A bit over 10 years ago I was still an evangelical Christian. I decided to ask myself, "What's the most logical way to live in light of your religious beliefs? Why aren't you living that way?"
That line of questioning was scary, but also invigorating. Scary, because it probably meant leaving behind a cushy tech job. Invigorating, because I imagined I'd end up as a missionary somewhere, which is a pretty amazing life if you really believe that Christianity is true.
After 18 months of staring into the abyss, I wasn't a Christian anymore. It was the hardest and most important thing I've ever done.
Two things made the journey possible:
1. I made it impossible to stop. I'd decided that I wanted to live as consistently as possible with my beliefs, so I couldn't stop until I knew what those beliefs were. The only possible outcomes were a) missionary, or b) non-Christian.
2. I found others who went through the same thing. A few were friends, but most were authors or random people online who wrote about their experience, like lukeprog on lesswrong.com.
That line of questioning was scary, but also invigorating. Scary, because it probably meant leaving behind a cushy tech job. Invigorating, because I imagined I'd end up as a missionary somewhere, which is a pretty amazing life if you really believe that Christianity is true.
After 18 months of staring into the abyss, I wasn't a Christian anymore. It was the hardest and most important thing I've ever done.
Two things made the journey possible:
1. I made it impossible to stop. I'd decided that I wanted to live as consistently as possible with my beliefs, so I couldn't stop until I knew what those beliefs were. The only possible outcomes were a) missionary, or b) non-Christian.
2. I found others who went through the same thing. A few were friends, but most were authors or random people online who wrote about their experience, like lukeprog on lesswrong.com.