De-conversion Testimonies

[Tony]

Does anyone have an interesting de-conversion story they'd like to share?

[LCBOY]

I was de-converted from atheism. Do you want to here that kind of story?

[Tony]

I'd love to.

[DeathToSophists]

I stopped going to church when I was 15.

In true adolescent style, I questioned the foundations and tenets of the church. I was blown off and temporarily suspended from youth group activities.

Without being bitter about it, I discovered profound gnosis in structured use of psychedelics and responsible forays in to sexuality.

I met a reformed Mormon a few years later, and discovered through him that morality is present in non-religious people, and and more thoroughly grounded in ethics that don't arise from dogma and fear.

Thats just a quick gloss-over, but yes; I used to believe that the crackers of christ were flesh, and the grape juice was blood ;)

DTS

[c4ts]

Honestly, I couldn't care less about testimony. You can't prove anything with it, and of course, your personal experiences may vary greatly. What reason is there to give any attention to testimonials unless you're in a courtroom?

[calladus]

My deconversion started when a Jehovah's Witness knocked on my door. 5 long years later, I had gone from very religious, to Atheist.

"Been a long road, gettin' from there to here."

[Teh Wiccan]

I took a look at other religons, and simply found Wicca more peaceful. Much more peaceful, and in my opinion a more solid moral system.

[Yahweh]

I never deconverted... obviously because I was never a Christian in the first place. I've always been an atheist.

I grew up in a very religious household. And my parents were the most conservative Christians imaginable--Southern Baptists. It was always fun because I never believed for a second that God could exist... Hell I never believed for a second that Santa could exist. My family wasnt the best place to show any kind of a religious tension (God forbid a child have opinions that differ from his parents...) so you can see how it wouldn't go over well.

Funny story:
My parents tried to put me in the Church Choir against my will when I was 10. My stubborn opposition and particularly foul mouth must have made the baby Jesus cry. Not only did I not believe in God, or want to go to church, or be around horny old preists, I didnt want to add to that humilation by singing in a crowded room filled with strangers. To make a long story short, the guy who got set on fire survived with minor burns and the preist had to change out his blood (and urine) soaked robe... oh my bad, thats the another story, the real ending is that I got myself kicked out of the Choir group. :D

[c4ts]

It all started when Jesus came to me in a dream and said "God is love" before being eaten by a nightmarish monstrosity of ineffable terror. And that's when I found Cthulhu, the lovable eldrich horror who just wants to devour you and everything else. In that dream Cthulhu went on to eat God, Satan, Allah, Buddha, Vishnu, Ahura-Mazda, BillieFan, and all the others. Then Nylarthotep showed up and started destroying everything...

[KelvinG]

I abandoned religion when I was around 14 and I started developing a little thing called common sense.

[c4ts]

If "common sense" really common, why are so many people religious?

[KelvinG]

Originally posted by c4ts
If "common sense" really common, why are so many people religious?

It ain't as common as the term itself would have us believe.

[triadboy]

Originally posted by LCBOY
I was de-converted from atheism. Do you want to here that kind of story?

Were you a knowledgeable atheist or an "I ignore religion" atheist?

[Tricky]

Originally posted by Teh Wiccan
I took a look at other religons, and simply found Wicca more peaceful. Much more peaceful, and in my opinion a more solid moral system.
I agree that Wicca is a more peacful, moral religion than most. (My wife is Wiccan). However too many Wiccans are susceptible to the most bizarre versions of new-age bullsh!t. At our pagan gatherings, you can see booths for Kirlian photography, ear candling, Reiki, crystal therapy and dozens of other things that would qualify for the Randi million if they could be proved.

I love Wiccans very much. I just wish there weren't so many of them that are so very gullible.

(BTW, TW, you can probably write Linda to get your unfortunate misspelling corrected.)

[LCBOY]

Originally posted by triadboy


Were you a knowledgeable atheist or an "I ignore religion" atheist? The former, knowlwedeable atheist.

[Q-Source]

I deconverted a catholic friend. He had a lot of faith in Virgin of Guadalupe (a very popular virgin in Mexico) and he was always telling me how much he loved her and how much she had helped him in his life.
I couldn't convince him that it was a fraud, but then a scientist published a report about his investigation on the image that was assumed to be the result of a miracle. He found that the image was painted in Spain in the XV century.
He stopped believing in her. And I think that he doesn't believe in God anymore. :D

[Lord Kenneth]

Originally posted by Tricky

I agree that Wicca is a more peacful, moral religion than most. (My wife is Wiccan). However too many Wiccans are susceptible to the most bizarre versions of new-age bullsh!t. At our pagan gatherings, you can see booths for Kirlian photography, ear candling, Reiki, crystal therapy and dozens of other things that would qualify for the Randi million if they could be proved.

