A therapist I had was a pastor's wife and I didn't even know until like six months in when she mentioned it off-handedly. I was pretty anti-religion at the time (I'm still an atheist but I was kind of a raging anti-theist then) and I was shocked because she had never argued with me about my criticisms of Christianity. It not only made me raise my standards for healthcare professionals (as she told me, "I'm here to help you achieve the life YOU want to live"), but it also made me realize I could have intimate conversations with deeply religious people without it turning into an argument.
I wonder how the therapist would have reacted if you had reveled that what made you happy is going around brutalizing and sometimes killing homeless people. Would she support the life you want to live? Yeah, now it seems to change. We should do what is Right , not what makes us feel good or happy as that can easily go side ways. Do not follow what society or culture is promoting as the new acceptable agenda of inclusivity and the like. Panadoras box is dangerous, let's not play with fire.
@@JohnPaul-ol5zl please seek some mental help. Only a very mentally disturbed person will pick on "you should do what makes you happy" and jump into that kind of conclusion and then try to make an argument that it's a societal issue.
@John Paul I think that hurting and killing people is wrong, but I do not think being an atheist is wrong. I do not think that Christianity is true so I don't think it's "right". If you have evidence to support that being an atheist is morally wrong then I'd be happy to hear it.
Another exmormon BYU grad here. I really don’t think the master plan of converting mormons to evangelicals would have worked, though, haha. At least not on anyone who is a millennial or younger. I know lots of exmormons and none of them are Christians. They are all atheists/agnostics or have some vague belief in god but are uninterested in religion. Once you lose your faith in mormonism, most people quickly apply the same analytical tools to Christianity as a whole and realize it’s all bogus.
@@strangeloveesq I'm an exception, probably because I left the LDS before I could learn much about how all of the other religions were false, but it took me decades after that to escape the religious world view entirely.
I assume you are from hindu religion. Just wanna know what problems did you face in your religion , why did you even leave it. What was your parent's reaction and what hindu religion needs to improve in
A movie producer could option this as a Mormon horror series. You’d follow a Mormon protagonist through several episodes, watching him get more suspicious, until episode 6 where he breaks into his therapist’s office, and while he’s riffling through documents with a flashlight, he says “oh my God, he’s…a CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY”
You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible? Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth! Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny! Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers! God authored the Bible! DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication? 1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion! One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“! Psalm 139 is about the human body!
As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I can tell you, no one would be scared by that reveal. Many of my best friends are, or at least have been, Christian Missionaries. Plus, our church is always a hard sell for horror in general.
@@jaredwonnacott9732 I think it's an Evangelical horror series about Mormons. Your average Mormon isn't going to think anything of the fact that a therapist is a Protestant. A Mormon doesn't see themselves as a non-Christian, and they would just be confused by an Evangelical therapist trying to convert them to something that they (nominally) already believe.
Several people have proudly told me about their successes evangelizing. Prisoners, kids, grieving people, immigrants, and so on. They go after people who are struggling with other problems so they're not able to resist.
They go after struggling people because people who are happy and content with their lives very rarely feel the need to give any real thought to religious matters. If you're in a horrible place, nowhere to turn, looking for any shred of hope that your life can get better, and then someone creeps along telling you about a god who loves you despite everything and will help you and look after you, you'll grasp onto that with every fiber of your being. But if you're just like, someone with a decent middle class job and a happy spouse and good kids who gets to take a nice vacation every year, what need will you have of a god? (Of course this only applies if someone is trying to convert you, ofc many happy people are still Christian, it's just very likely that they were born into it and never thought twice about it rather than converting at a low point) It's really fuckin disgusting bc they'll just prey on people's desperation to win new converts.
@History review Good values and Morals? So Taoism or Buddhism then? We know knot to include Abrahamic evolved versions if we want good values and morals.
Religious people reach out to the disaffiliated because sometimes no one else will. It’s a courtesy or nice gesture if a non-religious person shows compassion to a criminal but it is the duty of the religious person to engage with people who are these stages in their life. Unless there is some sort of philosophical school of thought galvanizing a non-religious person to help the disaffiliated the impulse to do so is not evident given who most often reaches out to the groups of people you mentioned. You can call sharing religious beliefs as “preying” (no pun intended) on these vulnerable people but then you offer no solution to the religious person who wants to help because their religion is a guiding force for them (which implies they will share why they are helping in the first place) or for the vulnerable person who more often than not is rejected by society.
@@henryramosacosta7746 Oh please, All people reach out. Religion has nothing to do with it. Most religious turn their backs on those who are not friends and family. Just look at the entire GOP. Evil masquerading as good. Those who need religion to be a decent human were born defective. Religion gets no pass. History readily reveals they have killed more than they have helped.
No no, think of it from a psychological perspective. Religion is linked to better mental health. People, such as prisoners, accepting religion leads to more altruistic behavior.
It’s so odd to me that it’s legal to drag children into a creepy building filled with adults they don’t know, in order to teach them weird, violent, rapey fairytales and then threaten them with eternal damnation if they dare to raise a question or two or express any discomfort about what’s happening around them. Religion is dangerous af imo and the sooner ppl stop relying on it to pacify and manipulate others, the better.
Same. So much religious trauma. I've recently started learning the difference between PTSD and CPTSD and turns out the reason nobody was able to help me with that before was most therapists don't actually know much about trauma - it's not part of the standard suite of tools, though it should be because apparently 20% of people have CPTSD.
I went to a Christian university and had a Christian counselor there, and was deconverting at the time, but he did what any good professional counselor should - listened to me, validated what I was going through, saw that holding on to my faith was detrimental to my mental health, and fully supported me when I announced I was no longer a Christian. This is the model of what a Christian counselor should be like - realising that Christianity doesn't work for everyone, especially if it's causing serious depression and anxiety.
"Christianity doesn't work for everyone" I agree with this SO much Growing up as a Christian just made me miserable and another point of view, new churches, Christian friends didn't change that I had mental wounds coming from something that was supposed to heal your wounds
@@davidlamb7524 No it wasn't really either of those, he was a practicing Christian but he had different beliefs to the very fundamentalist/evangelical types of Christians, which are the ones who are more adamant about sinners and hell and all that. I'm definitely giving a poor paraphrase of his complex beliefs, but he basically viewed everyone regardless of belief in god or not as deserving of happiness and love
@@FREAKE_DJ I think I know the sort of thing. They just go by the more liberal aspects of Christ's teachings and gloss over the more unpleasant stuff eg Hell etc.
Wow! That is amazing that you stayed together with the transition from Christianity to atheism. I was engaged to a Christian girl when I was about 20 and when I became an atheist it ended our relationship.
It's interesting that you describe these as coincidences, but these guys were at your college because they knew there would be a lot of individuals in the position you were in. That's not a coincidence that they then met someone of the demographic they were actively searching for. Edit to add: a few people in the comments are suspecting foul play on the part of the recruiters and that they'd secretly been told to approach Drew or even that the only space by them was specifically kept clear for Drew. I don't think that's the case at all. I'm pretty sure their meeting was not some compiracy. I'm just trying to say that these people came to an environment relatively rich in people like Drew specifically looking for people like him. How many people did they talk to that day that had different majors? I would guess a lot. It's not really a surprise that one person they spoke to had what they were looking for.
My first thought was that people who are so manipulative could also be manipulating their circumstances. How do we know that they weren't told about the couple and that they said the seats were saved until they saw the couple they were targeting. I do agree coincidences are used by religious people to construct meaning, but I also think there are people who are actively out to get you.
At my Christian high school there was a mandatory class on how to convert Mormons for every sophomore. We learned how to pretend to be interested in becoming Mormons so we could rope them into a Bible study and then epicly own Mormonism with Bible facts and logic
@@elijahbuck6499 the school would only allow us to use NASB (MacArthur study Bible was preferred) for Bible classes. But we did all get a copy of the book of Mormon so we could go thru and highlight contradictions together. The irony kills me now haha
Or maybe you ignored God’s calling on your life and you need to renew your relationship with him and he’ll send you somewhere else so you have not blown his plan for your life!
@@CentralPALocos 33, agnostic. Didn’t start coming to terms with the trauma inflicted on me by the church till my mid-20s. Hang in there, it takes time to ‘de-program’.
This is extremely interesting. This goes to show how susceptible we are to the power of suggestion. The fact that we're consistently looking for things to explain what we don't understand in addition to our emotions makes it hard to clearly navigate such situations. I'm glad you made it out okay.
woah woah woah, reading the description before watching and I see you planned on coming to Utah to convert Mormons?? As an exmormon living in Utah, It's wild to think of things flipped on their head like that. I can't even imagine trying to convert Mormons as a missionary for another faith. I'm really intrigued to watch this now!
In high school I was an agnostic. I asked a Christian if it was okay to lie to people to "save" them and get them to turn to Jesus. She said yes. That has colored my views of Christians who believe in conversion ever since.
She was definitely wrong. Conversion is a work of God, not of any particular person who feels they need to lie to make it happen. That's awful! I'm so sorry you got that message. That is not the kind, good and pure heart of God, and Jesus even calls Himself Truth!
@@janet-Spirit_of_the_Living_God You can't fully trust someone who feels that their god believes you deserve Hell (and thus they agree you deserve hell) if you are not part of their group. That's dehumanizing. They will prioritize converting you to their group over all else. Whether they outright lie to you or not, all interaction with them will be skewed to trying to convert you.
@@kimberlywolfenheart4275 Christian or not, it's wrong to lie and it's also cruel to value someone less if they are not in your specific group. I am a Christian, but I don't try to convert my friends. Religious beliefs are really personal, and I think each person should decide for themselves what they believe. For example, I fully believe that hell is real, and we all deserve it (myself included: no one is morally perfect); I trust in God's mercy to save me from that fate. Many do not share this belief, yet every person should still be treated with value and respect. My friends (who are not Christian) know what I believe. I love them and would never force them to convert. That's not something I have the power to do anyway. Thanks for your comment, it really shows a dark side of what happens when people become fanatical. I'm sorry you had a friend that were willing to lie just to create religious pressure, it's definitely not okay. We may not share the same beliefs, but I'm glad you're speaking up about your experience!
If it’s not in line with Jesus, it’s not Christian. Everything should be measured against Him not against flawed people. You can do anything you want in the name of Jesus, but if it’s not in line with Him - you can’t label it Christian.
As an atheist who was raised secular in a community where acceptance of religious diversity was the accepted norm, the stories you two tell of your religious past are mind-blowing. I really appreciate how you do your best to explain the emotions and thoughts behind these experiences. It really helps me to try to understand believers and to be compassionate and empathetic. I remember learning about missionaries as a kid and thinking that was an old historical practice from hundreds of years ago that no one did anymore. I think I was about 13 or so when I discovered that missionaries are still very much a thing. And I was shocked because it seemed so immoral.
Drew, Taylor, thank you so much for sharing this; it is inspiring. I am an ex-evangelical atheist in England (my particular poison was a group called the Navigators, which I encountered in my student days). I remember being told a (surely mythological) story of the reaction of a person being proselytized: "If I believed what you guys believe, I'd crawl over broken glass to tell everyone". This fable was used to encourage us to be bold in our evangelism and (I guess) not to worry too much about the ethics of how we we were being taught to behave. I am so glad that you found your way safely to a better way to treat other people. Whatever we believe, basic respect for humanity requires that we not manipulate or exploit the vulnerabilities of others.
Gives you more reason to sit on the sideline and do nothing, that’s exactly what you were looking for huh? You need to work for something bigger than yourself and make a difference, unless you’re a monkey man and you actually think because reality is contrary to your opinion, that this is all there is! You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible? Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth! Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny! Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers! God authored the Bible! DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication? 1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion! One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“! Psalm 139 is about the human body!
They used to share the broken glass story in the International Church of Christ (cult) also, and it was simply a way to show us we could NEVER do enough to convert people. It is a clever thought- stopping device as when you aren't willing to crawl on that glass to convert people, you aren't working hard enough. So get back out there!
the thing that's weird about this is crawling on broken glass isn't unethical, its a choice and it only hurts you. Its in no way comparable to manipulating or interfering with vulnerable people. The entire point was that Christians would have appealing lives so ppl would ask them how ie know by their fruits. The irony is its the total opposite, they literally have to force themselves on the most helpless struggling people to get them to listen. If you're doing Christianity right you shouldn't have to do that. You shouldnt have to initiate ANY conversation about religion. People will want what you have and when they ask you can explain YOUR journey. People *wanted* to follow Jesus because of who he was and how he treated others. Its a shame what Christianity has become. Nobody wants what you have when all you have is bigotry, fear and manipulation. They have literally become the Pharisees.
Ohhh I'm early! Can't wait for this story. I have regular moments where I go: how did I think this behaviour was normal and moral when I was still a Christian?
We were trained to believe that any ethical lapse was forgivable so long as it was in service of the lord. After all, he's the lawmaker, right? So if you break his laws *for* him, then that's forgivable, right? At least that is what we convinced ourselves of while praying.
I am a Christian and I just want to say that I appreciate your videos and your channel. It’s always good for me to watch your videos so I can have an open mind to both sides, religion and atheism. much love for you all ❤️
I don't have appreciation for this guy's videos. He is spreading the idea that telling other people your spiritual beliefs is unethical when you are a therapist, which is against basic human rights. I don't know if its common for atheists to not believe in the freedom of speech or not, but it certainly seems unethical to discourage free expression.
@@ethanlewis1453 brother, it’s about understanding them better. Jesus wouldn’t ignore someone who is an atheist just because he didn’t share the same beliefs. It’s not our job to condemn them. Im majoring in apologetics and something I learned through the years is that to have a strong faith and be strong spiritually we also need to look at other views and try to understand them. God bless you.
@@ethanlewis1453 Legally, you are perfectly free to profess your personal convictions. Ethically and professionally, to exploit someone's moment of weakness to advance your personal convictions, under the guise of professional therapy, is wrong - if you wouldn't appreciate it of a Muslim or a Mormon, and yet somehow you would find it acceptable for (your denomination of) Christians, then you shouldn't be a therapist, you should be a missionary.
@@Zhengrui0 If Christianity is helpful then it is clearly a positive benefit to convey Christian ideas to someone in a moment of weakness to help them heal. What you are saying is that it isn't helpful, which there is no study suggesting that whatsoever and therefore that is a militant atheist hating on religion and not a reason-based logical statement. A religion is more than a "personal conviction", it is also a specific lifestyle and path to social connections based on the philosophy of a supreme being. That lifestyle and support network can bring people to a state of better mental health.
@@ethanlewis1453 and many people find their non-Christian religion helpful - so you're okay with them taking advantage of a moment of weakness in a Christian, pushing their ideology on them, when that Christian came to them for professional help? Either (1) you are, in which case I don't agree with your principles; (2) you aren't, because you agree with our principle that exploiting moments of weakness so is wrong; or, (3) you aren't, because you think (your denomination of) Christianity is special, in which case you have no principles.
Glad you both "escaped" religion together. Sometimes having a religious partner can make it even harder to leave because you feel confirmation bias by your partner and just keep going.
I married my wife while I was a believer. When I was struggling my faith, telling her my feelings helped us grow closer. She believes in God but respects my perspective. I'm grateful for her companionship.
My wife prays for me. Not really fair to her, I was raised in the church. We weren't fanatics, but my mom went most Sundays, and most of the time, I had to go. My wife and I raised our kids in the church and were even members of a Luthren church for about 10 years. But, I've had my doubts since my teen years. The Tower of Babel, Noah's Ark, several of the stories just didn't ring true. Several years back, I sat down and read the King James cover to cover. After that, I just decided to "choose" to just have faith . I did that for a couple of years, and then I read it again. I just couldn't do it anymore after that. I still "choose" to believe there is a God (even though I'm aware many scientists don't believe one is necessary), but I don't think he/she/it has any connection with human religions. I think he kicked this mess off at some point in our far distant past and probably hasn't interfered since. Like I said, my wife prays for me. I've told her how I feel, but I try not to convert her. I don't think that's fair. She takes great comfort in it. And she has the right to believe what she wants. Besides, while I sincerely doubt it, if I was wrong, I wouldn't want to have caused her to miss out. Miss out on an eternity of singing hymns and praises to a God. Did I mention it's for an eternity?
