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Thanks for those. As a lifetimer, I find deconversion - and conversion - stories immensely interesting as I want to understand the mental process that is going on.
This common suggestion that someone left because they "got hurt" seems to be some rationalization by the believers. There must be some correctable reason why someone dropped out. Just find the thing that drove them away and talk them around.
I watched a rather long stage presentation (Jenny Sweeney, was it?) on letting God go. And it was a forensic setting out, step by step of the questions and doubts that can't be put aside. First Bible -literalism. And there are few indeed who can muster a state of faith -based inversion of any and all aspect of logic and reason and utter faith in the literal truth of the Bible..except those bits that are merely metaphor.
Then the mix of finding out more about what is actually in the Bible and how the world works (and the Burn is often in finding out how a convincing misrepresentation of both is presented to the faithful) and the stage play had the priest -figure backing off into metaphorically true and the good ol' "Just have faith".
Faith in what, exactly. Well, we know..faith in the club - or at least pretending to as the Play had it: "Why did you have to tell everyone?" The line seen to be 'disbelieve if you must- just don't leave'.
The play or stage talk gets to the sortagod stage with blue dome belief and God is nature/love/quantum and a look at other religions.
That's all ok except where we goddless bastards who see pretty clear (even if we haven't come from belief) that this is all faith in Faith and the believers papering the walls of the natural universe with posters of their own Id inflated to cosmic size, get bashed as closed minded, claiming to know it all or being atheist -religion fundies. It is all a bit unpleasant as we really have no quarrel with sortagod-agnostics, except when they roll up with such a crying need to convince us to believe in the sortagod they do. Why does it even matter?
Well, there may come a stage when even non -religious faith in what is believed but not really supported by evidence has to be put aside and you have to start asking serious questions about what you do without a god -belief. That generally seems to be easier to come to terms with than the rejection by friends and family who still belong to the club.
Cor, I don't mind admitting that I have a very jaundiced view of non -religion churches. But I can see there is a need for them. After all, in the early days, I was the one shouting about how Leavers needed some help and support. That's what UU is about, I suppose.
I was not at all burned by religion. I wasn't angry, bitter or whatever "at god." It's often assumed that an individual's nontheism is the result of being burned by other followers (their behavior and attitude > "Christians are so hypocritical and religion perpetuates X, Y Z [which it can/does], so I left because I couldn't stand it.") or by the religion itself, or their understanding of it, etc. That's not skepticism. That's being angry or disillusioned.
Speaking for myself, I did not have a bad experience, and I was exposed to a very fundamentalist cult growing up. The fact that my mother had primary custody, and isn't religious, helped to limit my exposure. My father was an Independent Fundamental Baptist deacon and youth preacher. He was/is a Jack Hyles fanguy, and used to regularly attend HAC pastors school. He lives, breathes, eats, preaches the IFB way/theology. (though at times was backslidden) For the most part, he is a champion for all things very far right/conservative evangelical. When I lived with or visited him I received this religious instruction, but I more or less went through the motions. I was naive to the inner-workings of this cult, and evangelicalism altogether.
Thanks for posting this. I come from an IFB upbringing and my dad is still an IFB pastor and my entire family and extended family is in the denomination. This makes things difficult for me because everything my family does is IFB related. The denomination is also hugely influential in the culture and politics of the state where I live. Outsiders don't know a lot about the denomination but as "cult-like" as it is, it has far more influence in society than most people realize and a significant number of followers. IFB literature also makes it far into mainstream evangelicalism so they influence the entire evangelical right.
I also believe that denomination is one of the biggest atheist/agnostic factories out there. Why? When you are raised in the IFB, you are taught to never question anything. You are made to feel guilty for even questioning things in your mind, and like you will go to hell for doing so. I remember the first time I questioned young earth creationism in my mind. I was literally terrified because of it.
When you leave for moderate evangelicalism, you'll find they have more in common with the IFB than differences, but less absolutes. In the IFB world, the pastor has all the answers. Outside of the IFB, there are gray areas of scripture. Once you start questioning things, it snowballs. The IFB worldview is even less compatible with mainline Protestantism and its entirely different approach to the Bible, and of course, anybody who has attended an IFB church knows that the Catholic church is evil. Most people who are raised IFB either stay in it for life or leave and lose their faith. Very few are able to feel at home in a more moderate church.
My own journey looks like this.