I love Wiccans very much. I just wish there weren't so many of them that are so very gullible.

(BTW, TW, you can probably write Linda to get your unfortunate misspelling corrected.)

Teh Wiccan's named is misspelled on purpose.

Personally, I wish there weren't so many Wiccans, period. And Christians. And Muslims. And Shintoists. And Scientologists. And so on...

[Yahweh]

Originally posted by Lord Kenneth


Teh Wiccan's named is misspelled on purpose.

Personally, I wish there weren't so many Wiccans, period. And Christians. And Muslims. And Shintoists. And Scientologists. And so on...
Whoa whoa whoa! That is of the utmost "uncoolness".

Personally I like Wiccans. I used to have tons of Wiccan friends in college. For the most part, they are as nice as you can imagine (they are the Mormons of the Pagan world).

[triadboy]

Originally posted by LCBOY
The former, knowlwedeable atheist.

You speak like Elmer Fudd! :)


What turned you to the dark side?

Was it an intervention? Miracle? You may have already told me and I forgot.

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by Yahweh
(they are the Mormons of the Pagan world).
I would just love to hear you elaborate on that.

[Jet Grind]

I de-converted to atheism at an early age. I didn't grow up in a very religious household. My parents never really considered themselves "religious" in the traditional sense of the word, though they often expressed a vague spirituality that was mostly the residue of their upbringings. I had always had an interest in science, especially biology and zoology of which I devoured books and TV programs on. Thanks to such sources I had a very early introduction to Darwinian Evolution.

By the time I was 9 years old I had started to develop a great disdain for religion. It was something that freaked out a lot of my friends at the time (I grew up in Maine where just about everyone is religious). Between that and the age of 15 I gradually went from holding to a sort of neo-deism to being a full blown atheist.

[Yahweh]

Originally posted by arcticpenguin
------------------------------------------------------
(they are the Mormons of the Pagan world).
------------------------------------------------------

I would just love to hear you elaborate on that.
Both Mormons and Wiccans are really super nice! :)

[calladus]

Originally posted by arcticpenguin

I would just love to hear you elaborate on that. Mormons ride bycycles in pairs, Wiccans ride broomsticks in pairs! :D

"Can I interest you in the book of Wicca?"

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by Yahweh

Both Mormons and Wiccans are really super nice! :)
That wasn't very interesting, make something up.

[Yahweh]

Originally posted by arcticpenguin

That wasn't very interesting, make something up.
The reason is quite "unusual". Skip this post if you are offended by any of the following: Sex, drugs, violence, genocide, immorality, abuse, public defication, evil, or obscene graphic imagery.


I was sitting naked in the living one day, and I was praying to a cat statue. Well, as I was sliding the razor across my skin (its part of the cermony), I musta hit some vein or artery cuz I got real cold and passed out.

I lost a lot of blood, and before I know it, I'm flying in the sky. For several minutes, it was utter euphoria, then I see the hand of god, I fly toward the hand... a few minutes later the hand forms into the shape of a middle finger and my sorry self falls straight to Hell.

So I'm in Hell, right, and its hot as Hell (hard to imagine). I see thousands of damned souls working in a huge sweat shop, every movement completely autonomous and in unison, and I think to myself "This is pretty cool!".

Satan says "Welcome to Hell! Care for piña colada?". I LOVE piña coladas!

Well, I have to say, after a few drinks or so with Satan, I had got myself properly trashed. I dont know why, I just said it out of nowhere, I said "Satan, I been trying to ignore it but Jesus f**king Christ, calm yourself down, you've been sportin' wood all night and you're knocking s**t off the table". Satan didnt take to kindly to that (apparently its really bad to say the "J" word in Hell).

So Satan tells me I have a drinking problem. No, I dont have a drinking problem, I do have a problem with a guy who cant control his own gurth and sexual prowess.

I sober up and Satan says he appreciates how dedicated I am feasting on the blood of Christians and how devoted to the Satanic revelution, he decides to resurrect me.

