Dan Phillips Tells It Like It Is
Dan Phillips from Pyromanics has an excellent post on why people deconvert from Christianity. I had similar thoughts rattling around in my head for quite some time, but never bothered to put pen to paper to get the thoughts out.
It is an unmistakable pattern in most deconversion stories that I’ve read that the author is usually attempting to justify some sin or sin-pattern within his or her life when the deconversion is made. Phillips lays this out pretty plainly in his post.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Thank God for Dan Phillips!
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Posted on June 3, 2010, in Apologetics. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
Josiah Concept Ministries 
I’ve read the guy’s stuff, I will answer some of his points sometime. The thing is, the question should be “Why should people join Christianity” instead. The normal state of a human being is not Christian, or religious for the matter. Even if the majority is religious. As could be said about the law of inertia…things only stop in their motion because of external forces. The inherent position a person takes is non-belief…now, different societies have created different religions, so modern homo-sapiens have almost always been a part of some religious group (as any object not thrown fast enough will eventually fall back, if without acceleration, on earth -> actually, héhé, gravity is religious belief, and the escape speed is critical questioning of the beliefs). The dependence on geography and time period show just how un-spontaneous belief is. Just realizing that you would not have been a religious person in a different situation should be enough to leave the faith. Then, in the new position, maybe you can try to see if anything can convince you to rejoin it. One does not need to find other reasons to leave it.
But I found his points quite interesting, I will comment on them soon.
“So let’s ask: when would it be a good, valid time to leave the God of the Bible? Simple: if He does not keep His promises.”
Héhé, he’s right that that’s a daring statement. I mean, come on. If he does not keep his promises?! To follow that logic is to presuppose the existence of said God. To most non-believers, it’s equivalent to saying: “So let’s ask: when would it be a good, valid time to leave the gods of Rome? Simple: if they do not keep their promises.” I mean, try, really try to see it like that, in our perspective, you’ll realize how empty the statement is. Anyway, what are God’s promises?
“Apparent contradictions in Scripture, even ones for which we’ve found no solution, might be a good reason to leave God if He promised that all Scripture would be simple, and equally immediately transparent to every reader. He does not.”
Hahaha!! That actually made me smile when I saw it, héhé…”apparent contradictions”…implies the presupposition that there cannot be any contradictions in scripture, so even if they say 2+2=5, we have not understood the meaning, we must accept it, reflect until we find a manipulation, a wording, a twist for which 2+2=5. “Equally immediately transparent to every reader”, that’s a funny way to put it. “He does not”? What does he promise at all about the scriptures?!
“To that, this:
1. Assuming that God is as the Scripture says He is, what would you expect? And
2. Assuming that God is as the Scripture says He is, to what higher authority could any appeal be made?”
Well, I actually like that. The man admits that he’s ASSUMING things. I can assume I my best friend is a crocodile and build logic on that supposition. The rest of my logic will, of course, will have strange results, but it will still be logical, parting with the supposition. At least the man does not pretend to have arrived to his position with pure reasoning.
I know his post was addressed to Christians, but again, as I said yesterday, if you’re a Christian, the question “Why am I a Christian (of this denomination, this group)?” should, logically, draw you away from the Church in itself. The other questions are based on unprovable, un-spontaneous assumptions, assumptions which would have been very different if the same person had been born in Pakistan, ancient Greece, Egypt, etc…