Are you unequaly yoked?
It has been over two years since I placed an article here at de-conversion.com, but I think it is time. My wife Rosemary and I have been kicking this idea around forever, and we both think now is the ideal time to start acting on it. We have been married now for 4 1/2 years, and we both wed as devout Christians. I have since left the Christian Faith, and although her beliefs have also evolved, she still identifies herself as a Christian. A couple of years ago, we posted an article here where we shared our views a little bit, but we would like to carry this to the next step and go into the world of podcasting.
I have scoured the online world looking for stories, experiences, perspectives and worldly advice from couples who are “unequaly yoked”, particularly those where one has de-converted after marraige. With the exception of religious sites that dispense advice to win the heathen back to the Faith or consider divorce, I can find absolutely nothing out there. People in hurting marraiges need more than that. I am particularly interested in those who want to remain in a healthy marraige, and those who have children. How do you maintain a healthy marraige when you have different religious beliefs? What challenges do you face? What compromises do you make?
My wife and I would like to discuss these issues, and maybe (with Paul’s permission) post them here for your enjoyment. I should be ready to put the first episode up in the next couple of days. I don’t have any idea what will become of it, but I do think it is an important topic that *nobody* is discussing.
I am interested in your stories. Perhaps we can hook up a skype interview or something, if you are interested in sharing your experiences here – or maybe you can just submit emails for me to read. Right now, I am just in the crazy, brainstorming phase…
Continue Reading May 4, 2010 at 12:23 am HeIsSailing 32 comments
Why Easter is Tough for Me
[Note: this is a difficult and heavy post. If you are enjoying your Easter, please don't read until tomorrow. Happy Easter everyone!]
Today I woke up and was pretty happy. The birds were churping, we have a full house between my roommates and their parents coming to visit, I just finished a massive requirement for a project yesterday that consumed roughly 115-120 hours in the last two weeks, and I’m just excited to be alive.
While for the most part I have moved on from the religious ‘discussion’ (and have not posted here in a while) I found myself this morning anxious, apprehensive, and conflicted. Religious holidays tend to do this to me now – although it is getting better.
I’m in Chicago – miles away from the friends and family that I grew up with and I miss them. I miss the Easter dinners, the good times we had, and the sunshine and kickball. But I don’t miss Jesus, I don’t miss church, and I don’t miss the beliefs that I once cherished.
Since leaving, I have come to realize that the beliefs of fundamentalist Christians are sadistic. The other day it occurred to me once again that they believe that I am a wretched sinner in need of Jesus and unless I accept Him I am going to hell. They praise the person who created this hell and then blame me wholly for going there. My confession on this Easter is that I don’t know how to emotionally and mentally deal with being friend with people who believe this. I’ve never known how to mentally grasp the concept of an eternity in hell. And yet to the fundamentalist Christian all the joy of Easter rests solely on their being delivered from that awful invented place…
Continue Reading April 4, 2010 at 1:36 pm Joshua 206 comments
What Would Yoda Do?
Some time ago I wrote an article for this blog discussing my take on the issue of who, “really”, is a Christian. This comes up when you are told, as we all have been at one time or another, that you never really were a Christian in the first place – because if you de-convert, it somehow proves the alleged falseness or insincerity of your prior belief.
My basic argument was that there is no answer to the question. The reason is that “Christian” is an arbitrary human group designation that is used with different (implicit) definitions by different groups. Since none of those groups has accepted authority to establish a (or the) correct definition, and since “Christian” does not (as we used to believe) refer to anything divine or supernatural, it follows that there can be no final, ultimate, “correct” definition. There is no right answer to whether “I was a Christian” is true or not, independent of context and a pre-chosen definition.
I still think my answer is substantially correct. But its not exactly punchy. It takes a bit of explaining, and that won’t always do in the heat of an argument. When faced with confrontation and criticism from friends, former friends, and others who challenge us, it helps to have an answer at the ready that doesn’t depend on delving into philosophical issues of “natural kinds” vs “nominal kinds”. I wanted something more memorable – compact & colorful, more visual and less abstract.
