scisyhp

I've been able to deconvert 1 of my roomates, but the other two are proving to be a little more difficult, they're not true Christians, they're of the type that doesn't read the bible but still claims to be Christian.

fromdownunder

Why do you wish to deconvert them?

Norm

Plognark

1) Don't do it unless you've been invited to try. That's just a rule of politeness, I think.

2) Ask lots of questions. You can get better results when you try to get a person to explain their own fucked up beliefs than you can if it seems like you're trying to sell something. You can then point out the contradictions and inconsistencies in their beliefs.

3-a) Never, ever expect that you'll have any success. Humankind's capacity for self deception knows no bounds.

3-b) If you go into every discussion realizing this, it won't bother you whether or not you have any success. Sadly, people are so generally fucked up that the appearance of self assuredness and confidence can have far, far greater impact than any logical argument. "He seems so calm and knowing and confident. He must have some profound insights..."

Distasteful, but typically true. It's a rare individual who actually gives more than a passing thought about the actual content of an argument. Most of the time they just spin their gears trying to defend what they've already decided, on nothing more than tradition and emotional motivations, is true.

Carrie

Click on my name, and go to "other posts by Carrie" and look at some of the first few I posted. That was back when I had just deconverted. The stuff I learned had convinced me, and I used it to deconvert my husband.

But mostly, people have to be curious and willing to explore the possibility that maybe the Bible isn't right. Most people are scared and stubborn.

The main thing that worked for me was reading all the terrible stuff in the OT and realizing the Bible COULDN'T be from God.

Good luck with your noble agenda.

His Noodly Appendage

Don't push. They'll hate you for it.

It may be an ugly tumour buried in their mind, but if you wade in with a bread knife to try and rip it out, at the very best you might be able to remove it, but with so much trauma that they'll never trust you again. At worst, you're just attacking them, and it'll just get bigger, with lots of pain and scarring thrown in. If you attack their religion head on, they will just turn to it for comfort, and push you away. If you manage to seriously damage it, they will grieve its loss, and blame you for it.

By far the better approach is to give them the opportunity to drift into a new position, making sure that every step is their own idea (or at least, make sure they think it is). If they want out, they'll just quietly grow out of it, like a child growing out of saturday morning cartoons. If they don't, they won't.

You don't have the right to change them just because you want them to be different - though you could argue for a moral duty to help them to change if you suspect that that's what they want, deep down.

The ends do not justify the means.