Recently, I carefully watched the 12 videos comprising what the author (according to his videos, we'll call him 'Chris') refers to as his 'deconversion' from Christianity. I've seen this series of videos referred to in a variety of atheist godless type (AGT) websites as being emblematic of the 'atheist' journey. There's really not much to say about the videos at this time1I have included all of my very rough notes after this paragraph for future reference. because as is covered in The Atheist's Journey, it is an exercise in futility to engage with AGTs about any matter of import save one as of this writing: the threefold problem. An atheist is a person who is consistent with all that is entailed by the godless world view and therefore sadly commits suicide; in contrast, the godless types stick around living lives that are inherently contradictory to the tenets of godlessness, doing their best to convince others to endorse illusions built upon delusions. As Chris hasn't committed suicide as far as I know, we can be certain that he is not an atheist. Whether he is of the simatheist, agnostic, or apatheist variety is irrelevant, because they all devolve to the same outcome and result in a life devoid of morality, meaning, hope, and motive. Hence, no reasonable person can take seriously anything of what he (or any AGT, we're not here to just pick on poor feckless Chris!) says about the nature of God, the universe, good, evil, truth, falsehood, morality, and immorality. That being said, if he were to foolishly and terribly take the tragic, yet logically consistent step of committing suicide, then he will have demonstrated at least two things to those of us left behind and learned something himself:
- His end was consistent with the godless perspective.
- His death would be a testament to the hellish end to which godless world views lead.
- God exists.
What follows are rough notes taken and observations made during my watching the 12 'deconversion' videos. These will need to be fleshed out in the event that the AGTs ever solve the threefold problem…
Overall—
- Cataclysmic failure on the part of Chris's parents
- Cataclysmic failure on the part of Chris's church
- Chris exchanged one blind faith for another blind faith
- How do we know that this 'professor' even existed?
- Certainly ironic how I saw no questioning this “professor's” existence
- Certainly ironic that throughout the videos Chris never indicates that he did any vetting of the 'professor'
- It is revealing how the majority of the commenters swallow Chris's schtick, hook, line, and sinker
- Putting aside all of the inherent problems with the 'journey,' how do we know that this isn't simply a fantastical dialog created by an AGT?
1.0 My Christian Life
Where are the AGT replacements for such great organizations? They have no motive.
Very little mention of the Bible, more on introspection: link
Most (if not all of what he relays) is emotive in nature. He had not been taught to think. As emotions are passing things, it's no wonder his 'Christianity' evaporated upon exposure to the Internet: link
1.1 Deconversion: The God Concept
The model is vastly oversimplified and can apply to my beliefs about just about anything that exists in the realm of ideas: government, justice, etc. link
1.2 Deconversion: Prayer
The prayer model presented is self-centered. link
Of course it was proportional. His prayers were childish and self-centered. Looking at human history, the fruits of the Spirit don't just 'happen.' link
The transition here is one of degrees, not kind. The listed prayers are all self-involved ones, even if some of them are 'good.' link
“Discovering what God's will for me was:” again, it's in the Bible, but there's little to no mention of digging into Scripture. This is all echoes of the dialectic of despair. link
It might have happened within 'your' 'Christian' world view, but it didn't happen within the Christian world view. A Christian is commanded to pray. Chris disobeyed the command. link
Perhaps a read of The Screwtape Letters will lead Chris to understand what was happening. Better yet, the Bible. link
How is one to know that those who were prayed for wouldn't have had even more complications? Post hoc ergo propter hoc study. "Prayers offered by strangers." "Results might be a result of chance." No mention of whether those who were prayed for were believers, or what they believed in, how well vetted it was, etc. Chris definitely needs to bone up on his analysis skills and acquire some knowledge thereof. link
Where is the evidence that praying to anything other than the God of the trinity has led to the founding and building of the most envied civilization in human history, i.e., Christendom,? Only a person unhinged from reality would pray to a jug of milk, so the jig is up right there. If God exists, then He represents reality. Period. link
Nowhere does the Bible guarantee one anything about their prayers. The prayers of a righteous man availeth much. What we are commanded to do is to give thanks in all things. In prayer, we are submitting to God's will, letting our petitions to him be known, but to come to prayer with the belief that He will reorder the entirety of the cosmos on our behalf is rather hubristic. If it accomplishes His purpose, He will. If it doesn't, He won't. Grow up. link
1.3 Deconversion: Morality
All of the questions he asks, are addressed in Scripture. That he turned to his 'personal relationship' with Christ (i.e., his own thoughts on the matter absent Scripture), shows once again the failure of his parents and church in teaching him correctly. "Don't do this. Do that." Again: no reference to Scripture. link
