- Bug Girl on SGU! – Go, listen to her awesome interview about the bedbug plague!
- Assassin bugs use their victims as shields – It does make sense that piling corpses on your back would make a predator think, “Uh, no, not eating that one.”
- Questionnaire on deconverting – Rick is looking for skeptics, agnostics, and atheists to answer a questionnaire about their deconversions from religion. “One of my goals at the end of this project is to publish a book based on the information I’ve gathered from interviews and data gathered via the site.”
- Five secrets you shouldn’t keep from your gynecologist – You have to at least read the very last quote.
I admit, initially I was skeptical, but I went ahead and read that last article anyway, and now I understand. Everyone must read that last quote. Do it. Do it now!
I did the questionnaire..
I feel better! haha
I like that questionnaire, it’s interesting and I could actually add more questions to it (like what turns me off organized religion maybe).
Has anyone else noticed the last question is repeated?
Also, yes! Tell your doctor everything! It helps.
“How do you find fulfillment in life now that faith in a god or gods is no longer necessary? ”
WTF? Strange questions.
How would you find fulfillment in life, if faith in superstition were necessary?
Having read the last line of the last article, as a male I have to flip the question. I’m imagining my doctor asking the same question to me, with ‘penis’ in place of ‘vagina’…
Madfishmonger & sjburnt – thank you for your input! I’ve addressed the question repeat and also reworded it. I thought it sounded awkward when I put it together also. Thanks for pointing it out.
Rick
PS – thank you so much to Skepchick also for getting the word out.
I sorta had one and a half deconversion experiences… when I was 18, I realized that the evidence against Christianity (which I had been raised in) was too much for me to believe it. When I was about 30, I realized I only half-believed in most of the heathenism that followed.
I’m one of those who bounced around a lot before totally deconverting. I have the skeptical movement, and a couple of posters around here to thank for giving me that final push out of the agnostic and into the atheist. So it’s YOUR FAULT if I burn in hell now!
;)
“How do you find fulfillment in life now that faith in a god or gods is no longer necessary? â€
When answering it the second time I pointed out that being a smart-ass and pointing out minor flaws in questionnaires is particularly fulfilling in my godless life.
My only actual quibble was that the age list started at 18.
If you’re under 18 being atheist/agnostic/skepticism is “just a phase” that you might grow out of?
Question: Why is this process of losing one’s faith called deconversion? Should it not simply be called conversion, i.e. converting from being a believer to being a non-believer?
It seems to me that the word “deconversion” implies going from being a non-believer, to being a believer, then going back to being a non-believer once again.
One cannot “deconvert” from something without having first converted to something in the first place. Or so I would think.
As for me, happily, I never had to “deconvert” as I was never, um, converted in the first place. I went from being a child who held no theist beliefs one way or the other — my parents never forced religion of any kind down our throats — to an adult who simply held no theist beliefs at all.
I also think there need to be more age ranges on the questionnaire. I don’t recall specifically when I lost my faith, for me religion had never been that significant, going to church and CCD were things I had to do, but sometime around 12 or 13 I just realized all the religious stuff was just nonsense. I went from believing to not pretty quick, with no wavering and no looking back.
I don’t think my penis has anything to tell my doctor. It might have something to tell a psychiatrist, but not my MD.
I had a thankfully very brief, and hopefully not recurring fantasy about sucking all the blood and digestible protein out of Glen Beck and strapping his lifeless corpse to my back to protect against all the forces of evil and woo. And maybe going after Sylvia Browne next.
Maybe this was exacerbated by listening to Bug Girl on SGU yesterday.
Sorry for sharing.
@Buzz Parsec: COTW!
@John Greg: I think the answer is in your own post. No one is born with a religion; someone has to “convert” children (i.e., teach them that religion is the “correct” path) before they can become religious in the first place. You never had to deconvert because your parents never initially converted you.
I’m sorry, but I totally disagree with telling your gyno that you’ve had an abortion if he/she is anti-choice. That’s just setting yourself up for abuse. Optimally you should get a new doctor, but personal experience has shown me that doctors can be amazing assholes when it comes to abortion – including telling people in your small town you are a slut.
That was a pretty glib recommendation. Boo.
@Buzz Parsec: cotw! And please, Jenny McCarthy?
@Sulis: That is a point well made. At the same time, I have higher standards for doctors. They should provide care no matter their beliefs, and if they can’t they should send you to someone who can. That sounds like a terrible experience, and if that happened to me, I’d do all I could to get the bastard fired.
@Madfishmonger:
Well, yes, they SHOULD be held to a higher standard, but that’s not reality. There was just an article here about doctors who had been disciplined for sexually assaulting patients and the inadequacy of the follow up — they were allowed to be “on the honor system.”
And as far as providing care regardless of their beliefs, see all the legislation allowing doctors, nurses, and pharmacists to refuse to provide medical service if they don’t like the patient’s problem (abortion, AIDS, birth control)
@Madfishmonger: Thank you (and Amanda), I did think of Jenny later, right after Meryl Dorey), but I try to tell the absolute truth here whenever possible, and Beck was the first person who flashed through my mind, followed immediately by Browne. I was going for repulsive, I think. (Don’t know what Dorey looks like, and McCarthy as an airhead I find mildly disturbing rather than physically repulsive.) So you’re welcome to use her lifeless carcass as a shield.
BTW, for the Whovians, the image I got was basically an empty Sleveen human suit held on with straps or glue.
I filled out the questionnaire. Kinda fun. I also think your goal is a good one. Thanks, Rick.
PS, I did not respond to your age choice, as I went through these experiences before I was 18.