Christianity is an irrational system of conformity, wishful thinking, and self-deception - Zach Doty

Today I spoke with Zach Doty, who grew up in Pentecostal and Foursquare churches, and later moved toward a Calvinistic perspective, before deconstructing his faith and realizing the irrationality of the Christianity worldview, and ultimately deconverting.
As we went through his story, we touched on topics such as:
• Understanding that truth is worth having, and therefore worth the pursuit, even if the journey is difficult.
• Admitting the conflicting motivations that override our search for truth.
• The experience of memorizing the Bible and passing out gospel tracts door to door.
• Moving from an Arminian perspective into a Calvinistic one, to more seriously honor the New Testament theology of election and sovereignty.
• Believing, as Christians, that people were inherently and completely wicked, at enmity with the Yahweh character, incapable of reaching out to him, spiritually dead, and having nothing good to offer him.
• Reveling in how the Yahweh character, in his mercy, chose to redeem his elect, of his own will and for his glory.
• Looking for "fruit" in our own lives and others, to have assurance that the Jesus character is living in us.
• Believing, as a Christian, that the world was 6,000 years old and even that the universe was geocentric.
• Being unwilling, as a Christian, to accept any scientific evidence that contradicted the Bible.
• Realizing, during deconstruction, that we had been severely duped by Christian apologist con-artists.
• Starting over as an adult, learning real science for the first time, after growing up in Christianity and its pseudo-science.
• The harrowing experience of seeing your epistemology crumble in front of you during deconstruction.
• Realizing that religion is the epitome of a selfish and anthropomorphic worldview, where the Yahweh character is orchestrating the gospel and all of history for you, so you can be part of his bride.
• Realizing we were callous to and even supporting the eternal conscious torment and suffering of the reprobate, in hell, because their torture was deserved and brought glory to Yahweh.
• Taking pride, as Christians, in ignorance and closed-mindedness, because we were part of the "base" things of the world, the clay that Yahweh chose to make into vessels of glory.
• How we go through life with an assumption that we are mostly rational in our worldview, even if we have a few ideas to tweak, rather than admit that we may be profoundly wrong about the most critical parts of our beliefs.
• The overwhelming power that our need for conformity has over us, especially in the areas of worldview and beliefs.
• The importance of being willing to update our worldview based on new information.
• Realizing that our intuitions are usually wrong, and that we need to question our assumptions and begin to apply the scientific method to our worldview, in our efforts to remove bad ideas and to search for the truth.
• The crucial importance of doubting claims, especially extraordinary ones that have no evidence, instead of blindly believing them.
• Admitting the role of wishful thinking and self-deception in our belief systems, especially when most of our loved ones and teachers all believe the same thing.
• How Christianity is like an evolved virus of parasitic ideas that infects our minds, in order to exploit our agency and biases, and that it is focused on its own self-interests and survival, not on truth or on our best interest.
• Understanding that the Bible is not monolithic, but that it was written by many men over many centuries, with competing, evolving, and incompatible ideas.
• The beauty of having truth as your North Star, versus conformity to an ancient, primitive text, which just leads to unending cognitive dissonance.
• The path to developing and using tools of truth.
Thanks to Zach for sharing his amazing journey out of the mythology of Christianity and into rationality and freedom!
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Zach's YT channel:
/ zachdoty0
Zach's website
zachdoty.com/
Zach's FB page:
/ zach.doty.355
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Ending music by Eyal Raz, "Friends"
• Friends
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