The Accidental Atheist

[TheRedneckProfessor]

5 hours ago, Weezer said:

 

I thought you were a logically minded scientist.  And somewhere along the line you developed some grit.  You may not have realized it, but it was there waiting to be developed.

I didn't become a scientist until years after my deconversion; and I've only developed the ability to use classical logic over the past few years.  You can look back to my early days on this website to see that there is a marked difference between 2014 and now.  Rational thinking and emotional control were both skills that I had to deliberately train myself to learn and use.  They were goals that I set for myself and only accomplished through stubbornness and determination.  There may have been a seed or kernel there waiting to grow; but at the time of my deconversion, there wasn't even fertile soil.  I was a purely emotional person, ruled by whim and whimsy.

[AnonSan]

14 hours ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

I'm not sure I agree with this.  I was the farthest thing from logically minded or emotionally secure when I first came to the conclusion.  Logic and emotional stability have both been long-fought-for achievements that didn't even begin until much later.  Maybe I'm an outlier to an otherwise general rule.  I don't know.  I only know that my own experience was different. 

 

I'd say everyone's experience with the Christianity and church are unique, complex, and justified why we left in the first place for sure. 

 

Before logic and emotional well-being developed during my childhood, I felt that something was amiss, but lacked the developed worldview and complex thoughts that described such intuition, while my family and social circle established the "church life" as the norm. I recall being disengaged in Sunday school because arts and crafts were more tangible than sitting through Bible lessons. I genuinely could not get into the redundancy of Bible studies and its legalism until I was forced to do so. I almost became a shell of myself as God/church evolved into a personality trait. Even when I was in the rabbit hole, I struggled to match the intellect and charisma of my more, successful peers viewed as the future role models in "building up the church."

 

Aside from the religious and family trauma rooted in my church of origin, it turned out deep in my subconscious I REALLY loathed dabbling deep into (illogical) theology and scripture, but forced myself to do it to be accepted in church community and not get harassed by youth leaders. Yet, my parents and church leaders blamed me and others for not liking/understanding scripture and leaving the church because of "worldly distractions/temptations" and not reading the Bible enough. Their dismissiveness was the earliest memory that got me thinking, "Why I am participating in something that I never liked doing in the first place, especially if my best was not good enough for others?" It freed me from the unnecessary burden brought to myself from the church peer pressure. Afterwards, I stopped reading Bible scriptures and only attended church events/potlucks for the social aspect (who doesn't like free food and BBQ?). Eventually, my logical and emotional aspect developed enough that I could no longer tolerate their groupthink and deliberate ignorance of my former church community that I left Christianity for good. 

[pantheory]

On 9/14/2020 at 9:00 PM, Krowb said:

 

Will you please send over the most recent version? I note in the message thread you mentioned there is one more recent than was posted.  Thank you.

 

@florduh I also think it's an important exercise to read the gospels back to back to back to back.  Too many of my friends use Bible study material that has them skip around or read short segments at a time. This disjointed nature of the writings, coupled with the commentary, clouds the issues. This is obviously done on purpose.

 

I am glad to see this community has people with varying experiences. I was beginning to feel a bit out of place as it appears a majority of the posters had a bad experience or life situation predicated on Christianity that drove them away from it. While I am glad they have found peace, that was not the path I had - it took years for me to make peace with it as I simply couldn't fit the square peg in the round hole any longer.

 

It is nice to find like-minded individuals from a similar path. My private school used to play the Moody Bible Institute's science videos as part of our curriculum regularly.  I know exactly where you're coming from. The top of our class argued for evolution in one of our papers - which was a huge no-no at our school.  Funny what sticks with you over the years.

 

Congrats Krowb, I never made such an exhaustive study of the Bible and related effort as you did. For me after reading through the Bible completely just once, about age 15-16, I realized that the Story of Genesis can very easily be proven wrong by a mountain of scientific evidence completely contrary to the book. And the Book of Revelation seemed to me as nothing more than a Alice-in-Wonderland tale, with no possibility of truth within it.

 

The books of the old testament portray God as a egocentric vengeful entity, while the books of the New Testament portray Jesus as somewhat of a God himself, preaching a pleasant type of communism in my eyes. Since nearly all of the stories seemed like they could never be proven or corroborated, any possible truth of the Bible ended for me then. The only way that I could describe it then and now is as an ancient tale of fables, with no possibility of truth concerning a God of some kind since all the God-of-the-Gaps explanations are now available to mankind via science.

 

But even then  I also realized that science is not infallible either, requiring skepticism when it is continuously contradicted or altered via addendums which change the essence of its assertions, has many different interpretations by those in the field, or fails as to its logical content and understanding, I continue to believe that this applies to several major fields of science today.

[☆ moxieflux66 ☆]

6 hours ago, AnonSan said:

"Why I am participating in something that I never liked doing in the first place, especially if my best was not good enough for others?"

I applaud you for getting there! Excellent question to ask!