Introducing myself

[Rahul]

In a lot of ways its really nice (and I do appreciate my parents for it) but you are right that I have a hard time debating with Christians since I was never one of them. I also have a really hard time just comprehending how people can believe in religions of all kinds since I have never had a belief in anything like that so it's just a totally foreign concept to me. I think people who have at least at one time believed have an easier time understanding how people can believe the things they do.

I always think of it as those of us raised in religion were born as slaves who became free later on in life. People such as yourself were never shackled.

In a way I was lucky because certain things never came up so I never was indoctrinated into certain aspects. Like evolution. I always believed in evolution and can't remember being told anything about evolution in church or by my parents. Much later in life I discovered that my parents don't believe in it.

This suprised me as they both have Master degrees.

Other things surprised me about my changed thought processes when I finished deconversion. Until that point I was against same sex marriage. Immediately after realizing that I could no longer believe in god I couldn't come up with a single reason why I should be against it. I actually started realizing a lot of reasons why I should be for it.

It is nice sometimes to have that experience under my belt. Once I was working at a job and I was talking crap about religion. This 21 year old kid looked at me and said, "You just don't get it do you?"

I responded, "Oh I get it now. I was a christian longer than you've been alive until I finally "got it"." Things like that trip up a lot of them. Usually though they come to the conclusion that I was never saved so my experience doesn't apply to them.

Here's the rub though. I was taught that if I believed in god, really believed, and also believed that Jesus died on the cross for MY sins, and invited him into my heart, I was saved for an eternity.

Well I matched all those things perfectly.

If I wasn't really saved then obviously none of them are really saved. Which of course the entire concept is bogus. But none of them can really know what they will believe in 10 years. Not a single one of them.

[KichigaiNeko]

[mostlysilent]

I responded, "Oh I get it now. I was a christian longer than you've been alive until I finally "got it"." Things like that trip up a lot of them. Usually though they come to the conclusion that I was never saved so my experience doesn't apply to them.

I get that too. They think that because I have never been saved and have never really heard the word of God or whatever that I don't really know what I am talking about. They even get kind of patronizing about it, like "oh you poor thing, you just don't know what you are missing" kind of thing.

[Rahul]

They even get kind of patronizing about it, like "oh you poor thing, you just don't know what you are missing" kind of thing.

Don't worry about it. It's complete and utter horse hockey.

I have felt a religious high before. But that's the same thing anybody would feel in any cult. This whole, reading the bible with new eyes, like believing unlocks some mystical understanding or insight is bull.

All they are doing are glossing over the screwed up and bad parts of the bible, ignoring the contradictions, and focusing on the parts they like. There's nothing else in that book that you won't get if you read it yourself.

They're just trying to act like they have something special but they don't. Not at all.

Any of us who used to be Christians can tell you the truth of that.

[mostlysilent]

All they are doing are glossing over the screwed up and bad parts of the bible, ignoring the contradictions, and focusing on the parts they like. There's nothing else in that book that you won't get if you read it yourself.

I have read about 2/3 of the Bible and am trying to motivate myself to finish it. It is an intensely difficult book to read and just boring as all hell. Needless to say it has most definitely not changed my outlook on God. If anything it reinforced it.

[Kayenneh]

Hello and welcome to AF! ^_^

[Brian37]

Be sure to barbecue kittens, record the NFL without their permission and rip the tags off of your mattress.

[Aractus]

[Mystical]

Welcome from yet another Bible belter

[Ben Davis]

from the UK