Evening all.

When I made the choice to deconvert (thanks, by the way, to Microsoft for not acknowledging that as a real word) from Christianity, I did so as a through and through skeptic. I've said in my introductory post a long time ago about how 9/11 shaped my understanding of reality, and I actually have purged the word 'believe' from my vocabulary outside of academic discussion. If you couldn't prove your point, I had no reason to point to it. A lot of people here who grew up in secular homes might find this disturbing and/or confounding, but I entered into atheism in the same vein. What proofs did atheists have that God didn't exist? Everything about my cultural paradigm up until that point was painted with a theistic, if not blatantly Christian, brush, so this argument needed to be pretty darned convincing.

Like any person who hears someone wholeheartedly proclaim that 'jet fuel can't melt steel beams', 'we never landed on the moon', or 'Trump never said that', one needs to have supporting evidence and arguments that either back up their counterpoint, or debunk the claimant's argument at the get-go. Running on a similar vein to my other sources of skepticism, I looked towards the theme of this debate article: Christian Apologetics. The concept of apologetics (I've now returned those lost brownie points back to Microsoft for not acknowledging that as a real word, either) is that people do not, on some level or another, understand the will of God, and that arguments and clarifications are necessary for someone to truly grasp the meaning of scripture. One of the first, and historically most famous apologists was Thomas Aquinas and the Summa Theologica he produced. Modern ones such as Ken Ham, William Lane Craig and Ray Comfort have come forward in modern times, and some of each of their theories I used to try to create a rebuttal against the 'positive claims' that atheism made against my theological concepts.

As you probably guessed, it didn't go over so well for my faith. Once I learned about the basic counterapologetics to the Argument from Design, Pascal's Wager, the Euthyphro Dilemma, and the Epicurean Paradox, I realized that belief was untenable and unreasonable. It did, however, give me a depth of knowledge into the concepts that keep a lot of mildly doubtful believers glued to their pews.

The reason I'm bringing all of this up is that a lot of people who were raised secular or who had a much swifter deconversion can't understand why people think a lot of the unfounded bunk that they do. As such, I'm offering this thread as a sort of window into the minds of the faithful from a former believer. Think of me in this thread as an...angel's advocate. Ask questions you have about belief and beliefs, and I'll give you the best answers that I've researched. Bear in mind that my former belief system was strictly Christian, but I did delve into both Protestant-leaning as well as Catholic apologetics, so I'll be able to answer either style, as well as the broader questions that matter around faith.