Originally posted on Reasonable Faith.org.



No Harvey. For those Christians who have the courage and stamina and faith and will power to look at the real reason people deconvert, it is the total lack of answers--in addition to the outright lies that Christianity preaches--that causes many people to deconvert. No seriously deep-thinking truth-lover can remain a traditional orthodox Christian. For some people it is the very serious hypocrisy of Christian leaders inside and outside of the church. For very many homosexuals it is the total rejection of them as human beings starting with the time-honoured biblical KJV text.

For Christians to pretend it is really something else is for Christians to practice self-deception. I can see that self-deception would be preferable to the truth because the true reasons indicate that Christians, too, might one day lose their faith. None-the-less, the truth remains.

Are people turning to pantheism instead? I don't know. I don't think that pantheism is better in the long run; I think it's a "half-way house" kind of thing for a de-Christianizing society. I know some people feel the ancient pre-Christian European pagan religions are better suited to us who are descended from European stock than is an imported desert god from the Middle East, also known as the Judeo-Christian God. There may be some merit to that idea, at least for those of us who live in a northern climate.

The hot dry climate of the Holy Lands does not speak to me at all, while the moist and musty woodlands of Lord of the Rings does a much better job. I know a person for whom Lord of the Rings has pretty much taken the place of the Bible. Since the stories in Lord of the Rings are just as realistic as the stories in the Bible, I don't think anyone should have a problem with that. Just to be clear, I'm not talking about myself; I'm atheist. Pagans or pantheists are not atheist because they believe in a supernatural realm of some kind.