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.

Our culture today says that murdering the man who had sex with your sister is wrong, but killing another man during a war is alright. What a culture defines as “baseless” can change from era to era and culture to culture, but the idea that baseless murder is wrong remains. However, baseless killing, although universally agreed upon by human cultures, is not a moral absolute because of the way it fluctuates–that ever-changing definition of when it is okay to kill and when it is wrong. There are no moral absolutes, just generalizations.

Theists who look at these evolutionarily generated common moral traits see them as a sign that there must be an absolute source of morality, and posit that God is that source. They supposes something extreme about the nature of “good” and “bad,” “right” and “wrong”. From this standpoint, morals should be black and white, and universally applicable (supposing that humans are unique moral beings, separated from the animals) with very little room for subjectivity, yet that goes directly against our experience. Instead of there being many apparent absolutes and few areas of subjectivity, there is a wealth of subjectivity and such a lack of absolutes that it is wrong to even call them that.

The moral wiring imparted by evolution does not transverse very far into daily life and the majority of moralistic concerns, because the only thing evolution cares about is survival. It only affects morals that in turn affect survival and positive group interactions, and those are few and far between. For example, it doesn’t matter for the survival of the species if someone wears clothing that covers their entire body or wears hot pants and tube tops; that is why there are so many different moral ideas about modesty and attire. All other moral ideals are social constructs–-products of a specific culture and its practices.

Outside of a theistic world-view, one could argue that evolution itself has created a set of moral absolutes. It is logical to say that the very bare bones of morality come from evolution, but evolution is not the absolute creator of morality. It creates a little bit of morality some of the time, and it leaves a great big giant space for relativism and subjectivity, such as various moral social constructs. I can say that baseless killing is wrong, but that only applies to species that evolved to exist in groups. That same moral principle doesn’t apply at all when one considers solitary animals who benefit by killing any and all competition. Since evolution as a system places no importance or specialness on humans (unlike religious systems), if it contained moral absolutes, they should apply to all of the animal kingdom, not just one species. What is “good” for humans, orangutans, and horses is not the same thing as what is “good” for polar bears and snakes.

In the natural world we can see that there is not one right and one wrong, but many rights and many wrongs all contingent upon many varying factors, including species, environment, society, and culture. Evolution determines a few of those (the ones that relate directly to group species survival), but that is it. This idea that there are moral absolutes in the world is an illusion caused by the common moral generalities derived from evolution.

- orDover

For the ten years I went to Christian school, every day started with the opportunity to share prayer requests followed by a prayer that dutifully addresses all concerns. Prayer request time was supposed to be time set aside for spiritual introspection and communion with fellow believers, but it always devolved into nothing more than story-telling time. And I loved it. We had a way of taking a story that we wanted to tell and twisting it to make it either a prayer request or an object of praise:

“Last night, when we were coming home from soccer practice, it was really dark outside. A dog ran right in front of our car and my dad had to slaaaam on the breaks! We all started screaming because we thought he had hit the dog. My sister even started to cry. My dad got out to make sure the dog was okay and saw him walking along the sidewalk across the street. He got back in the car and told us the dog was alright. My mom said that maybe we should go pick it up so that it wouldn’t get hurt or cause an accident. So we took the dog home and called the number on its tags and its owner came and picked it up. I’m thankful to God that my family and the dog were not hurt and that it got to go home to its family.”

Human beings love to tell stories. It’s the primary way that we learn and relate to each other. I can still remember the feeling of excitement as I sat at my desk with my hand raised, waiting for the teacher to call on me so that I could tell the entire class my new and exciting story–err–I mean, prayer request. One thing that I particularly loved about prayer request time was not only the fact that I got to tell stores and listen to stories, but that I got to listen to stories from people who I wasn’t necessarily friends with. My own stories also reached this larger audience of my school-mates, where normally they would be relegated to the realm of the lunch table in the corner that my friends and I always shared. These were people who I wouldn’t usually converse with, but I nonetheless had a desire to share events of my life with them because I felt a sense of connectedness and community with them.

As I go about life as a secular adult, I find myself often wishing I could go back to my fourth grade class room and share some of my prayer requests with a communal audience. I find that I have have so many stories to tell, but no good platform from which to do so. Sure, I can talk to my husband when he gets home from work, but it isn’t quite the same as telling a story to a large group of casual acquaintances who can actually learn something about me through my story. I wish that I could tell my entire German class that I saw a squirrel holding up one of its paws as it ran past me that morning, and that I really hoped it would be okay and that it wasn’t in pain. I feel the same sort of connectedness and community with my German class that I did with my fellow fourth-graders. We’re all students at the same school, we all live in the same area, we all know each others’ names. But the reality of the situation is that in this grown-up day-to-day life there is little opportunity for that kind of random non-sequitur, self-revelatory story. I wish I could feel like my German class was enough of a community that I could be permitted my non-sequitur for the sake of bonding and communion, but rules of propriety keep me quiet.

I see the value of prayer requests from a Humanist perspective. They help inspire and support the structure of a community. They allow a large community to freely share stories with one another—to relate to one another—without worrying about propriety, without worrying about sounding self-centered, and without worrying if the other person actually cares. If it is a request to God, there is always a legitimate reason for sharing. Not so with my squirrel story and my German class, unfortunately. I worried about that squirrel all day, and I wanted so badly to feel like it was okay to tell someone about it, but I never found the opportunity. If only I still went to church.

- orDover

(cross-posted from orDover)

But what about this site? Is it a help, or a hindrance to mature growth? Are we ex-Christians sulking about, fooling themselves that we are providing positive reinforcements for other non-believers and soon-to-be non-believers. Or is it what we say it is – a resource for former and skeptical religionists? Perhaps health and instruction is not part of what we do. Perhaps we are merely deconstructers, allowing the faithless to flounder in their own philosophies of non-belief. Is it possible for this sort of community to act as just another crutch, another religious-like entity that cannot think beyond itself?

In reply to the questions, I insisted that sites like this do have a positive affect because they provide a sense of community for a very marginalized group. As an American, I am constantly surrounded by the religious. Religious dialogs are impossible to avoid. They permeate our elections, they happen on the bus, they are handed out as fliers and pamphlets. Even if I wanted to “move beyond” Christianity, it would be an impossible task, because religion is simply unavoidable. Aside from the large Christian culture present in the US, my own family are all deeply religious, so religion will always be a part of my life, and I have to find ways to deal with that. One very helpful way is to communicate with fellow ex-Christians.

