And only because she pushed it with me until I just told her. I had kept from it for a long time because I didn’t want her to spend time crying and praying over me.

That was exactly my experience. Maybe 3 or 4 months ago she finally pressed the issue and I revealed that I no longer believed, and the effect on her was more-or-less what I expected, at least in the short term. Longer-term, it seems like she’s finally realizing that she’s not going to be re-converting me, and I think she’s finally dropped the issue.

I feel bad for my little brother though. I know he’s having his own doubts, and part of my parents’ reaction to my de-conversion is to start having a lot more family devotionals and the like, at least in part so my brother “doesn’t end up like [me].” In a couple of years he’ll start college, and hopefully he’ll then be able to deal with his doubts one way or the other without our parents breathing down his neck.

I certainly experienced that. I didn’t even think to question anything until I was in my late teens. Why should I? Everyone I knew believed the same thing. They couldn’t all be wrong, right? Argument ad populi is really useful for working out that cognitive dissonance. “Millions of people can’t be wrong.”

In fact, I now think that who we are is all about psychology, not religion. Kind, caring people who become religious will usually just become kind, caring religious people. Obnoxious people who become religious will become obnoxious religious people.

Two, Robert Price somewhere quotes a sociologist, whose name escapes me, about the concept of a “plausibility structure”. The way certain ideas make more sense just because your peer group takes them seriously. Thats part of what happened to me, too. Not only were many of my new friends nonreligious, once I moved away, they were (gasp) *liberal* — and they were decent people! That wasnt supposed to happen! By the time I understood how in the world that *could* happen, I was no longer a fundamentalist.

Like orDover and Kat, I still have not told my family, and am especially hesitant to tell my mother. And I have been an agnostic for over 15 years now.

It’s just that I know what it feels like to believe that someone you love isn’t going to heaven. And I know the sense of responsibility/failure that goes along with that . . . feeling you must witness to them and pray for them . . . feeling like perhaps you are to partly to blame for failing to model the christian life better. I deconverted before I became a mother, but now that I am a mother I can’t imagine the pain of feeling this way about one’s own child.

I don’t think I can do this to my mother. I just let her think I still believe, though it’s obvious I’m not zealous about it anymore. I sometimes wonder if I opened up to her in the right way if she would begin to question her beliefs. I doubt it, in part because she is even deeper into a circle of family and friends who are all believers. In other words, her “belongingness” in the church is even deeper than mine was. It is almost her entire world, and at her age (69) I don’t see how she could pull herself away and start again.

I wish you the best, Kristopia, as you begin this new chapter in your life with your mother. I sometimes wonder if I am making a mistake by not taking the plunge you took.

The really tough thing about rejecting Christianity is the not-belongingness it entails.

I’ve never converted, so I can’t comment on what it’s like to switch groups like that. But I do have evangelcial friends, and there are days when it’s almost tempting to become a conservative Christian, because then I’d fully “belong.” There’s always a barrier, in terms of seeing God, seeing the rest of humanity, believing that Satan is influencing one’s life. Or even in terms of politics, and how our worldviews feed into our beliefs.

The good thing about this — and I think this goes for many de-converts as well — is it that it can make us more aware of the assumptions we make. I think that people normally feel that “regular” people think/feel just as they do, since their viewpoint is the most logical one. And yet that is so clearly not the case, that it cautions me to not just blurt out what I think, but take the other person into the equation. Will this make them uncomfortable? Is this something they can relate to? Am I essentially calling the other person an idiot? And so forth.

Like orDover, I can’t tell my family or friends how I feel and think about beliefs to which they still hold very tightly. In particular, it would hurt my mother a lot.

What’s really hard for me is that I work at a megachurch! By virtue of its size, nobody here knows that I no longer come on Sunday or attend weekly Bible study. Nobody here knows that I de-converted at my desk, reading articles on unbelief between every sermon transcript I edited.

I’m trying to find another job because I’m going nuts here, but I get discouragement at every turn – articles about unemployment, friends telling me to be thankful (‘At least you have a job!’), family telling me to sit tight till things stabilize, etc. I wish I could tell them that it’s for my emotional and psychological well-being, but then they’d ask why, and then they’d find out the truth – that I just don’t see the point of advancing things that I no longer believe.

But the hardest part has been the family thing. When you have spent your entire life with committed Christians, they are your social group, your friends, your family. Leaving that means leaving everyone sometimes. I didn’t tell my family for all that time – it has only been in the last month that I have told my mother that I’m not a believer anymore. And only because she pushed it with me until I just told her. I had kept from it for a long time because I didn’t want her to spend time crying and praying over me.

But what can ya do? We’ll either work out a relationship in spite of this, or we won’t. I hope we can, but it’s kind of iffy right now, as I know the temptation for them will be to preach to me, try to convince me of my wrongs, try to tell me how much Jesus loves me, and wants me to return to “the fold,” etc. And the reality is, if that happens, it WILL make the relationships too awkward to remain close, because where is the fun in being browbeaten?

I’m discovering that I have little to nothing left in common with these folks anymore, so unless we can avoid the topics of religion or politics (not likely), there will be tension. I’ve never liked tension, but I won’t hide from it.

We’ll see. Oy.

I have always, even before I examined my beliefs enough to realize that I didn’t have any, had a great deal of respect for a guy I was at Abilene Christian University with. he was the first person I ever met who made no bones about being an atheist. There he was, in what I like to think of as the armpit of the bible belt, (the bible doesn’t make sense, why should my similes), and he had the intellectual curiosity to examine his belief system and state his position.
Every once in a while I think of him and hope he’s doing well.