So after continuing to chew on this, I think I’ve come up with one. So, let me share it here and you all can tell me what you think.
Here’s the setting: you are telling a friend, coworker, or stranger on the web that you used to be a Christian, but you deconverted. She scoffingly replies that that means you never were one in the first place; true Christians remain faithful and never leave. (Or, as a variant, as was said to me once, that you cannot lose your salvation, so you are still a Christian whether you think you are or not.)
I think I will call this Kenobi’s Fallacy...
Continue Reading March 12, 2010 at 9:14 am Richard 354 comments
Your Golden Square Triangle
It seems to me that the godless waste to much time debating Christians over the logical possibility of miracles, the nature of the singularity, or the historicity of Jesus. If someone is arguing that the square triangle in their pocket is golden, and produce genuine gold flakes as evidence, we still know with absolute certainty that they do not have a golden square triangle in their pocket.
If the biblical god is logically incoherent, we can stop there. Let’s stop playing the silly games that Christians attempt to employ to divert attention away from Jehovah’s inherent absurdities and towards issues such as an incomplete evolutionary theory as if that will somehow redeem an incoherent Jehovah.
I’ve just started a new blog called The Impossible God dedicated to arguments against the logical possibility of the bible and the biblical god. Here is one example.
P1: Christ paid the substitutionary price for our sins.
P2: Christ paid 3 days of physical and/or spiritual death.
P3: The price for our sins is 3 days of physical and/or spiritual death. (P1 & P2)
P4: Sinners can pay for their sins with 3 days of physical and/or spiritual death.
P5: Sinners remain damned even after 3 days of physical and/or spiritual death.
CONCLUSION: Jehovah cannot do math, is a liar, or is a myth. (P3 – P5)
Feel free to comment or offer additional ideas for arguments that cogently demonstrate the absurdities of the biblical god.
- Phil
Statement of Faith
It’s been two years since I finally admitted to myself that I was not struggling with doubt any more; I no longer believed in God. The creed below is what I can say with some confidence that I believe in today. I got a little silly with the language, and I did so on purpose, to help me remember to hold my new beliefs lightly. Feel free to argue, challenge or question me, or the entire concept of an unbeliever having “beliefs”. As for me, atheism only defines what we don’t believe in, leaving us a wide variety of beliefs we can still hold onto. I invite you to post your own beliefs in the comments.
Proposition 1: I believe that there is an objective reality; that what is, is; that a = a.
- Clarification of the above Proposition: I believe that what is, is neither as good, as bad, or even as easily defined or comprehended as it first seems.
- Corollary of the above Clarification: I believe that labels, like all nouns and symbols, are useful tools- if you remember they are not what actually is.
- Addendum upon previous three statements: I believe that observation, experimentation, reason, and logic are the best tools we’ve yet found to learn what actually is.
Proposition 2: I believe that actions have consequences.
- Corollary on Proposition 2: I believe that what we think, say, do, and choose matters.
- Conclusion drawn from above Corollary and previous Clarification: What we think, say, do and choose matters, but rarely in the manner we expect or intend.
- Corollary on above Conclusion and previous Addendum: We don’t really know what we’re doing, but that’s no reason not to do our best. Please refer to Corollary two statements previous.
Proposition 3: I believe that value is extrinsic.
- Addendum on Proposition 3: I believe that we attribute value through ritual and sanctification (blessing, or intentionally making sacred/holy).
- Corollary on Propostions 1 through 3: I believe that we create what meaning and purpose there is, and can, through changing our choices, change what meaning and purpose we create.
- Addendum on above Corollary: I believe that empathy, introspection and reason are the best tools we’ve found yet for choosing what meaning and purpose to create, and that the ethic of reciprocity (popularly summarized as the Golden Rule) is the best starting point from which to employ our empathy, introspection and reason, with special attention paid to the resources we have to draw on and the needs which we can fill (including, but not limited to, our own).
