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Deconversion: Letting go of one's religious belief and accepting reality on its own terms.


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3 hours ago, Raf said:

I try to discourage turning against God for emotional reasons, as much as I sympathize. A faith that is lost in emotion can be regained in emotion.

That's not to invalidate your journey. And I'm proud of you for thinking it through instead of just being angry at or disappointed in God. When it came to my autistic son, I realized "it's not God's fault." God is not to blame for my son's autism, my sister's ALS, my brother's lethal drug abuse, my other sister's cancer. And he's not going to heal or deliver them for the same reason. Non-existent people tend not to accomplish much.

My wife and I foster kids in need. Last year we adopted one. She's a delight.

People keep telling us we're doing God's work. My response is always the same: Who else is going to do it?

It's an inside joke based on something Penn Jillette once said: We have to do God's work, because God knows He won't.

I'm honored to have helped you realize you're not alone.

 

 

I'm very sorry for the loss of your sister and brother.  Is your other sister still battling cancer?

I appreciate what you said about emotions Raf.  But to make myself more clear, I let go of my belief in god that night because in my mind and heart he again proved to be untrustworthy.  Like I said, later I did look at what the bible said about prayer to see what I was misunderstanding about it and from what I remember, answers to prayer came with conditions which I saw as convenient loopholes for a "promise" to become a "perhaps" or "maybe."   There is no peace that passes understanding with BS like that.

 

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16 minutes ago, Charity said:

I'm very sorry for the loss of your sister and brother.  Is your other sister still battling cancer?

Thank you, and yes, she is.

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Well, it was a test.

 

"How far will Abraham go? How deep is his commitment? I've got to find out. Hmmm... a test... a test... rock ridge... rock ridge..."

"I've got it!! I'll tell him to make his precious Isaac a burnt offering to me. We don't want him to actually go through with it and slaughter the lad, we just need to see if he would. It's a test, remember? Tell you what, if it looks like he's going all the way, pop up at the last minute and stop him. I'll make sure an animal appears nearby, a goat or sheep or something. Keep your eyes peeled for movement in the thicket. Now, let's get to work..."

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Posted (edited)
54 minutes ago, Rocky said:

I can't say I knew what motivated you to do so, but I respect the end result of your thought process in forming the reply to chockful. 

Also, I've read at least one book by author Sebastian Junger and respect his insight on life individually and with other humans.

I watched this (non-comedic) interview this evening and thought it might appropriately fit in this thread.

 

Enough warnings had been given recently about how to respond to each others' posts.  My reply simply overlooked the way he chose to address an issue he had with me so instead of dealing with it, I thanked him that his post helped me to remember to use "IMO I think"...instead of telling someone what they ought to do.  And I meant it.

He was upset that I didn't apologize and let me know this in such a way that required an apology from him.  :anim-smile:

Thanks for the video - I'll watch it in the morning.

Edited by Charity
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8 hours ago, Rocky said:

I can't say I knew what motivated you to do so, but I respect the end result of your thought process in forming the reply to chockful. 

[Moderator's note: this post originally quoted another post that is being hidden for moderator's review. The hidden post violated no rules but responds to another hidden post that did. The remainder of THIS post is of independent value].

Also, I've read at least one book by author Sebastian Junger and respect his insight on life individually and with other humans.

I watched this (non-comedic) interview this evening and thought it might appropriately fit in this thread.

 

What a great video Rocky.  It's funny and it's about atheism, the "miracle" of modern medicine and some good life lessons one of which is how donating blood saves lives.  Were you interested in reading the book?

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3 hours ago, Charity said:

What a great video Rocky.  It's funny and it's about atheism, the "miracle" of modern medicine and some good life lessons one of which is how donating blood saves lives.  Were you interested in reading the book?

