had felt certain of. I began to reevaluate how I decided what was true and correct and accepted that I would never be 100% certain of it. Over time life got back to being normal. Some things just don't change regardless of what one believes. We all still need to eat and sleep, someone needs to wash the dishes, do the laundry, and clean our living areas. Believing one thing or another doesn't change these facts of life.

I wish you well, godlesssouth09. While your journey is unique to you, it is along a path that many others have traversed. I suspect most of us have survived without falling off the deep end. Our basic values, while perhaps altered a bit, are still intact and I suspect the vast majority of us have retained our compassion for our fellow human beings. We are still able to love and to care about others. While you may be at a difficult time greiving the loss of what you once believed, you will be able to endure and emerge better for having looked at yourself, the world around you, and for taking on the responsibility for what you will believe and why you believe it.

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Sure.

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