(January 1, 2017 at 3:27 pm)Astonished Wrote: That kind of thing is what prevented me from ever giving it a second chance. I would ask, if Jesus would go around healing the blind, wasn't he just playing favorites? Why do it for them and not everybody who is blind? If there's no level playing field, it's impossible for god to love us all equally, and if he doesn't love us all equally, that isn't a perfectly loving god. Their attempts to over-reach on god's perfection and benevolence backfired as defenses for faith in me.

"A second chance?" A chance to do what?

We have some xtians right here who answer this by saying god doesn't have to be perfectly loving and who are we to require him to be what we want him to be. Excuse me? Why should I trust in the salvation from a god who at any moment can change the meaning of salvation? Can you see those xtians up there at the pearly gates and St. Peter tells them, "Well, you just have to understand..."

(January 1, 2017 at 4:22 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote:

(January 1, 2017 at 3:27 pm)Astonished Wrote: That kind of thing is what prevented me from ever giving it a second chance. I would ask, if Jesus would go around healing the blind, wasn't he just playing favorites? Why do it for them and not everybody who is blind? If there's no level playing field, it's impossible for god to love us all equally, and if he doesn't love us all equally, that isn't a perfectly loving god. Their attempts to over-reach on god's perfection and benevolence backfired as defenses for faith in me.

"A second chance?" A chance to do what?

We have some xtians right here who answer this by saying god doesn't have to be perfectly loving and who are we to require him to be what we want him to be. Excuse me? Why should I trust in the salvation from a god who at any moment can change the meaning of salvation? Can you see those xtians up there at the pearly gates and St. Peter tells them, "Well, you just have to understand..."

Remember how I said I spent the bulk of my time from then on just pretending to still believe and going through the motions? Contemplating giving the faith a chance to prove itself to me was almost a defense mechanism. Instead it just shot itself in the foot, again.

RE:: Reply to thread: Did anyone else get deconverted by a single sentence?

Perhaps 4 small sentences are appropriate.
The aforesaid sequence reveals that humans physically can't believe [WHERE FREQUENT believe definition = 'accept as TRUE.....'].




Observe the sentences:

(January 1, 2017 at 3:48 pm)Stimbo Wrote: all that stuff you said

Do you have some kind of radar that lets you know when your name is mentioned in a post? something to do with your familial connection to Darth Vader, perhaps?

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(January 1, 2017 at 4:52 pm)Astonished Wrote:

(January 1, 2017 at 4:22 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote: "A second chance?" A chance to do what?

We have some xtians right here who answer this by saying god doesn't have to be perfectly loving and who are we to require him to be what we want him to be. Excuse me? Why should I trust in the salvation from a god who at any moment can change the meaning of salvation? Can you see those xtians up there at the pearly gates and St. Peter tells them, "Well, you just have to understand..."

Remember how I said I spent the bulk of my time from then on just pretending to still believe and going through the motions? Contemplating giving the faith a chance to prove itself to me was almost a defense mechanism. Instead it just shot itself in the foot, again.

Maybe we both held on so long for the same reason. Though I wasn’t pretending, hope made me hold onto a faith that proved itself over and over to have no basis in reality.

You live in Sacramento. I wonder if it’s anything like Los Angeles where I used to live. I lived in that area heavily populated by the Word of Faith movement. Then I tried to dove tail their teachings with the Calvinist teachings of Biola University, and nearly went insane.

Probably another good example is the "thou shalt not covet" commandment, or when Jesus says that thinking something bad is equal to doing it.

We can't police our own thoughts. Whatever brief thought pops into our heads is never under our control. Only acting on that thought is, under normal circumstances. So to think we're going to be judged according to something we have no control over is ridiculous.

Of course punishing people for something their parents or ancestors did falls under the same problem.

There's just no way to justify such things. I'm gonna start thinking bad thoughts at whoever believes this is a good system to have, and we'll see how long it takes for them to start feeling pain.

(January 1, 2017 at 11:54 am)Astonished Wrote: This struck me as significant after I heard AronRa on youtube saying that for him, his faith vanished after hearing a preacher being disingenuous, with what amounted to a sentence fragment. I wonder how many people were able to be hoisted out of faith by a single spoken sentence by a theist who had no idea what they were doing?

For me it was my uncle. We were on our way out of a grocery store walking to his car to head home when I was about 10 or maybe a little younger. Somehow the conversation went in the direction of the world being dangerous, and I agreed that the world had a lot of evil people. My uncle managed to kill my faith brutally with what he said next: "We're all evil." Okay, first of all, you don't say that to a child, EVER. For any reason. That anyone, let alone an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving god would view a child in such a way, was impossible even for my preadolescent brain. I spent a lot of years pretending and going through the motions but my addled zealot uncle knew not what he wrought.