Definitely. :love3:

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Posted (edited)

Where did the idea of Satan come from in the bible?  Apparently, there was no actual Satan in a human or earthly context nor in an otherworldly context in the OT until the 6th century BCE.  When the Israelites were freed from Babylonian captivity by Cyrus in 539 BCE, the Judea people returned to Jerusalem and lived for the next 200 years as a Persian-client state.  *Bill Zuersher argues that during this time, Judah was influenced by the Persian belief of Zoroastrianism.

Under this belief, Ahura Mazda, the god of goodness and Ahriman, the god of evil, are in a struggle against each other.  This played out as good vs evil in the lives of humans.  It was taught that good will triumph soon and in the meantime, a lot of emphasis was placed on moral teachings.  There is an afterlife and a supernatural opponent to the good god.  The afterlife includes a resurrection and judgment followed by one going to either paradise or the pit.

This mythology appears to show up in the NT where Satan appears as the god of this world (along with his devil spirits) and Jesus teaches in Matthew of "being in danger of hell fire" (chap 5) and being cast "into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth" (chap 13).

Is this a mere coincidence?  Is this doctrine necessary to explain the evil that is present in the world?

*Video: Bill Zuersher - Seeing Through Christianity - A Critique of Beliefs and Evidence

Edited by Charity
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2 hours ago, Charity said:

Where did the idea of Satan come from in the bible?

This is as labyrinthine a rabbit hole as how El became Yahweh. There should be plenty of books, articles and videos on the  subject. I suspect someone here has an answer, but I think you are on the right track.

It seems to me, if I remember correctly, the contemporary Christian idea of Satan is an evolved amalgamation. The ha-satan of Job is not the god of this world Paul writes about, and different still from what people mean today when they say Satan.

————

 

I had never heard so much daily talk about the devil until I married into that Way family. The adversary received more credit than God - no joke, no hyperbole, no figger of speech. The power of God depended upon beleeef, but the power of the adversary depended on nothing and was an absolute factual certainty.

According to them, the devil was everywhere, especially over your shoulder - Look out! God and Christ were absent in another realm.

I had no idea how polytheistic Christianity was until I took “the class.”

 

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On 5/21/2024 at 12:35 PM, Raf said:

That the Bible says something is proof that the Bible says it. It is sufficient evidence to base a doctrine on. It proves that somewhere along the line, believers accepted this as a fact.

It does NOT prove they were correct in doing so, or that the incidents relayed ever really took place.

You can say "I believe this happened because the Bible says so."

You cannot say, "Because the Bible says this happened, it therefore did, and how do you respond to it?"

I mean, you can SAY that. But the answer might come in the form of giggles.

Agreed.  

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7 hours ago, Nathan_Jr said:

The power of God depended upon beleeef, but the power of the adversary depended on nothing and was an absolute factual certainty.

When you consider the irony in this, it's almost comical in a perversely twisted way.

Want something from God? Follow a complicated formula. Make sure to cross every T and dot every I.

Want something from Satan? No problem. Just think it. It's yours.

You want to know what killed that little boy? He spun 'round and 'round trying to make sense of it all and fell over dead from dizziness.

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3 hours ago, oldiesman said:

Agreed.  

To be clear, I was answering a question about what's accepted about the Bible on THIS THREAD. Not on GSC. There are other sections of GSC where the Bible is treated with less skepticism (because to treat it otherwise would derail the thread).

 

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11 hours ago, Nathan_Jr said:

I had no idea how polytheistic Christianity was until I took “the class.”

 

Let's not confuse TWI with Christianity. In my experience, cults are far more interested in combatting demonic activity than the average Christian is. In my experience, Christians just want to live their lives and respect their beliefs.

Cults? Cults want you to be afraid of every demon or devil lurking behind every corner, en garde! ready to fight at a moment's notice.

It's EASY to let extremism paint all of religion, just like it's easy to let nihilism define atheism. They're not the same thing, but how do you resist the temptation to conclude If A, Then N? Especially when you add time to the equation, when it becomes increasingly justified.