Oh man. I do not miss the days of second guessing every impulsive thought to test if it was From The Lord. I'm much more at ease now that I understand that coincidences happen 😂
god I do not miss thinking that my soul itself must be tainted and I should be constantly afraid of "thinking wrong" due to intrusive thoughts. Now instead of thinking something "bad" and mentally responding with "god is watching and will know if you fail so you must stop having mental illnesses this instant, mr. 6 year old child," I can say "Your thoughts don't make who you are, it's ok, you're only human." I also think it's ok to be interested in whatever I like now because I no longer have to hear about how socialism or tarot cards are tools of satan. Predictably, I'm much better off now.
The Bible is true every which way I never lost an argument! here’s proof; You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible? Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth! Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny! Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers! God authored the Bible! DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication? 1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion! One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“! Psalm 139 is about the human body!
Hey Drew! I just wanted to write and let you know how much you helped me in a very difficult time in my life. Your simple decency and understanding of both sides helped me so much. Thank you!
You can see how healthy, mature, loving and respectful their relationship is. It's beautiful to see a couple who have gone through multiple life changes and stages together looking back and learning from each other and their experiences, who they used to be and who they are now. It's such positive modeling for other young couples finding themselves at a crossroads in their own lives and trying to figure out whether or not to move forward together or separately and whether or not to stay in the religion of their culture and upbringing or to strike out and find their own way. Good on you both for sharing your experiences!
That you've majored in counselling psychology probably explains why you are always so calm with really not nice people. I always admired how you didn't really trashtalk them but took you time to explain your point calmly!
I think confirmation bias is a major part of all religious experience. I myself was into occult mysticism for many years and I was always seeing proof of my beliefs everywhere I looked. I now realize I was looking for them, so when I found them it seemed divine.
@@topologyrobts not just religious experience, its all experience and belief, period. Confirmation bias is at play all the time unless you specifically set up counters to it (as in the more rigorous scientific studies). That said, if its just regarding a personal worldview that doesnt affect others it may not be super important to counter against it. Kinda depends on what you believe.
I've been out of evangelicalism for almost two years now and I still sometimes struggle to share about some of the things I did while in the church because looking back, I feel so ethically corrupt, but I had no idea the entire time I was in it. Thank you for sharing more of your story, it helps me shed off a little bit more of the guilt I feel for the things I did for the Lord
The most interesting thing I realized about your story is that one could argue that another higher power actually saved you from going down that path and used that time period to teach you some kind of lesson. That shows just how scarily versatile that way of thinking truly is.
Well said. Alternatively, I like to think that it was Taylor, his future wife, who saved Drew. Or to put it another way, he was saved by a desire to be a relationship with a woman, a trait that is highly selected for by evolution!
Very true I am glad he is searching instead of believing in falsehood, giving options will turn out better then sitting on falsehood and I am not surprised by this events as people need to deceive one another to keep them away from truth
As an ex mormon missionary, it would have been interesting to watch this play out as a fly on the wall. Later (after my deconversion), I was in therapy around 2019-ish. I have no idea of what, if any, religious views my therapist had (as it should be).
Matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, therefore no matter nor energy would’ve existed to do the causing. Consequently, whatever did cause the universe to exist, would need to be immaterial and exist beyond time and space! Genesis 1: 1 God creates time space and matter! Entropy is somewhat opposite of evolution and why did this come into the universe if everything’s getting better. Genesis 2:17 says death came into the universe through the first sin! First two chapters of the Bible not the 500th chapter or the thousandth chapter; explain what evolutionists have not explained;, The first two laws of thermodynamics! DNA does not auto encrypt, it did not write itself the code writer is outside of the code. 3300 billion lines of computer code in 1 humans DNA, would fill the Grand Canyon 50 times of Books, let alone plant and animal DNA and it did not write itself! One person‘s DNA could stretch to the sun and back 61 times! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did the world will not have enough room for the Books, telling of it“ Job 38:35 “were you there when I created the lightnings and they say ‘here we are!”’ This is God talking to Job! 3300 years later, James Maxwell discovers that light rays and electricity are two forms of the same thing! The Bible Predicted telecommunications
@@jjphank 1) the 2nd law of thermodynamics deals with the distribution of thermal energy over time in a closed system. There! An evolution is just explained it to you. It has nothing to do with the subject. 2) if everything complex needs a creator, then who or what created the creator? BTW, I don't care about your answer. Answer if you want, or not. I don't care.
Thanks for the insights. When I was a Christian, I didn't have a sense that God had a plan for my life, but the people around me did. If I asked them what it was like or how they knew, I didn't get a coherent answer. I think what you've said explains things more than they ever did.
Jesus is real I’m freer out of sin Than when I was in sin! And here’s practical evidence: You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible? Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth! Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny! Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers! God authored the Bible! DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication? 1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion! One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“! Psalm 139 is about the human body!
This really just nails how _desperate_ evangelicals are for people to believe their nonsense, regardless of the ethics or legality of the method. So proud of you both for sharing this story.
It does not. Many evangelicals are legitimately motivated by their heartfelt and warm love for others, not desperation. It does show how that can drive them to prioritize their spiritual beliefs above mere earthly ethics or legality though. Desperation isn't required because mere earthly ethics and morals are insignificant compared to the eternal importance of the spiritual. It is actually quite rational and natural once you assume the belief in God's spiritual authority.
@@skyfiter99 "Many evangelicals are legitimately motivated by their heartfelt and warm love for others, not desperation. " Many are also in prison because of their heartfelt love for money and not wanting to give it to the poor. It's a business, leave it there. " It does show how that can drive them to prioritize their spiritual beliefs above mere earthly ethics or legality though." Something something Kent Hovind. " Desperation isn't required because mere earthly ethics and morals are insignificant compared to the eternal importance of the spiritual." Tautology. " It is actually quite rational and natural once you assume the belief in God's spiritual authority." Tautology. Also circular.
I used to be one of those people with a "god of coincidences." I became deeply convinced that God had told me who my future husband would be... and then that guy went on to marry someone else. Lol. I didn't lose my faith at that moment, but like you I started become reaaaally skeptical. It was the beginning of the end, you might say.
I think it depends on a person's background. Secularism can be just as dogmatic and proselytizing, so a religious person might prefer someone with a similar religious worldview. We keep creating a false dichotomy between secular and religious. Because no matter your worldview, you will feel more comfortable with those that share your perspective.
@@booksquid856 I somewhat agree but what is dogmatic about secularism? Democracies and secular societies depend on science and there are no dogmas in science
Science is "our" understanding of the universe we are living in now some "theories" could well be false but we need more knowledge to prove it right ,those in secular power could promote certain ideology in the theory to divert the masses from the truth
@@DISCO-munication Also democracies are just institutionalized mob think. The founders of America specifically articulated their concerns and wisdom in avoiding it. We have a constitutional republic because placing the laws of individual liberty above mob think is essential to maintaining a free and prosperous society.
After a decade some of doubt, I determined to skip going to Mass. I remember waiting for a consequence, some incident that would reveal what a horrible sin I had just committed - this after numerous other sins probably equally as grievous. Many days later I was struck by the realization of a sudden sense of freedom from guilt. Six decades later, I have to smile at what I see now as a childish & somewhat narcissistic worldview that was part of the entire “god cares about YOU” myth that was then such a controlling part of my life. Makes me daily aware of how easily we hairless chimps can fall into delusion.
You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible? Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth! Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny! Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers! God authored the Bible! DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication? 1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion! One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“! Psalm 139 is about the human body!
@@gloopdevyoinky9271 well there are definitely no consequences after you're dead so nothing to concern oneself here. This bizarre cult belief in some sort of judgement after you pop your clogs is just the original conspiracy theory.
I had a friend, her family were devoted catholics, but when she got married she became Christian, as her husband was Christian. I lost contact with her after she got married, but I knew she was studying to be a psychologist. I kept enough contact with her through social media to know she had graduated, and was still married. I remember one day she posted something about how God condemned homosexuality, and I remember her post just blew my mind. I couldn't understand how someone who had college education and was a psychologist had that mentality. I remember thinking how I felt she would not be a good psychologist if she let her religious beliefs get on the way of her degree Edit: Sorry I didn't make it clear, her beliefs against homesexuality changed once she made the change in religion. That’s why in my head I made the distinction, but didn't explained it on the comment. That's also why I was surprised/shocked about her post, I didn't know she had those new believes as our friendship also kind of drifted apartat once she made the change on religion
I mean, I do study psychology and am a long-term atheist (never was a dedicated Orthodox in the first place), but even now I do see how religious people are not helping their children's mental health, so I have to start helping most of my queer friends, cause it's really shitty when a person is in relations for 3 years, but can't tell parents about her girlfriend, because she is scared of being kicked out of the house. Don't think that a Christian psychologist would do any good here...
I am with you on all of this, except differentiating between Catholics and Christians. It's just a secondary piece of information here, but I wanted to point it out because it made me re-read your comment until I realized it was a question of categorization. Greetings from Germany
Anything is possible with enough greed in mind. Candace Owens won a trial because of racist threats against her. You can still find an article on this dated January 2008. These days, she's all about conservative, pro-racist and even pro-Nazi stances on race issues. Anything is possible if enough money and resources are thrown at the right person who's greedy enough to profit from the suffering of others.
@starsh1nachan252 yes I always imagined a person in that situation going to her thinking they were getting help, and finding it out more damaging than helpful beacuse of her beliefs
@mittwochxiv.9770 hello, greeting to you to. And I am with you, I think they fall in the same category as they all believe in the Christian god/ Jesus, but they see themselves as a different categories, they don't tend to like each other's religions. At least in the culture I come from, catholics are some times more liberals, and the other Christians I am talking about ( I don't know the exact name of their Christian denomination) are more strict with their beliefs.
I was a Mormon for 45 years, believe me it’s not easy to de convert, that have invested time, money, and emotions into their religion. The majority of Mormons are all in.
Many Mormons are PIMO "physically in, mentally out", i.e. they pretend and attend, but in reality don't care. Moreover, two thirds of the official number do not regard themselves as Mormons (cf. census data in Mexico or other countries). The reason is that the missionaries rush them into baptism, and they do not officially quit but stop attending. There are about 11 million file-only Mormons.
This was insightful. I learnt about the oppressive nature of missions compared to our traditional belief system where you didn't need to worship the god of your ancestors and I was intrigued. The speaker said a religion that needs to recruit followers is fundamentally not a freeing faith. I stopped evangelizing to people after that lecture.
You guys are adorable and I love that y'all are in the same place regarding christianity! I started my deconstruction a year ago and telling my wife was one of the most challenging things I've ever done! It's a delicate situation now, with our kiddos and how to navigate things like night time prayers...but we actually support each other really well, while neither of us try to change the other. Anyway, I do hope at some point she and I'll have the same conversations you guy do...remembering when and laughing!
RUclips had some funny algorithms to put this in front of me. I briefly watched another video from you and appreciated your demeanor and approach. I am a Christian and I am a licensed professional counselor. I have too many clients who have experienced harm at the hands of religion. This would have been so unethical and a horrible abuse of your power. I’m so glad you chose not to go. That said, I believe my work in loving people in therapy is because of my world view that came from and still comes from my belief in Jesus. I intentionally kept only one piece of religious symbolism in my office for myself to remember, but it’s typically never addressed and I’m never there to proselytize. I’m just there to follow that second greatest command to love others. If that leads them to loving God, fantastic. If it leads to them loving others, wonderful. If it leads to them loving themselves, well… that’s one of those primary goals. Thanks for sharing your story here. It’s a great reminder to never push my personal beliefs over professional ethics.
You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible? Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth! Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny! Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers! God authored the Bible! DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication? 1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion! One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“! Psalm 139 is about the human body!
That seemingly good people could _ever_ believe that the all-powerful, all-loving, all-GOOD Creator of the Universe would want them to _manipulate and mislead people in his name_ is one of the most insidious and under-discussed problems with modern Christianity.
It is the people that realize that randomness and coincidence is part of the human experience, but then go onto using that knowledge to take advantage of those that still do attribute coincidence to a higher being, that are the true scum of the earth. That to me is what the real problem of religion and spiritualism is in as concise of a summary as I can put it. I hope it makes sense! Lol. I'm glad you shared this story, it takes some serious bravery and honesty to do so.
I looked at coincidences in my life a very similar way before my beliefs about gods changed. If there was a 'story' for my life and a god was in control of all things, then everything could be a sign. It was easy to form a narrative around circumstances and things that led to other things must be 'part of the story'. Thank you for sharing; this has a lot of great examples of how misinterpretation isn't just a harmless mistake. It can actually lead to some real world harm.
You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible? Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth! Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny! Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers! God authored the Bible! DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication? 1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion! One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“! Psalm 139 is about the human body!
I'm really glad no therapist I've ever had was like that. My first therapist when I was 16 was actually a pretty devout christian man, but he never brought up his religious beliefs once, even when I was complaining about religion. I really appreciate health care worker's ability to be compassionate and completely unbiased with clients
Ex-mormon living in Provo rn, i found this absolutely hilarious because I knew how I used to look at those missionaries of other faiths. Thank you for these videos, i love hearing you and Taylor process these things together. I'm in a mixed-faith relationship and it helps to see other couples have these healthy reflections and discussions.
meanwhile, in a parallel universe: Drew: "..and that's how I became a missionary, left my girlfriend before the wedding not allowing the devil to tempt be through her not to go on that trip, and met my new wife!"
This is VERY much a “the goal justifies the means”- way of thinking, and it makes me sick to my stomach. I grew up in a missionary home, mostly Africa, and was thaught to be so proud of that “legacy” (of being a part of a selfless group that spends their lives trying to save others, forgoing luxury etc..) Growing up I have obviously had to awaken to a very different legacy: unmentionable horrors (physical, spiritual, psychological, national and cultural,) inflicted by “missionaries” upon others in order to make them believe/obey/surrender to their own religious claims. Although the ministry I grew up in have never (as far as I know) used these types of tactics, the entire concept has truly soured for me. A part of me feels responsible; it is people like me (or at least as earlier version of me) that become missionaries who are entranced with the idea of “saving souls for eternity” that they do not realize, or just fail to care, that they are destroying people in the process. I’m a lot like Drew in some ways: I grew up being told it was my calling to become a missionary myself, and absolutely believed these adults! I am relatively well-spoken, and I enjoyed developing my theology before I eventually deconstructed. Now I enjoy studying religions from an outsiders perspective using historical-critical thinking. I NEVER thought I would end up leaving my faith. I am so glad I have had the courage to take my own true beliefs seriously and “follow the narrow path” out of the Christian culture I grew up in. I would call that a narrower, scarier and more painful path than it would have been to stay within the Christian crowd, and deliberately ignored these types of manipulative tactics in order to fit the status quo.
So much of this story resonates with me. My wife and I were a little older than you - mid 20's when we felt it was our call to shut down our whole lives and move to central Europe to be missionaries. Our model was slightly less unethical than what you were considering - but once I had started deconstructing my beliefs (during my time as a missionary), I realized that having a hidden agenda for all my friendships (converting them), I couldn't do it anymore. It felt so gross and dishonest.
I think a large part of why so many people want to believe in a Higher Power is that most human beings, psychologically, are ill prepared to deal with uncertainty. Most people desire solid answers for the big questions in life.
Well said. Totally agree. Like death; I’m at peace with simply not existing when I die but so many people have a real hard time with that (arrogance?) and need to believe in some sort of “life after death” (which is such an oxymoronic statement that I believed in for so long).
You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible? Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth! Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny! Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers! God authored the Bible! DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication? 1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion! One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“! Psalm 139 is about the human body!
@@learningisfun2108 you’re projecting, because you can’t prove anything wrong here ,so you’re the one that can’t think, thanks for any letting everybody reading this thread, know! I remember when I was 22 like you, but now I’m old and wise and you won’t be wise until you stop living for instant gratification and Facebook likes and your own pleasures & look for the truth …. Then and only then will you be able to deduce what’s right and wrong!
Yeah-- I went through a phase where I kept seeing "signs" that I was supposed to move from my home state to a southern state to pursue my "music career". A few medication changes later, I realized I had just been kind of hypomanic and having "delusions of reference". Meanwhile, I had persuaded my elderly parents to sell their house and make this big move, uprooting all of our lives. It didn't turn out terrible, but it was a big lesson to me. "Signs", "meant to be", " soul mate", "chosen"--- bad chemicals and bad ideas. The fact that so many terrible people think it was a sign from God that they won their election, and now should do any demented thing their leaders tell them to do is frightening.