IFB for 18 years > None (in college) > IFB again for about a year > Southern Baptist > disillusionment > radical cult-like Pentacostal movement > non-denom evangelical > disillusionment
So my question...for those raised Christian..what drew you to atheism or agnosticism? Was it science/reason, a bad experience in the church, or a combination?
I read a lot of mythology as a kid, and it was no huge leap to recognize that the bible contains a lot of mythology. Then I got seriously interested in science, especially biology, and THE END.
I don't feel especially burned by religion, in fact those parts of all religions that speak the truth about the human condition mean a lot to me. The scripture that I know the best is the bible, and there are many beautiful passages in it, just as there are in the diamond sutra. Likewise, church provided me with a number of moments of inspiration and understanding. So for me it was all part of the childhood that I grew out of, just as I grew out of a lot of things. I never spent any serious adult time investing in a religion, but I can understand why a person who did might feel bitter or ripped off.
I will say that my parents and I had a difficult relationship from the time I was about 8, including emotional and some physical abuse. My mother in particular justified her actions in the name of religion, but I always recognized that her religion was just that, an excuse. I feel anger and old hurt still, and it makes me very sensitive to the power trips that the religious indulge themselves in too often. But I don't blame that on the teachings of jesus or buddha or innanna.
Never heard of them, but from what you wrote, my old church sounds much like them. There subtle message was that WE had the RIGHT version of Christianity because we refused to emulate "the world." We were not supposed to go to movies, carnivals or even amusement parks because "sinners" congregated there. Our women were not supposed to wear makeup, ANY jewelry, short sleeved blouses or ANY kind of pants even in freezing weather. Our music had to be "choirish." Anything sounding remotely too rock and roll, R&B or metalish was discouraged. And of course, we "followed" the bible, excusing the crazy parts.
I increasingly see US religious society as a Mosaic (what Moses had to do with little coloured tiles I have no idea) of near -identical Fundy -baptist and looneybabble -charismatic churches, all fiercely independent and regarding the others as In Error and probably as damned as the Catholics, Muslims and atheists.
Never heard of them, but from what you wrote, my old church sounds much like them. There subtle message was that WE had the RIGHT version of Christianity because we refused to emulate "the world." We were not supposed to go to movies, carnivals or even amusement parks because "sinners" congregated there. Our women were not supposed to wear makeup, ANY jewelry, short sleeved blouses or ANY kind of pants even in freezing weather. Our music had to be "choirish." Anything sounding remotely too rock and roll, R&B or metalish was discouraged. And of course, we "followed" the bible, excusing the crazy parts.
My background is IFCA (Independent Fundamental Churches of America) and the vibe there was more that other Christian denominations were "weaker brothers in Christ" that we would metaphorically pat on the head and were willing to grant that they were Christians but in various stages of backsliding and/or ignorance or at least Not Getting It. This fit with our somewhat more intellectual approach to faith. Our pastors were generally minted at places like Moody Bible Institute or my now-defunct alma mater, Grand Rapids School of the Bible and Music, although some went a more academic route (the Bible institutes being more like technical schools) and attended, typically, Dallas Theological Seminary. It was very much like the difference, for software developers, between going to someplace like Devry or ITT vs getting a Computer Science degree at a university. The former was more practical and cheaper, "a little dab will do ya", 3 year program, the latter was a more typical 4 year undergrad program with optional postgrad work.
It was kind of interesting being part of a more cerebral group which nevertheless was deeply suspicious of "mere human wisdom". We got around it by rationalizing that what was being studied was "spiritual" in subject matter as well as rigorously fumigated of any alien theology.
So while we were not as legalistic about things like women wearing makeup and allowed at least the catchier three and four-part harmonies of John W. Peterson and Bill Gaither and so forth, and felt also that we had the RIGHT version of Christianity, I suppose that we were willing to allow that some similar denominations had it ALMOST right.
Still, I will never forget one of the early cracks in my FundaShield happened in a chapel service at GRSBM. I pastor whose name was George Slater or Slaughter was there to speak to us that day. He was an impish, mischievous, irascible sort of guy, an entertaining speaker from what was an exotic rarity in our world, namely, an inner city church that ministered to a lot of drug addicts and gang members (in Detroit, if memory serves). We mostly left that to the charismatics like David Wilkerson. Anyway he was more "street" than the whole lot of the student body put together, and at one point he made this provocative statement: "When you get to heaven you are going to be astounded at the variety of Christians who you are going to be sharing it with. It isn't going to be all IFCA." I noticed the President of our school visibly squirming in his seat on the dais. Poor George was, to my knowledge, never invited back to speak to us.
