My Deconversion Story

hi everyone it's just payton this video took me a little while to script i have short-term memory loss so please bear with me there will probably be a lot of jump cuts but this is a video this this is the first real video i wanted to make on this channel because it was something that changed my life forever i grew up in christianity hard core fundamentalism um if you don't know what a fundamentalist is they're really similar to like a southern baptist this is the good book and it's the only good book and it's inerrant and it's perfect it's what i believed um of course when i believed that i hadn't read it but the point is i grew up i i grew up in this culture i was indoctrinated at an early age i was raised by my fundamentalist christian parents who were raised by their fundamentalist christian parents and um i grew up in the church nursery learning god nursery having uh god and jesus nursery rhymes sang to me before i could even speak and every sunday i went to sunday school to learn about the cool stories in the bible and i even did this thing which i don't know if it was just my church or if it was a bunch of different baptist churches but we had this thing for the kids called patch the pirate if if anybody watches this and you know what that if you've done that too please let me know we did this thing called patch the pirate where every wednesday it was like youth group but for little kids i started that when i was in maybe kindergarten so once you're school age and i did that through i think i stopped around fifth grade i did it for a good amount of years five or six years um and what you did was you would go to church on wednesday and it would just be essentially sunday school but in the evening on wednesdays so your parents didn't deal with you um and i would have homework like i would have and i'd have pre-reading so before you go in you'd have to read this big long story and answer some questions and you'd go in and then you know you'd learn all about it and then you'd have homework okay so i had more homework for my church than i actually did for my school so i was i was indoctrinated very very young and so much so to the point that i became saved at age nine um and if you don't know what that means it's a it's a protestant thing most protestants believe in that being saved it's when you pray jesus usually out loud but some people accept being in your head but you pray to jesus and you ask him to come into your heart and to save you and that you believe that he is real and that he died on the cross for your sins um that's just a paragraph or two you repeat after the minister whoever's given the list and so i did that and it felt amazing i was tingling all over i was shaking i really felt like i felt the spirit of jesus come into my heart and i felt warm and happy and amazing and like my whole life changed my perspective on everything had changed now everything is you know everything is god first jesus first no matter what i do what would jesus do that kind of mentality you know i've got to grow my relationship with jesus i'm a child of god and i've accepted him into my heart and now he's in my heart and so i was very passionate very passionate about this and i was baptized soon after my mom and my nana cried when they found out i was saved they were so happy um yeah i got baptized and i was so indoctrinated that i i in third grade i had a friend um we'll call him dave his name was not dave i had this friend dave and i was really good friend of his and he didn't have very many friends and at school i found out that he was an atheist i don't think he used that word i just think he he was non-religious he said he was non-religious he didn't go to church and i told him in third grade how old were you in third grade like eight something like that give or take a year or two it was about the time i got saved so i told him in class well you're gonna burn in hell for eternity like when you die you're you're going to be tortured for eternity you're going to spend eternity in a lake of fire and the most unimaginable pain you'll you can't even think of forever you'll never get used to it and you'll never see anybody ever again it's just you in pain fraternity i told him that he cried he he had to go home he had to leave because he was so terrified by what i had said to him and that bothers me every day knowing that i did that to somebody and when i told my mom and dad what had happened they said good job like they were proud of me they said you did the right thing you're spreading the word of god and i was like okay that's awesome you know the truth hurts sometimes but you gotta tell them because if you don't nobody tells them they're gonna die and go to hell right so you gotta tell them and so this was my mindset and and i had multiple other friends and i i had gotten most of my friends saved most of my friends who were other sex of christianity or were catholic or i i had one friend who was this hybrid because one parent was hindu and one parent was christian i got him saved um this was very important to me because i really cared about these people and i genuinely thought that when they died they were going to burn in hell and i could stop it i would have arguments with kids at school i would say things that i realize now are ignorant but i would say things like well okay you can't have something from nothing what happened before the big bang explain that or i'd say something like what you believe in evolution but how can we come for monkeys they're still monkeys i would even say like um how can you not walk outside and look at the trees and the animals and everything and just not see god and not know that you've been created which you know when when you're in fourth grade those are compelling arguments you know i guess you know once you once you're an adult however those arguments become less compelling but anyway the whole point of this lead up was to say i was deep in the faith i prayed every morning and every night i went to sunday school in the morning and attended mass well we don't call it mass it's just that church service we'd go to sunday school and then the church service so i would attend two church lessons i guess you could say and then on wednesdays i did youth group okay my entire childhood and i was saved and i was preaching the word and i was evangelicizing is that a word that's a word i think i'm going to use it um so the the point is i was in it to win it i was in it to win souls for jesus okay this was my wife's purpose and the