Few seconds later, my wife is standing over me and she's shocked, she thought I had died. I hadnt the time to tell her my death story because the child (whom we lured into the house with promise of gingerbread cookies) was making an obnoxious amount of noise. You wouldnt think kids could scream so loud in terror... go figure.

Later that night I told her all about the story. I dont remember ever getting one of them, but I suddenly remembered I had a souvenir "I died and went to Hell and all I got was this lousy mug" novelty coffee mug. My wife really appreciates a good mug. And this one is cool because cold beverages stay cold and hot beverages stay hot, I love technology!

Over the next few days, little surprises started appearing all over the place. Sometimes I'd put my keys on the table, then I'd find them on the couch, othertimes I'd open a closet I wouldnt see the normal closet instead I see a whirling spiraling vortex of mystical origins. I discovered I had a few powers of my own also. Heh heh, silly me, I also want to be a prankster, I started a little mini-Armageddon at the mall. I had mind control also, its pretty cool, I made a hobo stick a needle in his arm and inject himself with his own urine. I'm such a crazy Yahweh.

Some time later, my wife and I began chatting. And I remembered, I could make the best piña coladas this side of Spiritual horizon. Later that night, a couple stopped by the house asking about their missing boy. What, I dont care about their problems, go away you whiney babies. Next thing you know, the floor in my kitchen falls out, and through the hole a-comes that Satan. My wife was star struck, she's always wanted to meet the Dark Unholy Prince himself, Satan.

To make a long story short, that rapture isnt what you think, stupid people suck, polygraphs are inaccurate, and Mormons and Wiccans are one in the same. :)

(Vote Yahweh for Post of the Year!)

[evildave]

Bah! Bah, I say!

Contribute to their mythology and validate it for them.

Don'tcha know that to the religiously afflicted, when you make up stories set in their favorite fairy lands, they just get more convinced you believe in them, and share their little fantasies?

Of course, something like "I was clinically dead for a little while, and there was... NOTHING!" isn't as good a read, and is just as conclusive as any other "near death" story, which is to say, it demonstrates nothing at all except for what relative levels of hypoxia in a still living brain will do.

Judgments, heavens, hells, reincarnations, yadda, yadda, yadda. It's all rantings and ravings without any form of proof.

Of course, even if you managed to get a video camera past the "great beyond" and back, if its images didn't match the religious preconceptions of what "SHOULD" be there, it will simply be rejected as "not it". Even if anybody could repeat the experiment.

"I don't know and I don't care." works for me. It's as likely that anyone's wild and/or chemically imbalanced speculations are correct as any especially sacred versions.

Who knows, maybe it's just like it looks. You die, you're dead, that's it for you. What's it like after you're dead? What's it like before you're born? Probably the same. Here is all there is. Nobody made the world. Nobody will miss it when it's gone (unless there are people still living in space who remember it).

Why not?

And why bother? The fundies will probably have their holy wars to bring back their favorite saviors long before we colonise other worlds, and what do you know? Everyone will die and no savior will ever return, and the human race will simply be extinct. Yay god! Way to go!

[Yahweh]

I'll contribute to their mythology if I feel like contributing their mythology!

Apparently, all should expect to be smithen down if they add on to the word of the God... poor Mormons...

[Checkmite]

Once, a long, long, long time ago, I read a very brief explanation of deism in an encyclopedia article on the study of religion in history. I decided then that deism made the most sense to me, but a week later I'd completely forgotten about it (since I was only a kid). I was technically Christian all my life until sometime between 16 and 18. Even earlier than that, I'd been becoming more and more of a "liberal" Christian, so one day when I "rediscovered" the concept of deism and decided (for sure this time) that's what I was, the change wasn't very sudden or drastic, nor was it cause for introspection. Thus, my "deconversion" took a long time, had several subtle steps, and is really too long a story to hold anyone's interest.

Unlike seemingly almost everyone else in here, I can't claim to have possessed any grown-up reasoning skills when I was little. I believed in Santa (though the concept didn't mean enough to me that I cared when I worked out that it wasn't true), and I believed in Jesus, etc. I loved UFOs, aliens, ESP, psychokenesis, ghosts, and cryptozoology - they were not "obvious" hooey to me. It took me years to wade slowly through each one of them, on my own, without any Sagan or Randi or baloney detection kit or spontaneous critical thinking skills to make the job easy or help me out in the least. No epiphanies about the materialistic nature of the universe, or insight into how "stupid" religion is, or how ignorant adults were; no "common sense" (as KevinG calls it) apparently either. Just patience and the love of truth, I suppose.