The point is that when you engage with actual human misery like you find in urban ghettos, if you're even remotely effective it strips away all the BS that you can leave in place if you're merely working with the lily white first-world problems of Ward and June Cleaver. I was warned of this even for the latter scenario by a lay pastor at a Baptist church in the town I came of age in, who said that GRSBM was not going to equip me for dealing effectively with the first person who came in the door in tears because of marital infidelity or because their spouse has some weird sexual kink they can't cope with or because their child has "come out" as gay (at the time I didn't even know what that WAS, so sheltered was I)*. Quoting a couple Bible verses, praying with them, patting them on the head and sending them on their way warmed and filled isn't going to cut it, he had found, at least not if you really personally care about people's actual suffering. But nevertheless such pastor mills kept churning them out, clueless as ever. The denial of the reality or at least significance of the subterranean ocean of personal problems and heartaches of the sheeple and the keeping up of appearances and nicities was the basic modus operendi.
So while it is certainly possible to be "burned" by such churches I didn't see them as cynically hypocritical, but simply supporting and reveling in approved illusions that supported their particular transcendence narrative. They were, in short, doing the best they knew how, even if that best was pretty pathetic in practical terms and unintentionally condescending or dismissive in support of the illusions. I have never felt it necessary to feel victimized or taken advantage of. After all, I had a role to play, too. I willingly embraced the illusions because it appeared to be working for hundreds of other people around me. Life eventually beat it out of me, but the beating I took was pretty much my own doing. No one held a gun to my head and forced me to partake of the Kool-Aid.
I suppose that I might feel slightly different, or at least tempted to, if I were one of the occasional people who is thrown under the bus because their personal pain is too annoyingly persistent and intransigent and challenging. My first wife was one such; she had profound mental health issues that our church counseling was way over their head about, and was basically told to come back when she had "suffered enough" to actually comply with their instructions, which was basically suggesting that paranoid schizophrenia was conquerable with enough prayer and Bible study. But even there ... it's not like the whole universe of standard-of-care in the mental health realm wasn't available to us or that we would have had a hit order placed on us if we pursued it. We simply feared it and couldn't afford it anyway. Is that the "fault" of the church? Is that "getting burned"? I suppose you could look at it that way but I just don't see deliberate malfeasance there, only the same deliberately blinkered ignorance that keeps us going round and round in circles with fundevangelists here regarding the existence of god or the literal Genesis accounts.
I have been close enough to this to understand that these people mean no harm, and really believe their own BS. That doesn't excuse it or make it less harmful but I do not see them nearly as unfavorably as I see, say, a televangelist.
* I suppose it was telling that all the examples he gave were sexual in nature, but I digress.
So my question...for those raised Christian..what drew you to atheism or agnosticism? Was it science/reason, a bad experience in the church, or a combination?
Not sure if I have enough "Christian credentialism" (I may trademark that) to speak to this, but I grew up in a very loose Catholic home. I don't think my father was a believer in Catholicism but if asked, he probably would have told you he was Catholic. My mother was a little more into the church than my father, but never did practice Catholicism very formally.
But I went through the motions, baptism, communion, confirmation, etc. but never did think it made much sense. The stories were so fantastical in classes and the few times we went to church that I couldn't help but look around the room at the adults. And as a kid, if something seems absurd to you but the grown ups around you aren't laughing...you pause and try to reflect on what they must know that I don't know. Or at least, thats how it made me feel and was my response.
After confirmation at about age 14, I knew this was just weird to me. It didn't feel right to confess my sins (I was a good kid...what the hell did I do wrong?) to a grown man in robes with BO. It didn't feel right to talk about a person (Jesus) that I had never met, yet others said they "knew". And it just felt wrong to think of all the people in the world who wouldn't even know of the teachings I was hearing...like tribal cultures and most of China (thats all I could think of at 14-15)....who might go to hell because they didn't believe.
The rest from that point on was a gradual debunking of the most common beliefs to myself. But the biggest breakthrough was the idea that belief itself, was somehow virtuous. This was what turned the corner from "maybe, but probably not" to absurdity.
But no particularly bad experiences with the Catholic church. Despite the BO, the local priest was a good man from what I recall, and I don't have any crazy Catholic nun stories to tell. Just became absurd to me.
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