-Jay-

We try. I've been very impressed with the candor of the respondents to the thread, and I appreciate everyone's participation to date.

regards,

NinJay

Dean Anderson

Here goes...

It started when I was running a Bible study group. It was about 7 or 8 years since I had been Born Again and given my life to Christ, and I was at a Bible Camp organised by our local branch of the National Young Life Campaign (the British group - it is not connected to the American "Young Life" organisation) of which I was a member.

Having to lead a group of others through a text means that you have to go through the text very closely yourself. Of course, back in those days, I knew a lot less about the Hebrew and Greek texts than I do now.

I had, naturally, read the entire Bible before - but like most people, I had kind of glossed over the brutal and bloody parts of the Old Testament. Unfortunately, leading Bible studies about some of these passages and texts made me examine them in much closer detail.

I was quite troubled when reading some of the atrocities that went on apparently on the instructions of (or at least with the approval of) God.

Of course, when it came to the actual Bible studies, I did what everyone else did. I just trusted that God "had a good reason" for such things - for example that various entire countries of people were "irredeemably corrupt" down to the last baby and that what God ordered people to do was either "just" or necessary".

When I discussed this with the group, some just accepted what I said without question - but others appeared to be discomforted by the passages just like I was, although they agreed with my explanations. It occurred to me that maybe the people who explained things to me may also have been just as uncomfortable with the explanations they were giving me as I was with the explanations I was giving other people.

Naturally, like most Christians, I was horrified by this discomfort and by my doubts as to the just nature of God. I prayed long and hard about the matter, asking God to help me understand and to ease my mind.

This worked to an extent, in that it made me feel much better about things - but it was never able to remove that last bit of nagging feeling that maybe what had been taught to me and what I was passing on to others may not be quite right.

Of course, it was unthinkable for me to blame God for this. Sometimes I blamed Satan for putting such thoughts in my head (and I often begged God to make him stop doing this and to protect me from him) and sometimes I blamed myself for being weak. I put myself through endless torment with this. Why couldn't I believe God's Word without having such doubts?

At around the same time, I was also studying science still. I had originally gone into my biology studies with the somewhat smug attitude that I would have to learn about things like evolution in order to pass my exams, but that didn't mean that I had to believe what the foolish "evolutionists" said.

Unfortunately, that side too brought me doubts. The scientific theories made sense. The more I learned about biology and evolution, the more I learned that the actual science was very unlike what I was being told in church and so on about what "evolutionists" claimed. The things I was told in church (this was in the '80s, before the days of the Internet and creationist websites) about evolutionists believing that monkeys gave birth to humans and so on turned out to be completely wrong.

I turned out to have quite an aptitude for probabilities and statistics, and quite an aptitude (when it came to biology) for genetics. This, of course, was a large stumbling block for me. The more I learned about population genetics, the more I realised that evolution was not just plausible, but an inescapable conclusion given the way that reproduction works.

So there I was as the year went on. I was slowly realising that the people in my church and that I looked up to for spiritual advice were very wrong when talking about things that I now knew much more about than them - and this just heightened the doubts I had about the platitudes they told me about more spiritual matters.

Of course, I was still terrified of these doubts, and still blamed myself for being weak.

I continued to pray and beg God to take away my doubts, and I continued to study the Bible in the hope that I would find in there the explanations I so desperately craved that would tell me that everything was alright and that would make my doubts leave me.

Unfortunately, the more I studied the Bible the more troubled I was by what I read. The Old Testament looked more and more as if it was simply not talking about the same God as the New Testament and as if it was not talking about the God I knew. Asking people about the parts that troubled me either got dismissals that I shouldn't "dwell on" those parts or got me the same explanations that I had heard before - and indeed had given to other people before - and that I was having so much trouble believing.

As time went on, my doubts grew and gnawed away at me like a cancer. the more doubt I had, the more frightened and desperate I got. Why was God not helping me understand the Truth and taking away my doubt? Why was God ignoring my pleas? I still blamed myself, of course. It was my weakness that was obviously the problem, and not God.