To any human being, a sense of community is a very important thing. I remember after George W. Bush was first elected hearing him give a speech in which he dropped several Christian buzz words. I don’t remember what they were exactly, but I turned to my mom and said, “It’s so cool. He’s speaking to us Christians. It’s like we have a secret language.” When I left Christianity I left my community, that group that I belonged to with its own secret language that I understood so well, with its rites and traditions that were so familiar, and with its built-in support system. Every friend, every family member I loved, and every school teacher I had were all Christians. I went from a large extended network of friends and mentors with a shared world view and value system to being completely alone. That loneliness was keenly felt when I went to college and realized that I’d never belong to a Christian fellowship group or go to another church potluck. As a Christian, I felt that no matter where I went, I already belonged to a community, but now I had to go it alone. And more than that, I had to be careful. I had no commonalities and no mutual starting point. Worse than that, I was constantly afraid of offending someone. Since Christians are such a vast majority, I think they tend to take it for granted that pretty much everyone else they meet are Christians too. As an atheist, I am also aware of the fact that virtually everyone else I meet is a Christian, and that makes me nervous. I don’t want to mention anything that could hurt their religious sensibilities. Can I talk about evolution around this person? Can I mention that I’m an atheist? I don’t know. There is no secret language to fall back on, no assured common ground. If I give myself up as a non-Christian then I give up the fact that I’m not a part of the established community. I’m not part of the club.

Christians like to downplay the communal aspect of their faith. They often say that they aren’t “church-goers,” or “Christians,” but just “followers of Christ.” They decry organized religion just as often as Christopher Hitchens, calling it a human distortion of God’s word, insisting that what really matters is not the extended religious community, but the personal relationship with Jesus.

In a recent Slate article, Paul Bloom looks at the correlation between religion and niceness (and happiness) and atheism and meanness (or unhappiness). He looks at studies conducted within the US and reports that Christians seem to be more moral and nice. He references a study from 2004 which found that “twice as many religious people say that they are very happy with their lives, while the secular are twice as likely to say that they feel like failures,” showing that US Christians are also happier than their irreligious counterparts. He goes on to show that this division between religious and irreligious is not present in countries that are largely secular, such as Denmark and Sweden. He writes that, “If you look within the United States, religion seems to make you a better person. Yet atheist societies do very well—better, in many ways, than devout ones.”

So what’s going on here? Why are only American atheists the ones who feel so unhappy and unfulfilled? Bloom explains that the European secular countries maintain a strong sense of community, even religious community, without actually believing in God. He points out that most of these atheists still consider themselves culture Christians. They maintain the religious rites such as church marriages and infant baptism; their sense of community remains intact, despite the fact that they have ceased to believe in an all-powerful deity. Bloom explains that it is the communal aspects of religion, the very same ones that Christians in the US are so quick to dismiss, are those that have a positive affect. He explains that out of all of the facets of religious belief, the creation of a strong community is the most beneficial:

There are factual beliefs, such as the idea that there exists a single god that performs miracles, and moral beliefs, like the conviction that abortion is murder. There are religious practices, such as the sacrament or the lighting of Sabbath candles. And there is the community that a religion brings with it—the people who are part of your church, synagogue, or mosque.The positive effect of religion in the real world, to my mind, is tied to this last, community component—rather than a belief in constant surveillance by a higher power. Humans are social beings, and we are happier, and better, when connected to others.

American atheists do not enjoy the same benefits that those in secular European countries do. As soon as we forgo the devotion to a mythical deity, we lose our club membership, and we no longer receive the benefits of community life that religion provided. We are left to either go it alone or forge new communities of our own, such as the de-Conversion blog. Bloom concludes his article with a poignant paragraph about atheists living in America:

The sorry state of American atheists, then, may have nothing to do with their lack of religious belief. It may instead be the result of their outsider status within a highly religious country where many of their fellow citizens, including very vocal ones like Schlessinger, find them immoral and unpatriotic. Religion may not poison everything, but it deserves part of the blame for this one.

I don’t presume to speak for all, or even most atheists, but I can say that in my personal life, the cause of the most grief is not existential angst, fear of damnation, a lack of purpose or meaning, or any of the other things that the religious claim plague unbelievers. The cause of the most grief is my exclusion from the Christian community, and the attitude Christians have toward unbelievers. What hurts the most is knowing that my own family would likely disown me if they knew of my unbelief (or at the very least be incredibly disappointed in me and lament my lack of faith). It’s knowing that the majority of people in my life would consider me immoral, unpatriotic, hell-bound, and in short, a bad person if they knew that I didn’t believe in the God that they believe in.

The Apostate questions if such communities like de-Conversion might be nothing more than a “crutch,” and also suggests that religious communities might be nothing more than a crutch. In my opinion, the desire to belong to a community that brings the religious together with other religious people and the irreligious together with other atheists and agnostics is not a crutch, but a way to meet a vital need. I feel an intrinsic desire for the sort of communal connection that religion provides. I want to be able to interact with a group of people who share something in common with me, and that is understandable. It’s written into my evolutionary heritage and something that every person longs for. We all need community, regardless of whether we believe in the supernatural or only the material.

The Apostate also expresses a concern that a community organized according to a set of beliefs may be unable to “think beyond itself,” but I believe this pitfall can be avoided, especially by a community like the atheist/agnostic community, which is organized around one large generality: the disbelief of a God. We don’t have a dogma or a set of rites and rituals. Our beliefs are flexible, open-ended, and varied. You don’t have to swear by The God Delusion to join our club–you just have to desire membership. The same cannot be said of religion. If I don’t accept Jesus as my personal savior and conform to a specific set of moral beliefs, I can never really be considered a member of the Christian community. If atheism and agnosticism continue to maintain such flexible parameters, then we will remain open to new concepts and different practices. We will be able to think beyond ourselves by including a diverse group of people in our community who each have a unique set of personal morals and opinions. We also have the additional benefit of being able to forge communal ties with other groups. Because we do not hold the belief that we possess the ultimate truth to morality and the mysteries of the universe, we can freely associate with people of different beliefs, and we don’t have to be afraid of the influences of those outside of our community.

