Comments on: What Turns Christians Into Atheists?

By: Adrian Hayter

Adrian Hayter — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 02:53:06 +0000

NewlyFreed,

Welcome to atheism, you’ll find a lot more reason and purpose to life here than you ever will with theism. Join the forums if you want to chat with like-minded people :)

-Adrian

By: NewlyFreed

NewlyFreed — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 02:39:49 +0000

I just recently deconverted as a born-again Christian. It is something i would have never imagined I would ever do. One of my best friends is an atheist. We have great conversations about religion without arguing, which he liked because his non-belief, I am the rarity that he could talk about religion with. Anyway, we were talking a couple of weeks ago about it, and he said something about how I should even bring my kids to church until they are older as to not ‘brainwash’ them and let them decide for themselves. Well I immediately became defensive, of course, because that is what I had been trained to do. So over the next few days I thought about - why do i believe in god? - because I was told to. Why does my daughter pray every night now? -because I taught her to. At any rate, it was like I was suddenly awakened to the fact that I believed because that’s all I knew to do and feared not believing because of scare tactics…well i am still here, just fine and I feel like a weight has been lifted.

By: fascination

fascination — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:17:38 +0000

For me, it was learning about science and actually taking the time to read the bible. What a shock that was!

By: martijn

martijn — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:39:19 +0000

(From holland so please excuse me for my writing)

My view on atheists is the following;

People have always want to believe in thing to make themselves feel more secure and save. Things that can’t be explained will also named as an so called “act of God”. This was mainly done in the year 0. This was in the time that large cities like rome were very populated. What will you get when you have a large city with a minimum of bathhouses, latrines etc? Exactly, deseases like the plage. The plage is an enormous killer, it swept though city reducing there populating by sometimes 40%. Now we see the same thing in about the middleages. In every case people start to more and more believe in Christ. And why? I think because it gives people hope, because it’s the only thing they can rely on ( they think ). And as above:
14.89% saw that the religious doctrine wasn?t compatible with science and reality.
As time went by science got more sofisticated, and these people got there explaination. Religion is a thing for the man who is affraid for the unknown.

(plz reply)

By: Warum der Christ gottlos wird | DER MISANTHROP

Warum der Christ gottlos wird | DER MISANTHROP — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:40:48 +0000

[...] würden Atheisten aktiv versuchen, Gläubige zu dekonvertieren. the atheist blogger - What turns Christians into atheists? [↩]kieran bennett - What works in deconverting Christians? [↩] « Mutter [...]

By: Atheist Revolution

Atheist Revolution — Wed, 21 May 2008 11:23:24 +0000

Sowing the Seeds of Doubt…

Kieran Bennett’s informative analysis of deconversion stories is a must-read for any atheist wanting to know what we can do to help Christians overcome faith and embrace reality. The results suggest that there are many things we atheists can do….

By: Brooke

Brooke — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:52:07 +0000

I strongly think that the desire to “convert” relgious people to atheism that seems to be very popular with the New Atheist movement is mainly driven by a back lash created when the fundamentalists started to agressively attempt to take control of the rights of everyone. If you look at the attempts in America to weaken and break down our traditional separation of church and state they are getting closer and closer to success. Our own, out of touch, president would love to have the bible take a bigger part in all of American life.

Yes, we will react to this nonsense. I had no desire to be active about atheism, whatever that would mean, till the arguments against gay marriage started popping up and then quickly followed by the stem cell decisions that are really based not on science, but on religious dogma of a small set of very vocal fundamentalists.

What choice do we have but to try to convince the majority that following religious dogma, any relgious dogma, at the exclusion of the minorities could only hurt the whole of whatever nation is involved.

Do I want to be involved? No not at all. Do I have to be involved? Do I owe it to my children, my partner, and my country. Yes!

By: Adrian Hayter

Adrian Hayter — Tue, 13 May 2008 11:04:56 +0000

I haven’t heard of many death-bed conversions to be honest…apart from the lie about Darwin of course..

By: Nessie

Nessie — Tue, 13 May 2008 09:15:32 +0000

Well we know what works best in converting athiests to religion: illness and impending death. So if we can do something about those, we’ll be a long way toward deconverting the religious.

By: Kieran Bennett » What works in deconverting Christians?

Kieran Bennett » What works in deconverting Christians? — Tue, 13 May 2008 02:02:11 +0000

[...] Atheist Blogger Adrian Hayter has a couple of posts on this essay. Related Posts:Assignment Update: Deconverting [...]