http://de-conversion.com/2008/11/20/from-tormented-soul-to-freed-atheist-part-3-of-3/

I do agree that people get accused of over-analyzing in situations where it shouldn’t be viewed as a negative, though. It seems like it most often happens when you’re genuinely interested in further exploring a topic when everyone else just doesn’t care anymore.

And I truly believe this probably made you a happier person

Some of us for some bizarre reason took it super seriously. Some monks would spend weeks on top of pillars, or in monestaries beating themselves over their mistakes.

Maybe it was arrogance on my part, or an extremely “over-analytical” mind (as some would often say to me), or maybe it was just the natural outcome of my particular genetic make-up. Whatever it was, for some reason some of us actually believed all of this as if it was just as real as the words on this page or your very existence.

Think about it this way. Parents will often admonish their kids about the importance of getting a good education, a good job, of “preparing for the future” – a future that might last less than 100 years. But why do they not “worry” about that at all, and instead focus on the future of an eternity. Suddenly preparing for college seems almost naive. If we really are going to live for eternity, screw college, screw preparing for tomorrow. Every action, every thought, everything we study or the people we interact with should all be “investing” in our future eternal reward.

Whats 100 years compared to 1000 or 10000 or 1000000? What about eternity? If abstaining from one sexual thought could give me a boost in my heavenly reward, I was willing to do it.

Now imagine taking it this seriously and then having a small thought that maybe you won’t make it to heaven at all and get any reward. Maybe you are just deceiving yourself this whole time and all those good works are “filthy rags” and Jesus will say “Depart from me I never knew you.” If so many people are going to stand before Jesus with confidence and be turned away, how do I know I am not one of those people? Even if this is a 1% chance that they could end up in hell, one would want to make sure all their abstinence, all their devotion, all their work, all their faith, all their self-debasement (“I beat my body to make it my slave”), all their sacrfice – was not in vain. “Do not worry about tomorrow… store up for yourselves treasures in heaven…”

In many of these de-conversion stories that I’ve been obsessively reading over the last couple of weeks, it seems that there is a common thread that runs through them, of constant worrying about whether one is saved or not, of trying *really* hard not to sin, etc. Perhaps it was that I wasn’t a terribly serious Christian. I mean, I wanted to be a good Christian, but I wasn’t about to ask other Christians for help in the struggle against lust – I was fairly happy to hang onto that.

I, for one, am thankful for all the men and women in history who over-analyzed cells, bacteria, psychology, their own thinking patterns, the movements of the stars, sexuality, archaeology, philosophical ideas, logic, biblical texts, population control, geneology, The Rosetta Stone, the size of finch beaks, chimpanzee and human genomes, languages, fossils, craters on the moon, radiometric dating techniques, mathematical formulas, and the list goes on. Some of these men devoted their entire lives to analyzing one particular thing – and today we praise them for their efforts. Can I get a second on this?

One cannot find the answer if they give up as soon as others tell them they are over-analyzing, which is, ironically, often right before an important discovery is made. Galileo, put down your scope bro!

“over-analyze”

I’m playfully curious: is this possible?