Professional ethics class: never mind that the entire university system in which this 'good professor' operates was created by Christians to train Christians for the furtherance of Christianity. link
Yikes! "I was already good." If this young man had been taught Christianity instead of religion, he would have know that "There is none good but God." link
The ethics professor: I know you're all good. Right there, again, if this young man had been taught to read the Bible, he'd have known that the heart of man is corrupt. What the professor and the young man in question here have adopted unwittingly and in their ignorance are Rousseauean beliefs. link
This ethics class took place in ostensibly one of the countries that are a product of Western Civilization, i.e., Christendom. The 'reasoning' is nothing more than conclusions reached within that stable environment, even if in sin, the conclusion is contrary to Holy Writ. Essentially, the class taught this young man 'morality by democratic' vote, which is no morality at all. link
"Clear that my teacher was ethical." Depending upon one's premises, it can be ethical to commit the most barbarous acts known to the annals of history. link
God could command anything and it would become 'moral.' The same goes with ethics: anything deemed ethical is ethical. It's chuckle inducing to hear an atheist speak of a word like 'good' becoming meaningless, considering that all words have no meaning according to the atheist creed. link
Wow. Before taking the class, he'd viewed accidents such as the Challenger explosion as being devoid of moral responsibility? This was one sheltered child. Again, if he'd been taught from the Bible, he'd have known that every decision and action of man is infused and suffused with moral responsibility. A serious failing on the parts of his parents and his church. The lack of criticality is mind-boggling. It seems the only effort that this young man has expended upon criticality is against moral responsibility. link
Flabbergasted: to be truly moral, I had to commit to doing the 'right thing' even if it meant that I'd go to hell. Nothing, not even the threat of hell should deter me from doing what was truly right: that was true morality. Translation: If I do what I believe is truly right, then I am truly moral. Meaning: I must commit to doing what I want to do at any moment and that makes me feel as though I am 'right' in so doing. I.e., the worship and love of the self above all else. link
God wanted me to discover 'morality' for myself. To not do what is right for some eternal reward or because of fear for some eternal punishment. Again: cataclysmic parent and church failure here. link
1.4 Deconversion: Other Christians (A)
The paucity of this young person's knowledge of science is sadly typical. He should look into how scientists used to say that the universe had existed forever and therefore there was no need for God, but then when irrefutable evidence was discovered that supported ex nihilo creation, they all jumped on that bandwagon and then started exerting their efforts to demonstrate that that scenario needed no God. link
The whole problem with the 'science' aspect of this is that Chris obviously understands little to nothing of the mathematics or physics behind what he is presenting, just as he understood little to nothing about Christianity. He's moved from one blind faith to another blind faith. Regardless, the Bible is not a science textbook. link
The review that troubled this young man so much: it is revealing how much of this person's journey was not due to him rolling up his sleeves, digging into the Bible, philosophy, history, and science, but rather just upon purely accidental events that he encountered. He was passive, not active. Like a cork on the ocean being taken whichever way the winds blew him. link
The first time he'd felt a real challenge? His parents should have been challenging him throughout his life, his church should have been doing so. link
1.4 Deconversion: Other Christians (B)
"To call the scientific/Biblical debate a myth is truly astonishing." What's actually astonishing is the bald ignorance displayed of the history of science. link
It is revealing that the young man postures the basic calculus required for a CS degree as 'advanced calculus.' CS essentially requires no science, and has 0 requirements in logic per se, nor metaphysics, nor metaphysics, nor ontology. Essentially, this kid was simply a plaything in the hands of the elder 'academic' with whom he was ostensibly communicating. link
"I seek the truth above all things." If that were true, he'd be seeking to know Christ. link
Going from 'religious question' to the "Oh, so that's how it works" fire, is an apt metaphor! Questioning is of course perfectly fine. Christianity will always come out shining all the brighter when subjected to any question when answered by capable thinkers. link
The height of being disingenuous: once again, this is demonstrative of what a pliant and foolish young man this person was (is). He comes across a review wherein the guy essentially dumps all over the Bible, and then, once the guy has the ear of the pliant fool Chris, puts on the pretense of not really wanting to dump on the Bible. Will the real 'professor' please stand up? link
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The people of my church fear to walk where I bravely tread. Wow, what a bunch of self-aggrandizing baloney. Perhaps put it: the people of my church are sincere in their beliefs. I am insincere. link
1.5 Deconversion: The Bible (A)
"They had not yet reached an advanced enough level to appreciate what I was saying." Again, the focus is on himself, and he once again betrays ignorance of Scripture which makes plain that understanding is granted by God. link
