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Derek Vick

From Non-denominational Christian to Methodist to Deist

I was born in a rather liberal Christian household. I've been told by family members that when I was a baby, and for the first couple years of my life we all went to church a lot, but I have no memory of it. I will say my earliest memory was walking outside a church with my sister, but the point being I wasn't real religious. My mom was a single mother and outside of a "Jesus loves you" and "God is looking out for you" every now and then Christianity wasn't a big deal.


In my life experience the Christian God was an axiom. He had to be true in order for everything to work. I always just assumed people who didn't believe knew the truth but were mad at God. I now know that is not true.


I had noticed that most of my family members and friends belonged to specific churches and called themselves by sects they were in (Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, etc), but my mom and I didn't call each other anything but Christians. That bothered me, and I eventually looked up all the denominations of Christianity and settled on Methodist. It was a waste of effort looking into it. I never ended up going into a Methodist church.


What shook me and eventually made me leave my religious beliefs in the Christian God was a matter of philosophy, study of the brain/mind, watching Atheist videos, study of various other religions, and the death of my mom.


The Problem Of Evil was something I read up on, and while I didn't find it convincing enough (I still don't) it at least put the thought in my head that what I had been told could possibly not be true. I began seeing Atheist comments on Christian videos I looked up and I decided to investigate them. I ended up watching multiple big Atheist YouTube channels, subscribed to some channels and began to think "Maybe they have a point." I eventually looked into more religions and realized how cultural it is and made me think "What if I'm wrong or why would God punish these people for not knowing him to be true?"


My Mom had died of cancer just a couple of months before I got into my exploration of my beliefs. Once I learned what Atheists tend to believe about the afterlife and what neuroscience says about death and the mind, I broke down in tears realizing my mom was really gone. I developed death anxiety, which is something I still work on overcoming.


Now I got into Deism after looking into the history of the American Founding Fathers and I'm getting into philosophy. I realized it wasn't just Christianity or Atheism and instead there was other possibilities. I asked my grandparents to get me Age Of Reason by Thomas Paine and I became overjoyed through his writings, his quotes, and his intellect. I got the Jefferson Bible too, and the same thing occurred.


I lastly read more about science and I realized how much of a miracle it is that the universe came about this way. I knew Deism was a belief I wanted to be associated with. Now I no longer cling to the Christian God but the God of reason and logic. While I don't know this God's purpose, attributes, and rules, I do know that this Being gave me this life to enjoy it and to seek to learn about all the laws that he set up.

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