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"The Sickness Unto Death" by Anne Sexton

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The Sickness Unto Death God went out of me as if the sea dried up like sandpaper, as if the sun became a latrine. God went out of my fingers. They became stone. My body became a side of mutton and despair roamed the slaughterhouse. Someone brought me oranges in my despair but I could not eat a one for God was in that orange. I could not touch what did not belong to me. The priest came, he said God was even in Hitler. I did not believe him for if God were in Hitler then God would be in me. I did not hear the bird sounds. They had left. I did not see the speechless clouds, I saw only the little white dish of my faith breaking in the crater. I kept saying: I’ve got to have something to hold on to. People gave me Bibles, crucifixes, a yellow daisy, but I could not touch them, I who was a house full of bowel movement, I who was a defaced altar, I who wanted to crawl toward God could not move nor eat bread. So ...
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The Lighter Side of Skepticism (LOLCAT Skeptic)

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William James' Second Account of a Deconversion (1901-1902)

for the first of James' accounts of deconversion (or "counter-conversion"), see this link   From William James, " Varieties of Religious Experience " (1901-1902), pages 174fn I add two other cases of counter-conversion dating from a certain moment.   The first is from Professor Starbuck's manuscript collection, and the narrator is   a woman. “ Away down in the bottom of my heart, I believe I was always more or   less skeptical about ‘ God; ’ skepticism grew as an undercurrent, all through my   early youth, but it was controlled and covered by the emotional elements in my  religious growth. When I was sixteen I joined the church and was asked   if I loved God. I replied ‘ Yes, ’ as was customary and expected. But instantly   with a flash something spoke within me, ‘ No, you do not. ’ I was haunted for   a long time with shame and remorse for my falsehood and for my wickedness   in not loving God, mingled with fear that the...
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William James' Account of a Deconversion (1901-1902)

From William James, " Varieties of Religious Experience " (1901-1902), pages 173-174fn   This second case exemplifies how small an additional stimulus will over- throw the mind into a new state of equilibrium when the process of preparation and incubation has proceeded far enough. It is like the proverbial last straw added to the camel's burden, or that touch of a needle which makes the salt in a supersaturated fluid suddenly begin to crystallize out. Tolstoy writes:   “ S., a frank and intelligent man, told me as follows how he ceased to believe: — “ He was twenty-six years old when one day on a hunting expedition, the time for sleep having come, he set himself to pray according to the custom he had held from childhood. “ His brother, who was hunting with him, lay upon the hay and looked at him. When S. had finished his prayer and was turning to sleep, the brother said, ‘ Do you still keep up that thing? ’ Nothing more was said. But since that day, now more th...
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Questioning Faith: Other Cultures, Other Religions

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As I summarized in a previous blog, there are a number of reasons people question their faith. Here's a quotation which has long been on my mind: "Jacob describes a similar childhood experience: 'I would get up very early to study Torah for a couple of hours before...the morning prayer. On the way to [temple], I noticed that Muslims were already praying at the mosque. So I asked myself: if we're both passionate enough about our religion to get up while it's still dark--how can I be sure that my religion is true and theirs is false?'" --quoted in Teaching Plato in Palestine , by Carlos Fraenkel, pages 67-68 Note: For a review of this book, see this link .
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Deconverts: Why Do People "Deconvert"?

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Why do people fall "out of love" with their faith? Well, lots of reasons. One of the best books I've read about the phenomenon is sociologist Phil Zuckerman's book, Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion . In this book, Zuckerman finds 9 main reasons why people walk away from their faith: 1. Parents: "when only one parent is religious and the other one is lukewarm or an outright nonbeliever, the likelihood of apostasy for the children of such a couple is increased" (page 153) 2. Education: "Many of the men and women I talked to found that going to college made them look at the world diff erently, forced them to ask questions that they had never wanted or even thought to ask, and caused them to scrutinize their own values and beliefs" (page 154) 3. Misfortune: "For some people, when they experience loss or pain in their lives, it leads them to question God’s goodness, even God’s existence" (pages 154-155) 4. Other Cultu...
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