HARMONIC ATHEIST - Summer Biby: "I Studied My Way Out of Christianity"

Today I spoke with Summer Biby, a mother of four and fellow YouTuber who grew up in Pentecostal Christianity but eventually deconverted after diving into the philosophical and historical issues of the Bible and the Christian worldview.

We discussed many aspects of Summer's story, from upbringing through deconversion, touching on many topics along the way, including:

• The reality distortions propagated by Pentecostalism.
• The negative influence of King James Only-ism.
• The very shaky ground of canonicity and church "history".
• Growing up fearful of dying with unconfessed sin that could "condemn us to hell."
• The cracks in the theological structures we Christians grew up with.
• The teaching on depravity that is behind our need for the "gospel."
• How Christian parents sow in their kids' hearts the untruth that they are intrinsically broken.
• How Christianity creates feelings of failure in believers, and then preys on those feelings.
• How Christianity teaches people to interpret internal dialogue and intuition as the Holy Spirit talking to us.
• Realizing that we have nothing to be "saved" from.
• The horror of the god character who creates people knowing they will be tortured forever in hell.
• The bizarreness of clear teachings in the Bible that say God has favorites, i.e., people he has picked and loved, and others he has not picked and therefore hated.
• The origins of the Yahweh character and the strangeness of his capricious jealousy.
• Being sheltered from reading non-Christian books during childhood.
• How Christianity borrowed from many other religions during its creation and evolution.
• The bizarreness of blood magic and of why it was acceptable to believe in "drinking his blood."
• How we see other gods as strange but ours as normal.
• The realization that "if others are indoctrinated, maybe I got indoctrinated too."
• How charismatic Christianity preys on people's desire to feel something special from god
• How Christianity preys on the needy
• How difficult it is to leave the community that you were deeply plugged into in Christianity.
• The negative effects of the purity culture and shame culture.
• The Christian dynamic of telling women they are responsible to diminish their curves and demeanor to not distract and tempt men.
• How deconversion hits us in waves as we realize the ways that theism has defined many parts of our worldview, and how we get to realize reality is entirely different than our old Christian construct.
• How Christians cherry pick topics in the Bible to obey and not obey, based on what is culturally acceptable.
• Realizing that religion is just the story of humans trying to figure out who god is--if there were a god--and not actually the story of any real god.
• How the church uses scare tactics, such as fear of god "cursing" us, to get people to fall in line with their authority.
• Losing the fear of the pretend deity.
• How to study our way out of faith.
• The powerlessness of the Bible and of the Christian message.
• Learning to stop seeing people as projects to fix and "save."
• How the synoptic problem of the gospels helps us see that the Bible has errors in it.
• How Christianity tries to teach its adherents to use circular reasoning.
• Being ok with not knowing all the answers.
• How deconversion from Christianity helps us to live in the moment and appreciate our lives more.
• How deconverting is like waking up from a bad dream.
• The need for slow and thorough healing from religious trauma and deception.
• The general dynamic of recovering from a religious worldview, and rebuilding from the ground up.


Thanks to Summer for her great contributions on her Youtube channel, and for sharing her heart in these matters during our interview today. I look forward to doing a follow-up interview with her.

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Connect with Summer:
https://www.youtube.com/@summerbiby14...

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We also mentioned:

Pinecreek Doug's YT channel:
   / pinecreekdoug  

MythVision YT channel:
   / mythvisionpodcast  

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Your support for my channel, Harmonic Atheist, is very appreciated.
  / harmonicatheist  

The more support I receive, the sooner I can do this full time!
--Tim