Age of Deconversion

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I do hope you're correct; I would love to be an atheist by New Years.

Put it off until the spring - give up believing in God for Lent.

Boru

[John 6IX Breezy]

Put it off until the spring - give up believing in God for Lent.

I'm not catholic unfortunately; but that does make me wonder what church produces the largest percentage of atheists. My hypothesis does go with the Catholic church; they seem to lean the most on ritual and tradition, and the least on bible literacy. That's my biased impression as an outsider, so I could be wrong.

[arewethereyet]

Catholics are not the only ones who observe Lent.

As for how many atheists come out of The Church...it's hard to say but I am one of them.

Other than a reading or two during masses, I don't remember the Bible being all that important to my Catholic upbringing. There is a lot of ceremony and ritual. Upon moving to the deep south I was surprised by what I can 'free-form' prayer. Growing up in a predominately Catholic area of the Midwest I hadn't heard prayers other than the standard ones that we all knew. Free-form prayer, heavily sprinkled with 'Father Gods' and 'nourish my body so I can serve you' and other such refrains were quite something to get used to.

But if you do a quick Google search you will see that other denominations do observe Lent. Most of the Christ-based religions do have overlap in their traditions, sacraments, and beliefs.

[The Grand Nudger]

The Church of Cathol is doing pretty well for itself, at least in the us, but that's mostly on account of immigration. Protestant demographics are falling off a cliff.

[John 6IX Breezy]

Are you able to provide those statistics?

[The Grand Nudger]

You can find them, yourself, with a quick google search.

[possibletarian]

You mean, would I have personally caused the flood if I was God, for example? Probably not; I probably would have just let Adam die after he disobeyed and not bother with the whole clothing him thing nor attempted to save mankind in the first place. But I'm not as concerned with justice nor forgiveness as the God of the Bible seems to be.

Do you believe there was a flood or an Adam and a fall ?

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I've noticed that 12-14 seem to be a common age for people to leave Christianity. To those who were raised in the church, at what age did you stop believing in God?

I've not found that, here in the UK it seems to be when the kids leave home to go to university 18 to 21 or later.

[brewer]

I'm not catholic unfortunately; but that does make me wonder what church produces the largest percentage of atheists. My hypothesis does go with the Catholic church; they seem to lean the most on ritual and tradition, and the least on bible literacy. That's my biased impression as an outsider, so I could be wrong.

I'm pretty sure it's not Heaven's Gate.

[downbeatplumb]

The god of the bible is evil, it is written that way.
But there were other gods who were either good or neutral so the idea of god is not always evil. So it depends.

The God of the Bible was not written as evil. To the contrary, he was written as a God who hates evil. That is how he is described continually through Scripture; and that is how the authors intended you to interpret him.

You are, of course, free to disagree with that description and argue in favor of another; the same way you can argue that Napoleon from Animal Farm was actually the hero of the tale. But you should at least remember that such interpretations are not canon and not the way they were written.

According to the bible god killed everyone on earth bar a small family and some pets, told an army to rape all the virgins of a conquered tribe, killed kids with a bear, destroyed various entire cities, condoned slavery, encouraged persecution of minorities, had many punishments for minor offences etc etc etc evil to the core.