Trust Their Actions, Not Their Words
A person’s actions are the most reliable evidence for assessing who they are and what they value. While an honest person’s words may convey truth about their intentions, a dishonest person’s will rarely match their actions. Even sometimes an honest person’s claims will not be true because a person’s subconscious often has motives of which their conscious mind is unaware. Because of this–the dishonest person’s lies and the honest person’s occasional lack of self-awareness–one would be wise to stop trusting what people say (unless they’ve earned your trust consistently) and start trusting what they do instead.
I Learned This Lesson the Hard Way
Having been raised by two covert narcissists, the truth in my home was far different than the deception of my parents' words. Things were said with the appearance of kindness or love, but the manipulation underneath was anything but lovely. Furthermore, they taught me to not trust my observations because they knew that I could see that their actions didn’t line up with their words. Love was spoken, but rarely shown and frustrations were placated, but only temporarily to do the same exact thing again later.
My Heart Always Knew the Truth
The dishonesty and deception of my mother and father showed me how people have the ability, whether they are conscious of it or not, to use their words to keep others confused–in other words, to lie. I knew that people could lie, but discovering that the people you’ve trusted your whole life are lying to you is a completely different experience. Since my teens, my subconscious always knew that my parents weren’t worthy of my love, empathy, or adoration, but I gave it to them anyway because they had convinced me with their words that they deserved it and that I would be wrong to withhold it. However, I always knew on a subconscious, emotional, and intuitive level that something was wrong with them. While my parents had consciously convinced me that I could only trust them and not my much more honest heart, my heart always knew. Why? Because the subconscious mind (our heart) processes information at a much higher level than our conscious minds, noticing the disparity between a person’s actions and words long before our conscious mind does.
Seeing the Truth for the First Time
Once I began trusting my lifetime of observations instead of their words–the deception, hypocrisy, and double-standards of my parents began flooding into my conscious awareness. I had seen and felt who they were for almost two decades, but had repressed and disregarded my perceptions of them due to their continual efforts to destroy my self-trust and protect their delusional egos. Now that I began to trust myself, I began to see them and everyone else clearly by their actions instead of easily spoken and broken words.
Where to Look to See People Clearly
Everyone will show you who they are if you objectively observe their actions for long enough instead of overvaluing their words. If you want to know what really matters to a person, look at how they spend their time. If you want to know if someone loves you, look at how they treat you. If you want to know if someone can be trusted, look at their history of keeping promises. It’s so simple, yet the pontification of so many people would convince us to ignore this simple truth and instead believe their delusions, dishonesty, and lies.
Ground Even Your Trusted Relationships In Truth
Even the people you love and trust should be held accountable by their actions. While understanding and empathizing with them is healthy, your empathy should also be grounded in the truth of their actions. Why? Because blindness is not a virtue and opens the door for dysfunction and disrespect. If we want to have healthy relationships, we must see people for who they are–not who they claim to be. Those who’ve earned our trust may get some free passes, but if their actions begin to consistently show contempt, dishonesty, or disrespect, they must be held accountable and repairs must be made before resuming trust again. Otherwise, if they are unwilling to apologize and change their unhealthy behaviors, those relationships should be reconsidered as a valuable use of our time and effort.
Place Your Trust in the Right Place
Deceivers will take advantage of our trust if we allow them by ignoring and minimizing their toxic actions. That’s what happened to me with my father and mother. While trust is wisely built upon consistently observing the actions of others, I would argue that many of us have instead mistakenly placed our trust in what people tell us about themselves. Instead of allowing people to convince us about who they are with their words, we would be wise to let them convince us with their actions. This is the foundation of reliable trust: evidence, not words or stories or feelings or promises, but instead what people actually DO.
Are You Confused By the People In Your Life, Even Yourself?
If you’re confused about who the people in your life really are and what they actually think and feel, stop listening to what they say and start observing what they do. Manipulative people in my life taught me that words are cheap, but actions reveal the truth of who people are. Even when applied to yourself, this concept will help you to develop incredible clarity and self-awareness as to who you really are, what really matters to you, and areas in which you could grow.
Conclusion
The words that come out of a person’s mouth only have value if they continually align with their actions. If they don’t, ignore what they say and stay away.
Life is too valuable to waste on dishonest people.
Why Skepticism is Superior to Faith
Being raised in a very religious part of the United States of America, I was indoctrinated to believe that faith was important, could be trusted, and actually meant something. This all made sense to me until my deconversion from Christianity in 2015 and my subsequent intellectual awakening.