So, with Satan's hand clasping his and guiding him to a right understanding of the Holy Bible, he finally decided to undertake a reading of the Bible. link
Good grief. Why did Abraham lie? Because he was a sinful man. Again, a gigantic manifestation of the irresponsibility of his parents and church. This isn't a problem with the Bible at all. It's a problem of mankind. It's a problem with this young man. link
The atheist tenets lead to there being no 'free will.' link
All of the questions he has about the Bible should have been covered and answered by his parents and his church. His ignorance is an indictment of him, his parents, and church, not of the Bible. link
David loved dwelling on God's law. All that this young person has demonstrated is that he's not indwelt by the Holy Spirit and is condemned to hell in eternity. link
Again, no reading of the Bible link
Continue to have faith in the Bible, i.e., faith in something he'd never bothered to read, i.e., blind faith. No wonder it was swept away with such ease. link
1.5 Deconversion: The Bible (B)
These are all moral evaluations. If they came from the mind of a man, they are by definition, ad hoc. link
There is no command in the Bible to Christians to kill children, nor anything that indicates it is 'true obedience.' link
For any phenomenon, there are literally an infinite number of explanations as to how it became manifested. The fact that someone wrote a book hypothesizing that the Torah was written by five different authors, does not disprove that Moses wrote the Torah. The best that could be done would be to disprove that Moses wrote the Torah. Also, where does this 'seeker of the truth' present counterarguments? Also, arguments based on linguistics are not scientific: they belong to the realm of speculative reasoning. link
1.6 Deconversion: Personal Relationship (A)
I labeled it as God speaking to me: of course, as he wasn't reading the Bible, he has no idea whether it was God speaking to him, a demon speaking to him, or his own voice. In fact, the best that a Christian can do is take what he believes /might/ be God's voice, juxtapose that against Scripture, and if it matches, be content to know that it is consonant with God's Word. link
Emotions aren't bad per se, but this guy seems to be ruled entirely by them. Dr. Johnson's aphorism is apropos here: We may take fancy as a companion but we must let reason be our guide. link
Prayed for the Holy Spirit to 'return' to him? Again, this young person's mind was filled with hocus pocus, not Biblical truth. No wonder he rejected it for he never was a Christian to begin with. link
Compared to psychology, sure, a computer science degree is difficult. Want actual difficulty? Pursue a degree in mathematics or engineering. I mention this only because this young person seems to be deluded in his beliefs about the scientific 'training' which a CS degree confers. link
Ahh, there's the rub: women rejected him. link
1.6 Deconversion: Personal Relationship (B)
It is ironic that the music Chris has chosen to convey his foolishness is that which was written by a man who lived according to the Christian faith, Samuel Barber. Where are the great AGT works that can replace it? Why have faith that the 'professor' is honest? He started off with a deception. link
I.e., 'Just have faith' in the 'professor.' Nowhere did Chris indicate that he vetted any of this person's statements. link
"God is just a concept." The same can be said of numbers. Of good, of evil, of morality. The bottom line is that Chris and the 'professor' are inconsistent about their ontology of beliefs. 'Numbers' make no moral demands upon them, and so they are allowed. God does make demands, and therefore is not. link
Agreed. Based upon the evidence of Chris's flimsy understanding of the Bible and shallow critical approach, I totally agree that his perception of the Holy Spirit's presence was self-manufactured. link
When an argument brings in psychoanalysis to give it 'heft,' you can be sure you've departed science into the realm of the squalid. It is demonstrative of how poor his understanding of science is. (Neil deGrasse Tyson and the Lily Gilders, Reasons, Why Not?) link
1.7 Deconversion: The End
Do you see how it is possible? Of course, anyone who's taken even a cursory look at epistemology sees that it is 'possible' that we're simply brains in a vat. It's also possible, that if I step out of my front door, a plane engine will fall on me, and so it is probably better that I stay in my apartment where at least I have a better chance of surviving the day! There are all kinds of 'possibilities' that if we were to take them literally would lead to the cessation of living. link
"The professor knew more about the Bible than I did." Satan knows more about the Bible than Chris as well. link
His explanation of Occam's razor is incorrect. It has primarily to do with ontological entities allowed into one's metaphysics, not assumptions. link
Isn't a reason to not commit suicide motivating enough? link
1.8 Deconversion: Losing God
It's not logic. It's premises. The most horrific immoralities imaginable are perfectly 'logical:' murder of the unborn, transvestism, mutilation of children, gas chambers, etc. link
Called his parents? They are the ones who failed him at every turn in his spiritual upbringing. It's akin to ingesting a 'Destroying Angels' mushroom to act as the antidote to ingesting a 'Destroying Angels' mushroom. Plus, this guy is an emotional house of cards. His dad obviously didn't teach him to be a man. link
His dad's ignorance does beggar belief, even if it is not surprising. link
What a strange emotionally helpless creature this ostensible man seems! link
A quick summary of Chris's journey:
- 1I have included all of my very rough notes after this paragraph for future reference.