We all have a desire to fit into a group and find a label that suits us (even if that label is “nonconformist”). Although I accept the atheist label, it is not my only self-definition, nor the most important. I hope that the atheist community can adopt the positive aspects of religious community and improve upon them by being tolerant, inclusive, and open. I hope that we can be there for one another to provide friendship and support, while maintaining the ability to see ourselves as more than just atheists or ex-Christians, but as multi-dimensional people unique experiences, histories, and futures.

- orDover

Christians really love this idea, and if you talk or debate with one you will surely hear them invoke their beloved God-given gift of “free will” with a twinkle in their eye that betrays their facade of modest humility and lets you know that they’re unbelievably certain of not only their chosen faith, but also of the usefulness of their apologetic “free will” card which will proved a philosophical answer to any of the difficult questions posed by nonbelievers.

Free will is an essential part of God’s salvation plan for the world. We are supposed to come to God freely, of our own volition, and make an informed and personal decision to accept him as our savior. My question is this: if Christians cherish free will so much, and believe that it is central to the process of belief, why do they also practice and praise childhood indoctrination? Doesn’t this seem directly hypocritical?

Research and personal experience both have proven that where a child is born and the religious affiliation of a child’s parents have the largest baring over their religious affiliation. Take a look at this map which shows the distribution of Christian denominations in the US if you don’t believe me. If you happen to be a baby born to Christian parents in a part of the world that is populated primarily by other Christians, you are going to be a Christian.

As a baby I was not baptized because my parents wanted to give me the freedom to choose religion on my own. They felt like baptizing me into the church as an infant violated my free will. My parents believed that the decision to follow Christ or not was ultimately up to me, and one that I would make once I reached the “age of accountability.” The majority of Christians believe in this mysterious “age of accountability,” which is a stage in development a child reaches where they are able to understand right from wrong, and thus are able to make a lifelong dedication to Christ. My family believes this age is about five or six, or whatever age a child reaches where they begin to empathize and understand simple moral concepts like “sharing is good” and “hitting is bad.” They believe that at five years of age a child who can’t even pick out their own clothes is ready to pick out their religion. A child of five is going to choose whatever their parents chose, or whatever they believe will make their parents happy. They are not coming to God based on their own will.

Thus I was born a Christian. I didn’t have any choice over the matter. Like all Christian parents, mine felt that leading me to Christ was their most important duty. They took the words of Proverbs 22:6 to heart, “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it,” and began my religious instruction when I was just barely learning to talk. I was instructed that I needed to ask Jesus into my heart as my savior because of how much God loved me. It wasn’t a matter of choice, it was a matter of duty. I wasn’t given any other options. They didn’t explain to me that, if I wanted, I could pray to Allah instead, or maybe Buddha. They certainly didn’t tell me that I could chose to not believe in God altogether. They violated my free will by urging me to make a decision that I did not understand the implications of, and without offering me alternatives. It wasn’t even a matter of “Will you decided to accept Jesus as your personal savior?” but rather “Have you accepted Jesus as your personal savior yet?”

Indoctrination violates free will, and that is why many free thinkers (myself excluded) consider it child abuse. It stifles a child’s ability to make a personal and conscious decision to follow any particular faith. Yes, a child might grow into an adult and decide to abandon their religion of their own volition, but it is extremely rare. It turns out that the old proverb is actually true. A child who is taught “the way [read: RELIGION] he should go” will not depart from it, even after they reach maturity. Darwin realized this when he wrote that it is as likely for a child to apostatize from their indoctrinated faith “as for a monkey to throw off its instinctive fear and hatred of a snake.”

Christians love free will, but they fail to see the how often they violate it.

- orDover

A Clarifying Addendum:

I am in no way saying or suggesting that parents should be careful to keep their children’s free will in tact and unvoilated. I recognize that all parents, regardless of their belief system, will have a great influence over the belief system of their children. This cannot be avoided. I am singling out Christian parents only because their religious belief claims that free will, coming to Christ via an independent personal decision, is a crucial and paramount part of God’s plan for salvation.

*I should take this opportunity to explain that I am skeptical of “free will” and believe that it is likely a cognitive illusion.

Someone who considers the validity of any scientific principle has the benefit of being able to verify the claim to their satisfaction. Anyone can retrace the logical steps of any successful theory or repeat any successful experiment and see the results for themselves, but this is not always practical. Because scientific theories and experiments have the tendency to be too complicated and labor intensive for the average person to experience for themselves, many people do take scientific principles on faith alone.

But what is the nature of that faith? I have faith that if I jump off of the side of the cliff, I will fall down and probably be killed. This faith is not blind, it is established from prior evidence—my daily experience with gravity, that one time I through a rock off of a cliff and watched it bounce violently down, and stories I have heard of tragedies involving bodies and cliffs. I haven’t personally experienced falling off of a cliff, so I do have to have faith regarding the end result, but it isn’t a great degree of faith. It would take a lot more faith to believe that when I jumped off of the cliff I would be miraculously unharmed, that there would be some sort of divine intervention, like a host of angles sent to protect me.

Similarly a person unfamiliar with physics and math would have to take it on faith that the Theory of General Relativity explains that gravity is the result of a curve in space-time. There is a compromise to be made here. Even though it is counter intuitive and confusing, anyone can open a book or two and learn about the theory along with its proofs. They can learn that many physicists and mathematicians have repeated and confirmed Einstein’s calculations. They can also learn that the effects of General Relativity can be viewed during a solar eclipse when a straight beam of light coming from a distant star appears to curve as space itself curves due to the mass of the sun. They can learn that the theory even has practical implications, for example the fact that we have to account for the principles of General Relativity when coordinating signals to and from satellites in space. Suddenly something that was taken on faith alone, that was considered abstract and beyond comprehension, becomes something understandable and something that makes sense logically.

I personally find this second-hand evidence sufficient proof for General Relativity because it follows a logical progression. I am satisfied with the observations of others because of the structure and nature of the scientific process. In order for a theory to be accepted as the scientific consensus it must pass the rigors of peer-review. This means that I can be assured that something like General Relativity isn’t just accepted by a few scientists, but by the vast majority of the scientific world. Virtually everyone who is able to understand Einstein’s calculations agrees with them. But I don’t have to be satisfied with the observations of others. I could get a PhD in physics and learn how to do the calculations myself.

When someone goes around touting their belief in Relativity, Big Bang Cosmology, or the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection without fully grasping the evidence for these phenomena, they are taking a leap of faith and are indeed no better off then their religious counterparts. The difference between religion and science is that, where science is concerned, nothing has to or should be taken on faith.