Religion Taught Me to Suppress My Doubts and My Intellect
My parents taught me to suppress my intellect growing up, only encouraging me to use it to confirm the beliefs they gave me to absorb instead of using it to seek truth. Also, doubt was discouraged (even though I now know how important it is for ridding oneself of untrue beliefs) and blind faith in God and the Bible was honored with respect that it doesn’t deserve.
Skepticism Versus Faith and Cynicism
For the purpose of this article, I’m going to define skepticism as withholding belief when encountering new ideas unless sufficient evidence has been acquired to justify belief. Also, skepticism is not cynicism like many people seem to think. Instead, skepticism involves being open-minded to new ideas while also exercising self-restraint and personal judgement to prevent acquiring a false belief whereas cynicism tends to be the complete opposite, assuming that everything is false without giving any open-minded consideration. Therefore, true skepticism is open-minded and unassuming, which is completely different from the assumptions and close-mindedness of cynicism.
Faith on the other hand is more proximate to cynicism. It is both assuming of propositions unverified by reputable evidence as well as close-minded to any other potential truths. When one has faith, they have chosen to dismiss any evidence (or lack thereof) to the contrary while also accepting only evidence that confirms their position. Therefore, faith, by definition, is a dysfunctional cognitive bias whereas skepticism is a much more useful tool for retaining objectivity and actually discovering truth. Honestly, the faith that I had when I was a Christian was nothing more than an assumption drilled into me during my childhood, as is the case with most proponents of faith. The reality is that very few people value faith in modern society unless it was idolized in their childhood. This explains why most fans of faith have either believed in the concept since their childhood or are returning to their childhood indoctrination later in life as an adult. However, someone raised only with objective critical thinking skills and an evidence-based epistemology would likely find faith a troubling concept for sure and have no reason to invest in such an unreliable way of determining truth and reality.
The Brutal Realities of Faith
Let’s get to the real elephant in the room. People of faith like to believe that faith is an admirable value, something possessed by great people, and that somehow it far surpasses reason and evidence-based frameworks. However, the truth is that faith is nothing more than a feeling without any evidence to support it. That’s why the majority of religions value faith because it can be used to justify belief in anything with no proper grounding in reality. That’s the problem I have with faith. All of these religions are claiming that their beliefs are true on the basis of faith, even though they regularly disagree with each other on the nature of reality. Without any rule or measure by which to judge and discern reality, anything goes, including ideas that are mutually incompatible. If one religion says that there are multiple gods on the basis of their faith while another says there is only one god on the basis of faith, then what’s the truth? Either one of them is wrong, or both are wrong. It is just not possible for two conflicting ideas to be true at the same time, unless of course you use faith for determining truth and reality.
Therefore, faith is nothing more than an assumption lacking evidence to establish it in reality whereas skepticism is a system by which facts are observed and belief is withheld unless sufficient evidence is present to justify belief or conclusions. And even when a skeptic determines that belief is warranted, he practices caution by assigning degrees of certainty to his conclusions because he knows that while truth exists, it is difficult to capture confidently. This is completely contrary to the absolute arrogance of those who possess faith, who assume that they have THE truth and that everyone else is wrong even though they can’t even provide the slightest adequate evidence for their emotional convictions. The irony is that I was taught growing up to believe that skeptics were the arrogant ones while us Christians were the humble ones, bowing down at the feet of Jesus. The truth, however, is far different: It is actually the skeptics who are the humble ones, choosing to admit what they don’t know on the basis of inadequate evidence. The bearers of faith are actually often the arrogant ones, especially the evangelicals, who think that it’s somehow acceptable to push their unverified beliefs upon someone else.
Don’t Expect the Religious to Support Your Abandonment of Faith
If you were raised to respect faith and are starting to see its flaws, know that you are not alone. There are plenty of people who’ve been down this road before (me being one of them) who have discovered that faith is all bark and no bite. You may be realizing for the first time that faith is nothing more than a concept rooted in superstition, indoctrination, and group conformity instead of reality and evidence. Just be aware that most of the religious people you’ve been surrounded by your whole life will not respect your new position and will try to convince you that your thinking is flawed or sacrilegious. If you want to debate with them, go ahead. However, if you’re looking for support, you’re going to have to find it elsewhere in both new people and yourself.