Yo! You two are great and a lot of your videos are hitting home! Long story short my mom was told she would never have more kids after my sister was born. 6 years later my twin bro and I arrived. We grew up with my mom telling us that we werent supposed to be here so God had big plans for us. I lived my life to about 30 years old making every decision based on "I wonder if this is god's plan", or "Iwonder if this is the partner god has for me".. Now at 40 I'm still deprogramming all the trash that christianity taught me. thanks for your videos the both of you! Keep it up
Enjoyed your incredibly productive and civil discussion with Dr. Sean McDowell. It was great to get to know you better and learn your story. I enjoy your channel too. Your voice is very calming. Cameras always give me the wrong impression. When I started watching your videos, I got the impression you were a tall, wide-framed person. I was shocked to learn you weren’t tall. I’m a short man so now I have hope. If I want to grow taller I only need to start a RUclips Channel! I’m looking forward to more Genetically Modified Skeptic content. You’re doing great work.
GMS: "So there is a downside to thinking in this way. To making meaning out of coincidences when you don't necessarily have 'proof' that the mechanism behind those coincidences is really anything other than random chance." Stevie: "When you believe in things that you don't understand, you suffer."
Matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, therefore no matter nor energy would’ve existed to do the causing. Consequently, whatever did cause the universe to exist, would need to be immaterial and exist beyond time and space! Genesis 1: 1 God creates time space and matter! Entropy is somewhat opposite of evolution and why did this come into the universe if everything’s getting better. Genesis 2:17 says death came into the universe through the first sin! First two chapters of the Bible not the 500th chapter or the thousandth chapter; explain what evolutionists have not explained;, The first two laws of thermodynamics! DNA does not auto encrypt, it did not write itself the code writer is outside of the code. 3300 billion lines of computer code in 1 humans DNA, would fill the Grand Canyon 50 times of Books, let alone plant and animal DNA and it did not write itself! One person‘s DNA could stretch to the sun and back 61 times! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did the world will not have enough room for the Books, telling of it“ Job 38:35 “were you there when I created the lightnings and they say ‘here we are!”’ This is God talking to Job! 3300 years later, James Maxwell discovers that light rays and electricity are two forms of the same thing! The Bible Predicted telecommunications
The more I see the content you guys make together the more I'm surprised that your relationship was able to last through your deconversion. I'm so proud of you guys for freeing your minds from all the childhood indoctrination, and so glad you were on the same page throughout that and that when you weren't, it didn't break your relationship.
As an ex Christian, I used to look at literally any stupid coincidence as a sign from God. I desperately wanted to believe he was in every detail of my life because otherwise, it meant I was utterly alone. Due to my love for learning, I started studying probability, cause and effect, and the sciences. Here is what I learned that could apply to this specific situation. 1. “They had two open seats” yes and they were also asking to mission to Mormons in an unethical way so people were probably avoiding them. This unintentionally drives the probability of your meeting up. 2. “We were in a place that we were looking for the next thing” yes, that is why they were setting up Ice cream socials at the end of the school year. They are looking for people who desire to know what’s next. Same reason the military recruits out of senior high school classes. This intentionally drives the probability up and the fact they pointed out that it was God who lead you their and not that they set up specifically to find people in transition points I say is very manipulative. 3. “They were looking for therapists.” Yes. So they went to a school with a therapy program and contacted the professor to make sure you would go. A random coincidence would have been if they went to a coffee shop and saw a person who was just fired looking for a new therapy job. And even then that could be influenced by if there is a large therapy hospital nearby. But to say a bunch of carefully laid plans is the result of Gods influence is bullshit and I’m glad you got out. The more I learned of probability and cause effect models. The more I saw it wasn’t Gods hand guiding me. It was past events that resulted in the current situation, and the probability that I would recognize it these circumstances went up because I was always watching for them.
The therapy mission most certainly wasn't unethical. It isn't unethical for a Christian to become a therapist. It isn't unethical for a therapist to share their spiritual beliefs with a client. It isn't manipulative to share your opinions with others. What is unethical is demanding someone get a government license to speak in a certain way which is what a therapist does. Perhaps this guy should be more skeptical of the government too seeing how they are violating human rights and he doesn't utter even a peep about it.
I'm curious about ex Christian experience. I believe in OSAS doctrine and wonder if one can be gone astray or gone for good. Can you describe your experience when you become a Christian? Did you feel convicted in your heart, down on your knee, wept bitterly and sincerely asked Jesus for forgiveness or just go to church and believe in your head you're a Christian?
You’re going to hell, here’s why; Matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, therefore no matter nor energy would’ve existed to do the causing. Consequently, whatever did cause the universe to exist, would need to be immaterial and exist beyond time and space! Genesis 1: 1 God creates time space and matter! Entropy is somewhat opposite of evolution and why did this come into the universe if everything’s getting better. Genesis 2:17 says death came into the universe through the first sin! First two chapters of the Bible not the 500th chapter or the thousandth chapter; explain what evolutionists have not explained;, The first two laws of thermodynamics! DNA does not auto encrypt, it did not write itself the code writer is outside of the code. 3300 billion lines of computer code in 1 humans DNA, would fill the Grand Canyon 50 times of Books, let alone plant and animal DNA and it did not write itself! One person‘s DNA could stretch to the sun and back 61 times! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did the world will not have enough room for the Books, telling of it“ Job 38:35 “were you there when I created the lightnings and they say ‘here we are!”’ This is God talking to Job! 3300 years later, James Maxwell discovers that light rays and electricity are two forms of the same thing! The Bible Predicted telecommunications
"I think people would be very surprised, like how would he think that that's ever okay, but it goes to show how much religion can color your perception of ethical issues" - so well said.
Interesting. I think it's in our nature to look for meaning where none exists. Coincidences can provide a framework for us to try to psychologically impose order on chaos. That's important, because for many, the randomness of the universe is terrifying.
Holy Cow! It's The Wifey!! Your wife is absolutely beautiful sir!! I completely understood what you guys went through. This was mirroring my experience but in a different setting. I felt God wanted me to go on mission. Paid with check. God called me to he a police officer, canceled mission trip and check. The entire ministry that I was involved with, pretended I didn't exist, became rude, and they should had just spit on me while they were at it. That was my first big crack. Shouldn't they had been happy that I was wanting to pursue what God had called me to be, something as noble as a police officer? In the early 90's police were thought of as God's chosen soldiers marching onward for christ, swaring an oath to abolish evil through the righteousness of the law! This was in 95-96. My 2nd major crack at that time, was when I began learning about a lot of officers personal lives. MANY have done and were doing their wife dirty, by either abuse (physically mentally & or emotionaly) or having affairs and or both. These officers were just as crooked in their duties. On the outside the spiritual people praise them. I heard one preacher praise a specific officer for answers God's call to righteousness, then evoked Paully Pockets scripture, and I began seeing something entirely different, that profoundly changed me, even today at 44. That their holy spirit, and magical beliefs are tailored around their beliefs. Why didn't the "holy spirit" testify that this person was jaded and crooked. Christianity became a wite picket fence belief. The better they present as the model family, and hide their inner flaws, the more praise and recognition they got; while the poor people who truly were trying their best, would get swept aside and counted as nothing. Sorry for rambling.
As a former Mormon, I can say that I am glad that you did not go down that path simply because I know, from personal experience, how defensive Mormons can be about their faith. That kind of manipulation might easily have backfired and caused a lot of people to cling even more desperately to their faith. Also, I can totally relate to the realization that what was previously perceived as divine intervention could simply be random circumstance. I remember slowly coming to that realization as I grew up and heard people share stories about experiences that often seemed so mundane and with a hasty conviction that it was all God's will even though there didn't seem to be any kind of confirmation of that. I began to realize that people jumped to the conclusion out of the same kind of eagerness that I felt to have spiritual experiences and see God acting in my life. Put simply: it was confirmation bias (though I didn't know the term back then). I slowly began to doubt other people's convictions about miracles and divine intervention and God's will.
I've been in evangelical christianity like drew (though not as fundie) and I can tell you I do understand that mentality of the desperation to save souls. The rhetoric of evangelical churches does a very good job at making you think that this is a matter of life and death and what is earthly, secular morality or "live and let live" in the face of "if these people don't accept the truth they will literally burn forever?" I would rather someone hate me and potentially live than they die with us on good terms, and I think a lot of people think like this (hell, that was the secular advice given to me if a friend is considering un-aliveing themselves), and evangelical pastors exploit that to all hell. Now as an atheist I don't think it would ever work, it's a massive violation of trust and you're literally just betraying and exploiting vulnerable people who (in this case) Are Paying You to help them. It also makes me a bit less trusting of people in general because I know that even if they're not common, these people do exist, which really just hurts the christian goal overall. Fear and desperation is a hell of a drug though.
Matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, therefore no matter nor energy would’ve existed to do the causing. Consequently, whatever did cause the universe to exist, would need to be immaterial and exist beyond time and space! Genesis 1: 1 God creates time space and matter! Entropy is somewhat opposite of evolution and why did this come into the universe if everything’s getting better. Genesis 2:17 says death came into the universe through the first sin! First two chapters of the Bible not the 500th chapter or the thousandth chapter; explain what evolutionists have not explained;, The first two laws of thermodynamics! DNA does not auto encrypt, it did not write itself the code writer is outside of the code. 3300 billion lines of computer code in 1 humans DNA, would fill the Grand Canyon 50 times of Books, let alone plant and animal DNA and it did not write itself! One person‘s DNA could stretch to the sun and back 61 times! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did the world will not have enough room for the Books, telling of it“ Job 38:35 “were you there when I created the lightnings and they say ‘here we are!”’ This is God talking to Job! 3300 years later, James Maxwell discovers that light rays and electricity are two forms of the same thing! The Bible Predicted telecommunications
Yeah, if the stakes are heaven and hell and it depends on your actions if other people get saved or condemned, that can justify almost anything. If I could remove one idea from Christianity, it would be the idea that our actions can decide the eternal fate of other people.
@@photon4076 well you can’t win cuz the Bible wins & here’s proof; We are lazy and narcissistic in our day and haven’t had that many Trumatic experiences so we’re not scared to face a holy God, yet God demands perfection. so much that Jesus lived a perfect life and sacrificed himself for our sins and only those who take him as their Lord and Savior go to heaven! Instead we have a mis-psychologized view of God and concept of love, a westernized concept! When the Bible spells it out clearly how death and hell get into the universe in genesis 2:17! Death came to the universe through The first sin. See also Romans 5:17 and first Corinthians 15:22! Adam and Eve both died that day they ate both physically and spiritually! death is a continuous state because They didn’t die in a finality state, they started dying continuously this also proves hell is continuous ! still Westerners don’t think they’re that bad, they haven’t killed anybody yet they do kill termites if they start eating away their house! and even if they try not to break the 10 Commandments they’ve broken them, yet God is patient and long-suffering and compassionate not wanting anyone to perish! We see glimpses of this when we have pets and they die and we think about (their) mortality! the Bible says Gods spirit will not always strive with man forever genesis 6:4. Psalm 7:11 God is angry with the wicked every day! so take time out & think about it, you can’t say you didn’t ask to be born God’s gonna say you should’ve been born again! you can’t say “God why did you create any of this, We wouldn’t have to go to hell if you did.“ a Christian is going to speak up and say “you’re not blowing this for me,I wanna go to heaven to see things beyond what we see now and what we don’t see, your foolishness doesn’t mean I have to suffer.” God is going to say the Christian is right & the sinner is wrong! Why does a Third World couple have 10 kids knowing that 4 are going to die? for the sake of the 6 that will live! its same with Heaven goers and hell goers! The glory of God in heaven with finally no separation, for we will see him,, will be shown to the righteous, as the Bible says! God’s not taking away his love nor his justice and no one‘s going to Out psychologize God on Judgment Day with any kind of smart answer! the Bible’s a steel trap, there are no smart answers, we’ve already answered them, in this message! If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian, so that’s not gonna work either! Sin against eternal God ,you get eternal punishment! hell is eternal Isaiah 33:14, Daniel 12:2 and 11 verses in the New Testament, most of them quoted by Jesus Himself!
@@photon4076 ultimately you’re right w adults; our actions are not gonna get somebody else thrown into hell, although it will influence them to go to hell! but Jesus said if you cause a child to sin, your payment for just one time doing that , is going to be drowning in 7 miles of water (thrown in the deepest part of the ocean) with a large stone around your neck; and then you have eternal hell after that! God is serious about sin, that’s why Jesus paid the price for sin on the cross and died for our sins, so don’t take that for granted! PS no you can’t continue to sin and be forgiven God is not stupid neither is the Bible!
I can completely relate to this because I was pressured by church leaders to think I was called to go to my denominations Bible college which I ended up spending three years in and hating every second of mainly because I felt guilty that to not do so I would not to be in God's will. I'm so glad I ended up seeing through all of that as like you said making a narrative out of various coincidences and also intentional suggestion by church leaders.
There can be wrong heavy shepherding but going down the road for Jesus, there’s gonna be some 2nd guessing and some Hardships along the way. After 40 years I do not regret it I know more than people on RUclips and I can bully go where most people can’t go into crowds to street Preach ! You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible? Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth! Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny! Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers! God authored the Bible! DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication? 1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion! One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“! Psalm 139 is about the human body!
@@maddiewadsworth4027 The Bible is proven to be right in real life ; it’s not hagiographic, therefore It does not lift it subjects up higher than what they deserve, and it’s morally perfect lifting up everything good and putting out everything evil and bad! So I see you cannot out psychologize the Bible so it’s smarter than you and it’s winning the debate so far! 40 Writers wrote it with no contradictions that means it’s not circular reasoning and means God wrote it! Keep track of this!
At about 14:05 or so, Drew you commented on putting your faith on the backburner ( paraphrasing), but also saying you felt guilty. As an Episcopalian/ Methodist growing up and never forced to or pushed to make a faithful decision, this is good. Coming from a more scientific background and environment, even sitting on what you feel are facts until you are able to work through whether they are or are not is exactly what you should expect of yourself. You determine your faith. Be it a higher being, science or yourself. Oh and do not forget those still struggling, if God knows and created everything, God created science and disbelief in themselves.
A therapist hiding their religion and trying to convert their client by talking about God and scripture during sessions... WOW that is so shady! And I'm pretty sure that's illegal too.
Damn, I hoped from the title that you planned on going to become missionaries for a holiday and a chance to covertly spread the light of clear thinking to people in need.
You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible? Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth! Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny! Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers! God authored the Bible! DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication? 1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion! One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“! Psalm 139 is about the human body!
Since I was a kid I’ve always questioned what it meant to “hear God’s voice.” I’ve always asked what it sounded like? What it felt like? How could I know that it was god speaking to me and not just my own thoughts? And the response I always got was “you just know.” To this day Im not really sure if I’ve just never heard God’s voice or if I’ve just never fallen into the trap of believing my own thoughts to be Gods voice.
I struggle with that too, knowing what is God’s voice or my own or the devil. The only thing that seems to make things clear is giving it time for that thought to keep appearing and see if it makes sense biblically.
I had the same question my entire Christian life. After about five decades I had to conclude that there is no way to distinguish "god" from just talking to myself...another step on the deconversion road.
You do just know, sometimes it's much more apparent than others. Sometimes His direction comes in a dream. Once I heard an audible voice that shook me to my core and out of my selfish whining prayer at the moment. And most of the time, as a strong Biblical believer who is indwelled by the Holy Spirit, I just trust that my thoughts are His thoughts if they line up with scripture, and maybe are confirmed by others if I feel I need to check them out with others. As with all relationships, over time it gets easier and easier to communicate and to recognize the sound of His voice. Don't give up, and just ask and listen.
Hey, Drew. I'm glad you were able to come out of your experience in a positive way. I have found many times in my life that things often work out without any real consequences and that it doesn't really have anything to do with God. Even without trying, things tend to work out in a way that isn't usually negative, even though we might sometimes see it as being negative or even expect it to be. I'm not religious so I don't believe in God, but I do sometimes feel like I am guided in my life in that the Universe itself is trying to tell me something and this brings me comfort. Not everything is going to work out the way we hope it will, but it will work out what it needs to. It's fruitless to worry that you might disappoint the Universe in some way because that won't happen. Don't feel guilty for making mistakes, it's how we learn. We are guided in our lives, but we are not forced and no one will be disappointed if we misstep on our journey. We are not perfect and shouldn't try to be. All we can do is live the best we know how and everything will work out in the end because it always does.