[evildave]

Originally posted by Yahweh
I'll contribute to their mythology if I feel like contributing their mythology!

Apparently, all should expect to be smithen down if they add on to the word of the God... poor Mormons...

But don't you see, that's the POWER of selective holy-book belief. If you can toss out 'Old Testament' stuff, like what God TOLD people to do, why not disregard that silly Revelation 22 as well?

18I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. 19And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.

[Yahweh]

Originally posted by evildave
But don't you see, that's the POWER of selective holy-book belief. If you can toss out 'Old Testament' stuff, like what God TOLD people to do, why not disregard that silly Revelation 22 as well?
Toss out the Old Testament! Have you gone mad!

Its filled such a great story, and children just love them! Here's a little taste:

From Exodus:
2:11

And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren.

2:12

And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.
Now that is a biblical gem if there ever was one. It speaks of Moses waiting till the coast was clear, then he slaughtered an Egyptian and dumped the body.

Oh, remember when I hardened Pharaoh's Heart by slaying all the first born:
4:21

And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.

4:22

And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel is my son, even my firstborn:

4:23

And I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.

4:24

And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met him, and sought to kill him.

4:25

Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.

In 4:24 I try to kill Moses because his son wasnt circumsized. But luckily, as it says in 4:25, Mose's wife, Zipporah, cut off her son's foreskin with a rock. A ROCK?! Ouch!

It is the word of Yahweh, ya know.

[Kilted_Canuck]

Grew up in a totally secular family(the first book i read was a astronomy text, at age 3) , didn't give a darn about god or santa until I got on the internet and found www.csicop.org, and go into skepticism, which led me to www.randi.org, and other more atheist sites, and became a full-on atheist.

[evildave]

You'd better share that one with Ruby in her 'contradictions' topic.

Moses the Murderer!

Don't like what someone's doing?

MURDER them!

To be fair, nobody could possible have ever told him murdering people was bad, yet. Why, until God said "Don't kill each other!", nobody would have ever had a single moral compunction or even hesitation about murdering someone. Didn't a state supreme court judge in Alabama make that point for us?

That he hid the body, well that wasn't guilt, just tidiness.

Boy, ol' Moses must've been embarassed when he read those rocks for the first time. I sure hope God had a notion of ex-post-facto laws. Oh wait, that's sort of Roman/Latin again, ain't it?

Otherwise, we have Moses wilfully violating the sacred and eternal law of God.

[Bluefire]

I was born into a mormon family and was a serious mormon until about the age of 14.

Through my interest in politics (I discussed politics with adults from the age of 6), I came into contact with general philosophy, and some specific reality-oriented philosophies, which had the effect of curing me of me theist illusions.

[elliotfc]

Originally posted by Tony
Does anyone have an interesting de-conversion story they'd like to share?

When I was in high school, an impressionable lad, I began to encounter more and more agnostics and skeptics, and I found myself reading a goodly amount of material questioning the historical reality of Jesus. In concert with other interests (paranormal, UFOs, science), Christianity just seemed either irrelevant or just not all that interesting.

I never made the conscious decision to de-convert. It never occurred to me in an epiphany that I no longer believed or should no longer believe. What happened, I think, was more of a de-personalization. What was meaningful became less and less meaningful. Eventually I stopped going to church, that lasted a couple years.

My re-conversion story, I suspect, is not applicable to this thread.

-Elliot

[Yahzi]

Originally posted by elliotfc
I never made the conscious decision to de-convert.
That's because you never de-converted. You never gave up your addiction to the absurd. You just switched to different brands for a while.

Your story is like a two-pack-a-day smoker who spent the last year smoking cigars instead. It's still smoking, dude.

[elliotfc]

Originally posted by Yahzi

That's because you never de-converted. You never gave up your addiction to the absurd. You just switched to different brands for a while.

Your story is like a two-pack-a-day smoker who spent the last year smoking cigars instead. It's still smoking, dude.

Your dogmatism is tedious.

Way to go. Insult people who think differently than you. Why should I take a person of your temperment seriously?

-Elliot

[Azathoth]

My parents were nominally Christian, but we never went to church when I lived at home. I think I must have always been a questioning sort of kid. I can dimly remember an awkward conversation with my dad in a car one day - I was probably 8 or so. I had said "God!" in an exasperated way, and he was trying to tell me why this was a bad thing. I just couldn't understand his point.

