Hey, AF! Figured I'd share my de-conversion story. It's not particularly unique, but it's nice to talk to some like-minded people for once.
I was raised in a very Christian household, born in Denver, Colorado, but when I was about 5 years old, my parents moved us to a small town (>5000 people) in Iowa. Very right-wing conservative, very religious. (Mostly fundies) We jumped around churches constantly, (my dad was really picky about churches), and eventually we stopped going altogether. My dad was so well-read in the Bible, it was silly to take sermons from someone who knew less than he did.
When I was a kid, I loved science and space. For a while, I even wanted to be an astronomer. I had loads of books about stars & stuff. None of it ever seemed to deter me from my faith, though. That is until about a year and a half ago, when I watched Carl Sagan's COSMOS. It was so emotionally moving, that I decided then to interpret everything I ever encountered from a scientifically skeptical point of view. Thinking this would only reinforce my long held religious beliefs, I was shocked to find it didn't. I could no longer believe in anything without evidence.
Wanting to confirm my faith in a God actually destroyed it. Makes sense...
Now, at 18, I've figured out how much better sense the universe makes without some deity pulling the strings. I managed to graduate HS a year before my friends, and I'm thinking about college.
I was raised in a very Christian household, born in Denver, Colorado, but when I was about 5 years old, my parents moved us to a small town (>5000 people) in Iowa. Very right-wing conservative, very religious. (Mostly fundies) We jumped around churches constantly, (my dad was really picky about churches), and eventually we stopped going altogether. My dad was so well-read in the Bible, it was silly to take sermons from someone who knew less than he did.
When I was a kid, I loved science and space. For a while, I even wanted to be an astronomer. I had loads of books about stars & stuff. None of it ever seemed to deter me from my faith, though. That is until about a year and a half ago, when I watched Carl Sagan's COSMOS. It was so emotionally moving, that I decided then to interpret everything I ever encountered from a scientifically skeptical point of view. Thinking this would only reinforce my long held religious beliefs, I was shocked to find it didn't. I could no longer believe in anything without evidence.
Wanting to confirm my faith in a God actually destroyed it. Makes sense...
Now, at 18, I've figured out how much better sense the universe makes without some deity pulling the strings. I managed to graduate HS a year before my friends, and I'm thinking about college.
“Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.” - Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark
