I renounce God

[Doubting Thomas]

Some babysitter taught my niece to pray before a meal, and my sister thinks it's funny, and she and my mother had a spat about it because my mother won't have it at her dinner table.

I've never met your mother but I love her. No praying in my house before meals, either, though my mother-in-law often insists upon it.

My grandfather was NOT open-minded AT ALL about religion. From the time I was very small he told me to run away if anyone approached me in the name of Jesus.

Probably good advice. I remember reading not too long ago about creepy religious people approaching children on a public playground and offering them candy if they would learn and recite bible verses.

[Argy]

The hardest part of deconverting for me was realising that I actually wasn't going to burn in hell, because there is no such thing as hell.

Prayer was the thing that convinced me that there is no god, because I stopped praying for god to help me find my keys, and kept finding them anyway!

[LastPoet]

The hardest part of deconverting for me was realising that I actually wasn't going to burn in hell, because there is no such thing as hell.

Prayer was the thing that convinced me that there is no god, because I stopped praying for god to help me find my keys, and kept finding them anyway!

Have you ever found yourself looking for the keys with them on your hand? It happened to me. Holy shit, I'm going senile!

[Argy]

I have looked for the keys while they were in my pocket!

[Neo-Scholastic]

Welcome, and fortunately God never renounces anyone, not even you.

[Darkstar]

My feelings step along the same line, I was never even aware of the option to not believe until I was in middle school.

It wasn't until high school for me (I deconverted almost instantly after that). And it wasn't like my parents were deliberately hiding anything from me either; I just never really thought about religion until then.

Unfortunately many thiests choose option D...

D) Invent fanciful and absurd excuses to dismiss divine moral abuses to keep the enjoyable parts of the fantasy intact.

That's basically what I did. Until I realized how intellectually dishonest it was...

[Whateverist]

Did their deconversion happen all at once?

Some of them, but for many it seems to have been a drawn-out experience, complicated by family pressure.

I always ask about this because I was raised by atheists, so I have no understanding of what this experience is like.

My parents weren't atheists but they also weren't effective brain-washers. I think those who have it the hardest must be those who are coerced into becoming apologists before they get away. It is like someone who is made to kill another when joining a gang. The experience makes it much, much harder to get out. My niece went through this and seems unable to forgive herself and move on. I would think it would really chip away at ones ability to trust themselves. I think that is why so many swing from true believer to hyper rational. Trouble is that hyper rationality is ultimately a kind of rejection of self. It isn't really possible to rationally support the rejection of everything except rationality. The effort has to lead to alienation.

[The Valkyrie]

Welcome to the real world.