Phlox Pyros

This is a common answer, but to me it has always come across as disingenuous. It comes across to me as an alternative crutch to religion, a belief that one is now better off (better off how? this seems similar to the type of rationalization that Christians use), has responsibility for their own actions (of course, Christians feel they have that same responsibility unless they are the "I can sin all I want and God will forgive me" type - which I believe are rare because of the "fear of God"), have grown more tolerant (this is one of the biggest self-lies to me...in fact, one becomes much less tolerant of religion as displayed in this very thread, and never seem to understand that those with a proseletyzing religion are most of the time actually trying to help others out of what they believe to be love and caring), and has grown into the truth (what truth? what happens after death? why were we created? what created the universe? if it was just here, why? what truth have we grown into? where are the answers that those with religion don't have?).

In fact, deconversion hurts. Then, one is simply left with the realization that there is nothing at all after death and that life is utterly meaningless. Of course one can try to find some temporary life-time meaning to make one happy, but that it is just a replacement crutch.

I just don't understand wanting to replace the "hope" of someone with religion with another set of rationalizations about what life is, while hurting them in the process. Just doesn't seem worth it to me.

ziffel

Speaking of the SAB, here's a free online version, with LOADS of info.

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/

I also like this site as a source of great articles related to this subject:

http://www.ofgodandlogic.com/

jjramsey

The Skeptics' Annotated Bible is not a great resource. As of this date, it still has this annotation for Leviticus 14:

Here's Leviticus 14:2-4:

That's a pretty bad error in the SAB.

Its list of contradictions on alcohol is also pretty sorry: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.co...a/alcohol.html

For the most part, what the SAB has done is treat any verse on the abuse of alcohol as an absolute prohibition and take any verse that says anything good about alcohol as an absolute permission. The very first example in the "no" column is taken grossly out of context:

The preceding verse makes clear that this is not for everyone, but only those who make the nazirite vow:

Some threads on the JREF forums about the SAB and the SAQ (Skeptic's Annotated Qu'ran):

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=42448
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=43964
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=44295

The best I can say about the SAB is that it is an unreliable resource that might be useful as a source of leads for more accurate research.

(Side note: I recycled these comments from a post I made in another forum.)

Jayrok

I deconverted after simply reading the bible. I was raised a fundy evangelical baptist. I began searching when our sunday school class was studying Mark's gospel. It occured to me when reading that his gospel is different than the others, and I wanted to know why. I found that the gospels don't give the same info on the same events. If this is godbreathed, I thought, then the stories should at least have similar content.

The other part of me wanted to understand why the Jews rejected Jesus as the Christ. I was raised to believe they simply missed the boat on Jesus. However, I wanted to know why. I began to read the OT and even talked with Rabbis and Jewish message boards.

After reading books like Isaiah, Jeremiah and especially Ezekiel, and "proof texts" like various Psalms... it occured to me Jesus didn't fit in there as well as Christians would have you believe. There is no indication in the OT that God was going to come to earth in the flesh to be the end-all sin sacrifice for mankind. Instead, the OT scriptures speak of Israel ultimately becoming God's representative to mankind and Jerusalem his dwelling place forever. There is no indication that God's sacrificial system was ever going away and there is no indication that the nation of Israel was going to be replaced by some "spiritual Israel" comprised of christian churches.

You can show that Paul takes hebrew texts out of context when selling his version of a new religion. It's easy to see writers of the NT basically highjacked the Jewish scriptures and Judaism in general to justify christianity.

I say absolutely use the bible when speaking to christians who really haven't read their bible. It worked on me and no one spoke with me.. I simply began reading it myself and learned what the OT books were really talking about.

