Christianity kept falling apart and eventually it was "game over" - David Ames

Today I spoke with David Ames, the host of The Graceful Atheist podcast. He placed his faith in Jesus in his early adulthood, but ultimately deconverted as he examined the truth claims of Christianity.

We discussed many topics, including:

• Seeing his mom get clean and sober from addiction through turning to Jesus.
• Being encouraged by his youth pastor to get a strong Bible education and to consider going into ministry.
• Feeling the excitement of being connected with god and sensing the presence of the Holy Spirit.
• Understanding the teachings of sin and of god's grace.
• Enjoying his time at Bible college but also being taught strong critical thinking skills which ultimately led him to deconvert.
• Feeling that "Jesus won his heart and Paul won his mind" as he dove into the New Testament and systematic theology.
• Experiencing angst over pressure to sign a statement of faith where he agreed with some things but not with others.
• Successfully starting ministry but, as an introvert, simultaneously burning out quickly.
• Getting married to a Christian, having a Christian home, and being focused on actively witnessing to the lost.
• Realizing that he had been ignoring cognitive dissonance, discrepancies, and doubts.
• Becoming increasingly concerned about how the church was treating people in the LGBTQ+ community.
• Turning to apologetics to reinforce his faith, but seeing that their arguments were extremely poor, especially regarding "intelligent design."
• Starting to listen to atheist authors and speakers
• Starting to lose the idea that he had a soul.
• Rethinking the story about Jesus' resurrection in light of whether he would accept other belief systems' miracle claims.
• Facing the outcome of an "unequally yoked" marriage.
• Realizing that Christianity is predicated on the principle of faith.
• Giving himself the permission to doubt and to no longer accept bad Christian explanations for the psychotic behavior and bizarreness of the Yahweh character.
• The process of creating meaning in our lives after the religious meaning and context are gone.
• Learning to grieve death properly after deconversion.
• Working through the best way to fight the psychological abuse of religious childhood indoctrination in our culture.
• Experiencing much more peace after deconversion than while he was a Christian.
• The importance of developing a mindset of "secular grace."

Many thanks to David for sharing his story and for his amazing platform!
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Connect with David / The Graceful Atheist podcast:

www.gracefulatheist.com

The podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/show/4JBhCa3Ly3dCwQrneaRMJS

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/c/GracefulAtheist

Twitter:
@GracefulAtheist

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/GracefulAtheist

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Tim may be reached by email at: harmonicatheist@yahoo.com
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Thanks!

--Tim
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Ending music by Eyal Raz, "Friends"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qbqNO6DdAQ
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Видео Christianity kept falling apart and eventually it was "game over" - David Ames канала Harmonic Atheist