An atheist NOW may not be a nihilist, but ask him what he thinks of everything 6 billion years from now, and the opinion of an atheist will be indistinguishable from that of a nihilist. But the point is most of us are not nihilists NOW. Atheists do not reject moral principles and we don't consider life meaningless. There is much meaning in life. In fact, this being the only life we have, we treasure life. That's why you don't see atheist suicide bombers. No one's promising us 72 science textbooks if we sacrifice ourselves for Darwin.

You'll never see us flying a plane into a building while shouting "REASON!!!!!!" until the last second.

Defining a group by the actions or beliefs of its extremists is usually not fair at all. Muslims suffer some of the worst prejudice for this. Atheists too. Christians, not so much. There are so many Christians that most people recognize "that's not all of us" when they're criticizing one religious group. JW's have the blood transfusion ban, not Christianity. Westboro Baptist teaches God Hates F*gs, not the average Christjan.

But that's part of what makes it so challenging to discuss some of these issues. No matter what belief Charity deconstructs as part of her journey, there will always be some branch of Christianity somewhere that says 

Quote

 

maybe what you have been told is Christianity is not Christian at all

perhaps reviewing other thinking is in order

 

Or

Quote

I don’t read that at all in those verses.

So now, while Charity tries to make sense of what Christianity teaches and whether/why she rejects it, she suddenly becomes compelled to evaluate and reject every alternative interpretation of Christianity before being permitted the luxury of saying, "You know, I think none of it is true."

Well that's preposterous. There are 45,000 Christian denominations on earth today. 45 THOUSAND. 

The OVERHWELMING MAJORITY of Christians and Jews, throughout all of time, believe that Genesis 22 records God telling Abraham to kill his son as a test. When the angel stops Abraham, at no point is there a "correction."

The angel SAYS:

Quote

“Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.

The angel does NOT say:

"Stop! You TOTALLY misunderstood what God asked you to do. He wasn't asking you to kill your son. Are you crazy?"

And the Bible later says Abraham BELIEVED God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness. It doesn't say "Abraham misunderstood God, but in doing so he demonstrated a faith that impressed the Almighty."

I do not know if Wierwille was alone in teaching that the burnt offering meant something other than what Abraham took it to mean. I do know that he cited no sources in making this claim. 

Quote

In Eastern custom a burnt offering does not indicate the presence of fire. When speaking of people as being a burnt offering, it did not mean sacrifice by fire. A burnt offering was a  total, unreserved commitment of self to God.

Where is he getting this information? He doesn't say. And I may not have delved into the practice with all the resources and time of a scholar, but I am not finding a scrap of support for Wierwille's sentence quoted above. If anyone can find a scholarly source, not Wierwille, to indicate that God might have meant something else when he said "offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I will tell you," I would be glad to see it.

But absent any other evidence, the only source for this claim is Wierwille.

The verse and context are clear: God was testing Abraham when He asked him to kill his son. And Abraham passed the test. The angel didn't intervene to correct Abraham. The angel intervened because IT WAS A TEST and IT WAS OVER. 

Did God really want Isaac to die? No. If He did, He would have let Abraham go through with it.

Did God tell Abraham to kill Isaac? Yes. He was testing Abraham. He says so.

But doesn't the Bible say God does not tempt? Yes. A thousand or two years after the Abraham incident, God says he does not tempt people with evil. But obedience to God is not evil. Trusting God to fulfill His promises is not evil. Abraham passed the test because he trusted God, not because he misunderstood Him.

Let the Bible speak for itself and the message is clear.

Now, stepping OUTSIDE the internal story that's being told, we turn our attention to the story as human beings.

God told Abraham to kill his son. It was a test. ABRAHAM DIDN'T KNOW THAT. We do. So we can look at the big picture, while Abraham is stuck in the present. God just told me to kill my kid. What do I do?

Any parent with a heart is going to answer the same way: "Tell Him No!" Maybe add an expletive or two after that. 

