Hi there,

As far as I know "Conversion" is a very Christian concept - Africans had be taught what it meant when Christians did missionary work there. Really it means joining the church I suppose.

Is there an atheist conversion ritual?

(March 12, 2013 at 10:02 am)Dawud Wrote: Hi there,

As far as I know "Conversion" is a very Christian concept - Africans had be taught what it meant when Christians did missionary work there. Really it means joining the church I suppose.

Is there an atheist conversion ritual?

An interesting question. And the answer is the process (most accurately describes as "deconversion") is often the reverse of conversion to a religion.

For those who deconvert from religion to atheism, it's almost universally described (by those who went through it) as a gradual and often imperceptible process, sometimes so much so that the atheist can't pinpoint exactly when they became an atheist.

Of all the people I've asked to describe their deconversion experience, NO ONE has ever been content in their faith and then one day dropped it and became an atheist. There's always a story of nagging doubts and unanswered questions followed by dismissing them with rationalizations followed by more doubts followed by more attempts to rationalize and then more doubts and so on.

Where conversion is sometimes sudden, deconversion is a long process.
Where conversion is often social, deconversion is often lonely.
Where conversion is dramatic, deconversion is subtle.

Faith usually dies with a whimper, not a bang.

If it's an atheist conversion ritual you want, Yoda described it best: "You must unlearn what you have learned!"