I explain my life as a born-again Christian, my deconversion, and my life as an atheist. In the deconversion section, I show how evidence, reason, and experiences related to prayer, morality, deconverted Christians, the Bible, and my relationship with God Himself all lead to my eventual inability to believe anymore.
Videos - series of 18 A short but comprehensive look into my life as a Christian (which spanned 15 years) to prove to Christians that I was a genuine born-again, Holy Spirit baptised, and deeply committed Christian who had a strong relationship with Jesus Christ.
Assemblies of God website:
http://ag.org/top/
The concept of God, while having the appearance of being a single, coherent belief is often actually supported by multiple pillars of intertwined sub-beliefs. I give an overview of some of the most important sub-beliefs for my personal conception of God here. I will detail how at least most of these sub-beliefs fell for me, under the weight of logic and evidence, in later videos.
I explain why, for theological reasons, I stopped believing in the validity of intercessory prayer as a Christian.
I also comment on the famous 2006 study on intercessory prayer[1] and present GIIVideo's argument against the validity of the "Yes", "No", and "Wait" heuristic that many theists use to justify the practice of intercessory prayer.
I explain how, through the study of Ethics, I came to believe that morality was something separate from God that He wanted us to discover using reason, evidence, and experience.
I explain how I came to see science and the Bible as compatible and started sharing this argument with atheists and non-believers through the Internet.
Books Mentioned:
- The Science of God by Gerald Schroeder
- A History of God by Karen Armstrong
- Who Wrote the New Testament? by Burton Mack
I explain how I came to meet a true Christian who had deconverted and how I came to believe that I was at a different rational stage of development than some believers.
Books Mentioned:
- Some Mistakes of Moses by Robert Ingersoll (written in 1880)
I explain how, through my own personal readings, I came to see the Bible from a less literal and more liberal perspective.
Verses Mentioned:
- Matthew 7:6 (Pearls to pigs)
- Proverbs 3:5 (Your own understanding)
- Romans 1:22 (Wise but fools)
- Genesis 12:11-20 (Lying Sarah)
- Exodus 9:12 & 10:20 (Hardening Pharaoh's heart)
- Leviticus 2 (Mundane flour rituals)
- Numbers 2 (Counting Hebrews)
- Romans 2:14-15 (Written on our hearts)
- Acts 1:18 v Matthew 27:5 (Judas's death)
I explain how the professor's knowledge of the Bible's construction brought into question my belief that it was divinely inspired.
Verses Mentioned:
The Documentary Hypothesis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis
The Bible with Sources Revealed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_with_Sources_Revealed
http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Revealed-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060530693
Explain how I was raised to see God in everything, how I came to believe I had a personal relationship with him, and how I began to enter a personal crisis in college when that relationship started failing and feeling distant and confused.
The beginning of my final battle with the professor and the professor's perspective of the concept of a personal God.
I explain the end of my confident faith in God and the beginning of what became irreparable doubts about God's existence, given the current lack of motivating evidence for believing in Him.
I explain the torturous emotional roller-coaster and eventual desolate hopelessness and terror that resulted from losing my theistic God.
I explain how I came to reject the Theistic conception of God in favor of Pantheism.
I discuss various definitions of "atheism" and explain why I have chosen the one I have.
Appeal to Ridicule:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule
Appeal to Popular Opinion (Argumentum ad Populum):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
Stella Liebeck v McDonald's:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants
Strong and Weak Atheism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_and_strong_atheism
Agnostic Atheism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_atheism
I explain why I remained with the church after becoming an atheist and discuss more nontheistic God concepts I considered in my theological journey.
Books and Concepts:
Jonathan Livingston Seagull:
http://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Livingston-Seagull-Richard-Bach/dp/0380012863
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Livingston_Seagull
Swarm Intelligence:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1558605959/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486...
The Hidden Face of God:
http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Face-God-Science-Ultimate/dp/0684870592
The Greatest Show on Earth:
http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Show-Earth-Evidence-Evolution/dp/1416594787
Transitional fossils from Hair-Covered Apes to Humans:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#morphological_intermedi...
Critique of the Physics arguments used in The Hidden Face of God:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/scott_oser/hidden.html
I relate the inspiring experiences of reading Ingersoll for the first time, observing the successful application of reductio ad absurdum to religion, perceiving the growth and maturing of my own mind, and encountering the concept of different Jesus movements from Mack.
Note: In case it is not obvious, the voice in the pseudo-Ingersoll recordings is my own.
Books and Concepts:
Some Mistakes of Moses:
http://www.archive.org/details/somemistakesmose00ingeuoft
http://books.google.com/books?id=VxUaAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&sou...
http://www.amazon.com/Some-Mistakes-Moses-Robert-Ingersoll/dp/0879753617
Robert Ingersoll:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Ingersoll
The Golden Age of Freethought:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Freethought
reductio ad absurdum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
DarkMatter2525 - Intelijunt Dezine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6AdEDm2mLQ
NonStampCollector - Free Will - "God Style" PART 3; Finale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0wSjJAsrAk
Inspiration for Sistine God manipulations:
ProfMTH - Adam + Eve = Plan B
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waV91LS0Atw
Proto-Orthodox Christianity:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-orthodox_Christianity
I relate the insights of reading Spong for the first time, solidifying the displacement of theism by the insights of science, seeing how we had created the theistic God in our own image, learning about the first images of Jesus from the letters of Paul, and trying to extract concepts from my Christian experience that were still meaningful in a non-theistic universe.
Books and Concepts:
Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers In Exile:
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Christianity-Must-Change-Die/dp/0060675365
Size of the Observable Universe:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=size%20of%20the%20observable%20universe&...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe
1 Thessalonians:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Epistle_to_the_Thessalonians
Gospel of Mark:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_mark#Date
Gospel of Matthew:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_matthew#Date_of_gospel
Gospel of Luke:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_luke#Date