 

 

As unbelievers, we are not criticizing God in this story, because we are not asked to identify with him. We are criticizing the character we're supposed to admire, the one we're supposed to emulate, the one we're supposed to look up to as an example of steadfastness of faith: Abraham.

But in REAL life, if someone told you he was about to kill his kid because God told him to, you would do everything in your power to stop him because, and this is key, you would not even entertain for a nanosecond the notion that he's telling you the truth.

And since the subject of this thread is deconversion (and by extension deconstruction) it should be pointed out that the majority of Biblical stories are tales you would flat out reject if someone claimed them in front of you right now.

Imagine someone washing up on Miami Beach right now and saying, "Lo! Spring Breakers! I just spent three days and three nights in the stomach of a whale after passing through his 25 centimeter esophagus, and I sat there with hundreds of pounds of krill in a vat of hydrochloric acid, only to go back through the esophagus for the whale to throw me up three days and three nights later (by the way, the Apple Watch battery lasts a long time, but that's how I knew how much time was passing as the acid disintegrated my skin). And I have come to tell you REPENT! REPENT! Or God will destroy Miami!"

You would not have gotten two sentences into that without calling mental health experts and fitting him for a nice white coat with REALLLLY long sleeves.

But you're supposed to believe Nineveh heard Jonah's warning and converted.

There is no evidence of any long term sudden change of religion in Nineveh. Just a Bible story that never happened.

Similar to how the story of God testing Abraham never happened. It's a story. If it were real, Abraham would be the bad guy and no one would admire him.

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Talk of the devil is common in some Pentecostal/Charismatic circles probably because they're heavy into the spiritual gifts, modern day prophets, revivals and other stuff.  Casting out devils by preachers on the internet is becoming quite a thing.  It's right up there with being slain in the spirit.  Just google videos on casting out demons and see how many come up.  Greg Locke, a big name preacher, released a movie called "Come Out in Jesus Name" in March of last year.

A write up for the movie reads: "Following a startling chain of events, the most controversial pastor in America, Greg Locke, took a 180-degree turn from his mainstream religious traditions and led his church into legitimate revival. He and a diverse group of unconventional preachers then began to spark the most important awakening in the history of the Christian Church - through the most unlikely means - by casting out demons. This fiery film documents the beginnings of their journey. While "Come Out In Jesus Name" is a 90-minute feature length film, it also has a special 2-hour Deliverance Edition that includes (as bonus material) an historic 30-minute invitation prayer and deliverance session led by Pastor Locke during the March 2023 premier that became the largest mass deliverance in Church history... in Jesus name. A Locke Media Film. A Global Vision Bible Church Production."

For all the onstage bravado, you can bet there are followers of these preachers living in fear of devil spirits in their own lives. 

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Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, Raf said:

Let's not confuse TWI with Christianity.

This morning I regretted writing that sentence "I had no idea how polytheistic Christianity was until I took 'the class.'" It was too late to edit the post. Thank you for calling it out. 

I should have written something like:  I had no idea how polytheistic Christianity or pseudo-Christianity could be, until I took the class. 

Edited by Nathan_Jr
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4 hours ago, Raf said:

Where is he getting this information? He doesn't say. And I may not have delved into the practice with all the resources and time of a scholar, but I am not finding a scrap of support for Wierwille's sentence quoted above. If anyone can find a scholarly source, not Wierwille, to indicate that God might have meant something else when he said "offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I will tell you," I would be glad to see it.

Bishop K.C. Pillai (pg. 127)

Oh, you know, that guy who lived thousands of years later in...India.

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2 minutes ago, waysider said:

There's a thread somewhere that poses this very question.

Darned if I know how to find it, though.

I'm reading the forward now to see if it answers the question.

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6 minutes ago, Charity said:

He is credited for having a profound impact of the Bishop's life.

I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you!

(Inset image of shocked Pikachu face here.)

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