You both rock! I remember when I tried to convince a fellow Christian that their version of Christianity was wrong and to switch to my correct version. It was quite the eye-opening experience.
When I was still a Christian, back in college I was going to be a student missionary volunteer high school teacher in the south pacific. The only request I had was for there to be at least 1 other American teacher. When I got to Hawaii I was told my island (Chuuk) wouldn't have any Americans because everyone else dropped out. I worked on changing islands to be with other Americans, but before I did the Chuuk principal told me that it was God's will that I come to his island and that I was disobeying like Jonah by changing islands. I ended up teaching for a year in the marshal islands with friends that I still am close with (a few are atheist now too ;), but I never quite forgot the manipulation that was being done there by invoking GODS WILL.
When my now ex husband and I were in marriage counseling, the therapist/counselor told my ex that his pornography viewing was "wicked." I knew instantly that she was Xtian. The rest of us just don't talk like that. We got a different counselor.
I became an atheist very suddenly after watching Cosmos and learning that human brains evolved to find patterns in everything. We are inclined to interpret natural phenomena as acts of God and find meaning in meaningless events. I realized that all the spiritual manifestations and signs I thought I had experienced were just coincidences, plus wishful thinking to please my parents and other authority figures. I now know this as apophenia and confirmation bias.
Loved this. Made me think of the way people who's living depends on church (priests for example) explain everything that happens. They could say something like "God actually presented you with 2 paths, one is love and the other is passion. You chose your partner over something important and thats what god wanted for you."
Still; You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible? Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth! Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny! Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers! God authored the Bible! DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication? 1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion! One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“! Psalm 139 is about the human body!
I always wondered if my insistence on making sure my therapists were completely secular in their practice was just paranoia. Nope. Not paranoia. Though it's undoubtedly scary, thank you for sharing this story.
In the UK the vast majority of people are atheists - in fact even the term ‘atheist’ has very little meaning now here - It’s just the norm. I find it so difficult to understand the social pressure you have to be Christian in the US. Having worked around the word I actually find Christian fundamentalism as scary as Muslim fundamentalism.
My physical doctor and former therapist shared a front office space. My physical doctor, who is not the best but there isn't much choice in my town, has the message 'have a blessed day' on her phone messages and has crosses hanging in her exam rooms. I think this was partly her response to healthcare for the poor coming to her profession, something I've noticed as a low income patient is a lot of resentment there, but I digress: Although I knew my therapist could share my personal info with my medical doctor, I suddenly found what I was talking about in therapy coming back to me as nagging suggestions from my doctor. I listened to this a few times and politely asked her not to pray for me, I'd prefer standard medication instead. If only my Christian doctor was a nice person who valued everyone but since I'm single, female, unapologetically (but politely..) Pagan, and ask questions about my healthcare, I get the impression I'm a particular target now who has been blacklisted as some sort of lost cause by my medical doctor. She often hints that I'm actually malingering and don't need special medication. Surprisingly is not a particular problem as I remind her I have another doctor called an oncologist that can help me if when she doesn't want to.
Well, I was a believing Mormon when I found your channel, and I thank whatever I'm trying to replace God with for people like you (and many others) for helping me to see why Mormonism (and other religions) is so damaging.
When I was younger I truly believed that Atheists were people who hated God. Now I just see them as normal people who don't believe in the same thing as me, and that is ok.
Well you also hate God, and not normal people, arrogant and narcisist who think they are the smartest, don't believe in that BELIEVE IN ME - says the 100 kg/30 kg adult failure atheist who achieved nothing in life
@@EasternOrthodoxChristianI DO. Your need to be abusive and terrible does not give you the authority or right to speak for “everyone.” You are about 1 in 10,000 here. By the way, one of my best friends from school is a high official in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and he would NEVER condone your type of disrespectful and rude behavior.
Drew & Taylor - (a) Y’all two are really beautiful together. What I liked most about this video was how it became a discussion between the two of you which we’re all just privileged to witness. (b) Yes, it is astounding how ordinary, plain-as-day ethics can go by the wayside when you’re convinced you’re doing God’s will. I remember particularly how heavily I pressed on friends and the friends of friends in my teenage “I’m going to be a preacher” phase. I pulled out all the stops, even the fire-and-brimstone shtick (once on a considerably younger boy who must have been terrified by my vehemence), in the effort to convert lost souls. I’m so glad that I saw the light eventually and left the church. (c) Thanks for the plug for Taylor’s channel. I’ll be checking it out.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. I've only started to deconvert over the past year or. so. At 63 years of age, that's a late start. Your videos have been a great help in walking me through the process. That being said, I have had doubts about many aspects of Christianity while I was a believer. I won't go into a long story, but, as an example I always had a problem with the concept of Jesus dying for our sins. That never made sense to me. And today, I see it kind of as a guilt trip as if on some level I'm responsible for Jesus' death. Any way, thanks again. I have also subscribed to Taylor's channel. Cheers.
Hi there. As a Christian maybe my understand might help. In the Old Testament God set up a sacrificial system because He is holy and we are not. He is a righteous judge and we are not. Sin cannot be held in His space. Jesus was sacrificed on the Jewish feast of Passover. It's a parallel situation in two periods of history. I probably didn't explain it very well, but no, you are not responsible for Jesus' death, because in His love He CHOSE to stay on that cross so that we could become His righteousness and enjoy a personal relationship with Him now and into eternity. The only guilt we have is when we don't apply Jesus' sacrifice to our lives and thank Him for what He has chosen to do for us out of his great love, grace and mercy. So whether you ever believe again I wanted to make sure you know you are not personally responsible for Jesus' death. Some religions are better at guilting the followers than others, but Jesus says the truth shall set us free!
I remember as a kid being encouraged to start looking for God speaking to me through seemingly random things, like billboards, or bits of dialogue on the TV, or other little mundane things. I tried to do that but I wasn't ever able to get past wondering "is this a coincidence? If I start ignoring the part of me that tells me this is just a coincidence will I go crazy?" One time in Sunday school we were supposed to share some of these instances of God speaking to us, and I had to make one up and I was ashamed. But I didn't believe in it, so I stopped doing it.
Matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, therefore no matter nor energy would’ve existed to do the causing. Consequently, whatever did cause the universe to exist, would need to be immaterial and exist beyond time and space! Genesis 1: 1 God creates time space and matter! Entropy is somewhat opposite of evolution and why did this come into the universe if everything’s getting better. Genesis 2:17 says death came into the universe through the first sin! First two chapters of the Bible not the 500th chapter or the thousandth chapter; explain what evolutionists have not explained;, The first two laws of thermodynamics! DNA does not auto encrypt, it did not write itself the code writer is outside of the code. 3300 billion lines of computer code in 1 humans DNA, would fill the Grand Canyon 50 times of Books, let alone plant and animal DNA and it did not write itself! One person‘s DNA could stretch to the sun and back 61 times! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did the world will not have enough room for the Books, telling of it“ Job 38:35 “were you there when I created the lightnings and they say ‘here we are!”’ This is God talking to Job! 3300 years later, James Maxwell discovers that light rays and electricity are two forms of the same thing! The Bible Predicted telecommunications
@@leslieviljoen Because everything in the Bible is scientifically accurate, every scientific principle in the Bible that is,. So these are not coincidences and if it was a coincidence, the probability of them not contradicting the first two laws of thermodynamics, is astoundingly miraculous! because it not only doesn’t contradict the first two laws of thermodynamics, but explains the, so on two counts, it’s right about them. Also DNA points to create a god because it does not auto Encrypt, the code writer to the 3300,000,000,000 lines of computer code in one persons DNA, had a writer that is outside of the DNA itself! God, whoever he is leaving clues and the God of the Bible is scientifically accurate, so I would pay attention to what the Bible says & start asking more questions if I were you! Evolutionists have to be at believe in hope beyond hope; that everything that exists, being sophisticated because that’s what everything is made of molecules and Atoms, Came about by accident and blind chance! and everything that was created, every living organism, does create themselves :they build nests hunt for food defend mates some hibernate some migrate;, as if they are designed to do that, as if to mimic the designer in that! So it’s much smarter to believe in a designer than to believe in blind chance, because of the microbiology! Watch out, that you don’t fall into the trap of wanting to believe in blind chance, because of a perverted lifestyle or sin that you like, too, because that’s what a lot of people do!
@@unpredictableaxolotl3762 You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible? Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth! Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny! Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers! God authored the Bible! DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication? 1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion! One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“! Psalm 139 is about the human body!
Maybe the purpose is to just live. Just BE. There is nothing to earn or prove. I saw this in 2 NDE's I had. There was no God from any religion waiting to hand out rewards, punishments and judgements. It was all about Love. What mattered was if we are we living from our true being or not and our true being has nothing to do with the egoic mind made "me" and all of it's various beliefs and concepts. That being said, there is no external judgement for not knowing who we are while in this earth experience. We are helped to remember who we all are at the transition of death. In my NDE,"s I saw some that didn't transition well, they were still stuck in egoic beliefs and some were experiencing various "hell" like loops of confusion. They were being helped to "wake up" out of those confused loops, surrounded by unconditional love and compassion. Most of us don't really know we truly are and live from ongoing states of fear and disconnection which have been conditioned into us.
I went to a therapist who presented himself as not a conversion therapist at my parents’ request not long after I came out to them. He was so subtle but I started to see the cracks that made it clear he was trying to guide me towards celibacy. The final straw was when he gave me a book and I read the first 3 pages before realizing it was fully promoting conversion therapy ideology.
Matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, therefore no matter nor energy would’ve existed to do the causing. Consequently, whatever did cause the universe to exist, would need to be immaterial and exist beyond time and space! Genesis 1: 1 God creates time space and matter! Entropy is somewhat opposite of evolution and why did this come into the universe if everything’s getting better. Genesis 2:17 says death came into the universe through the first sin! First two chapters of the Bible not the 500th chapter or the thousandth chapter; explain what evolutionists have not explained;, The first two laws of thermodynamics! DNA does not auto encrypt, it did not write itself the code writer is outside of the code. 3300 billion lines of computer code in 1 humans DNA, would fill the Grand Canyon 50 times of Books, let alone plant and animal DNA and it did not write itself! One person‘s DNA could stretch to the sun and back 61 times! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did the world will not have enough room for the Books, telling of it“ Job 38:35 “were you there when I created the lightnings and they say ‘here we are!”’ This is God talking to Job! 3300 years later, James Maxwell discovers that light rays and electricity are two forms of the same thing! The Bible Predicted telecommunications
I'm guessing I'm one of the few Christians here, and I'm so glad you were able to get away from these dangerous people and tactics. I'm so sorry that so many people have suffered so much under Christian institutions, and I hope more people can escape and became atheists or something else or also Christian of course, but in an actually healthy and loving manner. Thanks for sharing this!
i always find it so fascinating to listen to people who have undergone some kind of radical transformation reflect on their past selves and how their minds used to work. like how words and phrases change meaning or lose it entirely.
Wow it's like you're talking about my life. In a way all missionary work uses this same abusive nonsense to manipulate people into conversion, it's so disgusting. Im horrified that I almost went on to perpetrate that. The thing you said about a god of coincidences is so true too, you can believe in anything that way
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
A therapist I had was a pastor's wife and I didn't even know until like six months in when she mentioned it off-handedly. I was pretty anti-religion at the time (I'm still an atheist but I was kind of a raging anti-theist then) and I was shocked because she had never argued with me about my criticisms of Christianity. It not only made me raise my standards for healthcare professionals (as she told me, "I'm here to help you achieve the life YOU want to live"), but it also made me realize I could have intimate conversations with deeply religious people without it turning into an argument.
That's how it should be! It's good it didn't turn sour for you
@@annaairahala9462 Thank you! I am too. She was great
I wonder how the therapist would have reacted if you had reveled that what made you happy is going around brutalizing and sometimes killing homeless people. Would she support the life you want to live? Yeah, now it seems to change.
We should do what is Right , not what makes us feel good or happy as that can easily go side ways. Do not follow what society or culture is promoting as the new acceptable agenda of inclusivity and the like. Panadoras box is dangerous, let's not play with fire.
@@JohnPaul-ol5zl please seek some mental help. Only a very mentally disturbed person will pick on "you should do what makes you happy" and jump into that kind of conclusion and then try to make an argument that it's a societal issue.
@John Paul I think that hurting and killing people is wrong, but I do not think being an atheist is wrong. I do not think that Christianity is true so I don't think it's "right". If you have evidence to support that being an atheist is morally wrong then I'd be happy to hear it.
Exmormon here, turns out your channel ended up doing a LOT more good for me as a Mormon in Provo Utah than your mission ever would have!
Ditto!
Yep, same :3
I gotta get out of Southern Utah.
Another exmormon BYU grad here. I really don’t think the master plan of converting mormons to evangelicals would have worked, though, haha. At least not on anyone who is a millennial or younger. I know lots of exmormons and none of them are Christians. They are all atheists/agnostics or have some vague belief in god but are uninterested in religion. Once you lose your faith in mormonism, most people quickly apply the same analytical tools to Christianity as a whole and realize it’s all bogus.
@@strangeloveesq I'm an exception, probably because I left the LDS before I could learn much about how all of the other religions were false, but it took me decades after that to escape the religious world view entirely.
Just another assurance you have an international audience :) - well wishes frm an Indian atheist
Well wishes from a polish furry too
@@lepit3943 😂😂😂😂😂
Hi there from Germany!
I assume you are from hindu religion. Just wanna know what problems did you face in your religion , why did you even leave it. What was your parent's reaction and what hindu religion needs to improve in
@@sugarbutter1829 he didn't tell his parents that he is an atheist.
A movie producer could option this as a Mormon horror series. You’d follow a Mormon protagonist through several episodes, watching him get more suspicious, until episode 6 where he breaks into his therapist’s office, and while he’s riffling through documents with a flashlight, he says “oh my God, he’s…a CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY”
You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible?
Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth!
Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny!
Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers!
God authored the Bible!
DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication?
1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion!
One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled!
Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“!
Psalm 139 is about the human body!
As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I can tell you, no one would be scared by that reveal. Many of my best friends are, or at least have been, Christian Missionaries. Plus, our church is always a hard sell for horror in general.
A practicing Mormon commiting a B&E? Sounds unlikely lol
LoL!!
@@jaredwonnacott9732 I think it's an Evangelical horror series about Mormons.
Your average Mormon isn't going to think anything of the fact that a therapist is a Protestant. A Mormon doesn't see themselves as a non-Christian, and they would just be confused by an Evangelical therapist trying to convert them to something that they (nominally) already believe.
Several people have proudly told me about their successes evangelizing. Prisoners, kids, grieving people, immigrants, and so on. They go after people who are struggling with other problems so they're not able to resist.
They go after struggling people because people who are happy and content with their lives very rarely feel the need to give any real thought to religious matters. If you're in a horrible place, nowhere to turn, looking for any shred of hope that your life can get better, and then someone creeps along telling you about a god who loves you despite everything and will help you and look after you, you'll grasp onto that with every fiber of your being. But if you're just like, someone with a decent middle class job and a happy spouse and good kids who gets to take a nice vacation every year, what need will you have of a god? (Of course this only applies if someone is trying to convert you, ofc many happy people are still Christian, it's just very likely that they were born into it and never thought twice about it rather than converting at a low point) It's really fuckin disgusting bc they'll just prey on people's desperation to win new converts.
@History review Good values and Morals? So Taoism or Buddhism then? We know knot to include Abrahamic evolved versions if we want good values and morals.
Religious people reach out to the disaffiliated because sometimes no one else will. It’s a courtesy or nice gesture if a non-religious person shows compassion to a criminal but it is the duty of the religious person to engage with people who are these stages in their life. Unless there is some sort of philosophical school of thought galvanizing a non-religious person to help the disaffiliated the impulse to do so is not evident given who most often reaches out to the groups of people you mentioned. You can call sharing religious beliefs as “preying” (no pun intended) on these vulnerable people but then you offer no solution to the religious person who wants to help because their religion is a guiding force for them (which implies they will share why they are helping in the first place) or for the vulnerable person who more often than not is rejected by society.
