What or who was instrumental in your de-conversion? This to me is an interesting question for a few reasons. First, I’m fascinated by why people believe what they believe and why or how they lose those beliefs. Second, knowing what was instrumental in people’s de-conversion could help in de-converting others. Third, I have no real frame of reference for this question.
Tag Bible
The best atheist interview on TV was pulled off the internet awhile back. To my knowledge only one copy was left in existence. At the Reason Rally, I asked the one person I knew would have it if I could get a personal copy of it to put up on the web.
It is no secret that I think Christianity is a ridiculous religion however the belief in a deity in and of itself is not necessarily ridiculous. It is just improbably and there is no valid evidence to support such a belief. I have heard many arguments for God and most of which are pretty poor. There is one argument that I do find challenging and I think that atheists really need to address this argument in a compelling way.
Often times when I am talking about Christianity I try to speak generally. I focus on claims the Bible makes and some of the more popular beliefs that Christians hold. This gets me into trouble because obviously not all Christians are the same and there will always be a Christian who claims that the majority of Christians don’t believe in God literally or something.
There are a lot of great books written by atheist authors over the past few years. While I can’t say that reading any one particular book was the key to my own de-conversion from Judaism to atheism, I have heard from a lot of fellow atheists about how this book or that really got them thinking critically about religion and lead to their de-conversion. None of those books are going to be on my list.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said that, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Here is the thing about moral arcs, prayers don’t bend them – people do!
Every once in a while, I have to force myself to step back from the whole religion debate and get some prospective. Religious believers ask me every day why I don’t believe in God and I can rattle off any number of debating points. I can point out the lack of evidence, the contradictions in the Bible, the aspects of the Bible which have been shown to be false through science, the “creative” process that has gone into the writing of the Bible, the logical arguments against the concept of God, etc. All that being said, sometimes I just have to remind the religious believer that the whole concept is flat out ridiculous!
While fundamentalist religious believers certainly have a lot of ridiculous beliefs, I actually can understand their position much better than I can understand the position of the more nominal believers — as the old saying goes, in for a pinch; in for a pound.
I got a hilarious comment from a Christian recently. He claimed that atheism has been proven to be wrong. I didn’t know whether my gut was going to explode from laughter or my head was going to explode from his ignorance and stupidity.
I know many Christians are keen on the whole “Good News” thing, but I have a little bit more of a harsh reality that I would like to share. Not to worry though, because there is good news with this harsh reality too. In fact, there is a lot of good news.