Now What?

By After Deconversion ~

With all due respect to people who live on the ultimate fringes of society, in America, the majority of deconverted believers are going to be Christian. I was a Christian when I was a minor. But it didn't take very long for me to disentangle myself from the subscribed beliefs of my parents.

Image by Sarcasmo via Flickr

Now what?

Now you get to pick what's important to you out of your priorities. They'll probably start about where you left them. Depending on your approach to your life, you might be living a life based on the remaining commandments. But you can go further. If you want to investigate secular ethics, look at theories for our law. Read the kinds of books people in Law School read. Those books cover a lot of the trade-offs between different strategies. I think it's fascinating. Without a god, you get to ascribe your own reasoning to why you do things after all.

Now that you can do anything remember that there are many many choices out there that can be sensibly selected from. I don't know what you thought about homosexuality as a morality issue before, but now you have no Biblical reason to segregate based on sexual orientation. You get to pick your bedroom behavior and your relationship structures your way provided you stay on this side of what's legal.

I read a lot about atheism and humanism and more. But now that you're not a Christian it's not an imperative that you know the state of affairs in the belief system or the non-belief systems. Go focus on your things even if it's just a book, just a video game, or just a vacation at the beach.

When you've done all that, if you find you want a community of friends who don't assume your Christian, a group of friends that you can deconvert further around without defending yourself, then come find us. We're out there and we think there's a lot of benefit that can come from civic minded non-believers working together.

Personally, I'd like to make sure non-believers compete hour for hour and effort for effort with religious people when it comes to looking out for other people. It's good when anyone helps the disadvantaged. Personally, I'd like to make sure non-believers compete hour for hour and effort for effort with religious people when it comes to looking out for other people. And the reason is that if believers are the only ones helping, well that's something they should be proud of and a reason why disadvantaged people might affiliate with them.

Now that you've deconverted you've seen one example of what deconversion takes and what it costs. Let's make it easy and fun for people to wake up. I don't want them trading sanity for fellowship. And I'm not alone.

Coming out of a belief system is not simple and I applaud your effort. But now what?

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