- orDover

Co-written by cross-posted at Sequitur.

Here is why:

1. They never bring anything new to the table.
I’ve been an avid reader of the blog for over a year now, and I’ve read virtually every comment. I’ve read hundreds of Christian arguments and apologetics, but of those hundreds, no one has ever introduced a new or novel argument. They all use the same hackneyed apologetic tactics and arguments, and to make things even more frustrating, they present these arguments as if no one has ever heard of them before, as if they are completely original and earth-shattering. Since most of us here are former Christians who were deeply immersed and educated in the faith, this attitude is nothing less than insulting.

2. They present no convincing arguments.
Aside from just presenting hackneyed arguments, they also present weak arguments. They have yet to actually produce any real “evidence that demands a verdict,” or any strong point that makes me stop a think.

3. They are rarely humble.
It is absolutely impossible to carry on a dialog with someone who believes that they have the truth completely figured out. The least that they could do is admit that maybe, just maybe, they are mistaken. But this hardly ever happens. I’m more than happy to admit that I could be wrong, and that I don’t have all of the answers, but the Christians refuse to concede that point. The result of this “I’ve got the market cornered on truth” attitude is that they refuse to listen and consider what we actually have to say. Their minds are already made up, and conversation with them is a one-way street. On top of the attitude, they also act as if they have the answer to every single problem, including the problem of our de-conversion, and how we can find God again.

4. They posit simple answers for difficult questions.
Speaking of the way to find God again, Christians will tell us that it is painfully simple. We just need to “seek God” more—”more” as in temporally as well as humbly and fervently. I’m really sick of that one because it both presupposes that we didn’t already seek him fervently to begin with, and because it is a cop-out. Theoretically, we could seek God all of our lives and never really find what we’re looking for, despite the fact that scripture promises that those who earnestly search for God will have no trouble finding him. They also tend to sum up difficult topics with an unverifiable toss-away sort of answer, like the way they explain the Problem of Evil with the Band-Aid they like to call “free will.”

5. They display blind faith and emotional thinking.
During my first few weeks reading the blog I hoped to find some good, rational reasons for believing in God put forth by Christians, but every “personal testimony” is reducible to either blindly trusting in the Bible or an emotional, intuitive belief that God exists. Since I value critical thinking so highly, I find such testimonies more than underwhelming.

6. They don’t seem to understand the desire for real, empirical, immediate evidence, nor even know the nature of the sort of evidence I’m referring to.
No, the Bible doesn’t count. Neither does that person who you heard about who was “miraculously cured” of cancer, or that time you prayed that the coat you wanted from the Gap would still be there in your size, and miraculously by the time you make it to the store it was still there. It’s been said before, but apologetics boils down to nothing more than making excuses for an absent God, and I’ve certainly seen that here. One of the most frequent instructions given to us by Christians is that we have to “just trust in God.” That’s it. They ignore the fact that, for we who have apostatized, there is no reason to put our trust in God. They don’t understand the need to have real, direct answers to very serious questions. They don’t understand the need for reasonable certainty that drives so many of us away from the faith. For most Christians, the Bible and that nice little feeling they experience when the pray or sing songs of praise is enough. Evidence to them would be a nice little bow on top of their blind faith.

7. They don’t seem to appreciate a logical argument.
Many times I’ve seen a logically fallacy or irrational argument pointed out to a Christian, but they are in no hurry to amend their points to bring them into alignment with the criteria for a well-reasoned defense. They are satisfied with circular reasoning, “The Bible was written by God because the Bible says it is written by God,” along with non-critical pleas to emotion, “Read the Bible and the Holy Spirit will illuminate the truth if you listen to your heart,” as well as a blatant denial of truth, “There is no good evidence for evolution.”

8. They are arrogant regarding former Christians.
Along with the belief that they have all of the answers, they also act like they know our real hearts, and know exactly why we de-converted. We usually fall into two camps: those who were never really Christians to begin with, and those who want to be their own gods, who love to sin, who selfishly place themselves “upon the throne.” They come to the blog with a set of preconceived notions regarding apostates, and they cling to them passionately, even in the face of contrary evidence. Nothing is more infuriating than having someone assert that they know more about you than you do.

I came to this blog with an open mind. I wasn’t a hardened atheist set in my ways or confident in my position. I was open to the possibility of being re-converted by a strong, rational argument for God, but the longer I converse with Christians the more certain I am of my atheism, and the more I see the Christian faith as hollow, blind, self-fulfilling, and frankly, silly.

I know that the typical Christian commentor comes here because they think they can change some of our minds, or “help” those who are losing their faith, but I think more often than not they do the opposite with their horrible arguments, their inability to look at the world without using the blinders of the Bible, and their inability to understand the reasons for de-conversion. So thanks, Christian commentors, for being so narrow-minded, condescending, presupposing, self-righteous, and irrational. You’ve helped solidify my atheism.

(This criticism certainly doesn’t apply to all of the Christian commentors, but it does sum up the general Holier-Than-Thou attitude of the average proselytizer.)

- orDover

Emotional Thinking

Recently I was debating Chiropractic with an intelligent person. I presented her with evidence against the efficacy of Chiropractic and evidence that neck manipulation can and does cause strokes. I tempered that by saying that Chiropractic has been found to be helpful for certain kinds of lower back injuries, but no more helpful than massage and physical therapy, which don’t put you at risk of a stroke. I could tell she was considering what I had to say, and I was hoping that maybe, if nothing else, she’d think again before she let a Chiropractor twist her neck. She didn’t argue or challenge any of my points, and even admitted they were “interesting” but she told me that she was going to continue to visit her Chiropractor. Why? Because “he’s a close friend of the family and is trusted by us.”

Now I’m sure that her Chiropractor is a good person, and I’d bet with certainty that he’s never caused a stroke, but the fact that someone is a friend doesn’t make them right, and just because a friend is a Chiropractor doesn’t lend Chiropractic any actual validity. That’s emotional thinking. The person I was talking to preferred to put aside valuable evidence and trust a friend. Friends can be mistaken, mislead, and incorrect. Even the ones that we trust. If you want to engage in critical thinking you have to put the emotions you feel toward certain people aside and focus your attention on the facts at hand.