@@henryramosacosta7746 Oh please, All people reach out. Religion has nothing to do with it. Most religious turn their backs on those who are not friends and family. Just look at the entire GOP. Evil masquerading as good.
Those who need religion to be a decent human were born defective.
Religion gets no pass. History readily reveals they have killed more than they have helped.
No no, think of it from a psychological perspective. Religion is linked to better mental health. People, such as prisoners, accepting religion leads to more altruistic behavior.
I am glad that my therapist is an atheist.
mainly because i have ptsd related to religious trauma.
I hope you're doing better, be well.
@@zer0homer i am
I have a lot of religious trauma as well. I'm glad you're handling it.
It’s so odd to me that it’s legal to drag children into a creepy building filled with adults they don’t know, in order to teach them weird, violent, rapey fairytales and then threaten them with eternal damnation if they dare to raise a question or two or express any discomfort about what’s happening around them.
Religion is dangerous af imo and the sooner ppl stop relying on it to pacify and manipulate others, the better.
Same. So much religious trauma. I've recently started learning the difference between PTSD and CPTSD and turns out the reason nobody was able to help me with that before was most therapists don't actually know much about trauma - it's not part of the standard suite of tools, though it should be because apparently 20% of people have CPTSD.
I went to a Christian university and had a Christian counselor there, and was deconverting at the time, but he did what any good professional counselor should - listened to me, validated what I was going through, saw that holding on to my faith was detrimental to my mental health, and fully supported me when I announced I was no longer a Christian. This is the model of what a Christian counselor should be like - realising that Christianity doesn't work for everyone, especially if it's causing serious depression and anxiety.
"Christianity doesn't work for everyone" I agree with this SO much
Growing up as a Christian just made me miserable and another point of view, new churches, Christian friends didn't change that I had mental wounds coming from something that was supposed to heal your wounds
So as a Christian he thought you would go to Hell ? Or he was Christian in name only ?
@@davidlamb7524 No it wasn't really either of those, he was a practicing Christian but he had different beliefs to the very fundamentalist/evangelical types of Christians, which are the ones who are more adamant about sinners and hell and all that. I'm definitely giving a poor paraphrase of his complex beliefs, but he basically viewed everyone regardless of belief in god or not as deserving of happiness and love
@@FREAKE_DJ I think I know the sort of thing. They just go by the more liberal aspects of Christ's teachings and gloss over the more unpleasant stuff eg Hell etc.
Wow! That is amazing that you stayed together with the transition from Christianity to atheism. I was engaged to a Christian girl when I was about 20 and when I became an atheist it ended our relationship.
Sounds like some hard times, man. Stay strong 👍
A lot of people simply lack the innate common sense, insight & reasoning capacity to pierce the religion delusion. My sister falls into that category.
@@inctru It's like a spiritual Stockholm syndrome
God will place her back in your life.
Lucky you made the jump before you married the brain-damaged child.
It's interesting that you describe these as coincidences, but these guys were at your college because they knew there would be a lot of individuals in the position you were in. That's not a coincidence that they then met someone of the demographic they were actively searching for.
Edit to add: a few people in the comments are suspecting foul play on the part of the recruiters and that they'd secretly been told to approach Drew or even that the only space by them was specifically kept clear for Drew. I don't think that's the case at all. I'm pretty sure their meeting was not some compiracy. I'm just trying to say that these people came to an environment relatively rich in people like Drew specifically looking for people like him. How many people did they talk to that day that had different majors? I would guess a lot. It's not really a surprise that one person they spoke to had what they were looking for.
Yeah. Its like a trained gold prospector finding gold he knew was there and then declaring himself lucky.
It was still a coincidence, it was just a small one rather than a big one.
@@charlespentrose7834 Pricicely. A coincidence he met them specifically, not a coincidence he met someone like them.
It was about there being only 2 spots left perhaps
My first thought was that people who are so manipulative could also be manipulating their circumstances. How do we know that they weren't told about the couple and that they said the seats were saved until they saw the couple they were targeting. I do agree coincidences are used by religious people to construct meaning, but I also think there are people who are actively out to get you.
At my Christian high school there was a mandatory class on how to convert Mormons for every sophomore. We learned how to pretend to be interested in becoming Mormons so we could rope them into a Bible study and then epicly own Mormonism with Bible facts and logic
Wtf that’s insane! What was the denomination?
@@GeneticallyModifiedSkeptic it was a fundamentalist Baptist high school. The teacher felt he had a "calling" very similar to what you've described
Ah that makes sense. Us fundies had issues 😂
Do you remember if you were supposed to use a Mormon copy of the Bible or a more standard one in order to own Mormonism?
@@elijahbuck6499 the school would only allow us to use NASB (MacArthur study Bible was preferred) for Bible classes. But we did all get a copy of the book of Mormon so we could go thru and highlight contradictions together. The irony kills me now haha
Man, this reminds me of how I thought I was “called” to missions a few years ago when I was 17 (deconstruction came not long after, thankfully)
Sameee. Started deconstructing around 21.
Or maybe you ignored God’s calling on your life and you need to renew your relationship with him and he’ll send you somewhere else so you have not blown his plan for your life!
@@jboyd0104 my deconstruction began when I was 17, I’m 21 now and have been an agnostic since I was 18
@@jjphank Darlin’, we’ve all heard it. ‘You were never a REAL Christian’ doesn’t cut it anymore. Step off with that crap.
@@CentralPALocos 33, agnostic. Didn’t start coming to terms with the trauma inflicted on me by the church till my mid-20s. Hang in there, it takes time to ‘de-program’.
This is extremely interesting. This goes to show how susceptible we are to the power of suggestion. The fact that we're consistently looking for things to explain what we don't understand in addition to our emotions makes it hard to clearly navigate such situations. I'm glad you made it out okay.
Damm that's a good way to put it
Especially powerful if the interpretation involves you being somehow more special than other people.
woah woah woah, reading the description before watching and I see you planned on coming to Utah to convert Mormons?? As an exmormon living in Utah, It's wild to think of things flipped on their head like that. I can't even imagine trying to convert Mormons as a missionary for another faith. I'm really intrigued to watch this now!
Ive been to Utah to try and convert mormons to be atheist.
@@SweetGreenDream and how'd that turn out?
@@SweetGreenDream ya how that went?
@@AD-dg3zz i had a great time.
Lmao
In high school I was an agnostic. I asked a Christian if it was okay to lie to people to "save" them and get them to turn to Jesus. She said yes. That has colored my views of Christians who believe in conversion ever since.
As a Presbyterian I would have to say a definite no to that a person can only feel a calling from God alone
She was definitely wrong. Conversion is a work of God, not of any particular person who feels they need to lie to make it happen. That's awful! I'm so sorry you got that message. That is not the kind, good and pure heart of God, and Jesus even calls Himself Truth!
@@janet-Spirit_of_the_Living_God You can't fully trust someone who feels that their god believes you deserve Hell (and thus they agree you deserve hell) if you are not part of their group. That's dehumanizing. They will prioritize converting you to their group over all else. Whether they outright lie to you or not, all interaction with them will be skewed to trying to convert you.
@@kimberlywolfenheart4275 Christian or not, it's wrong to lie and it's also cruel to value someone less if they are not in your specific group. I am a Christian, but I don't try to convert my friends. Religious beliefs are really personal, and I think each person should decide for themselves what they believe. For example, I fully believe that hell is real, and we all deserve it (myself included: no one is morally perfect); I trust in God's mercy to save me from that fate. Many do not share this belief, yet every person should still be treated with value and respect. My friends (who are not Christian) know what I believe. I love them and would never force them to convert. That's not something I have the power to do anyway.
Thanks for your comment, it really shows a dark side of what happens when people become fanatical. I'm sorry you had a friend that were willing to lie just to create religious pressure, it's definitely not okay. We may not share the same beliefs, but I'm glad you're speaking up about your experience!
If it’s not in line with Jesus, it’s not Christian. Everything should be measured against Him not against flawed people. You can do anything you want in the name of Jesus, but if it’s not in line with Him - you can’t label it Christian.
Just another assurance you have an international audience. Best wishes from a Turkish agnostic.
South African agnostic sending good wishes as well! :)
South-east Asian also sending good wishes here
Best wishes from a Filipino Agnostic.
As an atheist who was raised secular in a community where acceptance of religious diversity was the accepted norm, the stories you two tell of your religious past are mind-blowing.
I really appreciate how you do your best to explain the emotions and thoughts behind these experiences. It really helps me to try to understand believers and to be compassionate and empathetic.
I remember learning about missionaries as a kid and thinking that was an old historical practice from hundreds of years ago that no one did anymore. I think I was about 13 or so when I discovered that missionaries are still very much a thing. And I was shocked because it seemed so immoral.
Being a missionary is not inherently immoral. It’s more just this scenario where he would be abusing his power as therapist most definitely is.
Drew, Taylor, thank you so much for sharing this; it is inspiring. I am an ex-evangelical atheist in England (my particular poison was a group called the Navigators, which I encountered in my student days). I remember being told a (surely mythological) story of the reaction of a person being proselytized: "If I believed what you guys believe, I'd crawl over broken glass to tell everyone". This fable was used to encourage us to be bold in our evangelism and (I guess) not to worry too much about the ethics of how we we were being taught to behave. I am so glad that you found your way safely to a better way to treat other people. Whatever we believe, basic respect for humanity requires that we not manipulate or exploit the vulnerabilities of others.
Persuasion and manipulation are not the same thing. Most Christian evangelism is of the persuasion side. Nothing wrong with that.
Gives you more reason to sit on the sideline and do nothing, that’s exactly what you were looking for huh? You need to work for something bigger than yourself and make a difference, unless you’re a monkey man and you actually think because reality is contrary to your opinion, that this is all there is!
You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible?
Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth!
Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny!
Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers!
God authored the Bible!
DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication?
1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion!
One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled!
Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“!
Psalm 139 is about the human body!
Absolutely completely agree with all this! The ends (in this case, conversion) do not justify the means.
They used to share the broken glass story in the International Church of Christ (cult) also, and it was simply a way to show us we could NEVER do enough to convert people. It is a clever thought- stopping device as when you aren't willing to crawl on that glass to convert people, you aren't working hard enough. So get back out there!
the thing that's weird about this is crawling on broken glass isn't unethical, its a choice and it only hurts you. Its in no way comparable to manipulating or interfering with vulnerable people.
The entire point was that Christians would have appealing lives so ppl would ask them how ie know by their fruits. The irony is its the total opposite, they literally have to force themselves on the most helpless struggling people to get them to listen. If you're doing Christianity right you shouldn't have to do that. You shouldnt have to initiate ANY conversation about religion. People will want what you have and when they ask you can explain YOUR journey. People *wanted* to follow Jesus because of who he was and how he treated others. Its a shame what Christianity has become. Nobody wants what you have when all you have is bigotry, fear and manipulation. They have literally become the Pharisees.
Ohhh I'm early! Can't wait for this story. I have regular moments where I go: how did I think this behaviour was normal and moral when I was still a Christian?
We were trained to believe that any ethical lapse was forgivable so long as it was in service of the lord. After all, he's the lawmaker, right? So if you break his laws *for* him, then that's forgivable, right? At least that is what we convinced ourselves of while praying.
It's just utilitarianism / consequentialism, but with some of the knobs on your tradeoffs board spot-welded to 100%.
I am a Christian and I just want to say that I appreciate your videos and your channel. It’s always good for me to watch your videos so I can have an open mind to both sides, religion and atheism. much love for you all ❤️
I don't have appreciation for this guy's videos. He is spreading the idea that telling other people your spiritual beliefs is unethical when you are a therapist, which is against basic human rights. I don't know if its common for atheists to not believe in the freedom of speech or not, but it certainly seems unethical to discourage free expression.
@@ethanlewis1453 brother, it’s about understanding them better. Jesus wouldn’t ignore someone who is an atheist just because he didn’t share the same beliefs. It’s not our job to condemn them. Im majoring in apologetics and something I learned through the years is that to have a strong faith and be strong spiritually we also need to look at other views and try to understand them.
God bless you.
@@ethanlewis1453 Legally, you are perfectly free to profess your personal convictions. Ethically and professionally, to exploit someone's moment of weakness to advance your personal convictions, under the guise of professional therapy, is wrong - if you wouldn't appreciate it of a Muslim or a Mormon, and yet somehow you would find it acceptable for (your denomination of) Christians, then you shouldn't be a therapist, you should be a missionary.
@@Zhengrui0 If Christianity is helpful then it is clearly a positive benefit to convey Christian ideas to someone in a moment of weakness to help them heal. What you are saying is that it isn't helpful, which there is no study suggesting that whatsoever and therefore that is a militant atheist hating on religion and not a reason-based logical statement. A religion is more than a "personal conviction", it is also a specific lifestyle and path to social connections based on the philosophy of a supreme being. That lifestyle and support network can bring people to a state of better mental health.
@@ethanlewis1453 and many people find their non-Christian religion helpful - so you're okay with them taking advantage of a moment of weakness in a Christian, pushing their ideology on them, when that Christian came to them for professional help? Either (1) you are, in which case I don't agree with your principles; (2) you aren't, because you agree with our principle that exploiting moments of weakness so is wrong; or, (3) you aren't, because you think (your denomination of) Christianity is special, in which case you have no principles.
Glad you both "escaped" religion together. Sometimes having a religious partner can make it even harder to leave because you feel confirmation bias by your partner and just keep going.
I married my wife while I was a believer. When I was struggling my faith, telling her my feelings helped us grow closer. She believes in God but respects my perspective. I'm grateful for her companionship.
@@mesplin3I'm glad things worked out for you! I wish everyone had that experience.
@@mesplin3 that's sweet
@@mesplin3 I'm in the same boat here.
My wife prays for me.
Not really fair to her, I was raised in the church. We weren't fanatics, but my mom went most Sundays, and most of the time, I had to go. My wife and I raised our kids in the church and were even members of a Luthren church for about 10 years. But, I've had my doubts since my teen years. The Tower of Babel, Noah's Ark, several of the stories just didn't ring true. Several years back, I sat down and read the King James cover to cover. After that, I just decided to "choose" to just have faith . I did that for a couple of years, and then I read it again. I just couldn't do it anymore after that.
I still "choose" to believe there is a God (even though I'm aware many scientists don't believe one is necessary), but I don't think he/she/it has any connection with human religions. I think he kicked this mess off at some point in our far distant past and probably hasn't interfered since.
Like I said, my wife prays for me.
I've told her how I feel, but I try not to convert her. I don't think that's fair. She takes great comfort in it. And she has the right to believe what she wants. Besides, while I sincerely doubt it, if I was wrong, I wouldn't want to have caused her to miss out. Miss out on an eternity of singing hymns and praises to a God. Did I mention it's for an eternity?
Oh man. I do not miss the days of second guessing every impulsive thought to test if it was From The Lord. I'm much more at ease now that I understand that coincidences happen 😂
god I do not miss thinking that my soul itself must be tainted and I should be constantly afraid of "thinking wrong" due to intrusive thoughts. Now instead of thinking something "bad" and mentally responding with "god is watching and will know if you fail so you must stop having mental illnesses this instant, mr. 6 year old child," I can say "Your thoughts don't make who you are, it's ok, you're only human." I also think it's ok to be interested in whatever I like now because I no longer have to hear about how socialism or tarot cards are tools of satan. Predictably, I'm much better off now.
@@cyndrift yeah there's an awful lot that's best left behind from that way of thinking. Congrats on getting out!
That sounds like hell
Exactly. The days before and after seemed the same, but no one knows the feeling like ourselves.
The Bible is true every which way I never lost an argument! here’s proof;
You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible?
Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth!
Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny!
Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers!
God authored the Bible!
DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication?
1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion!
One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled!
Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“!
Psalm 139 is about the human body!
Hey Drew! I just wanted to write and let you know how much you helped me in a very difficult time in my life. Your simple decency and understanding of both sides helped me so much. Thank you!
You can see how healthy, mature, loving and respectful their relationship is. It's beautiful to see a couple who have gone through multiple life changes and stages together looking back and learning from each other and their experiences, who they used to be and who they are now. It's such positive modeling for other young couples finding themselves at a crossroads in their own lives and trying to figure out whether or not to move forward together or separately and whether or not to stay in the religion of their culture and upbringing or to strike out and find their own way. Good on you both for sharing your experiences!
