tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20930767.post8168855071474623445..comments2023-06-01T14:08:49.977+00:00Comments on Confessions of a Doubting Thomas: Conversion, deconversion and the will to believeUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20930767.post-7192640292336177902012-08-09T19:01:06.922+00:002012-08-09T19:01:06.922+00:00Ricky, thank you so much for your blog. I have sl...Ricky, thank you so much for your blog. I have slowly been going through a deconversion experience very similar to yours - I think I am just about at the same point you are and am interested to find out how we both turn out. I can't really pinpoint why I am changing at this point in my life, but this is the first time I have been in almost constant contact with friendly atheists (not Hermant!) so your comments about taking on the beliefs of those we hang out with most really struck me.luschenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18285387470214331771noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20930767.post-33752819145702077122012-07-31T20:34:41.289+00:002012-07-31T20:34:41.289+00:00Ricky, thanks for the response. I've had simi...Ricky, thanks for the response. I've had similar experiences and also more-fraught ones, but I distinguish one of them because it had a concrete, lasting effect. <br /><br />In late spring 1984 I was walking back to my room on Holywell Street in Oxford while fuming about a remark by Jerry Falwell I'd heard in a BBC radio new item, of the kind that regularly sicken me. But based on my understanding of I Corinthians I resolved that I accepted him as a Christian. Instantly I was freed from a bunch of what you might call tics or "microsuperstitions" such as caring whether I'd entered a room an odd or even number of times---Edward T here might even recall some I affected while playing chess. No recurrence since. Of course my mind was in a ferment, and <a href="http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/it-dont-come-easy/#comment-21724" rel="nofollow">generally so</a> at that time.<br /><br />I hesitated writing this over "let's show mine" aspects, but hope it will help structure matters. Anyway I call it my "lone charismaton" and distinguish it even from this fraught experience the following December: A late start getting from Oxford down to Immigration in South Croydon and long delays there pushed me to 5:30pm long past a semi-promised pre-teatime visit to where an African exchange student was staying in London. I had to install software that evening before flying home two days later and wanted to go from Victoria straight to Paddington and home, but I got the proverbial hand-on-shoulder treatment saying "you have time to fit her in", so I took the blue line and rang her doorbell at 6pm. It was a half-hour after she'd learned of her husband's suicide in Africa. I comforted her until the last train before midnight (actually the whole evening is almost completely blank; 18 months ago I recovered repressed memory of the conversation at the door), and installed the software in a daze 2--4am.KWReganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09792573098380066005noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20930767.post-18896192741598587342012-07-30T22:55:18.385+00:002012-07-30T22:55:18.385+00:00I don't think missionaries target kids at coll...I don't think missionaries target kids at college BECAUSE of the reasons you cited. <br /><br />I think missionaries are trying to reach everyone, but they realize that ringing doorbells all day or street preaching just annoys people. But at college kids are more open and easy to speak with, especially if you can sound sincere and knowledgeable about a topic. <br /><br />Missionaries target everyone though, including young children, trying to get them to attend local Vacation Bible School, Bible camps, etc., and all they need is one kid on the block who is attending such a camp to try and snag some friends to go along with him whose parents really don't care where the kids goes that summer, so long as it gives the parents some time alone to themselves. <br /><br />On my block when I was growing up there was a lady who did felt-board storytelling and offered the kids cookies. She was protestant. She told stories like David and Goliath from the Bible. My mom was Catholic and didn't appreciate the lady's efforts to get kids to join her group (I think the felt-board lady also tried to get the kids to visit her church too, the kid's Sunday school, but I never got that far). <br /><br />It all starts with a cookie, or a perky smile on a co-ed. <br /><br />Christians want you in their churches, period.Edwardtbabinskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13036816926421936940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20930767.post-82305082633729107712012-07-27T08:46:14.268+00:002012-07-27T08:46:14.268+00:00Ken,
You clearly look at the world through a diff...Ken,<br /><br />You clearly look at the world through a different set of filters from the ones I use, so I don't fully understand your classification system.<br /><br />I suspect the word 'modeling' means something different to you from what it means to me.<br /><br />For what its worth, my conversion experience included 'physical' feelings of joy and elation such that I have rarely experienced in other circumstances. It was a 'real' experience. Whether that amounts to K2 on your scale, I can't tell. I have been back to the same experiential mountain top a couple of times subsequent to that (both in the 6 years following the first experience), but not really in the last 17 years or so. I have also had two minor 'revelation' type experiences (again, both within 6 years), which probably fall into your K2 category. Experience, yes, but not unambiguous experience.<br /><br />R.Ricky Carvelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17975085318645232701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20930767.post-29445812456776596992012-07-27T03:51:31.567+00:002012-07-27T03:51:31.567+00:00In my scale of "grounds for credence" wh...In my scale of "grounds for credence" which I first sketched <a href="http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Alt/alt.usage.english/2008-01/msg00661.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>, what you classify under <b>will to believe</b> seems to cover the range from "Emotion" up thru "K3: Modeling". Whereas my "K2: Experiential Knowledge" seems to exclude it.<br /><br />So my query is, did your Christian experience include anything you then classified (or would have classified) as K2? Famously Mother Teresa reported that she had a lot of early K2 and then went the entire last 50+ years without any. Not having any K2 is a common lot---I've emphatically countered "must-speak-in-tounges-ers" (via I. Cor. 12--14). Note also that I disclaim "K1: Reproducible Knowledge" and "Proof" (recall Tim's "Elijah BBQ" from the other thread:). <br /><br />But please do allow that some may perceive K2, and even feel they've been co-opted <i>against</i> their previous inclinations. This doesn't entail acting with certainty or immediately being more compassionate either---the Gospels themselves record "signs wearing off". This also gets into the topic of signs which I first intended to broach apart from God in the "Both Sides Now" thread.KWReganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09792573098380066005noreply@blogger.com