Trusting Authority

This is a tough one, because it’s so easy to do. Even as a skeptic, I find myself granting credulity to certain opinions based on nothing but the authority of their professor. Dr. Steven Novella is one of my favorite humans alive today. He’s a great skeptic and incredibly smart. I find myself wanting to get lazy and support an argument with “Well, because Steven Novella says so.” I have to remind myself that even Steven Novella could get something wrong, and I have to encourage myself to research claims on my own, not just take his word for it, even though he is a skeptic and a personal hero.

I learned that authority doesn’t equate to truth the hard way. After spending 17+ years of my life granting my elders full confidence, I woke up to the shocking reality that I had been lied to over and over again. They weren’t necessarily deliberate lies, but it was a great demonstration of the way that those we trust, those we learn from, those who hold authoritative positions in our life can be utterly wrong.

There are a lot of crappy authority figures out there who have the respect of millions but deserve none of it. Take Oprah, for example. As much as it pains me to admit it, my sister is an Oprah devotee. She’ll try any new health cure or diet strategy that Oprah endorses on her show. Why? Because Oprah says it works! There’s a logical fallacy for that, you know.

Normalization

It seems that the more people we know who do something, or the more often we see or hear about something, the more credibility we lend to it in our minds. This is kind of like that age-old allegory of lemmings running off the edge of a cliff (yeah, I know that’s a myth!), or how your mom used to say “If all of your friends jumped off of a bridge, would you do it too?” It’s called the argument ad populi in technical terms.

I hate to harp on Chiropractic again, but I think this is a great example of the phenomenon of normalization. You can find a Chiropractic office in practically every mini-mall in America. You can probably name a dozen people who you know that visit a Chiropractor regularly. Because of all of this attention, Chiropractic doesn’t seem like the strange pseudoscience that it is. Compare it to acupuncture. They operate on very similar principles (a life-force flowing through the body that can be clogged up), both with a lack of evidence for significant efficacy (i.e. beyond placebo levels), but acupuncture isn’t as normalized. Your average person would consider acupuncture too weird to try.

Always remember that just because something seems normal and popular, that doesn’t make it true.

Not Understanding Memory

Human memory is a strange thing, which most people greatly misunderstand. We like to assume that our minds work like a VCR, that we can rewind the tape and remember everything perfectly, when in reality our memories aren’t so great. We can unconsciously alter, elaborate, and even make up memories.

A really interesting example of the plastic nature of our memories is the case of John Wojtowicz, who attempted to rob a Brooklyn bank in 1972. His story was turned into the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon. Wojtowicz saw the film after it was released and said that it was only 30% true. He wrote a letter to the New York Times outlining the things the movie got wrong. After Wojtowicz was released from prison in 2000, digital artist Pierre Huyghe filmed and interviewed him watching the movie and visiting a film studio bank lobby set. He asked Wojtowicz to give his own account of the robbery, and was surprised to find that his actual memory of the events (subborted by the NYT letter and contemporary news accounts) had blended together with the fictional events of the film. Huyghe titled his video The Third Memory.

Most people trust memory to a great degree. They would be surprised to learn that, according to Wikipedia “eyewitness identification evidence is the leading cause of wrongful conviction in the United States. Of the more than 200 people exonerated by way of DNA evidence in the US, over 75% were wrongfully convicted on the basis of erroneous eyewitness identification evidence.” The rest of this article on eyewitness identification is incredibly interesting and is a great example of the fallibility of evidence based on memory.

Aside from the regular tweaking that occurs to our memories, they can be affected by certain bias. One classic example is confirmation bias, which occurs when we selectively remember what we want to, and forget what we don’t. It’s often characterized as “remembering the hits, forgetting the misses.” I recently fell victim to this bias. I had a theory that the Eastbound bus and the Westbound bus always arrived at an intersection near my house at the same time. My husband didn’t believed me, so I tried to keep track of the mornings that the buses at the same time. At the end of the day he would ask me if the buses came at the same time, and I found that I could only remember noticing if the buses came at the same time on the days when they actually did. Half of the days I said, “Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t notice.” I only took note of the event when it was confirming to my theory.

Not understanding human memory gives anecdotal evidence credibility. If you think that our memories are like cameras, that they reliably record information, then you’re very likely to accept it as truth when your neighbor says she remembers seeing a ghost with her own eyes two weeks ago. Even if you have two neighbors who claim they saw the same ghosts at the same time, the example of Wojtowicz proves to us that two memories can effect each other and blend to form a third memory. The bottom line is that anecdotal information cannot be trusted because our memories aren’t that reliable.

So as I go about the day I try to keep these things in mind:

• Don’t think with my emotions
• Don’t trust authority for the sake of authority
• Just because something is normal doesn’t make it true
• My memory sucks!
• The truth is out there! Go and find it!

- orDover

When we experience fear, we lean toward automatic reactions. That’s been programmed into our brains thanks to our instinct of self-preservation. Our brains tell us “Don’t think! Just be safe!” and that is why making decisions based on fear is not always a good idea. If your being chased by a mountain lion, then by all means, don’t think–just run away. But what if the thing causing your fear is less concrete, empirically speaking, than a charging cougar? In those instances we have to tell our sympathetic nerves to shut up for a second while we asses the situation. We have to examine the basis for fear before we give in to it.

Many of the arguments for putting faith in God are based on fear. Pascal’s Wager takes advantage of fear by claiming it is better to believe in God just in case, so that we can avoid the punishment of hell if, by some chance it exists. Likewise many Christians cite Hebrews 6:4-8 as a reason to continue their belief. The verses are considered a threat to deter wayward souls from apostatizing. It warns that a person who was once a Christian and has fallen away may never be redeemed ever again. It asserts that there is at least one unpardonable sin, one thing you can do that will get you into hell for sure: renouncing your faith in the Christian trinity.

If we want to think critically, we have to ask ourselves if fear is ever a justifiable foundation for belief. Is fear a good reason to believe in anything?

When I was a kid I had an older cousin who told me electric eels lived in the pipes of my pool, and that they would bite me if I swam past. For days I was scared to go into the pool because I really didn’t want to get bitten by an electric eel, but finally I decided that I could either keep being scared forever, or look in the pipes and see if there were really eels hiding there. So I looked, and guess what, no eels! I learned that the basis of my fear was false.