Joe Bloe

Do you really mean 'disingenuous'? Or only that you don't agree? While it may come across to you that way, I certainly don't mean it that way. It's my genuine answer.
I don't see how putting away crutches is itself a crutch.
I noted in a recent thread that I just finished reading the book Bible Believers: Fundamentalists in the modern world (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Nancy Tatom Ammerman (a sociologist who did a study of fundamentalists), in which it is clear that, at least for fundigelical type believers (which I know is far from all believers, but they are usually the ones who proselytize, and thus the ones I would typically respond to with explanations of my beliefs and the reasons for them) avoidance of personal responsibility for what they make of their lives is for many of them central to the attraction of their religion. A typical quote from her interviews:
In that thread I said That's not disingenuous. That's how, from my perspective, I really see things.

That's what I'm doing when I "proselytize". So I do hope that you are equally disapproving of religous people trying to proselytize others with their beliefs as we do with ours. You wouldn't want to come across as disingenuous, would you?

Life doesn't give meaning to you. You give meaning to it.

I can see how someone who can see only the pain of deconversion could think this way. But the results of the temporary pain of my own deconversion were well worth it to me. I would have absolutely no desire to go back even if I could. And if somehow I found myself back there, I'd gladly go through the temporary pain of deconversion to get back to where I am now.

LoneWolf

Of course. I would never use only one resource to develope such arguments anyway. And I don't believe in "copycating" arguments either. Check the argument out in the SAB and then study the verse yourself in the Bible and then check other resources. Check out the counter arguments to the SAB and see which argument holds up best.

I would never use the SAB as the "end all" source of argument. After all, the authors of it are only human

RUmike

Phlox Pyros, to see an example of what type of good a non-theist can accomplish for a theist, please go to the following link and jump down towards the bottom of the page to the paragraph that begins with "In the summer of 1885", and read to the end (it is not long). It's from a biography of Robert Ingersoll.

http://www.infidels.org/library/hist...hapter_14.html

EssEff

Worked for me! Well, I'm skeptical by nature, but I did try to be a good Christian, and I figured if I read more of the Bible that would help. It just made things worse. I still remember my horror at discovering that the end of the Sodom and Gomorrah story includes drunkenness, rape, and incest in the supposedly "good" family that was spared. The "fundies" I know today who are only too happy to bring up that story almost universally have not read it all the way to the end.

Phlox Pyros

Thanks. It was a touching read. However, I would have to say that Ingersoll, in his letter, sounded more agnostic than atheist to me. It sounded to me as if he were saying we can't know what is after death, none of us.

Here is what I do not understand. I can see possible comfort in agnosticism. However, unless one believes in some sort of supernatural something, or reincarnation, or whatever, then at death you are gone. I don't know of anyone who can be consoled by the thought that someone they loved is permenantly and forever gone into black void never to remember the life they led and any deeds they had done...utterly meaningless.

Phlox Pyros

I don't believe that one has put away crutches when one dumps religion. I believe one many times picks up a new set. That new set is the belief that one is somehow better, more intelligent, less child-like, more tolerant, etc., than religious folk. These are, in my humble opinion, rationalizations (crutches) to help support ones new beliefs. After all, one has to convince oneself that they are right...what better way to do that than to rationalize that others must be wrong (sounds kind of religious...lol).

First, I do not see proselytizing as a problem, unless it causes harm. I do not see most religions causing hurt or harm by their proselytizing. I see that they wish someone else to be happy and to find "hope". Conversely, I see "deconversion"-type proselytizing as inflicting unreasonable emotional pain and yielding no "hope".

That is what I was trying to say. Deconversion leads to pain and then to realization that no matter what they do in life, it does not matter. Everyone will die. The earth will cease to exist. Memory (and therefore any good or bad deeds) will be erased. Nothing matters. To find any "hope" after deconversion, it is my belief that one begins rationalizing their situation and attempting to irrationally build themselves up (or building one's own crutch, just not a religious one).

I don't know what to tell you. I am happy for you if you have been able to find peace. Others never do and feel that they cannot go back because they are all in their head and all about reason and knowledge. Two friends of mine are this way. They feel they can no longer believe in God, but they both wish they could and feel sad. I don't wish this on anyone and I do not see moderate religion as being any more harmful to people than many of the arbitrary values that non-theists must pick to guide them through life.

Anyways, I hope you don't take my post as mean, I just have a very different perspective apparently.