my understanding is that it's when they learn actual science and realize that they had been lied to all their life. However, a blog I read a few years ago (link no longer available) cited a study that showed that it's the humanities in college that lead to far more deconversions than science does. According to that study, it is due to their learning that other perpectives exist, ways of looking at things other than their own, and of looking at things through other perspectives, as well as understanding those other perspectives, plus learning to examine all perspectives objectively, including their own, which are all what happens in history, literature, and philosophy classes.
As I was reading the first part of this paragraph, I was thinking I needed to respond that it is not the actual science that gets people its being taught how to actually think things through. Philosophy is a dangerous subject for young fundamentalists to take. As you said, once you are exposed to other perspectives and you learn how to analyze them and scrutinize them, beliefs that are held without strong basis, quickly crumble.
Ironically, the course that had the biggest impact on my faith/belief system was World Literature. Two of the works we read (excerpts, of course) were Dante's
Inferno and Milton's
Paradise Lost. These stories were a huge "light bulb" moment for me. I realized that much of our images of heaven, hell and the Adam and Eve story were based on these works of literature, not on actual scripture. I vowed then that I would allow any belief I had to be subject to scrutiny and that I would be willing to let go of any belief that I held on to that did not hold up.
I have not lost my faith by any means, in fact I would say it has made my faith stronger. I no longer need to feel like I need to just believe something but not know why. I need to dig deeper, so to speak, and figure out why I believe what I believe. Unfortunately, the message so many fundamentalists have is it is all-or-nothing; believe what they say or else you may as well be an atheist. That is the message that I so strongly oppose in creation science.
The choice could not be any clearer.
I agree.
HBD
Whoever calls me ignorant shares my own opinion. Sorrowfully and tacitly I recognize my ignorance, when I consider how much I lack of what my mind in its craving for knowledge is sighing for... I console myself with the consideration that this belongs to our common nature. - Francesco Petrarca
"Nothing is easier than to persuade people who want to be persuaded and already believe." - another Petrarca gem.
Ignorance is a most formidable opponent rivaled only by arrogance; but when the two join forces, one is all but invincible.
™ Version 4.2
