(January 5, 2016 at 1:39 pm)Old Baby Wrote: Hello everyone.
After growing up in Christianity for 36 years, I realized one evening a few weeks ago that I no longer believed.
It was the most surreal experience of my life, far more than any "salvation" experience I've ever tried to have.
For the past 5 years, I've become increasingly skeptical, not just of my beliefs, but of my own motivations for believing and being a Christian. I decided to start being completely honest with myself, thinking that my honesty would be the only true foundation to build faith upon, not realizing that the same honesty would eventually destroy my faith.
I decided that if God is Truth, surely He would be found at the end of any honest search. Furthermore, if God is Truth, and I'm being completely honest with myself, there's no argument or evidence born in the secular world that could possibly upset my faith. Thus, I stopped being afraid of science and embraced it. I stopped being scared of what educated atheists had to say about me and embraced the challenge of refuting them. If God is Truth then Truth is God, so hiding inside my religious bubble no longer made any sense.
I never chose unbelief or made a decision to be an atheist. I simply woke up from my dream and realized that I was one, because this is the true default position.
Christianity (more specifically, Pentecostalism) became my reality before I was old enough to think for myself. This was the reality branded on my young mind by the people who loved me. They were my parents. They would never intentionally hurt me. They were acting for my benefit, so that I would be with them for eternity. I had no reason to doubt them or the hundreds of other adult authority figures who I saw gathering at church every week. Aside from that, there was the very real terror that preachers and Sunday school teachers instilled in my mind about that place that all people would go to who did not follow the bible and live good Jesus-led lives. This is why I have no tolerance for those atheists who deride Christians like they are some kind of subhuman disease. While it's true that they might have a disease, they aren't the disease itself, but merely victims who don't realize they need a cure.
So, what cured me?
My self honesty was just the first step. The realization that I didn't believe was the second, but not the cure itself. My realization of unbelief only initially made me suspect myself. Briefly, I thought that my unbelief was my fault - that the unbelief was the sign that I was on a sure path to damnation. Then, I began to study and educate myself. I listened to others' deconversion stories and found a great deal of correlation which ultimately reinforced my position and told me that I was not being unreasonable. Then, I started learning about the science that I always shunned as a believer. Then, I started learning about other world religions and the similarities between messiahs. Wow. Finally, I started watching debates between famous atheists and Christian apologists. It occurred to me that most of the apologists are a dishonest lot, just like I was, developing arguments to demonstrate how God COULD exist and using them as evidence that he DOES exist. This is where I clearly saw the line between theism and atheism, and I realized that unbelief was a more honest and noble position.
I still have doubts about my new position. I wonder if I'm just missing something and if I'm going to die one day and meet God, who's going to tell me, "You missed it, fella." I am not certain that God doesn't exist, and I'm still open to the idea that he does, but praying for him to reveal himself has thus far brought no results but empty silence.
I want to believe and know those things that are True. It isn't to my advantage to believe a lie. If God exists, I would like to know this so I can believe. In the meantime, I simply can't believe, no matter who much I might want to.
Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think.
Welcome aboard!
Great story and very well put.
Quote:I still have doubts about my new position. I wonder if I'm just missing something and if I'm going to die one day and meet God, who's going to tell me, "You missed it, fella." I am not certain that God doesn't exist, and I'm still open to the idea that he does, but praying for him to reveal himself has thus far brought no results but empty silence.
Well, if this does happen, you can take whatever punishment with the knowledge that you are more moral than the god that would punish you for the thought crime of doubting his existence.
By the way, when you were still religious, how much time did you waste worrying about the punishment of the other gods you did not believe in?
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