Very much agree!!
That you've majored in counselling psychology probably explains why you are always so calm with really not nice people. I always admired how you didn't really trashtalk them but took you time to explain your point calmly!
I'm ex-mormon. It's always fun to hear tales from the mormon-evangelical interface from the other end. Thanks for sharing this story!
I think confirmation bias is a major part of all religious experience. I myself was into occult mysticism for many years and I was always seeing proof of my beliefs everywhere I looked. I now realize I was looking for them, so when I found them it seemed divine.
Maybe with fundamentalism, but "all religious experience" - mate, sorry but that is ridiculous.
@@topologyrobts not just religious experience, its all experience and belief, period. Confirmation bias is at play all the time unless you specifically set up counters to it (as in the more rigorous scientific studies). That said, if its just regarding a personal worldview that doesnt affect others it may not be super important to counter against it. Kinda depends on what you believe.
@@rickwrites2612Your problem is that you think religion equates to belief.
I've been out of evangelicalism for almost two years now and I still sometimes struggle to share about some of the things I did while in the church because looking back, I feel so ethically corrupt, but I had no idea the entire time I was in it. Thank you for sharing more of your story, it helps me shed off a little bit more of the guilt I feel for the things I did for the Lord
Me, too
The most interesting thing I realized about your story is that one could argue that another higher power actually saved you from going down that path and used that time period to teach you some kind of lesson. That shows just how scarily versatile that way of thinking truly is.
Well said. Alternatively, I like to think that it was Taylor, his future wife, who saved Drew. Or to put it another way, he was saved by a desire to be a relationship with a woman, a trait that is highly selected for by evolution!
Very true I am glad he is searching instead of believing in falsehood, giving options will turn out better then sitting on falsehood and I am not surprised by this events as people need to deceive one another to keep them away from truth
@@exoplanet11 The romantic in me says he was saved by the highest power of all "love"
As an ex mormon missionary, it would have been interesting to watch this play out as a fly on the wall.
Later (after my deconversion), I was in therapy around 2019-ish. I have no idea of what, if any, religious views my therapist had (as it should be).
Matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, therefore no matter nor energy would’ve existed to do the causing. Consequently, whatever did cause the universe to exist, would need to be immaterial and exist beyond time and space! Genesis 1: 1 God creates time space and matter!
Entropy is somewhat opposite of evolution and why did this come into the universe if everything’s getting better. Genesis 2:17 says death came into the universe through the first sin!
First two chapters of the Bible not the 500th chapter or the thousandth chapter; explain what evolutionists have not explained;, The first two laws of thermodynamics!
DNA does not auto encrypt, it did not write itself the code writer is outside of the code. 3300 billion lines of computer code in 1 humans DNA, would fill the Grand Canyon 50 times of Books, let alone plant and animal DNA and it did not write itself! One person‘s DNA could stretch to the sun and back 61 times! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“.
John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did the world will not have enough room for the Books, telling of it“
Job 38:35 “were you there when I created the lightnings and they say ‘here we are!”’ This is God talking to Job!
3300 years later, James Maxwell discovers that light rays and electricity are two forms of the same thing!
The Bible Predicted telecommunications
@@jjphank
1) the 2nd law of thermodynamics deals with the distribution of thermal energy over time in a closed system. There! An evolution is just explained it to you. It has nothing to do with the subject.
2) if everything complex needs a creator, then who or what created the creator?
BTW, I don't care about your answer. Answer if you want, or not. I don't care.
Thanks for the insights. When I was a Christian, I didn't have a sense that God had a plan for my life, but the people around me did. If I asked them what it was like or how they knew, I didn't get a coherent answer. I think what you've said explains things more than they ever did.
Jesus is real I’m freer out of sin Than when I was in sin! And here’s practical evidence:
You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible?
Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth!
Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny!
Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers!
God authored the Bible!
DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication?
1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion!
One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled!
Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“!
Psalm 139 is about the human body!
This really just nails how _desperate_ evangelicals are for people to believe their nonsense, regardless of the ethics or legality of the method. So proud of you both for sharing this story.
It does not. Many evangelicals are legitimately motivated by their heartfelt and warm love for others, not desperation. It does show how that can drive them to prioritize their spiritual beliefs above mere earthly ethics or legality though. Desperation isn't required because mere earthly ethics and morals are insignificant compared to the eternal importance of the spiritual. It is actually quite rational and natural once you assume the belief in God's spiritual authority.
Of course they're desperate. People are leaving their faith in droves.
@@skyfiter99 I feel so sorry for you and anyone who knows you.
@@claytonreeves150 Why? Because he’s putting himself in someone else’s perspective?
@@skyfiter99 "Many evangelicals are legitimately motivated by their heartfelt and warm love for others, not desperation. "
Many are also in prison because of their heartfelt love for money and not wanting to give it to the poor. It's a business, leave it there.
" It does show how that can drive them to prioritize their spiritual beliefs above mere earthly ethics or legality though."
Something something Kent Hovind.
" Desperation isn't required because mere earthly ethics and morals are insignificant compared to the eternal importance of the spiritual."
Tautology.
" It is actually quite rational and natural once you assume the belief in God's spiritual authority."
Tautology. Also circular.
I used to be one of those people with a "god of coincidences." I became deeply convinced that God had told me who my future husband would be... and then that guy went on to marry someone else. Lol. I didn't lose my faith at that moment, but like you I started become reaaaally skeptical. It was the beginning of the end, you might say.
If I had a therapist that shared religious beliefs with me I would run screaming.
I think it depends on a person's background. Secularism can be just as dogmatic and proselytizing, so a religious person might prefer someone with a similar religious worldview. We keep creating a false dichotomy between secular and religious. Because no matter your worldview, you will feel more comfortable with those that share your perspective.
@@booksquid856 I somewhat agree but what is dogmatic about secularism? Democracies and secular societies depend on science and there are no dogmas in science
Science is "our" understanding of the universe we are living in now some "theories" could well be false but we need more knowledge to prove it right ,those in secular power could promote certain ideology in the theory to divert the masses from the truth
@@mohammedjafer9265 Science is a method not a belief. Theories are adapted or replaced if they cannot be proven time and again.
@@DISCO-munication Also democracies are just institutionalized mob think. The founders of America specifically articulated their concerns and wisdom in avoiding it. We have a constitutional republic because placing the laws of individual liberty above mob think is essential to maintaining a free and prosperous society.
After a decade some of doubt, I determined to skip going to Mass. I remember waiting for a consequence, some incident that would reveal what a horrible sin I had just committed - this after numerous other sins probably equally as grievous. Many days later I was struck by the realization of a sudden sense of freedom from guilt. Six decades later, I have to smile at what I see now as a childish & somewhat narcissistic worldview that was part of the entire “god cares about YOU” myth that was then such a controlling part of my life. Makes me daily aware of how easily we hairless chimps can fall into delusion.
You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible?
Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth!
Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny!
Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers!
God authored the Bible!
DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication?
1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion!
One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled!
Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“!
Psalm 139 is about the human body!
The "consequences" are not necessarily seen before your demise.
Caring about a person and wanting to micromanage their life are not the same thing.
@@gloopdevyoinky9271 well there are definitely no consequences after you're dead so nothing to concern oneself here. This bizarre cult belief in some sort of judgement after you pop your clogs is just the original conspiracy theory.
@@gloopdevyoinky9271 Imagine using scare tactics to make people believe in your God.
I had a friend, her family were devoted catholics, but when she got married she became Christian, as her husband was Christian. I lost contact with her after she got married, but I knew she was studying to be a psychologist. I kept enough contact with her through social media to know she had graduated, and was still married. I remember one day she posted something about how God condemned homosexuality, and I remember her post just blew my mind. I couldn't understand how someone who had college education and was a psychologist had that mentality. I remember thinking how I felt she would not be a good psychologist if she let her religious beliefs get on the way of her degree
Edit: Sorry I didn't make it clear, her beliefs against homesexuality changed once she made the change in religion. That’s why in my head I made the distinction, but didn't explained it on the comment. That's also why I was surprised/shocked about her post, I didn't know she had those new believes as our friendship also kind of drifted apartat once she made the change on religion
I mean, I do study psychology and am a long-term atheist (never was a dedicated Orthodox in the first place), but even now I do see how religious people are not helping their children's mental health, so I have to start helping most of my queer friends, cause it's really shitty when a person is in relations for 3 years, but can't tell parents about her girlfriend, because she is scared of being kicked out of the house.
Don't think that a Christian psychologist would do any good here...
I am with you on all of this, except differentiating between Catholics and Christians. It's just a secondary piece of information here, but I wanted to point it out because it made me re-read your comment until I realized it was a question of categorization. Greetings from Germany
Anything is possible with enough greed in mind. Candace Owens won a trial because of racist threats against her. You can still find an article on this dated January 2008. These days, she's all about conservative, pro-racist and even pro-Nazi stances on race issues. Anything is possible if enough money and resources are thrown at the right person who's greedy enough to profit from the suffering of others.
@starsh1nachan252 yes I always imagined a person in that situation going to her thinking they were getting help, and finding it out more damaging than helpful beacuse of her beliefs
@mittwochxiv.9770 hello, greeting to you to. And I am with you, I think they fall in the same category as they all believe in the Christian god/ Jesus, but they see themselves as a different categories, they don't tend to like each other's religions. At least in the culture I come from, catholics are some times more liberals, and the other Christians I am talking about ( I don't know the exact name of their Christian denomination) are more strict with their beliefs.
I was a Mormon for 45 years, believe me it’s not easy to de convert, that have invested time, money, and emotions into their religion. The majority of Mormons are all in.
Many Mormons are PIMO "physically in, mentally out", i.e. they pretend and attend, but in reality don't care. Moreover, two thirds of the official number do not regard themselves as Mormons (cf. census data in Mexico or other countries). The reason is that the missionaries rush them into baptism, and they do not officially quit but stop attending. There are about 11 million file-only Mormons.
This was insightful. I learnt about the oppressive nature of missions compared to our traditional belief system where you didn't need to worship the god of your ancestors and I was intrigued. The speaker said a religion that needs to recruit followers is fundamentally not a freeing faith. I stopped evangelizing to people after that lecture.
You guys are adorable and I love that y'all are in the same place regarding christianity! I started my deconstruction a year ago and telling my wife was one of the most challenging things I've ever done! It's a delicate situation now, with our kiddos and how to navigate things like night time prayers...but we actually support each other really well, while neither of us try to change the other. Anyway, I do hope at some point she and I'll have the same conversations you guy do...remembering when and laughing!
RUclips had some funny algorithms to put this in front of me. I briefly watched another video from you and appreciated your demeanor and approach. I am a Christian and I am a licensed professional counselor. I have too many clients who have experienced harm at the hands of religion. This would have been so unethical and a horrible abuse of your power. I’m so glad you chose not to go. That said, I believe my work in loving people in therapy is because of my world view that came from and still comes from my belief in Jesus. I intentionally kept only one piece of religious symbolism in my office for myself to remember, but it’s typically never addressed and I’m never there to proselytize. I’m just there to follow that second greatest command to love others. If that leads them to loving God, fantastic. If it leads to them loving others, wonderful. If it leads to them loving themselves, well… that’s one of those primary goals. Thanks for sharing your story here. It’s a great reminder to never push my personal beliefs over professional ethics.
Thank you for sharing your experience! I also have Mater degree in counseling psychology and also used it in my pastoral practice to proselytize.
I hope you stopped doing that.
@@littlebitofhope1489 yes, I did. no longer preaching :)
@@religiologEng 👍
You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible?
Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth!
Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny!
Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers!
God authored the Bible!
DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication?
1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion!
One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled!
Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“!
Psalm 139 is about the human body!
Thank u for sharing
That seemingly good people could _ever_ believe that the all-powerful, all-loving, all-GOOD Creator of the Universe would want them to _manipulate and mislead people in his name_ is one of the most insidious and under-discussed problems with modern Christianity.
It is the people that realize that randomness and coincidence is part of the human experience, but then go onto using that knowledge to take advantage of those that still do attribute coincidence to a higher being, that are the true scum of the earth. That to me is what the real problem of religion and spiritualism is in as concise of a summary as I can put it. I hope it makes sense! Lol.
I'm glad you shared this story, it takes some serious bravery and honesty to do so.
I looked at coincidences in my life a very similar way before my beliefs about gods changed. If there was a 'story' for my life and a god was in control of all things, then everything could be a sign. It was easy to form a narrative around circumstances and things that led to other things must be 'part of the story'. Thank you for sharing; this has a lot of great examples of how misinterpretation isn't just a harmless mistake. It can actually lead to some real world harm.
Hi
Can I just say that you two are so lucky to have each other and y'all are inspirational as a couple.
You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible?
Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth!
Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny!
Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers!
God authored the Bible!
DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication?
1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion!
One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled!
Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“!
Psalm 139 is about the human body!
I'm really glad no therapist I've ever had was like that. My first therapist when I was 16 was actually a pretty devout christian man, but he never brought up his religious beliefs once, even when I was complaining about religion. I really appreciate health care worker's ability to be compassionate and completely unbiased with clients
Ex-mormon living in Provo rn, i found this absolutely hilarious because I knew how I used to look at those missionaries of other faiths. Thank you for these videos, i love hearing you and Taylor process these things together. I'm in a mixed-faith relationship and it helps to see other couples have these healthy reflections and discussions.
meanwhile, in a parallel universe:
Drew: "..and that's how I became a missionary, left my girlfriend before the wedding not allowing the devil to tempt be through her not to go on that trip, and met my new wife!"
brr...*shudder*
This is VERY much a “the goal justifies the means”- way of thinking, and it makes me sick to my stomach.
I grew up in a missionary home, mostly Africa, and was thaught to be so proud of that “legacy” (of being a part of a selfless group that spends their lives trying to save others, forgoing luxury etc..) Growing up I have obviously had to awaken to a very different legacy: unmentionable horrors (physical, spiritual, psychological, national and cultural,) inflicted by “missionaries” upon others in order to make them believe/obey/surrender to their own religious claims. Although the ministry I grew up in have never (as far as I know) used these types of tactics, the entire concept has truly soured for me. A part of me feels responsible; it is people like me (or at least as earlier version of me) that become missionaries who are entranced with the idea of “saving souls for eternity” that they do not realize, or just fail to care, that they are destroying people in the process.
I’m a lot like Drew in some ways: I grew up being told it was my calling to become a missionary myself, and absolutely believed these adults! I am relatively well-spoken, and I enjoyed developing my theology before I eventually deconstructed. Now I enjoy studying religions from an outsiders perspective using historical-critical thinking. I NEVER thought I would end up leaving my faith. I am so glad I have had the courage to take my own true beliefs seriously and “follow the narrow path” out of the Christian culture I grew up in. I would call that a narrower, scarier and more painful path than it would have been to stay within the Christian crowd, and deliberately ignored these types of manipulative tactics in order to fit the status quo.
Wow thanks for sharing.
Love from South Africa 🇿🇦
Thanks!
So much of this story resonates with me. My wife and I were a little older than you - mid 20's when we felt it was our call to shut down our whole lives and move to central Europe to be missionaries. Our model was slightly less unethical than what you were considering - but once I had started deconstructing my beliefs (during my time as a missionary), I realized that having a hidden agenda for all my friendships (converting them), I couldn't do it anymore. It felt so gross and dishonest.
I think a large part of why so many people want to believe in a Higher Power is that most human beings, psychologically, are ill prepared to deal with uncertainty. Most people desire solid answers for the big questions in life.
Well said. Totally agree. Like death; I’m at peace with simply not existing when I die but so many people have a real hard time with that (arrogance?) and need to believe in some sort of “life after death” (which is such an oxymoronic statement that I believed in for so long).
You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible?
Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth!
Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny!
Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers!
God authored the Bible!
DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication?
1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion!
One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled!
Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“!
Psalm 139 is about the human body!
It's an adaptive trait through evolution.
@@jjphank Absolute drivel. You clearly have no ability to think critically about your superstitions.
@@learningisfun2108 you’re projecting, because you can’t prove anything wrong here ,so you’re the one that can’t think, thanks for any letting everybody reading this thread, know!
