JohNeo

Jon,

Welcome from me. :wave: I guess we missed each other...I fell out of faith about a year before you but you were already on hiatus by the time I showed up.

Having been through the deconversion process myself no so long ago, I can sympathize with the strain that your differing worldview can bring about with friends and family.

It still hurts me deeply that my former best friend, who was there while I started having doubts and tried his best to keep me in the fold, will hardly speak to me now. He tried to do what I initially asked him to do, which was to help me when I was in the midst of a spritual crisis. But as I grew more comfortable with my newfound atheistic worldview, we butted heads and it got ugly. He even said "get behind me Satan." We have seen little of each other since that incident nearly two years ago. He came to my wedding, but left after ten minutes.

My sister and I are nowhere near as close as we were before either. That hurts more than anything, because unlike friends, it's almost impossible to walk away from immediate family. She makes sure that God, Jesus or Church gets brought up almost every time I'm around. Right before my wedding, I had to make it clear to the judge that my wife and I didn't want the mention of God or Christ in our ceremony, and my sister happened to be standing right there. She gave me the dirtiest of looks and shook her head. Why the judge hadn't bothered to look at the ceremony's script until two guddamn minutes beforehand is beyond me anyway.

Anyway, the only thing that can keep me half sane is to try my best to be indifferent to religion. Not indifferent to bigotry, violation of First Amendment church/state separation, nor crimes justified in religion. But rather indifferent to the whole basic metaphysical debate. We all know that we're going to die, let's just all agree on that. What happens afterwards is anyone's guess, and no more.

I happened to see another thread of yours in which you pointed out that you tend to evangelize atheism. After I lost my faith and began healing from the trauma, I found an indescribable joy and freedom. I was eager to go out and spread the message to everyone else, but fortunately I was able to minimize the damage by keeping my mouth shut. A lot of good people on these boards were helpful in telling me when to leave it alone. So you win an argument, great, but chances are the other person's still not going to walk away thinking you did. Not much good can come from trying to dissuade others from their beliefs, IMO, unless they are ready to take that step themselves.

If the difference of worldviews is causing the strain and misery, I would think it would follow that you don't need to keep forcing the issue.

I would suggest channeling your energy into more constructive pursuits, such as secular humanism or secular charities, or even just hanging around IIDB and being supportive of others like us, who have come here for the same reason.

JN

Jon Curry

I can understand that one. It's similar for me, though not identical. My best friend was actually my apologetics mentor. A very smart guy. I was so impressed with his knowledge and understanding of logic when I met him that I really tried to imitate him. It was my first exposure to critical thinking. This is really what lead to our friendship. I read the books he had read and basically adopted most of the positions he held. As I started to turn he didn't make much effort to stop me. I think he could see that he wasn't going to be able to, so he didn't try. Early on, when I pretty much admitted the resurrection didn't occur I always brought the subject up with him, to his chagrin. I wanted to debate, and he is truly one of the smartest people I know. Who better to debate with? Truly nobody that I knew was better qualified to debate me. He hated every moment of it. It always put him in a foul mood. In that case I should have let it go sooner than I did.

Our friendship is a shell of what it was before. Not just because of my deconversion, but also because he was married a little before my deconversion and he doesn't have the time he once had. But we still consider ourselves friends. He tries. I think he must have made a vow to not discuss the subject with me to his wife. When I've brought it up casually he's done what he could to prevent the conversation from going any further. Perhaps that is wise.

You're probably right. Though I do continue to debate with several Christian acquaintances (they don't seem to mind) I do try to be tactful. You just put the feelers out. It is obvious that some people don't want to hear it. I try to respect that.

But sometimes I am tempted to debate with those that I think maybe don't want to hear it based upon my own experiences. When I first met the friend I referred to above I was a mindless Pentecostal, KJV Only Christian. He argued with me about the KJV Only thing. My position was completely irrational, and he showed that. I was mad at him for a while and would not accept his arguments. But a couple of years later (as we were becoming closer friends) I finally started to realize he was right. And I was so grateful to him for arguing with me way back when. He helped me change my false stupid beliefs into true ones. The reality is, people don't want to hear it. It is painful at first, but I believe (based upon my own personal experience) that if they ever do realize they are wrong they will be very grateful for the difficult questions they are asked. They'll be better off. Of course we should be tactful. If someone goes completely crazy in the face of arguments against Christianity, obviously you should back off. But my experiences tend to cause me to err on the side of promoting the truth. You might just change someone's life dramatically for the better.

Avynth

yeah, hanging on to groundless arguements doesn't stand for fighting with very long... i first found this too because a friend always mentioned it and i finally checked it out, i didn't join for a few months because i kept thinking up arguements against everything said but then thought about it and realized i had no way to really defend my counterpoints, and then i realized christianity was really a bust, and now i'm happily here, not exactly atheist, but rather taoist (i just liked the idea of the tao and became enchanted by it, but i use logic as well, i'm not hanging onto ridiculous ideals as my basis)

Jobar

Avynth, I call myself an atheist/pantheist. I've studied Taoism a lot over the years. If you'd like, you might want to read Atheism and/or Pantheism, the text of a talk I gave to a local Humanists group. The thread that's part of you also might find interesting.

I'm intrigued by Rhea's statement that our atheistic answers don't penetrate until the believers themselves ask the questions. I'm forcibly reminded of GraciePearl, who recently came to II and impressed everyone with her good manners. I think that she actually came to witness to us; but as that conversation went on, it seemed that she began asking herself some of the hard questions. And when that happened- she fled. If she keeps on with her internal questioning, I think she'll come back- perhaps as an unbeliever.