reason i'm emphasizing this so much is because i see a lot of christians and i did the same thing and my mom did it to me when i told her i wasn't a christian anymore they'll say well obviously you weren't really saved nobody could be saved and walk away from the faith and what i'm what i'm what i'm saying as nicely and politely as i can is i was saved technically i still am and i walked away from the faith it happened that happened there may i understand why you have why some people have to tell themselves that or have to believe that i get it i just want to emphasize that i was a real christian in my mind i was really in it okay so let's fast forward to high school and college when i'm a senior in high school i leave to go to college okay i wanted to be a nurse at the time because i love people and i care about people and i want to help people that's why i was evangelising all the time okay and so i wanted to help people through medicine i wanted to heal people uh but i didn't want to go to medical school it was way too long and so i wanted to be a nurse and nurses have incredibly hard jobs and i have the utmost respect for nurses i'm no longer a nursing major but i was a nursing major and there's 50 spots every year and there were 500 pre-nurse majors which i was a pre-nurse major sorry so i was like i've really got to study hard because i want to get in and so for a year i didn't go to church i didn't go to church anymore when i went to college because i had to focus on the school i didn't do any extracurriculars i studied a lot i played i played some video games every once in a while but i i didn't do anything i just studied and i wanted to ace my classes and i did and i got in and that summer i had a change of heart i i was praying like crazy i prayed starting freshman year of high school i was praying like god please guide me direct me what do i do with my life what do you want me to do and that whole time i was i thought it was nursing and i was praying more and more and i started to realize maybe it isn't nursing maybe it's teaching and so i changed my major to biology and education i have two majors and i'm still this to this day i'm a senior and so i drop out of the program and i change my major i start taking biology i'm a biology major so i start taking biology classes and i start learning about evolution and things like that and there there are christians who accept evolution and are still christians and that's totally fine that's totally fine however i was not brought up to think that evolution is some just weak attempt to try and scientists are scrambling to come up with this half-baked idea just to say there's no god or because they hate god or whatever okay but it wasn't like it wasn't it's not true it's not proven or anything but then i'm taking these classes and i'm like wow my teachers are like silver tongue liars they are making a really strong case for this but there's no way and so what i did is i started doing my own research i looked into lectures by like jerry coyne on why evolution is true and i'll link that below link one of his lectures below and um evolution is like an undeniable fact i mean in the science world we never say anything as a fact for the most part like theories you know um but the the evidence is incredibly compelling and it makes the most sense compared to any other theory including creation and so i was like okay okay i can do that i will accept evolution maybe adam and eve are like a myth or they're like a lesson to teach you about sin and things like that and there are a number of problems with doing that because it talks about i don't know there's problems with that obviously a lot of christians will acknowledge that there's problem with that usually and so for a while i'm a christian who accepts evolution i'm still praying every day every morning and every night i'm still praying and i'm praying before i eat when i remember but i will forget sometimes we're human after all we're not perfect but i started to feel really guilty because i started to question things i started to think why are there so many other religions well not even religions just sects of christianity there are hundreds of countless types denominations whatever you want to call them of christianity and most of them not all of them but most of them claim to be the only right one like fundamentalist baptists think they're the only christians that go to heaven methodists have it wrong catholics have it wrong they're going to hell mormons have it wrong jehovah's witnesses they have it wrong they're going to hell so not only do you do you believe that most of the people who are christians go to hell but you also believe every other religion goes to hell and i was like well what the heck happened to native americans because jesus dies at like close to zero like 30 80 or something and we didn't even discover the new world until what 1500 years or so later so were there generations after generations after generations of people just born and damned because they didn't know about jesus and so i had these these real concerns and i started to feel really bad because i was like i'm questioning god how arrogant what an arrogant thing to do and it is i guess when you're a christian you you think asking questions like that is arrogant because you're questioning the most perfect all-knowing deity in the world or in the every i mean god is everything so it's really arrogant to to do that in my mind and it was so i felt bad and i asked god to guide me to find a church and i found a southern baptist church near where i lived and i started going i went to sunday school and i went to the church service i also started reading the bible reading the bible was the worst thing i ever did for my faith the bible is what deconverted me from christianity the bible not seth andrews not matt de la hunty not my college professors it was the bible i want to stress the significance of that but what i'm going to do is i'm going to read some verses when i was reading the bible through i decided to put a sticky note on the pages that i had issues with i didn't do this originally i just like i'm going to read it and then i saw some things that bothered me i was like well you know what i'll put some sticky notes on it and then i'll ask the preacher about him and then i realized i had a lot of sticky notes and coming from a faith where you believe the bible's inerrant if i question something that i've highlighted and put a sticky note on i'm questioning god and that's that's horrible now i'm