How long did it take for you to deconvert? What made you change your mind?

[Alex K]

There is nothing embarrassing about reading Dan Brown novels.... I hope..

[Athene]

This is a really tough question for me. I never really viewed myself as being deconverted (an atheist) until just this year, but looking back I suppose my religious beliefs had been wearing away for a very long time. As  the years passed, I felt less and less comfortable with church. Religion was always a source of conflict  for my mother, other religious family members and myself ......I was always accused of not trusting in God enough, because I was never convinced that the act of prayer could solve a any serious problem.  I attended a Pentacostal church, and if you didn't know they really give Southern Baptists a run for their money in the crazy department. Speaking in tongues, being slain in the spirit, and faith healings were things I could never bring myself to believe in. I wanted to, but I just couldn't. 
A simple way to describe my deconversion-- I had always seen the holes in whole religion thing. Time passed. As I learned and experienced more, the holes got bigger and my belief grew smaller. What I was left with in the end was a room full of large, gaping holes and a tiny marble. I watched CNN's Atheist in America out of curiosity-- and was surprised at how much I related to them. Read some stuff. Marble rolled towards one the big 'ol holes. I asked myself some extremely diffficult questions.The marble teetered precariously close to the edge of hole. Thought a lot. Read some more. Thought things through. Marble disappeared.

[SteelCurtain]

There is nothing embarrassing about reading Dan Brown novels.... I hope..

No, but having one spur a major life shift seems rather trite.

[brewer]

Not that long, almost instantly. I was in church (13 yrs old) and we were having a teen group discussion with the youth pastor. The subject came around to evidence that god and jesus existed, that the bible was true. We'd say what about this, what about that........, he'd respond with a text book answer (it's in the bible-the bible was written by god-therefore god and jesus exist. He might have thrown in some extras like dead sea scrolls, shroud of turin, I don't recall, that was 45 yrs ago). With continued questioning he finally cracked and stated the relentless questioning was satan working in us and we just had to believe to be saved and then stormed out.

Ding, ding, ding! We have a deconversion, jesus and god and the holy goat go down for the count. It was a third round, holy trinity knockout!

[downbeatplumb]

I have never for one second believed any of it. I look on bemused at the people who take it seriously.

[Alex K]

There is nothing embarrassing about reading Dan Brown novels.... I hope..

No, but having one spur a major life shift seems rather trite.

I had too, though of a different kind. I read Angels&Demons and almost instantly decided to become a writer and write a science thriller one day. I thought to myself - there has got to be a way to do this kind of exciting topic and format, but with an actual understanding of the science and interspersed with a discussion of science vs. religion that is less fatally eye roll inducing than Dan Brown's hack job on this topic. Still, I can't help but loving that stuff.

[abaris]

Can't say how long it took and there was certainly no atheist literature or videos involved in the process. The internet or personal computers for that matter weren't even around at that time. I got disgusted with religion even when I was still a child. The sermons of priests did the job well enough. Truth is, for the longest time of my life I didn't give a fuck. I didn't waste any thoughts on religion at all. What you could call a final deconversion happened, must have been around 1990. For some reason I pondered the question of god. And given all I knew about science, history and the age of the world, christianity or any other religion didn't make any sense. No big boom of now I got it, simply the facts and I went on with my life as I did before.

[Chad32]

Not that long, almost instantly. I was in church (13 yrs old) and we were having a teen group discussion with the youth pastor. The subject came around to evidence that god and jesus existed, that the bible was true. We'd say what about this, what about that........, he'd respond with a text book answer (it's in the bible-the bible was written by god-therefore god and jesus exist. He might have thrown in some extras like dead sea scrolls, shroud of turin, I don't recall, that was 45 yrs ago). With continued questioning he finally cracked and stated the relentless questioning was satan working in us and we just had to believe to be saved and then stormed out.

Ding, ding, ding! We have a deconversion, jesus and god and the holy goat go down for the count. It was a third round, holy trinity knockout!

This is one thing that bugs me. Truth is something that holds up to scrutiny. Truth does not fear questioning. When someone tells you something is so, and then makes the act of questioning a major crime or insult to it, that's a red flag. Whether it's the devil or not, if an idea doesn't hold up well to scrutiny, it isn't worth keeping.

The bible talks about people who build their house on a rock, as oppose to people who build their house on sand. If you don't have a good foundation for a belief, it's not going to hold up. If you don't have a good reason for your faith, you're going to lose it.

[hilary]

Im an agnostic-atheist now. I "deconverted", as you put it, in a time frame of about a month and a half. But before this I was very skeptical, I was doubting alot of the things my faith had taught me. Even as a child I knew something had to be wrong with this thing I called "christianity"/"catholicism". One of the many questions I had was: If god was so great, why didnt he simply fix everything? No one to this day has answered this sufficiently, I presume because the real answer is that there is no god. 

But in short:   

---

This is one thing that bugs me. Truth is something that holds up to scrutiny. Truth does not fear questioning. When someone tells you something is so, and then makes the act of questioning a major crime or insult to it, that's a red flag. Whether it's the devil or not, if an idea doesn't hold up well to scrutiny, it isn't worth keeping.

Perfectly put!

[Regina]

I don't know when I de-converted when I look back in hindsight.

I had the "Catholic" label put on me as a kid, but if I'm being honest I don't think I ever really believed in it hardcore. I was hardly a child genius by any means, but I just seemed to have this ability to know I was being fed bullshit. I went along with the crowd and lived a half-assed "soft Catholicism", indentifying more with the culture than the religion, until I was about 19. After that I very briefly flirted with Paganism before having my atheist wake-up call. I'd say the process took about a year.