The Doubting Shadow Personality of the Religious
Most people possess at least some ability to reason objectively if they choose to use it. However, people of faith often reject this aspect of themselves because it eventually raises reasonable doubts about their religion. Instead of valuing truth by openly considering these doubts, most of them give into their fear and try to suppress their rational self in favor of blind faith. As a result, most religious people possess a subconscious doubting side that has long been repressed in their shadow personality for years. Therefore, your dissent and doubt will likely make them feel uncomfortable because it will be raising this aspect of their doubt into their awareness that they’ve been avoiding for a long time. Even your withdrawal from their religion alone will be enough to trigger intense feelings of uncertainty in them–and boy do they hate uncertainty!
The Truth About the Practice of Religion
One thing you will learn quickly as a truth seeker is that most people–but especially the religious–are driven by comfort and security. When they perceive you as the cause of their discomfort, even though you’re only triggering an internal confrontation within them with their own repressed doubt, they’re probably not going to like your new position very much. Many of them will want nothing to do with your new ideas and others will even refuse to acknowledge your shift, treating you like you’re still a person of faith like them. Furthermore, some will try to argue against your ideas and others will even try to shame or discredit you to avoid facing their fears. It isn’t your fault that they’re feeling this way, but most of them will do whatever they have to do to push their doubts back into repression. That’s what the practice of religion actually is: Struggling to maintain unverified beliefs in an effort to minimize fear and maximize comfort. YOU may have chosen to leave this practice of fear and comfort behind, however, they haven’t and they are not going to understand or respect your departure from it.
Protect and Respect Yourself
Don’t let anyone tell you what you “should” think, feel, or believe. That is your right and your responsibility, not anyone else’s. Even if you feel unsure of your new ideas right now, which is completely normal, know that you are fully capable of developing critical thinking skills quickly if you haven’t already.
Conclusion
As far as we know, humans are the only conscious beings on this planet capable of critical thinking, so let’s not waste this capacity by choosing to ignore our doubts out of fear that we might make mistakes. While we all regularly make mistakes, I would argue that faith maximizes the likelihood of possessing false convictions whereas skepticism minimizes this risk and increases the likelihood of actually securing some truth for yourself.
The religious might not respect your new position, but those of us in the skepticism community do. Keep questioning. Keep doubting. Keep separating truth from fiction and don’t believe in anything unless you can prove it. Afterall,
The discovery of truth begins not with faith, but with doubt.
What Is It Like to Go Through a Religious Deconversion?
The short answer–and I can only speak from my personal experience–is that going through a religious deconversion can be a very confusing, disorienting, lonely, and painful experience, but it is worth it in the end! While I’m sure the experience varies from person to person, if your religion mattered to you, deconverting is likely going to hurt. And you’re probably not going to get much support on your journey either, at least from most of the people you’ve been associating with previously.
My Story - Unanswered Prayers
In 2015, after several years of severe anxiety, depression, and unemployment, I began to wonder why all of my prayers to the Christian god for help seemed to do nothing. It made no sense to me why a god who loved me wouldn’t answer my prayers for healing, especially considering that I wasn’t able to do anything productive for him. I wasn’t involved in any ministries, had no social contact outside of family, and spent the majority of my time wearing out my living room couch. Then one day, while sitting on the couch, something shifted within me. I remember looking up at the ceiling of my living room and having a realization–one that gave several explanations for my unanswered prayers.
Either:
God loves me and has a plan I don’t understand, which is why he’s allowing my suffering or
God created the world but has abandoned humanity, so he’s either not listening or doesn’t care or
God…doesn’t…exist…
When that third and final idea hit my awareness, it was a jaw-dropping, light-bulb moment for me. Maybe all of my prayers were nothing more than just talking in my head with nobody receiving my pleas for help! Everything started to make so much sense to me from this new perspective. While I withheld full commitment to this new idea, being the analytical person I am, I couldn’t shake the notion that maybe God didn’t exist!
The Power of Childhood Indoctrination
It’s weird looking back at this moment because I still find it insane that at 24 years old, I had never considered the possibility that God might not exist. This is a great example of the power and effectiveness of childhood indoctrination. Prior to my awakening, I had never seriously considered any alternative philosophies to my childhood religion. In my previous life, I had heard of people who didn’t believe in the existence of gods, but I had never experienced the possibility of atheism on a deeper, more emotional level. This time was different, because I went beyond acknowledgement to believing that the supernatural might not exist for the first time in my life.
