Arguments when I was a Believer

 So I woke up this morning and saw this tweet in my feed that prompted enough thought in me (and the fact that it's a quiet Sunday morning and the kids are playing nicely) that I decided to write on the topic.

Non-theists, what arguments (if any) for Theism did you find convincing when you were a Theist? What changed your mind?

— Adherent Apologetics (@AApologetics) September 27, 2020

This is a very interesting question! I started to think about it and it made me realize that there weren't any explicit arguments that had me believing. There certainly were some that I was effectively indoctrinated with that aimed to reinforce my faith in a bubble, but nothing like the arguments I'm intimately familiar with now. I also distinctly recall being entirely unimpressed with apologetic arguments when taking a "evangelism training" seminar/class at my church. 

 So lets get into the specifics here.

What christians get right about deconversion

I've been following Christian theologian and apologist Randal Rauser's interview series with apologist John Marriott on his book about deconversion and how to prevent it. 

There is quite a lot I'd like to say on the topic, at least in critique of why John's (and purportedly Randal's) solutions are ultimately not good reasons for someone to remain a Christian; but that's not my aim today. 

Here I want to offer some agreement with their assessment of deconversions and one key area of why they happen that they touched on in their final post in the series.

The idea is that of plausibility structures and how Christians need to maintain a plausibility structure through the use of their churches.

Are Atheists celebrating Intellectual Regression?

I had shared the following atheist meme on Twitter, which prompted some reaction from some theologians/apologists I follow.

"The longer I have been an atheist, the more amazed I am that I ever believed Christian notions." - @DanBarkerFFRF pic.twitter.com/Ko0ub12CAc

— Atheist Republic (@AtheistRepublic) July 14, 2017

The strongest reaction coming from Randal Rauser who penned a post about the topic which reveals more context to the quote which I wouldn't endorse.  I'd recommend reading his article.

I posted the following as a comment on his blog, but I liked the themes here so much I decided to include it as a post of my own so as to not lose it. Hopefully it's helpful to others who can strongly relate to the meme, as I do. 

Beyond an Absence of Faith - I'm in a book!

So there's this book that was just released that I'm particularly excited about - Beyond an Absence of Faith  It's a collection of stories about people who've left religion and the impacts that has had on their lives. It was edited by Jonathan MS Pearce and Tristan Vick, which I can tell you is a good sign of the quality!  It's even got a foreword by Jeremy Beahan of the Reasonable Doubts podcast, which is awesome considering how much that specific podcast helped me reground myself after deconverting. 

So why am I excited about it? Because Johno asked me to contribute my own deconversion story to the book!  I'm published in a book (though still using my pseudonym), which is something I never thought would happen.  The version here is similar to my video/post on the matter, but with a bit more detail on my life before apostasy and on some personal aspects of the fallout that happened after.

What's better is that there are 15 other stories in the book, including ones by other online atheists I admire like Vyckie Garrison who escaped the Quiverfull Movement. It includes stories of apostates of different religions, and all of the stories here are honestly moving. It's frankly amazing what some people have gone through on their journey to apostasy.  The book is less about arguing for atheism than it is about our respective journeys out of religion and finding ourselves again.

Kaveh Mousavi at On the Margin of Error wrote a very nice review of the book, and so far the reviews on Amazon have been quite kind as well. I'm a bit biased, but I highly recommend picking up a copy.  It's in paperback and on Kindle. 

From Fundamentalist to Atheist - My Deconversion Story

This video is going to be a bit different than the other videos I’ve put out since I don’t have an actual argument that I’m putting forward or refuting. I’m going to talk about my deconversion from being a fundamentalist Christian to being an atheist.  And I really want to do this because I think it’s something that all of us who’ve deconverted want to put out there to maybe help other people who may be going through the same thing.  I’m hoping it’s also useful for life long atheists to help understand where the “faithful” are coming from. 

I’m going to give a brief overview of what my religious background was growing up, there’s a much longer and detailed post about thison my blog that I’m going to link to in the description box.  The long and short of it is that I was born a Catholic and then my family converted to being fundamentalist Christian, specifically Baptists, when I was about 9 years old.