Later, when I was about 12, my cat was struck and killed by a car in the summertime when I was home alone. A friend told me where he had spotted her several blocks away, and I walked over there and carried her lifeless body in my arms back to my yard. I was very distraught, and I can't remember ever having prayed for something so fervently as when I asked God to bring her back to life. After some time had passed, and it had had no effect, I suddenly realized that I just didn't believe any of it. It was less of a decision than just a realization of what I had unconsciously felt all along -- that God was make-believe.

Here's a bonus de-conversion: For a time thereafter, although I was an atheist, I was also kind of New-Age-y with beliefs in various aspects of the paranormal. That died away shortly after I went to college and did some serious research on the subject in the university library. It was actually Robert Anton Wilson's book The New Inquisition that did the trick. Its attack on the scientific establishment in general and CSICOP and Randi in particular incensed me: "How could those mean-spirited close-minded skeptics do such terrible things?"
But when I looked into the situations he mentions, I discovered that Wilson distorted the facts in virtually every case! As I continued my research, comparing and contrasting the works of the believers with the works of skeptics, I found the latter far more persuasive. CSICOP and Randi went from being villains in my mind (due to Wilson's book) to heroes. And that's how I was de-converted from paranormalism.

[Yahzi]

Originally posted by elliotfc

Way to go. Insult people who think differently than you.
Eh... I wasn't actually trying to be insulting. This time, at least.

Seriously, though, your various new-age and paranormal beliefs are of a similar character to religious belief. As you said yourself, you never stopped believing, you just stopped caring. That's not quite the same thing, is it?

[imekon]

Went to University, got converted to Born Again Christianity, went through an exorcism, walked away from it all, got threatened. Recently came across the Sceptics Annotated Bible and the Encyclopedia of Biblical Errors.

"And you will see the light, and the light will set you free".

Truly.

No-longer-in-Christ.

[Filippo Lippi]

Good for you Pete

[Professor Frink]

I went to church with my family as a grew up, every week without fail. When I got to college, I ended up joining a very evangelistical church which did lots of things like going door-to-door inviting people to church and having bible studies two times a week, etc. I really believed it all, and believed I knew the answers.

Then one day I was talking to someone about it, and I realized that I had no idea why I believed what I believed, it was simply told to me over the years as I was growing up and I just took it for fact, like you remember the things that happen when you grow up, or you remember a particular birthday party or something. Things like "Jesus rose from the dead" are going to be accepted without question by an 8 year old, and they become a part of your thinking, like memorizing 2+2=4.

I started talking to a person who was in my college church who had left, and I realized that the whole organized religion thing was a crock - it was stomach-dropping. I realized from that point on that organized religion was a sham.

I still thought the bible must be okay, it's the people who are running the religions that are the problem. All I have to do is understand the bible and I'll be fine.

Then I realized that it is literally impossible to read the bible and come to any reasonable conclusion about what you're supposed to do to be saved. Every single sect of christianity believes something slightly different - how is that? How can a god's "book" which is presumably the "breathed word of God" be so ambiguous? No wonder people cling to a half-dozen verses like there's no tomorrow - you have to! 10 Commandments, John 3:16, a few others.

Then I came to the conclusion that even though all these sects claimed to be worshipping the same "God," they weren't. In fact, if you believe that salvation comes a different way from the way the church across the street believes it, then face it: YOU BELIEVE IN DIFFERENT GODS! You can't say it's the same one, because the one across the street demands an utterance for salvation, and yours requires baptism. No one God accepts both, does it?

Anyway, I have admitted in other places that because of my upbringing it is difficult for me to flatly say I don't believe in God, because while I don't 99% of the time, it does hit me occasionally.

Frink

[Jude]

I became an atheist when my Gameboy batteries ran dry.

Going to church was never about religion or faith for me. It was about socializing and trying to weasle out of having to sing the hymns. I had never actually given the lessons or anything any thought. I went to a Mormon church, and on the first Sunday of every month they used chapel time for testimony bearing (i.e. members get in front of the mic and say they love Jesus and how happy they are for their blessings). Normally I spent the chapel period doodling, chatting with friends in the foyer, or playing Gameboy. Anyway, it was during one of these testimony sessions that my Gameboy batteries ran dry. I was like, "Hey, I'm a mature 13-year-old now, I should be an adult and just listen to these testimonies." And so my de-conversion began. I was absolutely floored by the things that came out of their mouths. I had always figured religion was just some casual faith about being nice to each other, and that everybody felt the same way. One of the testimony bearers went as far as to say they had seen their daughter's spirit in their bedroom before she had even been born. My de-conversion was pretty swift, and it wasn't long before I viewed anything related to the supernatural with steep skepticism.

