My Religious Demise: step by step
Another step deeper into darkness. . . closer to the light.
For a more expanded and indepth version, go here: My Philosophical Evolution
I went to a fundamentalist bible college and got a degree in religion (with as many classes in bible as possible) with a Greek and Bible minor. I taught home bible studies to college students, I was a church youth leader, a deacon, worship leader, and on and on. Now I see that all of the study I did of the bible went through a very strong filter that says the bible is inerrant and so it cannot be wrong. Any discrepancy must be reconcilable and therefore I must find a way for the errors to be erased in my mind. And if it cannot be wrong, then questioning it is not only pointless but it is a sin, a lack of faith. It was my fault, which was a perfect blinder for me to not see what the bible really said. So when I read the bible directly now with my eyes open, without dogma, filters, without basic assumptions, confirmation bias, and preconceived ideas, it is a whole new book from what I had been brainwashed to believe all my life. This change began about 15 years ago. Much of this blog is about that process.
I’ve been deconstructing my deconversion to further understand what has happened to me. I can no longer unsee the things that I can now see. I can no longer digress when I have progressed and deepened so much. But why me? I really didn’t want to change. I was content.
1. I earned a bachelor's degree in religion, bible, and greek at a well known Evangelical, bible, liberal arts college. There I was required to develop a Christian world and life view based on my indepth studies of the bible. Along with the knowledge of my faith growing, there has been a deepening dissonance throughout my 30s and 40s. I could not quiet it with pat answers anymore. The answers were no longer alive, they were dying on the vine and I was becoming desperate. I began to understand and appreciate a good question; how it deepened me and opened me up. That's why on April Fool's Day, 2006, I began blogging. I didn't write because I knew anything, I wrote because I no longer knew anything. I wrote in order to understand and listen to life. I wrote because I was desperate to go deeper; following the truth no matter where it would lead.
2. Then life upended me. It was like a whirlwind ripping and ransacking, uprooting and upending everything in my life. The American Dream, gone. In the spring of 2008, I lost my marriage (divorced!), I lost my kids half time (joint custody!), I lost my house (forclosed!), I lost my job (downsized!), I lost my mental health (clinical depression!). Like my first divorce when I was 30, I turned to God and clung to what I was taught. It seemed to work back then. But this time, I prayed harder and harder. I studied the bible more and more. I went to church every chance I could. And yet those deep wounds would not heal. I tried and tried and tried. I cried and cried and cried. I cried out and cried out and cried out. But I could not muster up enough faith to keep me going. But, I kept writing. I didn't know why. I just knew that I had to. The compulsion to keep on writing was undeniable, incessant, and irrepressible. I had to write. It took a long time to begin to understand that it was the silence, the reflection, and the contemplation that began my healing. This I learned from a Buddhist Priest as I practiced shambhala meditation in Toronto. I carried it on for a few more years in silent worship with the Quakers. And continue to practice stillness informally everyday.
3. The questions along with the dissonance became a continuous and relentless roar throughout my 50s. It reminds me of the neverending tinnitus in my ears now in my 60s. At times it brings me to my knees.
4. First it hit me that "knowing" is a presumption that we have abused. We do not
5. Then it hit me that along with knowing, certainty is nothing more than a story in my head. We are humans, not gods. We don't get to be certain about anything except that everything changes constantly. There is no permanence. Everything is temporal. And if I think that I know or that I am certain or that I am permanent, then I am playing God or just an idiot. (see Underpinnings of Faith #1&2)
6. This then made me begin to question the foundational things of my faith: one of them being an inspired, inerrant word of god. Not long after I began to see that, then I realized that the concept of a word of god period is absurd. And when I was then forced to question why we would be told this, the dynamics of power and oppression became clearer and clearer. (See, How Holy is the Holy Book?)
7. External authority is another story in our heads that we tell ourselves. Sometimes it is practical (like government and laws) but not when it comes to the things of life and death that no one can know. (see Underpinning #3) It is only internal authority that can tell me who I am, why I am here, and what I should do about it. There is a Seed of Knowing; an inner seed or light or voice that is always true. Some guy over there is not going to be able to tell me what my life is all about.
8. Once that foundation began to crumble, everything else began to unravel, and kept unraveling until there was nothing left. The nature of language and the identity of words furthered and deepened my understanding. Words are not reality and they never can be. Words and language is designed to simply point to a reality that gives us a point of reference to begin a conversation. Words and language were never designed to end or conclude a conversation with final answers. How can there be a Word of God if words themselves cannot express any sort of reality? Words and language are again stories we tell ourselves. Beliefs are stories we are told, then tell ourselves, then choose to believe. The Macro-Narratives and Micro-Narratives that drive us.