I got into a vicious circle. The more I doubted what the Bible said about God, the more I needed God to help me understand and take my doubts away. Unfortunately, the more I doubted what the Bible said about God, the less reassurance I got from him and the less I could feel his presence. I thought it way my fault, of course - that I was somehow "rejecting" God. This, I think, terrified me more than anything else. It was the last thing I wanted to do - so why was I doing it? I badly wanted and needed God, so the thought that I was somehow pushing him away horrified me.

In the end I came to the realisation that the reason I felt God's presence less and less the more I doubted was because the "presence" that I had felt was the manifestation of my own strong beliefs, and that the "small still voice" I heard was not God telling me things, but merely the inner monologue of my own conscience and fears - and that that was why the less strongly I believed, the less strongly I felt the "presence".

This was helped by the fact that at this point I was studying Neurobiology - so I was learning all about the biochemistry of the brain and the nature of various brain states. It just seemed so obvious that what I had "known" to be God's presence was merely a state of euphoria brought on by my belief in God and by my subconscious expectation of God's presence. As my belief dwindled, my expectations dwindled too - and consequently I felt God's presence less and less.

This realisation came as a huge relief. After spending years berating myself for having doubts and feeling that I was failing God and it was my fault, the realisation that the "God" I had "failed" had never existed - and that rather than feeling guilty for the knowledge I had acquired I could actually feel good about it - was a huge burden lifted from my shoulders. Similarly, although I would sorely miss how good "God's presence" felt, I was not sorry to miss the fear and isolation that my doubts brought me.

Of course, at this time I was still an active member of the church and involved in the youth group and so on. I carried on for a while, "going through the motions" as it were, whilst no longer believing what I was talking about. But soon I couldn't stand the hypocrisy of it.

I selected a couple of friends who I thought would be sympathetic (rather than judgemental), and I "outed myself" to them as an atheist who no longer believed in God. to my great surprise, the reaction I got was that they had both also stopped believing and were also simply "going through the motions" - it looked like my hunch that they would be sympathetic was correct.

The three of us then promptly severed all connection with the church. This was made easier by the fact that we had just finished college and were about to go on to do further university courses - so we all moved out of the area soon after leaving the church, and simply didn't bother joining new churches where we each ended up.

Interestingly (and contrary to the claims of a lot of Christians that people become atheists as a way of "justifying sinful behaviour") the feelings that had been instilled in me as a Christian about such things as lust were still with me for a long time after I stopped believing. For example, it took a long time before I stopped feeling guilty about masturbation and it was years before I was comfortable enough with my sexual feelings to lose my virginity.

Of course, this was all in the late '80s - so that was nearly twenty years ago now (I feel so old...)

I actually pretty much ignored religious matters for over half the period since then. I assumed that the Bible was wrong, but never thought about it from one day to the next, not really gave much thought to who wrote it or why any more than I spent time thinking about who wrote the Rig Veda or the Elder Edda. It was just one more "holy book" amongst dozens of others.

That changed when I encountered a piece of Lovecraftian fiction by Robert M. Price, who mentioned in his introduction to it that his "day job" was performing textual analysis on the Bible. The concept of textual analysis (which he also referred to in introductions to other stories as he analysed them) intrigued me. I was particularly interested in the fact that people did textual analysis on the Bible in this way. Whilst I no longer believed the Bible to be true, I still had no idea when (and by whom) it was written - so this piqued my interest and I started looking into the subject. (Incidentally, this is how I came across IIDB - a Google search for Price led me to transcripts of some of his debates here.) This interest turned into a hobby, and I have learned much about who wrote the various texts of the Bible (and when and why) and how it got into its modern form - and what I have learned is very different from what I believed by faith when I used to be a Christian.

In fact, everything I have learned about science, archaeology, history and textual studies has all served to make my atheism much stronger - not that I studied for this reason: I learn because it is interesting. Had I had access to the information and knowledge then that I have now, I am sure that my "deconversion" would have been quicker - if I had ever become a Christian in the first place. But then, of course, hindsight is always 20/20.

Dean Anderson

Sorry for the length of that! I never know when to stop...

-Jay-

Wow, just...wow.

No slight intended to anyone else who has posted, but if I were grading these posts, Dean just blew the curve for everyone else.

It just occurred to me that I should post my own story. Barring unexpected changes in weekend plans, I should be able to do that by Sunday evening.

regards,

NinJay