Overly simplistic, yet still valid Conclusion drawn from everything said thus far in this creed (much to my pleasant surprise): I believe in love.
- Quester with thanks to all the support, fellowship and inspiration I’ve received on this site over the past two years!
Turtleism in the Age of Reason
These are dark days in which the forces of evil have besieged The Lord Turtle Almighty. Aturtleists the world over have risen up against the truth of the turtle upon which the world rides. It is high time for Turtleists to come out of their shells and defend the foundation of our faith.
In years past, our faith in Our Almighty Turtle was dismissed as a blind faith as if the number of Turtleists itself did not prove the existence of the Turtle. However, we are here to assert that our faith is based on real evidence, and it is the Aturtleists who are dependent on faith in science and a misguided logic. I, for one, don’t have enough faith to be an Aturtleist. Allow me to elaborate.
I have personally confronted Aturtleists in many universities across the globe, and have asked them one simple question. “What does the Earth sit on?” Scientists have demonstrated that gravity pulls down. Therefore, we stand firmly on our front porch. Our front porch stands firmly on the cement, the cement on a substrate of clay, the clay on bedrock, and so on. What is the first foundation that supports all that is? Aturtleists have yet to give me a coherent response. However, we Turtleists know this foundation. And we know this foundation personally. It is the wonderfully shelled back of The Lord Turtle Almighty.
Some Aturtleists have actually suggested that there is no foundation needed. How incredibly ignorant! Nowhere in this world will you find anything of substance that does not rest upon something. And that something will be found resting upon another something. Now here is the interesting thing. Scientists have recently told us that this Earth is finite. Logically then, there is a point at which something that is not the Earth is the foundation. This is logical common sense! How can there be no ultimate foundation? The Aturtleists have no answer. But those of us who have a personal relationship with the Lord Turtle Almighty have an answer that daily comforts us since we know that our world does not precariously hang in the air.
Other Aturtleists ignorantly ask, “What is then the foundation of your turtle?” It is true that former Turtleists had, at one time, suggested that there was another turtle supporting the turtle that supported the Earth. And another turtle supporting that one, and so on. We modern Turtleists reject such silly notions. This is called “an infinite regress”. There cannot be turtles all the way down.
For this reason, our particular faith has the doctrine of The Infinite Legs of Turtle Almighty. There is no need for other turtles. Our Almighty Turtle has infinitely long legs. It is this doctrine that makes the Aturtleists arguments looks so silly. The Earth must have a foundation, and we Turtleists have personal knowledge of this foundation. We all have our foundation on the eternal legs of Our Almighty Turtle.
You might hear some Aturtleists respond that the doctrine of Infinite Legs is logically incoherent, an ephemeral plug, and that we just made it all up. But the spirit of the Turtle bears witness with our spirits that all the Almighty Turtle says is true. Aturtleists who have not the spirit of the Turtle cannot discern the things of the Turtle. To them, Eternal Legs seem like foolishness, but for us, it is the foundation that they, in rebellion, deny is necessary. Only those who have submitted to the Turtle are privy to the mind of the Turtle.
It is sad to see that the bulk of the same scientists who have told us that the Earth is finite and that gravity pulls down, actually turn their backs on logic when it comes to the question of the ultimate foundation. But the Almighty Turtle has clearly told us why this is so. This is the work of the invisible evil crow who sets about to turn their minds away from the truth. The crow has many of them suggesting that Earth supports itself. I’ve never seen something support itself, and I don’t have enough faith to believe such silly theories. And I don’t need education to give me the common sense to know there must be a big turtle beneath this world. Would you want to live on an Earth that had no turtle foundation?
So you see, even in these dark days when many former Turtleists have rebelliously abandoned all notions of a foundation for our world, Turtle apologists have provided us with an arsenal full of the powers of both logic and scientific facts that will allow us to fearlessly affirm our Turtleism until the day we all have infinite legs.
-phil stilwell

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