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How long did it take for you to deconvert? What made you change your mind?
July 31, 2015 at 6:02 pm
(This post was last modified: July 31, 2015 at 6:06 pm by IanHulett.)
For me, it took from August when I first started watching MrRepzion and The Amazing Atheist, all the way until January 14th of this year. TAA is the one who friggen murdered my faith. Just took an assault riffle and riddled it with bullets. He just took that fucker and stomped on it, bloodying its face and shoving it into the dirt until it was lying dead in a ditch with flies eating its ugly mutilated corpse. What made me change my mind was the Whence Cometh Evil argument on TAAs channel. So, how long did it take you to deconvert, and what changed your mind?
If pinkie pie isn't real, then how do you explain the existence of ponies, huh? If ponies are real, then that's proof that Pinkie Pie is real. Checkmate, christians! 
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Let's stop fighting and and start smiling! This is our one and only life to live... let's be friends and live it with smiles! 
-- Book of Pinkie Pie 7:3
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RE: How long did it take for you to deconvert? What made you change your mind?
July 31, 2015 at 6:10 pm
At some point I simply realized that I had never *really* believed in God all those years although I kinda had gone through the motions. Then I turned 13...
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition
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RE: How long did it take for you to deconvert? What made you change your mind?
July 31, 2015 at 6:18 pm
I've always been on and off religious. Then I dropped the crazy juice and god went poof!
BUY MY BOOK!!!
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RE: How long did it take for you to deconvert? What made you change your mind?
July 31, 2015 at 6:27 pm
at about 14 or 15 I stopped going to church and soon after dismissed organized religion in general. But I still had sort of general beleif in god until I met my husband.
I listened to Julia Sweeney's stand up on letting go of God at my brother-in-laws house back in about 2004, that started me thinking about it a lot.
I got pregnant in 2006. It was actually during the pregancy that I deconverted. It was an emotional time, and fear of losing the baby made me somehow face it....admit I knew deep down that heaven was a lie and if the baby died it would just be dead. It was very hard for me, but It's been years now, and the transition was worth it.
I'm glad I was able to shed the security blanket.
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RE: How long did it take for you to deconvert? What made you change your mind?
July 31, 2015 at 6:27 pm
I probably did believe at some point. Kids usually believe what their parents tell them. All I can remember about it though is the realization that I was surrounded by grown-ups who believed something akin to fairy tales. It was an odd sensation and it's stayed with me in a way most other memories from my early childhood have not. But if that was it, the answer is during the course of a twenty minute sermon about talking snakes in trees.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
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RE: How long did it take for you to deconvert? What made you change your mind?
July 31, 2015 at 7:37 pm
I would never classify myself as having been a hardcore believer, but I remember as a kid asking my parents why we didn't go to church and setting up nativity scenes at Christmas, etc. I guess I was a barest level of cultural christian if I was anything.
Actual "deconversion" time (if you'd even call it that) was probably around a year.
Teenaged X-Files obsession + Bermuda Triangle episode + Self-led school research project = Atheist.
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RE: How long did it take for you to deconvert? What made you change your mind?
July 31, 2015 at 7:40 pm
I switched from briefs to boxer-briefs overnight about two decades ago; mostly for the support while enjoying enhanced inner thigh comfort.
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RE: How long did it take for you to deconvert? What made you change your mind?
July 31, 2015 at 8:33 pm
Having a bunch of deist/borderline woo talks with my dad did my belief in. He was a catholic growing up, but more importantly he's a natural at playing devil's advocate, which encouraged me to question everything. In the end, I think dad landed on some vague Jesus based deism...or...something, and I ended up an atheist after uncovering the source of that "internal God voice" (spoiler alert: it was me). Getting over the outside influence was the easy part for me, thanks to dad. Understanding how I could construct that voice and be unaware of it was something else.
I can't remember where this verse is from, I think it got removed from canon:
"I don't hang around with mostly men because I'm gay. It's because men are better than women. Better trained, better equipped...better. Just better! I'm not gay."
For context, this is the previous verse:
"Hi Jesus" -robvalue
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RE: How long did it take for you to deconvert? What made you change your mind?
July 31, 2015 at 8:48 pm
I don't think I ever really believed. I was in a non-denominational, heavy attending protestant family who are all believers, my little brother the most liberal, my older sister on the outskirts of a quiverfull situation, my parents fundies. I attended church until I went to college, never buying it, but not rocking the boat. I also had no idea what an atheist was. I attached some evil Satan worshipping connotations to that word, probably thanks to my family.
Embarrassingly, it was Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code that pushed me over the edge into researching the origins of the Church and reading Ehrman and, ultimately, The God Delusion.
By page 50 I was eager to call myself an atheist. All in all, a couple of weeks from question to answer.
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great
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RE: How long did it take for you to deconvert? What made you change your mind?
July 31, 2015 at 9:04 pm
It was gradual. When I got older, especially after we got internet in the house, i started talking to people outside my bubble. I got to thinking about whether or not I really accepted the message about the bible, and what Jesus said and did. Eventually I just decided that this guy wasn't someone I wanted to worship. Sure he could force me to if he wanted, but i can't willingly worship Yahweh.
Killing an innocent should never be the ideal course of action when someone does something wrong. Torture and eternal punishment has no constructive results, so it's just sadism. Judging someone more by what they say, than what they do, is no way to run a just system. Whether someone deserves it or not, demanding to be worshiped on pain of death or torment kind of disqualifies you from being worthy of worship. Or benevolence.
These are basic concepts of right and wrong that adults should have a good grasp on. These kinds of things shouldn't be debatable, and yet they are debated along with the idea that Yahweh/Jesus may not even exist. It's been three thousand years, most of the world doesn't believe he exists, and his followers still haven't come to a consensus about what he wants.
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