The Process of Deconversion

[FallentoReason]

I've just finished watching this small series of Youtube videos that really resonated with me. I'm sure you too would resonate with them seeing as the majority of atheists here once used to believe. They are about this guy who decided to reflect back on his deconversion and document the different stages of it. I feel like explaining in a similar way how I eventually stopped believing. I think this also gives us an insight into why some Christians are so persistent and don't go down without a fight!

Here's the playlist with all the 7-10min videos he made: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?an...nTbkgcFi7k

NOTE: I'll sometimes paraphrase the content of the relevant video or I'll just go with my own experience and leave you to watch the video if you wish.

The God Concept

---

---

*Paraphrased from the video*

We tend to think that a believer can be deconverted by one fatal argument that brings everything else down. From my own deconversion, I can tell you that this is not how it works. The reason is that the God Concept is part of a much larger network of smaller things that -- together -- form what we are calling here the God Concept (please refer to 2:28 to see a schematic diagram).

These individual nodes can be countered through debate, but the believer can effectively remain believing because they have the other nodes intact that effectively leave the God Concept stabilised. It is only after the majority of these have been seriously damaged that the network of nodes comes crashing down and the God Concept starts being questioned by the believer.


Prayer

---

---

*My own experience*

As my faith rose when I was younger and headed more towards a Pentecostal understanding of Christianity, I started believing that my prayers were being heard. Not all my prayers were being answered though, but that didn't bother me because I believed that God knew best. Moreover, I rationalised this by convincing myself that the prayers that did get answered were because they would lead to circumstances that would somehow aid me in doing God's work.

Through the Bible, I realised how practical Jesus was in all that he did. I realised that maybe I shouldn't rely on prayer to do God's will on earth but instead I should be acting how Christ would have acted. This would guarantee that I would be more effective than prayer and waiting for things to happen.

This lead me to abandoning prayer as a necessary tool in my Christian walk.


Morality

---

---

*My own experience*

By the time I had joined an atheist forum to see how many people I could convert, I began struggling with the concept of Christianity and morality. Every time I would explain how through Christ we could come to understand what was right, I would be shown the atrocities in the Old Testament that were due to the same god that sent Christ. Long story short, this highly damaged my faith in the belief that the Bible was the source of all morality. I wasn't completely convinced by their arguments, but they left the topic of morality on neutral ground in my mind. I no longer felt like it was a valid enough area to be used by me to convert people. I also no longer felt like it held that much weight within Christianity. For me, I could still see reason in believing because it was about salvation which theologically came before acting moral anyways.


Other Christians

---

---

*My own experience*

Other Christians always helped me to stay strong in my faith. The thing is that I never really adapted my entire world view to match that of my church's as my faith grew. I had always (and will always) believe in evolution and an old earth. This meant that I was fundamentally separated from those Christians around me because my theological understanding necessarily had to match my rational perception of the universe God himself created. This was a huge detail that acted as a catalyst in my deconversion because it would make me see some of the justifications for most "apparent paradoxes" (the words of my Christian friends) as insufficient because my unique belief required the explanation to be in line with the universe God created. Therefore, deep down I felt like some things never really added up despite the explanations given, but this would be pushed to the back of my head.


The Bible

---

---

*My own experience*

Arguably, this is the thing that made my faith initially skyrocket. Once I was old enough to understand the basics of what the Bible contained (i.e. the different genres of writing separated into different "books" by different people) I then realised what I was holding in my hand -- the history of what God had done on earth. Long story short, that's an outrageous baseless assumption that doesn't hold any water. This ultimately started dealing the final blows in what had become a more "reasoned" faith, but because the most logical thing to believe in couldn't be proven (that God mucked about on earth and it was all recorded) then I seriously began to have doubts about the whole thing.


Well, that's it for my story. I think the series touches on one more topic, but for me I was pretty much deconverted by this stage

TL;DR version

The God Concept consists of smaller sub-concepts that all come together to form an internally coherent belief in God. This is why there's no single argument that can be given to the theist for them to deconvert. This argument might be countering one of the above sub-concepts, but the theist still has the other sub-concepts (presumably) intact and therefore can still believe in God. It is only when a sufficient amount of these sub-concepts are critically damaged that the theist seizes to have a network of sub-concepts that form the greater concept of God.

[Minimalist]

We tend to think that a believer can be deconverted by one fatal argument that brings everything else down.

Speaking only for myself, it was the realization at the age of 11 that these pious fucks were not all that bright that led me to begin to question the whole edifice. It cannot stand up under close scrutiny. Too many absurd assertions propped up with too many outright lies.

[FallentoReason]

We tend to think that a believer can be deconverted by one fatal argument that brings everything else down.

Speaking only for myself, it was the realization at the age of 11 that these pious fucks were not all that bright that led me to begin to question the whole edifice. It cannot stand up under close scrutiny. Too many absurd assertions propped up with too many outright lies.

It still puzzles me how people avoided ever being religious at such a young age. Maybe your brains developed a lot quicker because I remember that in 1999 (I was 9) I got fooled into thinking the world was going to end when the calendar hit 2000. I was pretty miserable during those days!

[Minimalist]

My parents regarded religion as a "duty".... for us, not for them. Suffice it to say that they did not set a stellar example for religious bullshit.

Made it easy.

[FallentoReason]

My parents are non-practising Catholics so I guess that made it fairly easy to develop a more liberal way of thinking about the world for me.

[Minimalist]

My brother is 6 years older than me. When he went into the Navy I was 12. He had been driving us both to church as one way to get his hands on the car.

Without him, my dad asked if I wanted him to drive me to church or would I rather sleep in?

I've been sleeping in on Sundays for the last 50 years, FtR. So yeah - parents can definitely shove this shit up their kids' asses if they have a mind to do so.

[Angrboda]