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Did anyone else get deconverted by a single sentence?
January 1, 2017 at 11:54 am
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?
Religions were invented to impress and dupe illiterate, superstitious stone-age peasants. So in this modern, enlightened age of information, what's your excuse? Or are you saying with all your advantages, you were still tricked as easily as those early humans?
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There is no better way to convey the least amount of information in the greatest amount of words than to try explaining your religious views.
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RE: Did anyone else get deconverted by a single sentence?
January 1, 2017 at 12:03 pm
(This post was last modified: January 1, 2017 at 1:22 pm by vorlon13.)
I had a long slow gradual ascent into atheism, however, a 'sizable' jump in that direction occurred ~ 15 years ago when a family friend referred to Methodism as "The One True Faith", and I realized how fucking ludicrous that statement was in regards to the Methodist schism, and it's applicability to all the rest of them.
The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it.
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RE: Did anyone else get deconverted by a single sentence?
January 1, 2017 at 12:09 pm
(January 1, 2017 at 12:03 pm)vorlon13 Wrote: I had a long slow gradual descent into atheism, however, a 'sizable' jump in that direction occurred ~ 15 years ago when a family friend referred to Methodism as "The One True Faith", and I realized how fucking ludicrous that statement was in regards to the Methodist schism, and it's applicability to all the rest of them.
Well, I will admit I had never gotten satisfactory answers about dinosaurs and whatnot, so I was never that strong in my faith to begin with. That's the only thing I'm grateful to my mother for, really, that her ineptitude and laziness never led her to either get me circumcised, nor seriously indoctrinated.
Religions were invented to impress and dupe illiterate, superstitious stone-age peasants. So in this modern, enlightened age of information, what's your excuse? Or are you saying with all your advantages, you were still tricked as easily as those early humans?
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There is no better way to convey the least amount of information in the greatest amount of words than to try explaining your religious views.
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RE: Did anyone else get deconverted by a single sentence?
January 1, 2017 at 12:13 pm
I had youthful doubts all along. It wasn't a single sentence that did it for me, but my lack of faith become starkly clear to me in an instant one day when I really heard the words to the Apostle's Creed I had been taught to recite and realized that I believed virtually none of it.
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RE: Did anyone else get deconverted by a single sentence?
January 1, 2017 at 12:13 pm
Sort of - although I did it in reverse. I was 11, sitting in a Sunday school class (bored to fucking tears, of course) when the idiot nun said something really stupid. It caused me to evaluate THEM. Only later on did I evaluate their dogmas and find them seriously flawed.
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RE: Did anyone else get deconverted by a single sentence?
January 1, 2017 at 12:20 pm
I recall many people within our church community that were sincere and didn't seem bothered by my concerns. If I hadn't been deconverted already by my uncle's vapid remark, I would have been by something on the wall of our Sunday school. The ten commandments were all given cute little anthropomorphic animal illustrations, and one of them was for 'Thou Shalt Not Covet'. Knowing full well that this was an impossibility to keep from doing, that would have proved to me that god was too moronic to exist as described. All that revelation did was make me look at all the adults funny from then on.
Religions were invented to impress and dupe illiterate, superstitious stone-age peasants. So in this modern, enlightened age of information, what's your excuse? Or are you saying with all your advantages, you were still tricked as easily as those early humans?
---
There is no better way to convey the least amount of information in the greatest amount of words than to try explaining your religious views.
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RE: Did anyone else get deconverted by a single sentence?
January 1, 2017 at 12:27 pm
Religion, for me, crumbled one little piece at a time. Every flimsy answer and horrible dogma tore off another chunk until there was none left. It was a long process that took years. I don't think there ever was a big, sudden realization for me.
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RE: Did anyone else get deconverted by a single sentence?
January 1, 2017 at 12:40 pm
For me it's as simple as science class at school. That took care of what was left of any remnant of faith. The pieces of religion just didn't add up with scientific knowledge. Hence belief was out of the window.
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RE: Did anyone else get deconverted by a single sentence?
January 1, 2017 at 12:41 pm
No.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Did anyone else get deconverted by a single sentence?
January 1, 2017 at 12:50 pm
If there was one sentence that broke my faith, more than anything, it would be the verse that says if you're lukewarm in the spirit, he will spit you out. I forget where it's stated, but I found that rather insulting. Of course this was back when I was a kid, and they glossed over a lot of the worst parts of the bible. But someone in the church noticed I wasn't giving my all to christ, so they mentioned that line, and I didn't react the way she expected.
She said if I was given a plate of grits, would I rather it hot or lukewarm. And I said if I was hungry, I'd appreciate just being given food. Especially if it was free. To throw it back at the other person because it's not warm enough would be very rude.
This didn't completely break my faith in christianity, but it certainly didn't get the result she was hoping for.
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