going to read mostly from the old testament and a lot of christians will say it's different times old testament look at the new testament but i will say i'm reading the new living translation it's a lot easier to understand than king james but you could read that if you like hebrews 13 8 and i will read it jesus christ is the same yesterday and today and forever which means he's unchanging he has always been and always will be the same he doesn't change with culture as culture changes he doesn't change god says that homosexuality is a sin as society starts to accept it he's not going to change his mind he's the same yesterday today and today and tomorrow i want to emphasize that so i'm going to read some verses that i had issues with personally exodus was the first time i had an issue and it's exodus 21. i encourage anybody watching this if you haven't to read the entire exodus chapter 21 but it essentially says that slavery is not only okay but it's completely justified and okay and even worse and i will read this part this is exodus 21 verse 20. anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result verse 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two since the slave is their property okay so that's a lot to unpack god says slavery is okay god says people can be property two things that i have a huge problem with slavery in my opinion is atrocious and i've always thought slavery was atrocious and so when i read this my brow peek because i was like what hold on we can have slaves and we can own people as property and we can beat them with a rod we i mean not not only can we have safe but we can beat the crap out of them and as long as they stand up in a couple of days it's fine some people will justify it and say well they had that was just put in place so that people wouldn't just kill their slaves because if you kill your slave then you'll be put to death i'm sorry that that's not that's not compelling because god who is the perfect moral being is telling people that you can own people's property and you can beat them and i had a problem with that i promise i won't read that many more i i just this one i find fascinating because the book of leviticus is what a lot of preachers will preach from when they talk about homosexuality being an abomination and i will read that verse to you right now it's exodus chapter 20 verse 13 if a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman both of them have done what is detestable they are to be put to death their blood will be on their own heads so god's saying okay so you're gay i got a lot of christians don't think that you're born that way that is a choice either way it i that doesn't matter if it's a choice or not the fact that if i put my lips on the lips of another man in in this context i would be put to death i i don't even think theft is worthy of i think you can steal property in the bible and you don't get killed for it but if you touch another man's genitals then you'll be stoned to death or however they would kill you that i had a huge problem with because i am pans pansexual and in high school i realized well i said bisexual at the time but that was a big issue for me because i was attracted to men luckily i was attracted to women too um and so that was a part of me that i could repress for a while but i had a huge problem with that anyway this is the book of the bible leviticus where they preach hatred for gays or maybe not hatred hate the hate the sin but love the sinner kind of attitude either way it's bad they don't like it and they will tell you it's a sin and you're living your life the wrong way but if you flip just a couple pages prior to chapter uh to chapter 11 of leviticus the same book verse 4 chapter 11 there are some that only chew the cud or only have a divided hoof but you must not eat them the camel though it chews the cud does not have a divided hoof it is ceremonial unclean for you the hyrix though what choose the cud does not have a divided hoof it is unclean for you the rabbit though what chews the cud does not have a divided hoof it is unclean for you and the pig though it has a divided hoof does not chew cut and it is unclean for you you must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses they are unclean for you you can even touch bacon you can't even touch it of all the creatures living in the water of the seas and the streams you may eat any that have fins and scales so you can only eat fish that have fins and scales but all creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales whether whether among all the swarming things or among all other living creatures in the water you are to regard them as unclean and since you regard them as unclean you must not eat their meat you must regard their carcasses as unclean anything living in the water that does not have fins and scales is to be regarded as unclean to you you cannot eat shrimp or crab or lobster i don't even think you can eat catfish i don't think catfish has scales but the point is these preachers who preach hatred or hatred of the sin of homosexuality will leave church and then drive to a buffet and eat shrimp they'll eat pork chops they'll eat bacon the point is i'm realizing now that christians have are picking and choosing even the fundamentalists who say everything in the bible is inerrant so i started to have some issues there now i have way more to read and i even have one where god justifies abortion um god aborts a fetus i'm not going to read it but it is numbers chapter 5. it is the test for an unfaithful wife it starts on verse 11 and ends on verse 28. now i'm not going to read it because i think i've made my point and that there are some errors in this inherent book and i had a big problem with that i had a big problem with that and so you don't since you don't since you don't choose to be gay god will will force some people to go through life not able to marry or have sex which is very important for mental health might i add for some people and so you have to repress this this way you live and i i thought that was horrible and then the fact the bible says you can own slaves i had a deep moral problem with and so what happened is i was turned off from christianity and i thought okay maybe i'm not a christian anymore i still believe in god i just i need to look into this maybe maybe i'll be muslim or or maybe i'll be hindu i'll look into these other religions i'm gonna see what they're what they're about okay so what happens next as i start actually looking into atheist youtubers like