As rational beings, we must examine critically the basis of any claim before we give into its fear mongering. As a Christian, when I began having doubts about the existence of God I was scared by Hebrews 6:4-8. I was scared of the threat of hell, scared of letting down God, scared of disrespecting him, scared that I was spitting into the face of Jesus who made the ultimate sacrifice for me, scared that my name would be written out of the book of life, and scared that I was wrong. But I decided, rater than give into that fear, I had to examine the basis. I looked for empirical, non-emotional proof for the existence of a benevolent, all-powerful creator God. I found nothing. No proof of something called a “soul,” no proof of bottom-up design, no proof of anything supernatural. My fear was without basis, and no longer became a source of fear at all.

I found no proof of eels in my pool, but I could have continued to be afraid. I could have insisted that the eels were invisible, that my eyes weren’t well-equip to see them, that they were really there but I had failed to notice. The next time I went swimming I still avoided the pipes. I still had the emotional fear that the eels were there, even if I could find no proof of them. But that emotion didn’t make the eels real, and I decided that I had to let go of the fear because I really wanted to enjoy swimming that summer. Likewise, I decided I had to let go of God, despite my inner fears, because there was no proof of him either.

In my opinion, fear is the most powerful emotion that can obscure our powers of reason. We have to constantly rise above our evolutionarily programed instincts and rationalize in the face of fear.

- orDover

Much like Dumbo, all of my life I have been plagued by low self-confidence, but I too had a magic weapon: I called mine God. Dumbo was told that the magic feather would make him fly. I was told “with God all things are possible.” I believed that God had a plan for my life. Not only that, but I was told that God wanted me to be happy and successful, that he had “plans to prosper and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” I was sure that I was special to God, that I was one of his children, and that my status granted me privileges that I could not earn on my own. I was sure that where others failed, I would succeed, because I had God on my side and he would help me accomplish anything I set my mind to.

When I was 13 I tried out for a spot on a highly competitive club volleyball team. I was incredibly nervous and sure that my skills weren’t enough to qualify me for the position. I had only played one season of school volleyball in 7th grade, while several of the other girls had been playing club for two years. They were taller than me, stronger than me, and more experience than me. I was so sure that I wouldn’t make the team that I considered asking my mom to take me home before warm-ups were even over. But then I remembered that I was a child of God! I knew that if it was his will for my life that he would help me make the team. With a new sense of peace and confidence I completed tryouts, giving it my very best, and leaving the rest in God’s hands. When I found out that I made the team I said a quick prayer of thanks and ran off to tell my mom the good news.

When I was grappling with the decision to de-convert from Christianity, losing this source of self-confidence was one of the largest obstacles. As I considered what it would mean to no longer be a Christian, instances like the volleyball tryouts came to mind. I was a person who suffered from low self-esteem, and what small self-esteem I did have came from my belief in God. I had been taught that I was nothing without God—that all people are weak in mind, spirit, and will, but that God intervenes and is the source of all of our positive traits. That is why we give him the glory, and not ourselves. I was told so often that it was God who makes us strong, who gives us faith, who helps us persevere, and who helps us overcome. I was afraid that without God my life would fall apart, and that I wouldn’t have the confidence to get out of bed in the morning, let alone accomplish the lofty goals I had in mind for my future.

I used God as an emotional crutch. I thought that it would be impossible for me suffer through day to day life if I was unable to take my burdens and “lay them on the cross.” I couldn’t imagine tackling a problem or dealing with an emotionally stressful situation without having God to rely on. I was already dealing with rather severe depression and was convinced that my relationship with God was the only thing keeping my head above the water. I was afraid that without him I would sink so far into depression that I would never find my way out again.

Despite my fears for my emotional wellbeing, I couldn’t maintain belief in the Christian God the face of mounting evidence. I renounced my faith and waited for the avalanche.

That avalanche never came. Instead of finding myself bogged down further by depression, I found myself coming out of it. Having the courage to reject my religion also gave me the courage to change my life in other positive ways. I ended up taking the reins instead of waiting for God to intervene, and I took myself to a better place where I could find happiness. Knowing that I was capable of making positive changes, that I was the one responsible for my own happiness, increased my self-worth. I had removed myself from emotionally detrimental situations. I had cured my depression.

This increase of self-worth lead me to realize that I could be making more out of my life. I had always planned on attending the most prestigious college I could get myself into, and I was always a dedicated student, but my bout with depression came during the last few years of high school and caused my grades to slip well below Ivy League levels. I didn’t even attempt to apply to any of my dreams schools, opting instead just to go to my state university, which had admissions standards so low that they had actually been mocked on an episode of The Simpsons.

After my first year of college I had brought myself up to the good emotional place I mentioned and I was excelling in my schoolwork. I decided to start thinking about those dream schools again, and applied to three as a junior transfer.

As I was waiting to hear back from the schools my old self-confidence problems crept back into my life. I found myself wishing that I was a Christian again so I could pray to God for comfort and have the confidence that he had a great plan for my life. I was nervous that my grades weren’t good enough, that my essays weren’t good enough, and that I didn’t have what it takes intellectually. On top of that, the odds for being admitted as a junior transfer were much lower than those for being admitted as a freshman. I wanted to feel special like I did at volleyball tryouts. I didn’t feel special, and worse than that, I felt alone. These schools were evaluating me based on my merits and scholarly ability. They were either going accept me or reject me, and it was me alone. There was no God to intervene on my behalf or to guide the admission board’s decisions, there was no Divine Will. I had simply either worked hard enough to get in or I hadn’t.

I was accepted into all three schools, and chose to attend my first choice, UC Berkeley. I currently have a 4.0 and am in the top 4% of my class, and I did it all on my own. Just as Dumbo learned that he could fly without his feather, I learned that I could be successful without God. It turns out that the key to self-confidence, emotional stability, and perseverance was within me all along.

- orDover

[Cross-posted on The Art of Skepticism]

I don’t know how old I was when it started, but I can remember being no older than 5 and being dogged by that question every time I was in his presence. I remember being perplexed by the question. I didn’t really know who Jesus was, or what it meant to ask him into my heart, but I knew it was something I had to do. I was told that prayer would make it happen, but I had no concept of what prayer was either. I remember laying in bed, again no older than 5, and in a quiet whisper asking Jesus to come into my heart. I was plagued by the fear that I hadn’t asked loud enough, that Jesus hadn’t heard my request. I ask him several times over to come into my heart, with increasing loudness. To finally make sure Jesus could hear, I went into my parent’s large walk-in closet, crawled underneath some hanging clothes, and shouted, “JESUS! Come into my heart!” Surely that did it, I thought.

