The Atheist Blogger

Kieran Bennett (an atheist blogger and member of the forums) has analysed 117 Christian deconversion stories, and written a very interesting and informative essay on “What works in deconverting Christians?“.

His investigation found that:

• 14.89% were dissatisfied with some of the answers given to them by priests or other religious people.
• 14.89% saw that the religious doctrine wasn’t compatible with science and reality.
• 12.76% came to the realisation that religious dogma was “internally incoherent” and illogical.
• 10.63% read the Bible and found that for the Holy Book of Christianity, it didn’t reflect modern day Christianity at all.
• 8.51% found the corruption and scandals following the church as a persuasive argument against following their doctrine.
• 8.51% gave up on prayer and religion when they realised that nobody was going to listen, let alone answer to them.
• 8.5% thought the similarities of Christianity with so many other religions (and yet so different at the same time) the primary factor of their deconversion.

Surprisingly, less people found that an exposure to atheism / philosophy / skepticism was a factor in their deconversion (I guess we’d better try harder). Likewise, only a couple people saw the association of violence with religion and attributed it to their lack of faith.

As for how we can deconvert more people, Bennett hits the nail on the head, and comes to the conclusion that whilst we can push and prod people towards the big ideas (science, logic etc), a successful deconversion is all down to the individual. We can’t force our ideas onto people, only sow the seeds of doubt by asking the right questions.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I honestly didn’t want to cover this story, not because so many others had already done so, but because it literally chilled me to the bone, and I find myself sickened whenever I read it. However, Evan over at the Debunking Christianity blog wrote an investigative story on the subject, which I couldn’t ignore.

For those who are unaware of the story (which is probably a minority), I will give a brief description. 11 year old Madeline Kara Neumann (pictured above) died from diabetic ketoacidosis, a perfectly treatable condition, and one which the majority of people do not die from. I’d like to say that her illness was the primary cause of death, but sadly that is not the case. Madeline Neumann was murdered by her parents, who were so ignorant of the situation around them, they decided that the power of prayer, not medicine would save their daughter.

Madeline saw a doctor at age 3, and would not see another until her body was examined at the local hospital, a good few hours after she died. She had been off her medication for most of her life, but when her illness became too great, she fell unconscious and died. All the while her murderers refused to take her to hopsital, and in fact a 911 call that eventually alerted the hospital came from a relation outside the immediate family.

Read the rest of this entry »