9. Then came the nature and function of thought, of reality and perception, of concepts and illusions, and of fictions and the stories we tell ourselves. The Fictions that Thought Creates
11. Then my eyes opened to the unseen structures, principalities, and powers that were really running things. The structures of power and oppression, inner and outer authority, being controlled and compliant versus living out our full potential. Oppression, Power, & Privilege
12. A great eye opener is my understanding of myths per the teaching of Joseph Campbell along with the understanding and influence of conditioning according to Krishnamurti. My Mythic Guideposts
13. Once I turned 60, the scales fell off my eyes and I could see all of the wishful and magical thinking that I had been clinging to. At that point, I was finally ready to say "STOP" "enough!" It was at this point that I could fully let go of dogma. What I experienced profoundly and astonishingly is that I was finally free. No more shackles on my mind or on my conversations with others or in my acceptance and inclusion of others; unconditional love! I was finally free!
Losing my religion was perhaps the most freeing thing that has ever happened to me.
Who'd'a' thought that the total unraveling of my life would result in such incredible freedom?
Living Beyond Religion
What do you do when your religion has been one of the most important things in your life, when your religion is the basis for your family life, social life, intellectual life, the books you read, and the basis for your life long learning? What do you do when you find that your religion is just stories and illusions, that it is empty and meaningless? What do you do when there is nothing left to hang on to?
https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/2019/09/living-beyond-religion.html
An Old Old Story Based on Crumbling Foundations
There were a bunch of white guys that lived between 1900 and 4000 years ago that wrote the bible. Those guys believed it was evil spirits and false gods that made us sick, made it rain, ruined the crops, caused floods and droughts, earthquakes and tsunamis, caused the stars to fall from the sky; and that the universe revolves around the earth with human beings at the center of the whole created universe. They made up story after story about how things work that we know now are completely false, pure guesses based on the knowledge they had at that time. We can’t know what we don’t know. But for some reason, these stories are still hanging around and people are still believing them, even though they don’t make any sense any more. I’ve always thought that I was building my life on solid rock, but as my eyes are opening, I realize that the foundation I was building on was nothing but sand; shifting, sinking sand. This blog post is meant to be a sort of introduction to three very specific crumbling foundations with lots of documentation and research: 1) Why would God need Hell? 2) A holy book full of inconsistencies, errors, horrible inhumane actions of those that are supposed to be good, is considered inerrant and inspired? 3) The 10 Commandments, a list of non-essential morals, are touted as the greatest moral principles of all time? See the following three links.
https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/2021/03/an-old-old-story-based-on-crumbling.html
Heaven and Hell and Other Such Stories
So let me get this straight. This so-called god cannot trust people that he created to choose to believe in himself, their creator, the one that has only two actual attributes that I have been able to ascertain; silence and invisibility. But this god has to resort to tyrannical tactics in order to force people to believe in him by creating a torture chamber the size of 10 earths where people will burn forever. I wonder why he ever bothered to create them. On top of that, people will be sent to eternal torture without informed choice; in other words without ever knowing what their choices were. They are held responsible to know that Jesus died for their sins and need to repent even if they have never heard of Christianity. The reward is going to an eternal worship meeting to appease this god’s need for attention forever.
https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/2021/03/heaven-and-hell-and-other-such-stories.html
More Highlights of My Deconversion Story
As I’ve grown up and have come to a greater and deeper understanding of how this world works, I realize the complexity of language and words. Language is made up of words and words are what make up thoughts and images, or maybe thoughts and images make up words. Hmm. But when we don’t understand how that works, we elevate language to a level of idolatry. An example of this is thinking that words are reality and that they can contain the truth of reality. Words can only point toward reality as signs and symbols representing the images and stories in my head. They can never be the reality itself, just like a “tree” or a “table” cannot exist in my head where words originate and exist. So how can there be such a thing as a holy book that is the inspired, inerrant Word of God, when God created this world in such a way that words cannot be reality or truth???
https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/2021/03/how-holy-is-holy-book.html
The 10 Commandments - the best morality of all time?
How does 10 commandments etched in stone 4000 years ago become the best morality of all time? What did people do for 2000 years before they had these precious commandments were so desperately needed? What happens if we actually read them and try to apply them to today? Why do people insist that America was founded on the 10 commandments? If you read them and actually think about them, you’ll see that only two can be used as a foundation for a country’s laws. And yet they are foolishly displayed in America’s courtrooms as if they are the basis of all our laws. The questions go on and on stemming from these 10 little narrow-minded commandments.
https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/2021/03/10-commandments.html
What happens when you devote your life to hand-me-down religion and beliefs, automatic downloads from culture without thought and sense? Then what happens when you realize that if you are determined to understand truth, you must dig and keep on digging, if you were to follow the truth no matter where it leads? I started digging day after day for 15 years, sorting through the trash and treasures that had piled up in my subconscious and conscious mind. The innerwork was grueling, tearing my hands to the bone as my heart broke all the way down. The further I went, the more I could see I needed to keep on going. But then what? What happens when I begin to see a bit of bedrock, the ground of being? What is there? Nothing close to what I was told to believe. This journey is lifelong, so don’t begin unless you have to, unless you are so compelled that you can’t not begin. If you can stay in your cocoon and live with it, then do it.