From the age of seven on I was sent to a large nondenominational Christian school. We went to Chapel once a week where several grades met together to sing praise and worship songs and have a mini-sermon. We memorized Bible verses along with our list of spelling words. A portion of every part of the day was set aside for the subject Bible, just like the subject Math. We even had a Bible workbook and regular homework assignments. All of our textbooks had Christian themes and were from Christian publishers: Science, History, even English. In 6th grade for literature we were assigned Joni, the autobiography of Joni Eareckson-Tada, a quadriplegic who turned her tragedy into a way to tell others about the love of God. That same year I was punished for bringing a book about the history of philosophy, which my paternal grandmother had given me, because it contained chapters on unchristian thought, like Nietzsche. I pointed out to the teacher who confiscated my book that it also had a chapter about Jesus, but that didn’t matter. They did everything they could to keep us locked up in a very tight Christian bubble, with every aspect of our lives completely saturated with Christianity.

During my elementary years I proudly identified myself as a Christian, but I hadn’t given much thought as to what that actually meant. By the time I reached junior high I had rededicated my life to God with teary-eyed passion. I started taking my faith much more seriously. I began doing daily “devotionals”—reading a passage from the Bible or a page from a devotional book that contained a verse and words of instruction or inspiration. I prayed for at least 15 minutes before going to sleep every night, and attempted to “pray without ceasing” during the day, which resulted in my inner dialog switching from a conversation with myself to a conversation with God, a habit that became so engrained in my psyche that it still rears it’s head from time to time.

As I entered high school, still at the same Christian school, I was a Christian novel reading, W.W.J.D. bracelet wearing, mega-church attending teen; my life was still consumed and defined by my faith. At school they kicked our Bible instruction up a few notches in order to prepare us for the mission field, the ministry, and the dreaded “real world” outside of that bubble they had so meticulously built. Bible was often my favorite subject, and one I always earned high marks in. I was excited to learn apologetics and how to interpret scripture on my own. Along with being taught how to defend our faith, we were also taught morality, or rather, how we should think. We were taught about the evils of abortion and shown a video of hacked up fetuses, piles of baby hands and feet, and crushed skulls that made every single one of us cry—even the football players. We were shown a skit about how God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, and read the passages in Romans about the evils of homosexuality. And that is where they started to loose me. Because of my Christian bubble I had never met an atheist, a girl who had gotten an abortion, a Muslim, or a democrat, so I could comfortably consider those people immoral and hell-bound, but accidentally a homosexual had slipped through the cracks. His name is Rufus Wainwright and he’s an openly gay musician and songwriter who I had fallen in love with. It was all well and good to say that the abortion girl was evil, but Rufus? My Rufus? Evil? No. He couldn’t be. He was too nice, too kind, too caring, and too talented to be condemned for a lifestyle choice that he felt he had no control over. The Rufus Problem caused me great psychological stress. I remember pouring it over night and day. Finally I came to my mom and ask, “With gay people, wouldn’t it be best to ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’?” She agreed that would be best, but admitted that a lot of Christians had problems with that policy, and that it would be harmful for society if the gay lifestyle was accepted. “Just look at Rome,” she said. “Homosexuality was accepted there, and they fell into ruin.” So even my mother, the most loving, caring, wonderful Christian—no, the most loving, caring, wonderful person I knew—thought that homosexuality was a pox on civilization, an unnatural abomination.

Around the time that The Rufus Problem cropped up, I had a very strange change of heart. I slowly lost interested in my devotionals and cut back on my long daily prayers, opting many nights to just go to sleep instead. While I felt immensely guilty about it, I couldn’t help but notice that my life was unchanged. I didn’t suddenly start failing tests, or being mean to my friends, or having evil thoughts. I decided to try to stop my constant dialoging with God as an experiment. I was sure my life would fall apart, that even simple tasks would be emotionally difficult if I wasn’t constantly chatting with my best friend Jesus, but much to my surprise I found that I was able to get through day just as easily. Despite this, I remained a proud and vocal Christian. I wasn’t about to let go of the most important thing in my life just because I had stopped praying as much as I used to. I had so many other reasons to believe. Or so I thought.

I continued on for another year, still a Christian, but not quite as passionate as I had once been. I began to find religious conversations tedious and annoying, which was shocking and another source of guilt. I remember distinctly a road trip with my mother where she was talking about religion nonstop. She always talked about religion, so this was nothing new, but I found it absolutely insufferable. I can’t say what it was exactly—maybe it was the hypocrisy of her words that I was starting to discover, maybe it was the fact that it was all beginning to sound too much like a ridiculous glorified fairy tale, but I couldn’t take it any longer. I asked her suddenly, “Mom, can we please talk about something other than religion. Anything other than religion.” My outburst resulted in a mini-inquisition, where I admitted that I was feeling like I didn’t have very much faith anymore. She told me that it was normal, that all Christians went through times of high faith and low, and that I should just continue to pray and rely on God and it would all resolve itself. I was satisfied enough with her answer that I didn’t delve any further into my true feelings. I prayed that God would help me find my great faith again and trusted that within a few weeks I would be back to my old happy Christian self, but I never did reclaim that teary-eyed passion. Despite all of this, I never once even considered leaving the faith. I was still a Christian, just a bad one.

The next year was my senior year of high school, where we got to finally learn under the most revered Bible teacher at our entire school. I had heard stories of changed lives from other students, and I had high hopes that Mr. L’s class would help me through my little faith problem. He was supposed to be extraordinarily smart, the greatest mentor, and the most learned Christian. His entire class was devoted to high-level apologetics. We were presented with arguments against our faith that we were likely to encounter in the “real world,” and then walked through step-by-step instructions to debunk the claims. A large chunk of the class was devoted to debunking evolution. We were told that they would teach us all about evolution so that we could understand it as well as our moral opponents, but in reality all they told us was lies. They asserted that no transitional fossils had been found and that none exited, that there was no way to reliably date the earth and the universe, that the theory was full of more gaps than answers, and that it should be disregarded because Darwin himself recanted the theory on his deathbed shortly after his Christian conversion. We mocked the silly idea of life coming from “primordial soup” and were even given that old line, “If we evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys around today?”