I remember when I was 22 like you, but now I’m old and wise and you won’t be wise until you stop living for instant gratification and Facebook likes and your own pleasures & look for the truth …. Then and only then will you be able to deduce what’s right and wrong!
Yeah-- I went through a phase where I kept seeing "signs" that I was supposed to move from my home state to a southern state to pursue my "music career". A few medication changes later, I realized I had just been kind of hypomanic and having "delusions of reference". Meanwhile, I had persuaded my elderly parents to sell their house and make this big move, uprooting all of our lives. It didn't turn out terrible, but it was a big lesson to me. "Signs", "meant to be", " soul mate", "chosen"--- bad chemicals and bad ideas. The fact that so many terrible people think it was a sign from God that they won their election, and now should do any demented thing their leaders tell them to do is frightening.
Yo! You two are great and a lot of your videos are hitting home! Long story short my mom was told she would never have more kids after my sister was born. 6 years later my twin bro and I arrived. We grew up with my mom telling us that we werent supposed to be here so God had big plans for us. I lived my life to about 30 years old making every decision based on "I wonder if this is god's plan", or "Iwonder if this is the partner god has for me".. Now at 40 I'm still deprogramming all the trash that christianity taught me. thanks for your videos the both of you! Keep it up
Enjoyed your incredibly productive and civil discussion with Dr. Sean McDowell. It was great to get to know you better and learn your story. I enjoy your channel too.
Your voice is very calming. Cameras always give me the wrong impression. When I started watching your videos, I got the impression you were a tall, wide-framed person. I was shocked to learn you weren’t tall. I’m a short man so now I have hope. If I want to grow taller I only need to start a RUclips Channel! I’m looking forward to more Genetically Modified Skeptic content. You’re doing great work.
GMS: "So there is a downside to thinking in this way. To making meaning out of coincidences when you don't necessarily have 'proof' that the mechanism behind those coincidences is really anything other than random chance."
Stevie: "When you believe in things that you don't understand, you suffer."
Superstition ain’t the way even if it’s called a religion
Matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, therefore no matter nor energy would’ve existed to do the causing. Consequently, whatever did cause the universe to exist, would need to be immaterial and exist beyond time and space! Genesis 1: 1 God creates time space and matter!
Entropy is somewhat opposite of evolution and why did this come into the universe if everything’s getting better. Genesis 2:17 says death came into the universe through the first sin!
First two chapters of the Bible not the 500th chapter or the thousandth chapter; explain what evolutionists have not explained;, The first two laws of thermodynamics!
DNA does not auto encrypt, it did not write itself the code writer is outside of the code. 3300 billion lines of computer code in 1 humans DNA, would fill the Grand Canyon 50 times of Books, let alone plant and animal DNA and it did not write itself! One person‘s DNA could stretch to the sun and back 61 times! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“.
John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did the world will not have enough room for the Books, telling of it“
Job 38:35 “were you there when I created the lightnings and they say ‘here we are!”’ This is God talking to Job!
3300 years later, James Maxwell discovers that light rays and electricity are two forms of the same thing!
The Bible Predicted telecommunications
The more I see the content you guys make together the more I'm surprised that your relationship was able to last through your deconversion. I'm so proud of you guys for freeing your minds from all the childhood indoctrination, and so glad you were on the same page throughout that and that when you weren't, it didn't break your relationship.
As an ex Christian, I used to look at literally any stupid coincidence as a sign from God. I desperately wanted to believe he was in every detail of my life because otherwise, it meant I was utterly alone. Due to my love for learning, I started studying probability, cause and effect, and the sciences.
Here is what I learned that could apply to this specific situation.
1. “They had two open seats” yes and they were also asking to mission to Mormons in an unethical way so people were probably avoiding them. This unintentionally drives the probability of your meeting up.
2. “We were in a place that we were looking for the next thing” yes, that is why they were setting up Ice cream socials at the end of the school year. They are looking for people who desire to know what’s next. Same reason the military recruits out of senior high school classes. This intentionally drives the probability up and the fact they pointed out that it was God who lead you their and not that they set up specifically to find people in transition points I say is very manipulative.
3. “They were looking for therapists.” Yes. So they went to a school with a therapy program and contacted the professor to make sure you would go.
A random coincidence would have been if they went to a coffee shop and saw a person who was just fired looking for a new therapy job. And even then that could be influenced by if there is a large therapy hospital nearby. But to say a bunch of carefully laid plans is the result of Gods influence is bullshit and I’m glad you got out.
The more I learned of probability and cause effect models. The more I saw it wasn’t Gods hand guiding me. It was past events that resulted in the current situation, and the probability that I would recognize it these circumstances went up because I was always watching for them.
The therapy mission most certainly wasn't unethical. It isn't unethical for a Christian to become a therapist. It isn't unethical for a therapist to share their spiritual beliefs with a client. It isn't manipulative to share your opinions with others.
What is unethical is demanding someone get a government license to speak in a certain way which is what a therapist does. Perhaps this guy should be more skeptical of the government too seeing how they are violating human rights and he doesn't utter even a peep about it.
I'm curious about ex Christian experience. I believe in OSAS doctrine and wonder if one can be gone astray or gone for good. Can you describe your experience when you become a Christian? Did you feel convicted in your heart, down on your knee, wept bitterly and sincerely asked Jesus for forgiveness or just go to church and believe in your head you're a Christian?
I really appreciate how candid you both are! Much respect ✊🏾 ❤
My walk with God is not found in a church. I have a personal relationship with God and it always keeps me striving to be a better person.
I'm a 54yrs old atheist from down under, I love your channel and admire the important work you do 'saviors of sanity'.
You’re going to hell, here’s why;
Matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, therefore no matter nor energy would’ve existed to do the causing. Consequently, whatever did cause the universe to exist, would need to be immaterial and exist beyond time and space! Genesis 1: 1 God creates time space and matter!
Entropy is somewhat opposite of evolution and why did this come into the universe if everything’s getting better. Genesis 2:17 says death came into the universe through the first sin!
First two chapters of the Bible not the 500th chapter or the thousandth chapter; explain what evolutionists have not explained;, The first two laws of thermodynamics!
DNA does not auto encrypt, it did not write itself the code writer is outside of the code. 3300 billion lines of computer code in 1 humans DNA, would fill the Grand Canyon 50 times of Books, let alone plant and animal DNA and it did not write itself! One person‘s DNA could stretch to the sun and back 61 times! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“.
John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did the world will not have enough room for the Books, telling of it“
Job 38:35 “were you there when I created the lightnings and they say ‘here we are!”’ This is God talking to Job!
3300 years later, James Maxwell discovers that light rays and electricity are two forms of the same thing!
The Bible Predicted telecommunications
@@jjphank I wonder if this is a bot or if an actual maniac who is manually writing and copying/pasting the similar things under these comments.
Wow, mate, you think atheism = sanity? Do you hear what that means for religious people? Deal with your downright un-Australian bigotry.
"I think people would be very surprised, like how would he think that that's ever okay, but it goes to show how much religion can color your perception of ethical issues" - so well said.
Interesting. I think it's in our nature to look for meaning where none exists. Coincidences can provide a framework for us to try to psychologically impose order on chaos. That's important, because for many, the randomness of the universe is terrifying.
Holy Cow! It's The Wifey!!
Your wife is absolutely beautiful sir!!
I completely understood what you guys went through. This was mirroring my experience but in a different setting.
I felt God wanted me to go on mission. Paid with check. God called me to he a police officer, canceled mission trip and check.
The entire ministry that I was involved with, pretended I didn't exist, became rude, and they should had just spit on me while they were at it.
That was my first big crack.
Shouldn't they had been happy that I was wanting to pursue what God had called me to be, something as noble as a police officer?
In the early 90's police were thought of as God's chosen soldiers marching onward for christ, swaring an oath to abolish evil through the righteousness of the law!
This was in 95-96.
My 2nd major crack at that time, was when I began learning about a lot of officers personal lives. MANY have done and were doing their wife dirty, by either abuse (physically mentally & or emotionaly) or having affairs and or both.
These officers were just as crooked in their duties.
On the outside the spiritual people praise them. I heard one preacher praise a specific officer for answers God's call to righteousness, then evoked Paully Pockets scripture, and I began seeing something entirely different, that profoundly changed me, even today at 44.
That their holy spirit, and magical beliefs are tailored around their beliefs. Why didn't the "holy spirit" testify that this person was jaded and crooked.
Christianity became a wite picket fence belief. The better they present as the model family, and hide their inner flaws, the more praise and recognition they got; while the poor people who truly were trying their best, would get swept aside and counted as nothing.
Sorry for rambling.
Thanks, again, Drew. Seems like Taylor is the perfect partner. Y'all keep up the great work; it is very much appreciated. Cheers.
As a former Mormon, I can say that I am glad that you did not go down that path simply because I know, from personal experience, how defensive Mormons can be about their faith. That kind of manipulation might easily have backfired and caused a lot of people to cling even more desperately to their faith.
Also, I can totally relate to the realization that what was previously perceived as divine intervention could simply be random circumstance. I remember slowly coming to that realization as I grew up and heard people share stories about experiences that often seemed so mundane and with a hasty conviction that it was all God's will even though there didn't seem to be any kind of confirmation of that. I began to realize that people jumped to the conclusion out of the same kind of eagerness that I felt to have spiritual experiences and see God acting in my life. Put simply: it was confirmation bias (though I didn't know the term back then). I slowly began to doubt other people's convictions about miracles and divine intervention and God's will.
I've been in evangelical christianity like drew (though not as fundie) and I can tell you I do understand that mentality of the desperation to save souls. The rhetoric of evangelical churches does a very good job at making you think that this is a matter of life and death and what is earthly, secular morality or "live and let live" in the face of "if these people don't accept the truth they will literally burn forever?" I would rather someone hate me and potentially live than they die with us on good terms, and I think a lot of people think like this (hell, that was the secular advice given to me if a friend is considering un-aliveing themselves), and evangelical pastors exploit that to all hell.
Now as an atheist I don't think it would ever work, it's a massive violation of trust and you're literally just betraying and exploiting vulnerable people who (in this case) Are Paying You to help them. It also makes me a bit less trusting of people in general because I know that even if they're not common, these people do exist, which really just hurts the christian goal overall. Fear and desperation is a hell of a drug though.
Matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, therefore no matter nor energy would’ve existed to do the causing. Consequently, whatever did cause the universe to exist, would need to be immaterial and exist beyond time and space! Genesis 1: 1 God creates time space and matter!
Entropy is somewhat opposite of evolution and why did this come into the universe if everything’s getting better. Genesis 2:17 says death came into the universe through the first sin!
First two chapters of the Bible not the 500th chapter or the thousandth chapter; explain what evolutionists have not explained;, The first two laws of thermodynamics!
DNA does not auto encrypt, it did not write itself the code writer is outside of the code. 3300 billion lines of computer code in 1 humans DNA, would fill the Grand Canyon 50 times of Books, let alone plant and animal DNA and it did not write itself! One person‘s DNA could stretch to the sun and back 61 times! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“.
John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did the world will not have enough room for the Books, telling of it“
Job 38:35 “were you there when I created the lightnings and they say ‘here we are!”’ This is God talking to Job!
3300 years later, James Maxwell discovers that light rays and electricity are two forms of the same thing!
The Bible Predicted telecommunications
Yeah, if the stakes are heaven and hell and it depends on your actions if other people get saved or condemned, that can justify almost anything. If I could remove one idea from Christianity, it would be the idea that our actions can decide the eternal fate of other people.
@@photon4076 well you can’t win cuz the Bible wins & here’s proof;
We are lazy and narcissistic in our day and haven’t had that many Trumatic experiences so we’re not scared to face a holy God, yet God demands perfection. so much that Jesus lived a perfect life and sacrificed himself for our sins and only those who take him as their Lord and Savior go to heaven! Instead we have a mis-psychologized view of God and concept of love, a westernized concept! When the Bible spells it out clearly how death and hell get into the universe in genesis 2:17! Death came to the universe through The first sin. See also Romans 5:17 and first Corinthians 15:22! Adam and Eve both died that day they ate both physically and spiritually! death is a continuous state because They didn’t die in a finality state, they started dying continuously this also proves hell is continuous ! still Westerners don’t think they’re that bad, they haven’t killed anybody yet they do kill termites if they start eating away their house! and even if they try not to break the 10 Commandments they’ve broken them, yet God is patient and long-suffering and compassionate not wanting anyone to perish! We see glimpses of this when we have pets and they die and we think about (their) mortality! the Bible says Gods spirit will not always strive with man forever genesis 6:4. Psalm 7:11 God is angry with the wicked every day!
so take time out & think about it, you can’t say you didn’t ask to be born God’s gonna say you should’ve been born again! you can’t say “God why did you create any of this, We wouldn’t have to go to hell if you did.“ a Christian is going to speak up and say “you’re not blowing this for me,I wanna go to heaven to see things beyond what we see now and what we don’t see, your foolishness doesn’t mean I have to suffer.” God is going to say the Christian is right & the sinner is wrong!
Why does a Third World couple have 10 kids knowing that 4 are going to die? for the sake of the 6 that will live!
its same with Heaven goers and hell goers! The glory of God in heaven with finally no separation, for we will see him,, will be shown to the righteous, as the Bible says! God’s not taking away his love nor his justice and no one‘s going to Out psychologize God on Judgment Day with any kind of smart answer! the Bible’s a steel trap, there are no smart answers, we’ve already answered them, in this message! If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian, so that’s not gonna work either!
Sin against eternal God ,you get eternal punishment! hell is eternal Isaiah 33:14, Daniel 12:2 and 11 verses in the New Testament, most of them quoted by Jesus Himself!
@@photon4076 ultimately you’re right w adults; our actions are not gonna get somebody else thrown into hell, although it will influence them to go to hell! but Jesus said if you cause a child to sin, your payment for just one time doing that , is going to be drowning in 7 miles of water (thrown in the deepest part of the ocean) with a large stone around your neck; and then you have eternal hell after that!
God is serious about sin, that’s why Jesus paid the price for sin on the cross and died for our sins, so don’t take that for granted!
PS no you can’t continue to sin and be forgiven God is not stupid neither is the Bible!
I can completely relate to this because I was pressured by church leaders to think I was called to go to my denominations Bible college which I ended up spending three years in and hating every second of mainly because I felt guilty that to not do so I would not to be in God's will. I'm so glad I ended up seeing through all of that as like you said making a narrative out of various coincidences and also intentional suggestion by church leaders.
There can be wrong heavy shepherding but going down the road for Jesus, there’s gonna be some 2nd guessing and some Hardships along the way. After 40 years I do not regret it I know more than people on RUclips and I can bully go where most people can’t go into crowds to street Preach !
You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible?
Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth!
Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny!
Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers!
God authored the Bible!
DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication?
1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion!
One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled!
Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“!
Psalm 139 is about the human body!
@@jjphank so basically the Bible is right because the Bible says it's right.
@@maddiewadsworth4027 The Bible is proven to be right in real life ; it’s not hagiographic, therefore It does not lift it subjects up higher than what they deserve, and it’s morally perfect lifting up everything good and putting out everything evil and bad!
So I see you cannot out psychologize the Bible so it’s smarter than you and it’s winning the debate so far! 40 Writers wrote it with no contradictions that means it’s not circular reasoning and means God wrote it!
Keep track of this!
@@jjphank glad it makes you happy 🙂
At about 14:05 or so, Drew you commented on putting your faith on the backburner ( paraphrasing), but also saying you felt guilty. As an Episcopalian/ Methodist growing up and never forced to or pushed to make a faithful decision, this is good. Coming from a more scientific background and environment, even sitting on what you feel are facts until you are able to work through whether they are or are not is exactly what you should expect of yourself. You determine your faith. Be it a higher being, science or yourself. Oh and do not forget those still struggling, if God knows and created everything, God created science and disbelief in themselves.
A therapist hiding their religion and trying to convert their client by talking about God and scripture during sessions... WOW that is so shady! And I'm pretty sure that's illegal too.
Damn, I hoped from the title that you planned on going to become missionaries for a holiday and a chance to covertly spread the light of clear thinking to people in need.
You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible?
Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth!
Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny!
Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers!
God authored the Bible!
DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication?
1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion!
One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled!
Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“!
Psalm 139 is about the human body!
😄
@@JM-st1le Stank you very much
"Insanely unethical" yup, precisely as described. Enjoyable and educational video as always.