https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/2020/11/bedrock-of-being.html
One thing I found at the bedrock of my being is that there are no answers, only more questions, more wonder, more intrigue, more mystery. There are no signposts beckoning us to a place that will finally give the answers. Meaning for my life does not come from any external authority. Meaning comes from within. But what does that mean? What am I going to do with this one precious life that I have been given? First we must decide the one true question of life, can I find a reason to live? Or will I choose not to live by turning to philosophical suicide or physical suicide. This is perhaps one of the most profound findings for me that helps me understand my place and my purpose in life; as well as my way forward.
https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/2020/11/philosophical-suicide.html
When I was a child, I thought like a child. But when I became a man, did I learn that this is not a magical world of fairy tales, Santa Clause, a magical sun that rises every morning and disappears at night, meals that magically appear at just the right time when I am hungry? Eventually, we begin to see that either things are fiction or reality. We can’t explain the fiction but if it is reality, there must be an explanation. We can’t make it magical by just believing it is. Sick people get well due to natural processes with some help from medical scientists. God didn’t donate money for my wonderful cause, people that cared did that. When things happen, there’s no magician in the sky waving something into existence. When I began to discern my own hidden assumptions about life, I had to ask myself if I think that magic is why things happen or do I base my thinking on evidence and on reality.
https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/2020/08/magical-thinking.html
The Tyranny of the Mind that I refer to here is located in the psychological realm. Keep in mind there are other realms of tyranny (social, cultural, political, educational, religious) that are constantly oppressing us through conditioning, a form of brainwashing. Anything expressed is not real… it is nothing but a perception, a concept conjured up in our minds, then formulated with words that are nothing but signs and symbols that can only point to reality. Our reality is simply a “perception” or an interpretation of the concept or image that our mind creates. Awareness is beyond thought and comes from stillness. This is where truth lies.
Don’t believe everything you think. “Thought creates the world and then says, ‘I didn’t do it!’”
https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-tyranny-of-thought.html
What is prayer beside talking to myself?
It seems to me that whether or not my faith in God is ever restored, prayer just keeps on. I keep right on talking to myself as if there is someone else listening. It seems to me to be a basic human trait... talking to myself and/or an imaginary friend. What is this thing called prayer if there is nobody home? When the only two verifiable attributes of the guy in the sky is silence and invisibility, what is prayer?
https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/2020/08/on-prayer.html
For those that have not really read the bible, or if they have, those that don’t really believe what it says, what is this buffer, this defense, that filters out what I’m not supposed to notice? Well, here is a straight-up look at what god says about himself directly from his own Word of God.
These attributes of God are not made up or derived from historical teachings.
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction; jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving, control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
—Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
The following is a self-description of the attributes of God directly from God himself through the inspired, inerrant, holy Word of God.
https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/2021/04/behold-thy-god.html
This is the tip of the iceberg after my innerwork of 15 years. I began by blogging the questions and doubts that had been gnawing at me in my first blog. During that time, I was still looking at the world through a Christian framework but it was a process of casting off the dogma and assumptions and conditioning that I was becoming more and more aware of. In my second blog, I felt a need to not only deconstruct my faith and sort it out but to move beyond that to deconstructing my whole world and life view. For the past two years I’ve been writing about the crumbling foundations of the Christian framework that was holding me back from seeing and following the truth wherever it may lead. Dogma is perhaps the greatest oppressor of freedom.
Recently, I felt a need to start the third iteration of Living With Open Hands that expressed my social and political outworkings that are a reflection of my innerwork. Sometimes politics are just as divisive as religion so it feels more coherent to separate the innerwork from the outer expressions. I waited for over a year to begin writing blog number two because I knew that in order to be true to myself, I would need to write but with my first blog I have many followers that are ardent Christians and I just am not ready to have people trying to save my soul or arguing about the truth I am discovering. The reality is quite the opposite except that I have no compulsion to save anyone from their beliefs. I think maybe some people need those beliefs. Sometimes we need the deeper truths mediated to us in order for it not to be too hard to understand meaning and purpose in life (see Mediated versus Unmediated Living). The original blog is actually in WordPress: https://ronirvine.wordpress.com/ where I have gotten over 78,000 hits from 150 countries. This is still quite surprising since I did not start a blog in order to put it out there, I just needed a place where I can archive them and return to them as a sort of working journal of my inner journey. Besides, I’ve always liked typing much more than handwriting like in a diary. Each post is really a reminder to me of what I have forgotten or what I need to not forget. And I never cease to return to these posts so that I can remember those points of inevitable change and paradigm shifts. So easily we forget what we already know.
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