Anyone else experience anything like this, where a single fraction of a paragraph  was just so appalling, or shocking, or hurtful that there was no need for further reflection to reject their faith entirely?

Nothing in my past was hurtful enough to leave Catholicism at 13. A priest did get belligerent with me once but that was not as hurt. It was a challenge. One sentence did inspire me though :

"Imagine there's no heaven"  of course the rest - "It's easy if you try , no hell below us, above us only sky".

s/God//g

(January 1, 2017 at 6:48 pm)chimp3 Wrote:

(January 1, 2017 at 11:54 am)Astonished Wrote: This struck me as significant after I heard AronRa on youtube saying that for him, his faith vanished after hearing a preacher being disingenuous, with what amounted to a sentence fragment. I wonder how many people were able to be hoisted out of faith by a single spoken sentence by a theist who had no idea what they were doing?

For me it was my uncle. We were on our way out of a grocery store walking to his car to head home when I was about 10 or maybe a little younger. Somehow the conversation went in the direction of the world being dangerous, and I agreed that the world had a lot of evil people. My uncle managed to kill my faith brutally with what he said next: "We're all evil." Okay, first of all, you don't say that to a child, EVER. For any reason. That anyone, let alone an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving god would view a child in such a way, was impossible even for my preadolescent brain. I spent a lot of years pretending and going through the motions but my addled zealot uncle knew not what he wrought.

Anyone else experience anything like this, where a single fraction of a paragraph  was just so appalling, or shocking, or hurtful that there was no need for further reflection to reject their faith entirely?

Nothing in my past was hurtful enough to leave Catholicism at 13. A priest did get belligerent with me once but that was not as hurt. It was a challenge. One sentence did inspire me though :

"Imagine there's no heaven"  of course the rest - "It's easy if you try , no hell below us, above us only sky".

You'd think they'd be scared shitless to even try suggesting such a thing. Isn't apostasy the one unforgivable sin? That's a gateway challenge to make someone unredeemable if I've ever heard one.

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(January 1, 2017 at 5:43 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote:

(January 1, 2017 at 3:48 pm)Stimbo Wrote: all that stuff you said

Do you have some kind of radar that lets you know when your name is mentioned in a post? something to do with your familial connection to Darth Vader, perhaps?

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(January 1, 2017 at 4:52 pm)Astonished Wrote: Remember how I said I spent the bulk of my time from then on just pretending to still believe and going through the motions? Contemplating giving the faith a chance to prove itself to me was almost a defense mechanism. Instead it just shot itself in the foot, again.

Maybe we both held on so long for the same reason.  Though I wasn’t pretending, hope made me hold onto a faith that proved itself over and over to have no basis in reality.

You live in Sacramento. I wonder if it’s anything like Los Angeles where I used to live. I lived in that area heavily populated by the Word of Faith movement. Then I tried to dove tail their teachings with the Calvinist teachings of Biola University, and nearly went insane.

Eh, all I know about Sac is that people around here drive like morons. I've been hit 3 times in about a 7 year span.

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(January 1, 2017 at 6:43 pm)Chad32 Wrote: Probably another good example is the "thou shalt not covet" commandment, or when Jesus says that thinking something bad is equal to doing it.

We can't police our own thoughts. Whatever brief thought pops into our heads is never under our control. Only acting on that thought is, under normal circumstances. So to think we're going to be judged according to something we have no control over is ridiculous.

Of course punishing people for something their parents or ancestors did falls under the same problem.

There's just no way to justify such things. I'm gonna start thinking bad thoughts at whoever believes this is a good system to have, and we'll see how long it takes for them to start feeling pain.

That was one of Hitchens' biggest points about religion being wholly man-made, the attempt to control the thoughts of its adherents.

(January 1, 2017 at 7:16 pm)Astonished Wrote:

(January 1, 2017 at 6:48 pm)chimp3 Wrote: Nothing in my past was hurtful enough to leave Catholicism at 13. A priest did get belligerent with me once but that was not as hurt. It was a challenge. One sentence did inspire me though :

"Imagine there's no heaven"  of course the rest - "It's easy if you try , no hell below us, above us only sky".

You'd think they'd be scared shitless to even try suggesting such a thing. Isn't apostasy the one unforgivable sin? That's a gateway challenge to make someone unredeemable if I've ever heard one.

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Well , John Lennon suggested it.

(January 1, 2017 at 7:18 pm)chimp3 Wrote:

(January 1, 2017 at 7:16 pm)Astonished Wrote: You'd think they'd be scared shitless to even try suggesting such a thing. Isn't apostasy the one unforgivable sin? That's a gateway challenge to make someone unredeemable if I've ever heard one.

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Well , John Lennon suggested it.

I don't recall that but it doesn't surprise me. It's pretty telling about any religion where they forbid you to even question it at all, but you only seem to understand that if you're on the outside looking in.