Since I was a kid I’ve always questioned what it meant to “hear God’s voice.” I’ve always asked what it sounded like? What it felt like? How could I know that it was god speaking to me and not just my own thoughts? And the response I always got was “you just know.” To this day Im not really sure if I’ve just never heard God’s voice or if I’ve just never fallen into the trap of believing my own thoughts to be Gods voice.
I struggle with that too, knowing what is God’s voice or my own or the devil. The only thing that seems to make things clear is giving it time for that thought to keep appearing and see if it makes sense biblically.
I had the same question my entire Christian life. After about five decades I had to conclude that there is no way to distinguish "god" from just talking to myself...another step on the deconversion road.
You do just know, sometimes it's much more apparent than others. Sometimes His direction comes in a dream. Once I heard an audible voice that shook me to my core and out of my selfish whining prayer at the moment. And most of the time, as a strong Biblical believer who is indwelled by the Holy Spirit, I just trust that my thoughts are His thoughts if they line up with scripture, and maybe are confirmed by others if I feel I need to check them out with others. As with all relationships, over time it gets easier and easier to communicate and to recognize the sound of His voice. Don't give up, and just ask and listen.
Hey, Drew. I'm glad you were able to come out of your experience in a positive way. I have found many times in my life that things often work out without any real consequences and that it doesn't really have anything to do with God. Even without trying, things tend to work out in a way that isn't usually negative, even though we might sometimes see it as being negative or even expect it to be. I'm not religious so I don't believe in God, but I do sometimes feel like I am guided in my life in that the Universe itself is trying to tell me something and this brings me comfort. Not everything is going to work out the way we hope it will, but it will work out what it needs to. It's fruitless to worry that you might disappoint the Universe in some way because that won't happen. Don't feel guilty for making mistakes, it's how we learn. We are guided in our lives, but we are not forced and no one will be disappointed if we misstep on our journey. We are not perfect and shouldn't try to be. All we can do is live the best we know how and everything will work out in the end because it always does.
As an atheist all my life I find these stories fascinating as well as scary.
You both rock! I remember when I tried to convince a fellow Christian that their version of Christianity was wrong and to switch to my correct version. It was quite the eye-opening experience.
When I was still a Christian, back in college I was going to be a student missionary volunteer high school teacher in the south pacific. The only request I had was for there to be at least 1 other American teacher. When I got to Hawaii I was told my island (Chuuk) wouldn't have any Americans because everyone else dropped out. I worked on changing islands to be with other Americans, but before I did the Chuuk principal told me that it was God's will that I come to his island and that I was disobeying like Jonah by changing islands.
I ended up teaching for a year in the marshal islands with friends that I still am close with (a few are atheist now too ;), but I never quite forgot the manipulation that was being done there by invoking GODS WILL.
It is always God's will for what someone else wants. For what you want, you are a weak sinner that needs to obey their lies.
The Principal is nothing but a power-hungry freak. Do not let one like him influence your spiritual development.
@@gloopdevyoinky9271 well, the principal was actually probably the beginning of my deconversion process.
Ah yes the casual "I want to save people from hell" brainwashing, and pasta with meatballs for the lady
When my now ex husband and I were in marriage counseling, the therapist/counselor told my ex that his pornography viewing was "wicked." I knew instantly that she was Xtian. The rest of us just don't talk like that. We got a different counselor.
I became an atheist very suddenly after watching Cosmos and learning that human brains evolved to find patterns in everything. We are inclined to interpret natural phenomena as acts of God and find meaning in meaningless events. I realized that all the spiritual manifestations and signs I thought I had experienced were just coincidences, plus wishful thinking to please my parents and other authority figures. I now know this as apophenia and confirmation bias.
Loved this. Made me think of the way people who's living depends on church (priests for example) explain everything that happens. They could say something like "God actually presented you with 2 paths, one is love and the other is passion. You chose your partner over something important and thats what god wanted for you."
Still; You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible?
Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth!
Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny!
Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers!
God authored the Bible!
DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication?
1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion!
One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled!
Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“!
Psalm 139 is about the human body!
I always wondered if my insistence on making sure my therapists were completely secular in their practice was just paranoia. Nope. Not paranoia.
Though it's undoubtedly scary, thank you for sharing this story.
In the UK the vast majority of people are atheists - in fact even the term ‘atheist’ has very little meaning now here - It’s just the norm. I find it so difficult to understand the social pressure you have to be Christian in the US. Having worked around the word I actually find Christian fundamentalism as scary as Muslim fundamentalism.
Glad you got out of that. Choosing your to-be wife over god is such a power move.
Thanks for the honesty! Much needed in today's floating ethics.
My physical doctor and former therapist shared a front office space. My physical doctor, who is not the best but there isn't much choice in my town, has the message 'have a blessed day' on her phone messages and has crosses hanging in her exam rooms. I think this was partly her response to healthcare for the poor coming to her profession, something I've noticed as a low income patient is a lot of resentment there, but I digress: Although I knew my therapist could share my personal info with my medical doctor, I suddenly found what I was talking about in therapy coming back to me as nagging suggestions from my doctor. I listened to this a few times and politely asked her not to pray for me, I'd prefer standard medication instead. If only my Christian doctor was a nice person who valued everyone but since I'm single, female, unapologetically (but politely..) Pagan, and ask questions about my healthcare, I get the impression I'm a particular target now who has been blacklisted as some sort of lost cause by my medical doctor. She often hints that I'm actually malingering and don't need special medication. Surprisingly is not a particular problem as I remind her I have another doctor called an oncologist that can help me if when she doesn't want to.
Well, I was a believing Mormon when I found your channel, and I thank whatever I'm trying to replace God with for people like you (and many others) for helping me to see why Mormonism (and other religions) is so damaging.
When I was younger I truly believed that Atheists were people who hated God. Now I just see them as normal people who don't believe in the same thing as me, and that is ok.
I absolutely love this comment. It gives me a lot of hope. ❤️
@@GeneticallyModifiedSkepticI didn't asked, nobody cares about ur hope
Well you also hate God, and not normal people, arrogant and narcisist who think they are the smartest, don't believe in that BELIEVE IN ME - says the 100 kg/30 kg adult failure atheist who achieved nothing in life
@@EasternOrthodoxChristianI DO. Your need to be abusive and terrible does not give you the authority or right to speak for “everyone.” You are about 1 in 10,000 here. By the way, one of my best friends from school is a high official in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and he would NEVER condone your type of disrespectful and rude behavior.
Drew & Taylor - (a) Y’all two are really beautiful together. What I liked most about this video was how it became a discussion between the two of you which we’re all just privileged to witness. (b) Yes, it is astounding how ordinary, plain-as-day ethics can go by the wayside when you’re convinced you’re doing God’s will. I remember particularly how heavily I pressed on friends and the friends of friends in my teenage “I’m going to be a preacher” phase. I pulled out all the stops, even the fire-and-brimstone shtick (once on a considerably younger boy who must have been terrified by my vehemence), in the effort to convert lost souls. I’m so glad that I saw the light eventually and left the church. (c) Thanks for the plug for Taylor’s channel. I’ll be checking it out.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. I've only started to deconvert over the past year or. so. At 63 years of age, that's a late start. Your videos have been a great help in walking me through the process. That being said, I have had doubts about many aspects of Christianity while I was a believer. I won't go into a long story, but, as an example I always had a problem with the concept of Jesus dying for our sins. That never made sense to me. And today, I see it kind of as a guilt trip as if on some level I'm responsible for Jesus' death. Any way, thanks again. I have also subscribed to Taylor's channel. Cheers.
Hi there. As a Christian maybe my understand might help. In the Old Testament God set up a sacrificial system because He is holy and we are not. He is a righteous judge and we are not. Sin cannot be held in His space. Jesus was sacrificed on the Jewish feast of Passover. It's a parallel situation in two periods of history. I probably didn't explain it very well, but no, you are not responsible for Jesus' death, because in His love He CHOSE to stay on that cross so that we could become His righteousness and enjoy a personal relationship with Him now and into eternity. The only guilt we have is when we don't apply Jesus' sacrifice to our lives and thank Him for what He has chosen to do for us out of his great love, grace and mercy. So whether you ever believe again I wanted to make sure you know you are not personally responsible for Jesus' death. Some religions are better at guilting the followers than others, but Jesus says the truth shall set us free!
I remember as a kid being encouraged to start looking for God speaking to me through seemingly random things, like billboards, or bits of dialogue on the TV, or other little mundane things. I tried to do that but I wasn't ever able to get past wondering "is this a coincidence? If I start ignoring the part of me that tells me this is just a coincidence will I go crazy?" One time in Sunday school we were supposed to share some of these instances of God speaking to us, and I had to make one up and I was ashamed. But I didn't believe in it, so I stopped doing it.
Matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, therefore no matter nor energy would’ve existed to do the causing. Consequently, whatever did cause the universe to exist, would need to be immaterial and exist beyond time and space! Genesis 1: 1 God creates time space and matter!
Entropy is somewhat opposite of evolution and why did this come into the universe if everything’s getting better. Genesis 2:17 says death came into the universe through the first sin!
First two chapters of the Bible not the 500th chapter or the thousandth chapter; explain what evolutionists have not explained;, The first two laws of thermodynamics!
DNA does not auto encrypt, it did not write itself the code writer is outside of the code. 3300 billion lines of computer code in 1 humans DNA, would fill the Grand Canyon 50 times of Books, let alone plant and animal DNA and it did not write itself! One person‘s DNA could stretch to the sun and back 61 times! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“.
John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did the world will not have enough room for the Books, telling of it“
Job 38:35 “were you there when I created the lightnings and they say ‘here we are!”’ This is God talking to Job!
3300 years later, James Maxwell discovers that light rays and electricity are two forms of the same thing!
The Bible Predicted telecommunications
@@jjphank cool, bud.
@@jjphankhow can you tell whether these things are coincidences or predictions?
@@leslieviljoen Because everything in the Bible is scientifically accurate, every scientific principle in the Bible that is,. So these are not coincidences and if it was a coincidence, the probability of them not contradicting the first two laws of thermodynamics, is astoundingly miraculous! because it not only doesn’t contradict the first two laws of thermodynamics, but explains the, so on two counts, it’s right about them. Also DNA points to create a god because it does not auto Encrypt, the code writer to the 3300,000,000,000 lines of computer code in one persons DNA, had a writer that is outside of the DNA itself!
God, whoever he is leaving clues and the God of the Bible is scientifically accurate, so I would pay attention to what the Bible says & start asking more questions if I were you!
Evolutionists have to be at believe in hope beyond hope; that everything that exists, being sophisticated because that’s what everything is made of molecules and Atoms, Came about by accident and blind chance! and everything that was created, every living organism, does create themselves :they build nests hunt for food defend mates some hibernate some migrate;, as if they are designed to do that, as if to mimic the designer in that!
So it’s much smarter to believe in a designer than to believe in blind chance, because of the microbiology!
Watch out, that you don’t fall into the trap of wanting to believe in blind chance, because of a perverted lifestyle or sin that you like, too, because that’s what a lot of people do!
@@unpredictableaxolotl3762 You cannot out psychologize the Bible for God not to throw you into hell for all eternity. In other words, you cannot come up with a good enough excuse here and now, so you will not be able to on judgment day. If you say you did not want to be born, God is going to say you should’ve been born again, that means become a Christian so that’s not gonna work. And there are no other excuses try to think of one. So now you know for the first time in your life, that the Bible is smarter than you and it is a steel trap, smarter than all of mankind! So at least investigate and look to see that these things are true, because right now you just learned the Bible is smarter than you, so what should you do concerning the Bible?
Prophecy, the Bible is 27% prophecy, that’s future history written in advance. God‘s really sticking his neck out to get it cut off he’s wrong but he hasn’t been wrong about the thousands of prophecies that were fulfilled, so he’ll be right about the end of the world prophecies as well and you’ll have no excuse on judgment day for not looking for truth!
Caveat: you cannot look for God in times of chaos says Isaiah 45:19, so you better do it now. In other words,You’ll be too worried about your own survival when chaos hits, than your eternal destiny!
Statistic probability of 40 writers writing the Bible with zero margin of deviation, proves God wrote the Bible through the 40 writers!
God authored the Bible!
DNA does not auto encrypt, the code writer is outside of the code of the 3300000,000,000 lines of computer code in the human genome of our DNA! So who wrote the code to such sophistication?
1,000,000 seconds is 12 days, 1,000,000,000 seconds is 32 years! That’s the difference between 1 million and 1 billion!
One person’s DNA could fill the Grand Canyon up to 50 times full of books. John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did, the world wouldn’t have enough room for the books telling of it.“ this verse would be fulfilled!
Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“!
Psalm 139 is about the human body!
Even in religion,its a competition.
The fear of not having a purpose anymore is what keeps a lot of evangelicals in it.
And the sunk cost fallacy
Maybe the purpose is to just live. Just BE. There is nothing to earn or prove. I saw this in 2 NDE's I had. There was no God from any religion waiting to hand out rewards, punishments and judgements. It was all about Love. What mattered was if we are we living from our true being or not and our true being has nothing to do with the egoic mind made "me" and all of it's various beliefs and concepts. That being said, there is no external judgement for not knowing who we are while in this earth experience. We are helped to remember who we all are at the transition of death. In my NDE,"s I saw some that didn't transition well, they were still stuck in egoic beliefs and some were experiencing various "hell" like loops of confusion. They were being helped to "wake up" out of those confused loops, surrounded by unconditional love and compassion. Most of us don't really know we truly are and live from ongoing states of fear and disconnection which have been conditioned into us.
I think the fear of hell is the main thing that keeps people stuck in to this.
I went to a therapist who presented himself as not a conversion therapist at my parents’ request not long after I came out to them. He was so subtle but I started to see the cracks that made it clear he was trying to guide me towards celibacy. The final straw was when he gave me a book and I read the first 3 pages before realizing it was fully promoting conversion therapy ideology.
Conversion therapy is useless but gender affirming care is cutting edge science
This was the most open and genuine post of yours I have ever seen. Thank you for sharing.
Very interesting! I'd love to hear more stuff about mormons and your interactions as I am an ex-mormon.
Matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, therefore no matter nor energy would’ve existed to do the causing. Consequently, whatever did cause the universe to exist, would need to be immaterial and exist beyond time and space! Genesis 1: 1 God creates time space and matter!
Entropy is somewhat opposite of evolution and why did this come into the universe if everything’s getting better. Genesis 2:17 says death came into the universe through the first sin!
First two chapters of the Bible not the 500th chapter or the thousandth chapter; explain what evolutionists have not explained;, The first two laws of thermodynamics!
DNA does not auto encrypt, it did not write itself the code writer is outside of the code. 3300 billion lines of computer code in 1 humans DNA, would fill the Grand Canyon 50 times of Books, let alone plant and animal DNA and it did not write itself! One person‘s DNA could stretch to the sun and back 61 times! Psalm 139:16 “in my members you have written many books“.
John 21:25 “I suppose everything Jesus did the world will not have enough room for the Books, telling of it“
Job 38:35 “were you there when I created the lightnings and they say ‘here we are!”’ This is God talking to Job!
3300 years later, James Maxwell discovers that light rays and electricity are two forms of the same thing!
The Bible Predicted telecommunications
@@jjphank did you copy and paste this nonsense to the wrong comment? FYI the bible hasn't revealed anything before science, nice try.
@@w0ody16 i’m lovingly telling everybody because the Bible is scientifically accurate and you’ll go to hell for believing in anything else!
@@jjphank I'm sure that's all correct buddy 😂
I'm guessing I'm one of the few Christians here, and I'm so glad you were able to get away from these dangerous people and tactics. I'm so sorry that so many people have suffered so much under Christian institutions, and I hope more people can escape and became atheists or something else or also Christian of course, but in an actually healthy and loving manner. Thanks for sharing this!
Drew & Taylor. The opposite of Paul & Morgan. I love hearing your old Christian stories! ❤
i always find it so fascinating to listen to people who have undergone some kind of radical transformation reflect on their past selves and how their minds used to work. like how words and phrases change meaning or lose it entirely.
Wow it's like you're talking about my life. In a way all missionary work uses this same abusive nonsense to manipulate people into conversion, it's so disgusting. Im horrified that I almost went on to perpetrate that. The thing you said about a god of coincidences is so true too, you can believe in anything that way