(February 16, 2016 at 5:20 am)God of Mr. Hanky Wrote: Your brother's being an absolutely dishonest and nasty sort of a shithead. Nobody "converts" religious believers to atheism, and why this is impossible has been pointed out. The next time he starts up with his shit, look him directly in the eye and ask him why he really believes what he says he does. You know he isn't being honest about this, if he ever "converted" to atheism for any reason other than attention-seeking. If he ever had a quarter of the reasoning in his head which you display here, then he still has it now, he just resorted to lying about it so that he could be the bully like your mom, because it's easier than toughing it out on the high road like you are now. You are a far better man than your brother for that, so don't ever let him make you forget it! Take control of every conversation he starts up, and hit him square in the chops with probing questions. When you ask "why" in the context of factual reason, he will reply with reasons in the prescriptive context (i.e. why he sees it as expedient to make that "believer" claim in place of rational observation of the evidence, which he has none of), which is fallaciously tactical. Unpack that shit for him, fallacy by fallacy, which he will flailingly continue to spin desperately until he gets tired and walks away.I'll check out the website here in a minute. He says he was a Christian, then became an atheist, then back to Christian.
If you haven't already studied logical fallacies, it helps a lot to know them all, and by name, so that you will be able to call them out on your feet whenever those arguing for their faith deploy them. Here's one source:
https://rationalskeptic.wordpress.com/th...fallacies/
Did we "convert" you? You found your way to us on your own, at some point after you stopped believing. I don't know about others, but I for one care a lot about not seeing you give in to your brother and your mom because you, like everyone else has the fundamental right to believe what they see as true, and to state that publicly (least of all with their family members) and not have to deal with the hateful sort of harassment which you are getting for it.
No you didn't "convert" me. I gave up religion and my OCD doubts led me to come here asking if anyone else struggled with doubt and I was curious at the time if it was OCD or just indoctrination and both have played a factor, but it was mostly OCD. I was very lucky to meet you people because you all seem much more reasonable (with a few exceptions) than any creationist or even my parents.
When I first gave up religion I had zero second thoughts. It just happened. 2 weeks later OCD stopped attacking my sexuality and started attacking my faith or lack thereof. My brother made a claim like I only become atheist because I want comfort for my sin, but I've never felt guilty about sin when I was a Christian. (Except for masturbation because of how horribly my parents painted it.) He tries to tell me I will end up the same as him, I try to ration it our, OCD feeds off of it and intrudes, I get doubt/small anxiety, I obsess, I re-assure, it happens again. This will happen until I develop a new obsession. Sucks man, I never get HOCD thoughts now, ONLY religious thoughts. I need a positive obsession, or something I can obsess over and not get anxiety. I lost interest in things after depression though, so it will be hard to get interested and obsessed with something again.