[Marquis de Carabas]

I began my de-conversion sometime around the age of 8, when I was praying consistently to God for something (I remember not now what it was) and it never worked. I briefly switched to praying to Satan, figuring he might be a bit more generous. When that didn't work, I began to suspect the whole thing was horse-hockey.

It took another several years before I actually described myself with the word 'atheist' but it all began there, at least.

[espritch]

I was quite religious as a child. I regularly attended the local Presbyterian Church, went to bible school, and actually read the entire bible (King James version - even the begats). I even cried myself to sleep one night thinking how awful it was that Jesus had to be nailed to a cross for me. As I got older, I began to notice some things that bothered me, like the time I overheard two grown men making a joke about coons in Church (this being a derogatory term for black people). I couldn’t understand how “good” Christians could practice blatant bigotry in God’s own house.

As I got older, my doubt grew. Of course I couldn’t bring myself to admit that the problem might be with my beliefs. I assumed that I just didn’t have enough faith and if I could only get filled with the Holy Spirit my doubts would vanish. It’s strange. I had already been baptized and publicly professed my belief, yet I was still trying to become saved. I wonder if that means I wasn’t really a Christian after all?

In my second year at Carolina I met a campus Christian group called Maranatha. These were hard core evangelicals. They went for full emersion baptism, speaking in tongues, and preaching in the pit (let he who attended Carolina understand). I figured if they couldn’t fill me with the Holy Spirit there was no hope for me. So I attended their meetings, got baptized again, got prayed over, etc. My doubts persisted.

One of the other members told me that he was a big fan of Edgar Cacye, the so called Sleeping Psychic. He told me how Cacye claimed people are reincarnated and spend their incarnations working on problem areas from their past lives. Being somewhat familiar with Christian theology, I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t imagine how a Christian could reconcile such nonsense with the teaching of the bible. I was quite rational enough even then to recognize that Cacye was total hokum, but I still wasn’t ready to apply that rationality to my own deeply held beliefs.

It all came to a head near the end of the school year when the service featured a guest preacher - a traveling faith healer no less. At one point in the service, he proclaimed that while we were praying, he had seen the spirit of God descending like a fog over us. I looked up to see the fog of the Holy Spirit and saw only the ceiling. Later he told us he was going to perform a genuine miracle. It seems someone had told him he was having back problems. But God told the preacher the man’s real problem was that one leg was shorter than the other and that God was going to heal him. I didn’t actually get to witness this “miracle” – there was such a thick knot of people gathered around to witness the event that I couldn’t get close enough to see anything. What I did witness was the look on the “healed” man’s face later on. For a guy who had just received a miracle from God, he didn’t seem particularly elated. In fact, he seemed rather troubled.

Well never mind. I was still determined to get filled with the Holy Spirit. So when the preacher started laying on hands and people were falling out, slain by the Spirit, I got in line. When my turn came, he prayed and put his hand on my head. I closed my eyes and prayed and prayed and prayed until I was suddenly overcome by a deep conviction. But it wasn’t the Holy Spirit - it was the realization of how utterly ridiculous the whole situation felt. I was griped with a strong desire to be somewhere else. So I fell back, slain not by the Holy Spirit but by the need to get out of what was becoming, for me, an increasingly awkward situation.

There are certain moments in life that you wish you could go back and do over. That was one of mine. I’ve never liked hypocrisy and I really don’t like it in myself. I wish I had been honest about it and just admitted it wasn’t working for me and walked away. I never went to another Maranatha meeting. Although I attended Church again a few times afterwards, my faith pretty much died that night.

It was about a year later that I first heard of James Randi. I read an article about a debunking he had done of evangelical faith healer Peter Popov. In the article, he specifically mentioned the so called “miracle” where the faith healer tells someone with back trouble that they have a “short” leg and God is going to make it grow. This is apparently a standard faith healer parlor trick. Reading that article convinced me that my gut instinct about that miracle had been correct. That was the final nail in the coffin for my faith.