Age of Deconversion

[zebo-the-fat]

When I reached the age of reason (about 12)

[EgoDeath]

I think you know what Im trying to say. But okay.

Youre telling me that some amount of empirical evidence wouldnt at least get you to consider the possibility that a god exists?

Some? define the amount.

Thats a good question. And first wed have to figure out what would qualify as evidence... But thats a whole other rabbit hole to go down... Since none of its even been put on the table, Im comfortable saying I have no reason to believe a god exists.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think NDT had some comment on how small and seemingly insignificant groundbreaking evidence could be. It was about aliens, not gods, but it would seem to apply. He implored people who got abducted to swipe an ashtray from the mothership. That's all it would take.

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Ingersol put it more eloquently, lol.

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We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your Bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your reverential amens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact. We know all about your mouldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want a ‘this year’s fact’. We ask only one. Give us one fact for charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years. Their reputation for “truth and veracity” in the neighborhood where they resided is wholly unknown to us. Give us a new miracle, and substantiate it by witnesses who still have the cheerful habit of living in this world. Do not send us to Jericho to hear the winding horns, nor put us in the fire with Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego. Do not compel us to navigate the sea with Captain Jonah, nor dine with Mr. Ezekiel. There is no sort of use in sending us fox-hunting with Samson. We have positively lost all interest in that little speech so eloquently delivered by Balaam’s inspired donkey. It is worse than useless to show us fishes with money in their mouths, and call our attention to vast multitudes stuffing themselves with five crackers and two sardines. We demand a new miracle, and we demand it now. Let the church furnish at least one, or forever after hold her peace.

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[Sal]

So, my question isn't weather your conclusion changed as you got older, since most of you stayed atheist. Rather, I'm wondering if the reasons for that conclusion have changed and grown since that point? Looking back, do you feel that your reasoning was correct or incorrect?

For me, I've grown. My doubting started from reading and noticing a small inconsistency in the Bible (the 2 versions of The 10 Commandments), which I couldn't ignore, and it got the ball rolling, so to speak. It hasn't change the conclusions I first came across.

I think my reasoning was correct; why would God need 2 versions of The 10 Commandments? This just opened the door to a whole slew of inconsistencies, contradictions and just plain immorality in the Bible that I had a blind spot for before.

I didn't read any atheist book until I was around 23 or 24, which of the first was "Atheism: The Case Against God" by George H. Smith. The other books were "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, "Atheist Universe" by David Mills and "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris (I didn't read the precursor to that book though), but that was somewhat later. But the first book I read was at that point just preaching to the choir kinda of thing. Still haven't read Christopher Hitchens' "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" or Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell".

[BrokenQuill92]

Mentally about 10 but I finally put my foot down and refused to go back to church around 13

[John 6IX Breezy]

I'm curious what everyone's experience was prior to deconversion when it comes to reading the Bible. At least one user mentioned having viewed Bible stories in the same light as Aesop's Fables. The reason I find this interesting is because most children, I would assume, are first taught Bible stories in a very Dr. Seuss-type fashion; with color illustration, easy to understand paraphrases, or even cartoons and musicals such as the Prince of Egypt. I don't know to what extend children are asked to read these stories straight from the notorious KJV with all its thee's and thou's, for example, and if they did would their comprehension be on par with an adults.

Is it possible that the way in which these stories are presented to children, plays a role in them being viewed as children's stories?

[The Grand Nudger]

Probably. Sunday school full color bible stories are boss. I even like the watchtower for the similar style, lol. Ofc, it's also possible that they're viewed as stories for children, because they are. We could make them more boring, or less eye catching, but the stories would still be the same.

[BrokenQuill92]

I suppose since I was very little and i was read fairytales along with the Bible as a tyke I really didn’t see much difference. It actually cause some behavioral issues because the biblical stories frightened me badly and my parents insisted they were real. I didn’t want to turn to salt, or have a bear eat me, or get locked in a furnace. I had terrible panic attack up into my teenage years. And still have terrible anxiety though it’s no longer biblically based.

[arewethereyet]

I know I had a children's Bible but don't recall much about it. It was a big storybook with lots of pictures.

The Noah's Ark story was told to us without the unseemly parts being emphasized when I was in Catechism and when it was read to me out of the book I mention above. Noah's Ark was about saving the animals while God did his Etch-A-Sketch version of cleansing the world of the bad things but keeping the animals. Very kid friendly in it's telling. That's the one that stands out the most...probably second is Jonah and the whale. And then, of course, the manger scene with all the animals and angels and kings being there for the birth. The star in the east and gifts and it all being very pastoral. Animals always got me.

As a young kid I don't recall anyone actually reading the words from an actual Bible...only a more Disneyesque version.

Of course when I was a kid the mass was in Latin so I didn't have a clue what they were saying anyway. Nor did I care. I just learned how to sit, stand, kneel and say the scripted responses.

[GrandizerII]

When I was a kid (around 12) I read the whole KJV Bible cover to cover. Actually I had stolen it from my aunt, lol. I was rather disturbed by the cruelty displayed by God in the Bible and remember feeling betrayed at the time. I was taught that God was love and yet here I was reading accounts of God ordering the execution of children. Reading Achan's story in Joshua was really traumatizing as a kid.