seth andrews is the first one i found and i watched a couple of his lectures i'll link them below they're amazing after watching those two lectures i was like okay i'm agnostic okay it wasn't that fast but i also watched some matt dillahunty i watched his atheist experience show where he debates theists who call in and i'm like okay so i'm agnostic i don't know if there's a god there may be one and i still think that i still think that today by the way i still no i don't i don't think anybody knows everybody's agnostic everybody on this planet is agnostic there are some religious extremists who will say they're 100 sure and that's fine they would be they would not be agnostic but pretty much everybody on this planet is agnostic because you can't be 100 sure there is a god because it's about knowledge and then belief is different then you have theism and atheism and so i'm an atheist i'm an agnostic atheist after i was watching after i had watched a lot of the atheist content i started to read some i read um the god delusion i'll get them out actually get them right here right here i read these two books i read the god delusion by richard dawkins um which if you have not read is a masterpiece frankly it's amazing it's it's kind of hard to read sometimes um but it's good he has a new book a newer book um called outgrowing god which is the exact same book but it's much easier to read and i like it i just was disappointed when i bought it because i've already read this book and it's the same book essentially it's just easier to read it's you can hand this to a to a middle schooler and they could read it um but and i also read this one which is uh god is not great how religion poisons everything by christopher hitchens also an amazing book and so after this i'm like yeah okay i'm definitely an atheist i need to tell my parents i also had a fiance at the time we're now married it's good i'm like what am i what the heck am i supposed to do i i'm an atheist like my how are my parents going to react when i told my mom when i was bi in high school she just pretended like i didn't say anything she asked me like one quote like what really you're attracted to men too and i was like yeah and then she started giving me the silent treatment and then we acted like it never happened so i was really really scared to tell them about my beliefs and i hid this from them and my fiance for about a year then i told my fiance who is very loving and understanding she's an incredible woman she's very understanding she is still a she is a theist um which she's well she's technically a deist she believes in a creator uh but not a personal one which is fine we don't have to have the same beliefs it was so wonderful i was i was worried that she she may run run out because she was also fundamentalist christian but we had that talk and we're both out of that incredibly in my opinion toxic mindset which is really nice but after a couple months i decided to tell my parents because i wanted to tell them before i got married and i told her parents too and i will preface by saying i'm still on speaking terms with her parents and my parents however when i told my parents it took four hours i brought my bible and i brought i brought this one with all these notes in it and i told him what was bothering me i just said hey i've been on this journey and i was reading this book and i found these things that i have problems with and i'll read them to you and i read every single sticky note and my parents had an answer for all of them and that answer was it was a different time every time that that was the answer for pretty much everyone and my dad was incredibly angry that i was being so arrogant and i just he's still my family my my sister my mom my dad they're still fundamentalist christian which whatever um but they were very hostile about it um and ever since we have talked about religion maybe once or twice and neither one of us have changed our minds when i told my now wife when i told her parents it hurt more to tell them because instead of anger they were just sad and i empathize because i hate that real that religion does that to people it makes you feel horrible for other people uh i don't want to use the word pity because it has negative connotations but when i was a christian and someone wasn't a christian i felt bad for him i was genuinely conflicted especially for somebody i loved and cared about because i'm like you're gonna go to hell when you die and nobody wants that for anybody and so they were just really sad and you know they said some of the things like how can you not see god how are there still monkeys and things like that i answered those questions but that was my story uh we i have great relationships with with my wife's parents i love my in-laws and um uh i talk to my parents sometimes i don't really go out of the way anymore just because they seem really judgy and anytime i'm there they're like well let's pray come on in let's pray and i think they're just kind of poking fun at me they'll kind of giggle and it just gets on my nerves but i still talk to them i have a good relationship with them i just keep my distance sometimes that's my story and if there's anybody else out there who who is a christian or a muslim or a jew or whatever your religious beliefs are just know that if you're questioning things that's fine and you shouldn't be scared to ask questions if something is true it should be able to hold up to scrutiny and questions and you should be asking questions i think when you when you don't ask questions you you can run into some serious problems just know that it's okay and there are a lot of us out there who went through the same thing and some people come out deist and some people come out stronger in their faith and some people come out atheists or other religions just know that it's okay always ask questions always be curious the worst thing anybody can do is to stop asking questions about anything just know that you're not alone if for some reason people actually see this video and you're someone who is a believer and you're you have questions please email me my email is just payton gmail.com i will do my best to answer any questions that you have because i wish that i had had someone to talk to when i was going through this similar thing thanks for listening everybody stay safe you

Channel: Just Peyton

Views: 1,224

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Id: g_FnWe8YZHs

Length: 32min 45sec (1965 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 23 2020