We were taught that the Bible is a scientific authority, not Darwin, and given a handful of verses that illustrated that point. The one that sticks out most in my mind is Hebrews 11:3. We were given the following passage, “what is seen was not made out of things which are visible,” as proof that the Bible predicted atoms. I found this very interesting and decided to look into it further. We had already been taught how important context is to Biblical interpretation, so my first step was to dig deeper into the surrounding verses to build up the context. That phrase from Hebrews 11 comes that the beginning of a chapter about faith, and by reading the entire third verse and those that come before it, it was clear that the author was not talking about atoms at all when he wrote, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.” Looking at that entire passage, the first three verses and not that one little phrase, it became clear to me that the author was saying that “what is seen” is made from the words of God, which are invisible, as God is invisible according to the first sentence. To say that he was talking about atoms was such a stretch that I found it to be deliberately dishonest. Mr. L hadn’t presented us with the context of the verse in order to dupe us into thinking that this was a scientifically accurate passage. He was supposed to be teaching us, but this was underhanded and despicable. From that point on I decided I would no longer participate in Mr. L’s class. Before I had been one of his star pupils. I was always willing to answer his questions, and always knew exactly what to say even when others were stumped, but I wasn’t going to parrot his shallow answers back anymore. I was going to sit there and think. I was actually going to consider the atheistic arguments Mr. L presented, and weight them seriously against the answers he taught us to give in response. Much to my surprise, I found that the atheistic arguments made more sense and were more logically consistent and honest than Mr. L’s counters. Yet, I was still a Christian, and I still couldn’t even consider being anything else.

One man’s poor defense of the faith and the constantly emerging hypocrisy I found amongst my teachers and schoolmates wasn’t enough to convince me that the Bible wasn’t the word of God and that God didn’t love me, but earlier that year I had met someone, another person outside of the Christian bubble, who was enough. He was an atheist, and I was in love with him. Not “in love” like I was with the celebrity Rufus, but wholeheartedly and genuinely in love. We had met that summer and formed a very deep and serious relationship, but I attempted to keep him always at arm’s length because of his lack of faith. I had always believed that the most important quality of candidates for my future husband was adherence to the Christian faith and I had been warned over and over again of the dangers of being “yoked together” with an unbeliever. I didn’t want to love this guy. I wanted to love a good Christian boy from school or church. Despite my ever-increasing feelings for him I considered breaking things off several times, but my love for him was completely undeniable. In many ways he was the straw that broke my Christian camel’s back. I just couldn’t believe that the God of the Bible, the loving God I had prayed to for so many years would bring the perfect guy into my life and then require me to break up with him because he wasn’t religious. It was too cruel, and beyond a test of faith. It made no sense. What could I possibly gain by severing ties with someone I deeply loved? Even now as I think about it I know what a Christian reading this would say: “What about Hosea and how he was tested?” “We can never know the mind of God or what he has planned for our lives.” Maybe if this was the first thing that had caused me to question my faith I would have accepted those answers, but it was just one more piece of a mountain of evidence forming against God in my mind. One evening as I lay in his arm I said very quietly, “I don’t think I’m a Christian anymore.” The first time I said it was the first time I had even allowed myself to think it. I realized at that point that it was true, I was no longer a Christian, and I hadn’t been for several years, but that denial had hidden that fact from me.

Even with my quiet confession, and the mental shock of finding it to be actually true, I still couldn’t let go. I held out hope that I would find some reason to believe again, that I would find some proof or have a change of heart. That never happened. In fact, the opposite happened. I found more and more proof against my religion. The first line of evidence came surprisingly from a college course on British Literature, and from that thing I had been told about Darwin back in high school, that he refuted his theory on his deathbed. For the Lit class we read an excerpt from Darwin’s autobiography. I came to a passage about his faith, “During these two years I was led to think much about religion…By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported,–that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become,–that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us,–that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events,–that they differ in many important details, far too important as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eyewitnesses;–by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation…But I was very unwilling to give up my belief;–I feel sure of this for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams of…manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at least complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct.” His account was so similar to my own journey that I could hardly believe it. In Darwin I found a kindred soul, and I couldn’t believe that he, even on his deathbed, would have taken back those words, so I decided to research it on the internet. Sure enough, I found out that the Darwin deathbed refutation was a lie made up by an evangelist and was debunked by Darwin’s own daughter who was actually present at his death. I felt hurt and angry that I had uncovered yet another lie, and shocked that Christians were obviously so threatened by Darwin that they felt the need to create lies instead of defending against his theory with reason. I decided that if they had lied to me about Darwin’s deathbed words, that they had probably lied to me about his theories as well. Boy was I right! I took a course the next semester on biology taught from a non-Christian textbook, looked things up on the internet, listened to podcasts, and read a few books. I soaked up all of information on evolution that I could find and concluded that it was 100% truth.

As I began to search for the truth, I discovered more and more deliberate lies that I had been told in order to convince me of everything from the divinity of the Bible to the young age of the earth. I researched negative claims about the Bible and learned that those “little discrepancies” we had been taught were no big deal were in fact very damning evidence against the Bible being the inspired word of God. The structure of self-reinforcing belief that my parents and teachers had built up around me crumbled completely. I learned more and more about how the universe works, about scientific discoveries, theories, and the proof behind them. I realized that the universe was capable of operating without a divine force and sealed my fate as an atheist.

Not long after my de-conversion completed I married that atheist guy I was so in love with—I consider not breaking up with him over Christianity to be the best decision I ever made. He is the only one who knows of my loss of faith, and is a constant source of love and support. I haven’t told my family about my de-conversion, and I don’t know if I ever will be able to. Sometimes I have nightmares where my mom and I are fighting and I suddenly yell out, “Mom, I’m an atheist!” causing her to break into tears and disown me. That might seem dramatic, but I’m confident that it isn’t far from the truth. I don’t think I’d be disowned, but I think I would be treated so differently that I would be forced to end contact with them. I’ve seen how they act around people they know aren’t saved. They would never stop trying to convert me. They will never accept me for who I truly am, so in order to not hurt them and maintain at least the semblance of a relationship, I’m going to keep lying to them.

Christians reading my story will say that I didn’t really “know Jesus or have a relationship with him.” I know I won’t be able to convince them that I did, but I can say with all confidence that I “knew Jesus” just as well as they, and that I considered my relationship with him not only the most important thing in my life, but an unshakeable reality. It’s easy to think that way when you have all of your beliefs reinforced by everyone and everything around you. Jesus was real to me, but his reality was grounded in the Bible and the teachings of Christianity. As evidence mounted against those things and my faith in them faded, so did my faith in Jesus.

- orDover

[Cross-posted on The Art of Skepticism]