The Confusion of Shifting Beliefs
After this moment of awakening, I didn’t even realize how much had shifted for me yet. I still considered myself a Christian, maybe even a sacrilegious one for questioning the existence of God, but still a Christian nonetheless. I still prayed to God, still felt like He existed and sometimes thought that maybe I was losing some type of spiritual war to demons and other evil entities. However, I also wondered if all of my religious beliefs were just superstitious bullshit and if I had finally woken up to a more sensible perspective on the world. At this point, I was already an agnostic atheist even though I didn’t realize it until three years later in the future. I just didn’t have the terminology to label myself at the time due to my ignorant and insufficient Christian education on all of the other perspectives in the world. To this day, agnostic atheism is still my current position because it is the only justifiable position one can have if one strictly adheres to an evidence-based epistemology.
At the time though, I had no idea that I was already an agnostic atheist. I still felt, talked, and thought like a Christian (for the most part) due to a lifetime of indoctrination and conditioning. The only difference was that for the first time in my life, I started to consider that maybe doubt was a good thing after years of being told that it was spiritual “weakness” and instigated by the “devil”. It was such a confusing experience–part of you thinking that you are waking up to reality by doubting your religion and another part of you thinking that you are giving into the deception of the devil as he lures you away from God.
This phase of my deconversion, the cognitive dissonance phase, lasted for three years. During this time, I experienced a tremendous internal war. I wasn’t sure what I believed because I held convictions in both camps. It was an extremely frustrating, confusing, painful time for me. It was made even worse by the fact that everyone around me was looking at me like I was crazy. Even my wife suggested at the time that my doubt in God might be because of my mental illness. I had no one to support me through this or help me to understand what I was going through. I…mean…no one. I went through this alone. I mean, yeah, if I knew I was an atheist for sure, I could have found an atheist or deconversion support group, but with my belief that the devil might be kicking my ass too, this didn’t seem like a good idea. I felt like I was in the middle of two different support groups because I actually was. I couldn’t get any support from my Christian friends or family because they were afraid of what I was going through and didn’t understand it. I also couldn’t get any support from atheists either because I wasn’t comfortable joining their camp either. It would have helped me tremendously to hire a secular therapist or coach to support me through this time, because I can’t describe to you just how alone I felt. I felt like it was me versus the world.
Giving Myself a Proper Education
Because I already understood Christian apologetics deeply–I love that name by the way–I knew that I needed to properly educate myself on atheistic perspectives too–not the shitty strawman arguments proposed by Christians that are easily defeated, but instead the rationality offered by the brightest atheists in the world. So, in my desire to know the truth, I started watching atheist versus theist debates, reading books about deconversion stories, and educating myself on secular science. I know it might come as a surprise to some of you, but I never received a proper science education because I was raised by conservative Christian parents who homeschooled me so that they could control everything I learned. All of my science books exclusively taught the young-earth creationist point of view and made secular scientists and the theory of evolution look ridiculous. However, once I started acquiring a proper secular science education for myself, I started to find myself agreeing with a lot of what I was learning. I wasn’t convinced by everything, but I found that the secular explanations made more sense to me overall than the whole “God said it and blam, it was there!” thing that I had always been taught.
The Results of My Reconstruction into Atheism
At the end of those three years, in 2018, my cognitive dissonance had disappeared and I now realized that I had settled into being an agnostic atheist. It just made more sense to me and seemed more intellectually honest. I went from being someone who felt like he had the answers to everything (“God did it”) to someone who knew nothing but what evidence could sufficiently prove. I became willing to accept that there was a lot in the world that I didn’t know or have answers for and that I probably never would. I became curious as to the origin and breadth of the cosmos and I looked at everything in nature with wonder and awe for the first time. For most of my life, I had never really appreciated nature or science because why would I? I had all the answers; I knew where everything came from. How did the universe get here? God. Where did matter come from? God. Where did light come from? God. Where did life come from? God… I also previously had no reason to appreciate that we are sentient animals living on a giant rock hurtling through space while orbiting a star that will one day run out of thermonuclear energy, go supernova, and explode. I realized that the fact that we are here at all is ridiculous and so exciting at the same time, regardless of whether we came from a natural or supernatural origin! Furthermore, I realized that theists don’t have a clue about ultimate origins either because they don’t have an origin story for their gods. They claim that their gods have always existed (at least Christianity does), but if that’s the case, then why can’t the universe have always existed as well? Yet, they consider naturalistic perspectives of the universe illegitimate for their lack of origin explanations while they themselves don’t even know the origins of their own gods! I’m thankful to Carl Sagan for pointing out this theistic double standard and the fact that no one, either atheists or theists, really has a grasp on the origin of time, energy, matter, or life.
