2009 April « de-conversion

Archive for April, 2009

A New de-Convert’s Guide to Debating Christians

This guide is in many ways similar to a sex education class. I am neither condemning nor condoning recent de-converts’ decisions to debate their lack of beliefs with Christians. I am simply recognizing that for many of you it is inevitable and therefore insisting that you learn to do so properly.

Of course, I mean “debate” loosely. It’s only half up to you, but it should be a conversation characterized by more than two sides trying to score points by pointing out each and every one of the others logical fallacies by their Latin names. But part of any conversation with conflicting points of view is a debate, and understanding how a pure debate works is important.

Much of what you need to know is just standard knowledge of how to debate and knowledge of Christianity and apologetics in general. I won’t go into any of that, but will instead focus on the psychology of recent de-convert versus Christian debates. It’s my hope that if you don’t know your stuff at all, you find this to be fairly unhelpful. Learning to debate what you do know is the art of communication, while learning to debate what you don’t know is BS artistry.

Recent de-converts are at an enormous debate preparation advantage simply due to timing. De-converts often go through an enormous intellectual struggle trying to make themselves believe before realizing that trying to believing that which one has learned to be false is hopeless. Thus, de-converts know exactly why they left their faith. By contrast, even apologetically inclined Christians probably have not been studying like that, simply because it’s hard to match the passionate study of a de-convert trying to figuring out if they’re going to hell…

Continue Reading April 29, 2009 at 2:49 pm Jeffrey 15 comments

The Illusion of Moral Absolutes

There are a few moral ideals that are common to all social groups, such as not stealing or committing senseless murder. These have lead to many people, both religious (theist and deist alike) and nonreligious, supposing the existence of moral absolutes.

These generalized moral ideals are picked up on keenly, but little attention is paid to the fact that other than these few things, all other moral ideas are blurred, subjective, and mutually exclusive. For example, some cultures seen cannibalism as a moral duty, and other see it as the worst imaginable crime.

The common morals (not stealing, not fruitlessly murdering) can be traced logically back to evolution via natural selection, and that is the reason that they are the only ones truly common to all social groups. They are the morals that help people live together as a group, which in turn helps them to survive as a species. It boils down to basic common sense: if you want to have a successful group, you can’t have people stealing from one another and you can’t have people killing at random.

All other morals enter the realm of subjectivity. Every culture agrees that a baseless random murder is wrong, but they disagree severely over definition of “baseless,” when it is okay to take a life and when it is not. Just a few hundred years ago it was socially acceptable for a brother to murder a man who had sex with his sister out of wedlock. Many countries today still practice honor killings where it is morally justifiable for a husband to kill is adulterating wife, or a father to kill his disobedient daughter. Among the Asmat in New Guinea, before they were influenced by Western society, it was not only considered correct, but a moral and religious obligation to kill and cannibalize your enemy…

Continue Reading April 26, 2009 at 10:33 pm orDover 58 comments

Nothing joyful about Easter memories for me

I wasn’t there and I didn’t do it. I hadn’t even been born at the time!

For a long time I always associated Easter with guilt. Although my family would try to stuff me with chocolate, and church would try to tell me it was joyful with antiquated, mournful melodies, it is the feeling of guilt that lingers in my memory. I partially blame it on Aunt Lil.

Aunt Lil wasn’t a real aunt – just a kind lady that used to provide hospitality and a warm fireplace to a lost adolescent. Relatively recently, after two years in psychotherapy, my therapist and I concluded that I have spent my whole life looking for my mother. Aunt Lil was one of the many that I have found en route.

For all sorts of reasons that I won’t bore you with now, my mother was ‘absent’ for a lot of my formative years. After my mother died when I was a teenager, my father and I often popped round to Aunt Lil’s – a kind lady from the local Methodist church who would sometimes cook a meal for us and offer cheese and biscuits when my father came out of the pub. She was a widow and seemed to welcome the company, and we appreciated her care. I spent a lot of time round Aunt Lil’s chatting and drinking tea, listening to how much she missed her husband, and sharing my own teenage angst.

Although Aunt Lil and I shared a sense of mischief, Easter Sunday was always very serious…

Continue Reading April 12, 2009 at 8:50 am athinkingman 18 comments

Two “miracles”

So this Sunday we had a guest priest do a sermon. [For those who don’t know, I go to church because my family believes, and because there are good people there whom I count my friends.] The priest rambles a little, then gets to what he really wants to tell us about. Two “miracles” that he has seen in the last few months.

“Miracle” 1: A ten-year-old girl had a stroke and was comatose. The priest went to see her in the hospital a day or two after the stroke. While he was praying, he gets to a point in the prayer where any Orthodox knows to cross oneself. The little girl, though still comatose, crosses herself. At the end of the prayer she does so again. (This is labeled “a miracle”.) Over the next days and weeks the “miracle” continues as she wakes up, sits up, and begins to regain control of her body.

“Miracle” 2: The priest is at a shopping center and is in his car. He puts the car in gear and pulls out of his parking spot to go across the lot to pick up his son, who he believes is playing in the snow at the far end of the lot. The priest feels his front and back wheels bump over something and jumps out to see what it is. Unbeknownst to him, the boy was right next to the car and was knocked down and run over by the wheels (at <5 MPH obviously). The priest panics and yanks the boy off the ground into a big hug and cries out. The boy gives a gasp and opens his eyes; he is apparently unharmed. They go to the hospital and doctors confirm that the boy has suffered to harm.

Now I’ve had emergency medical training and have been a biomed researcher for years. So out of curiosity, do those of you without benefit of such background see some problems with labeling these two events as “miracles”?…

Continue Reading April 6, 2009 at 12:47 pm LeoPardus 51 comments

De-Converting from De-Conversion

Christian Commentary

Well I think it’s about time, time for me to de-convert from de-conversion. In other words, this will be my last post on this blog. But before I post, let me just say that I have thoroughly enjoyed my time contributing to this community. Back when I was more active with the site, I thoroughly enjoyed the back and forth discussions between various visitors. For the most part they were very respectful and full of great passion, logic, and philosophy that I found to be quite entertaining. Of course, sometimes they would turn sour, but that is bound to happen now and again when religion is the topic . Unfortunately though, I am so busy with work and other pursuits that I cannot give the website the justice it deserves.

Seeing how this is my last post, I want to ask you to bear with me on this one. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all “preachy” and try to convert you… that’d be impossible anyway, I think we both know that. In fact, of all the posts that I did, my goal was never to get any of you to come back to religion – more or less, my aim was to offer a voice for the “other” side. This post will not be any different, and it will try to sum up the main point I tried to emphasize is all of my posts.

During my time with De-Conversion.com (at one time, AgnosticAtheism.com), I found one overarching aspect a bit disturbing. Many brilliant people wrote (and still write) on this site offering many facts and theories on religion and God. This is fine, and I never was upset with these posts or their topic. No, instead what I found the most troubling was the over generalization of religion. Friends, religion is very complex, and I have always been one to believe that theology can’t be reduced down to a bumper sticker (i.e. “Jesus Saves”… ugh, gag me)…

Continue Reading April 5, 2009 at 10:13 pm Justin 31 comments