Deconversion Feels Like Going Through a Divorce
On a more serious note–long after I went through my religious deconversion, deconstruction, and reconstruction–I realized that going through my deconversion was like going through a divorce with God. I perceived his presence most of my life and talked with him even though he never talked back. From the secular perspective, I had an imaginary friend as a child that I never grew out of as an adult. At the time, this imaginary friend was very real to me and I considered him to be my best advocate. However, I later realized that this god character in the bible is an insecure, vengeful control freak who threatens people with eternal punishment if they don’t voluntarily enslave themselves to feeding his narcissistic ego through a lifetime of worship and obedience. Instead, at the time, I thought of this Christian god as a loving person who was willing to die for me to save me. The reality is that most Christians are good people who think that their god is good just like they are too. The problem is that most of them have never objectively or fully read their Bible, and even if they have, they’ve been taught to blindly trust that God is good and moral and that his actions should never be questioned. And–that was me for most of my life. I projected my moral self onto God and assumed that he was good like me. I had never fathomed that I was a much better person than him and that I was worshiping a monster based upon his holy book. So for me, losing my relationship with my god was very painful, and there was no one to support me through it because I didn’t look for external support. I walked this journey alone because I didn’t have any non-religious friends, family, or acquaintances.
Encouragement for Those Who Are Deconverting Right Now
I want you to know that if you are going through a religious deconversion right now that you are not the first to go through this and that eventually it gets better. You may lose family members, friends, colleagues, and sadly, sometimes even jobs, but you will eventually find your place in this world. The painful feelings of leaving behind a religion you once loved and a god you once worshiped will be replaced with feelings of self-respect and self-confidence. You will know why you believe what you believe and have the evidence to prove it instead of relying on frustrating and fallible faith. You will also have the ability to say “I don’t know” when evidence is insufficient to justify a conviction. You will eventually be able to stand as the atheist in your environment and develop new friends (if you want to) who appreciate your new perspective. Your confidence will build, your knowledge will increase, and your life will become more authentically yours. You will become the judge of morality in your life (and realize that you have actually always been) and will develop an understanding of moral reasoning that you never possessed in your religious past. You will know that just because something feels true doesn’t mean that it actually is (Faith, I’m looking at you). And most importantly, your newfound appreciation of skepticism will serve as a shield of protection for you for the rest of your life from deception, manipulation, falsehoods, and lies.
You Don’t Have to Pick a Side!
Furthermore, I want you to know that it’s okay to not be solidly in one camp. I have learned through my journey that humans are very tribalistic and tend to have a “pick a side” mentality. However, if part of you believes that the supernatural exists and part of you believes that it doesn’t at the same time, that’s okay! Most people assume that you can only possess one belief at a time, but if you study psychology, you will find out that the human brain is capable of possessing multiple incompatible beliefs at the same time. It’s called cognitive dissonance as I alluded to earlier. Here’s the thing though: Cognitive dissonance only causes suffering if you resist it and try to force yourself into believing only one side. This is one way that theists abuse themselves that you no longer need to do to yourself as an atheist. Therefore, if you accept the experience of possessing two conflicting beliefs simultaneously and don’t see it as a problem to “fix”, you will not suffer from it. Furthermore, don’t let people pressure you into “picking a side”. If they do, you would do well to tell them to leave you alone on this issue. If they continue bringing it up, I would recommend reconsidering your relationship with them because they are refusing to respect your boundaries and honor where you are right now.
You Are Going to Be OK; Trust Yourself!
Lastly, choose to trust yourself! You will get through this! Wherever you land will be OK because you are going to be at peace there eventually. I myself prefer for my position to be grounded in truth, reason, and evidence, but it’s up to you what values you choose for your life. Your thoughts and feelings matter more than the people around you because this is your life, not theirs. I’m not saying that we should close our minds to the opinions of others, because we would miss out on many opportunities to test our theories for truth; however, many of us who have been deeply indoctrinated in religion have been conditioned into trusting the opinions of authority and others too much and need to start asking ourselves what we think a bit more than we already do. Be patient with yourself in this process of deconversion, deconstruction, and reconstruction, because you are learning to think for yourself and question what is real and true. Don’t let the thoughts and feelings of others overshadow your developing intellectual independence and instincts. Your opinion matters, not only to the world consensus, but more importantly, to you.
Get Ready for a Better Life
Even if you are alone right now, know that it won’t be forever unless you choose solitude. Eventually the clouds will part and the sun will shine again in your life. And let me tell you, the secular sun is so much brighter and more beautiful than the religious one ever was. Welcome to freedom!