Welcome back to my channel.

If you don't already know, my name is Christi, and this channel exists to help people who are deconstructing or unpacking their conservative, evangelical, and fundamentalist Christian ideologies.

I was raised Southern Baptist as an evangelical Christian for all of my life until I became an adult, and then I realized that I no longer believed any of it.

And it was not that quick of a process.

It was a very long journey of me really trying to figure out what I believed, but I did eventually come to the conclusion that I just didn't believe in Christian ideologies, and I really didn't believe in God at all.

So I do consider myself an agnostic atheist, and I like to kind of put this all out at the beginning of the video so people understand who I am, where I'm coming from, and what my intentions are.

Recently, I received a comment from a viewer who had a really important question for me, and I thought it would make a really interesting discussion for a video.

And so I'm going to kind of shorten it because it's a little bit of a long comment, but I will put the entire comment in the description of this video so that you can read it for yourself.

So this commenter says, you say in this video, the video that they were commenting on, that believing something without evidence to make yourself comfortable, faith as you defined it, is okay.

I would say it's never okay.

I've seen enough harm that comes from faith that I'm willing to say it more than often than not leads to unnecessary harm.

This is the absolute minimum harm faith can do, create unnecessary vulnerability to further harm.

Could you maybe explain how you can be so comfortable with faith that you can call having it okay?

I agree that what this commenter says, that faith can create unnecessary vulnerability to further harm.

I agree with that because it's true that when you're not practicing critical thinking, it can be very easy to fall for things that aren't true.

Critical thinking is a really specific process that you kind of go through to carefully examine and kind of scrutinize the things that are being presented to you.

So you can filter out the things that aren't true and only accept the things that are.

And we all get it wrong.

I get it wrong sometimes.

I'm sure I believe things that are, well I know I do, I believe things that aren't true all the time and I have to get corrected or you know figure it out for myself.

I'm sure that there are beliefs right now that I hold that aren't true.

So this is not, I'm not saying this is a Christian problem or a religious problem, this is a problem across the board.

And this commenter does bring this up in a part where they talk about kind of astrology and legitimizing that.

And so I agree that when you're not practicing critical thinking and you're engaging in blind faith or blind belief that you do open yourself up to accepting things that aren't true because you're not practicing critical thinking.

So for example if you aren't practicing critical thinking and you're just believing things you know just kind of on a whim or you know for bad reasons perhaps, you might be more susceptible to being scammed or more susceptible to baseless conspiracy theories.

And presented so that they can make sure that what they believe is true.

I think we all want to believe things that are true.

And it isn't the faith or the belief that is necessarily the problem, it's often the actions that follow.

So for example people who have faith or believe in these evangelical Christian ideologies, they might go out and cause harm to other people by maybe insulting them for their non-belief or threatening them with hell or maybe they'll go out and vote against the rights of those in the LGBTQ plus community.

Maybe they vote against the bodily autonomy rights of women.

So we can see as non-believers, as people who believe in critical thinking, that a lot of times these behaviors that follow the blind belief and faith can cause a lot of harm.

And I'll admit that I used to be someone who was very very angry about Christian ideologies, about faith, and I did at one time consider myself an anti-theist because I saw the harm that was being done, I experienced the harm myself, and I just in my through a lot of therapy and introspection that anger is a secondary emotion.

That the reason I was so angry and frustrated was because there was something underneath that I was protecting.

Anger protects.

And so what it was protecting was my fear, my trauma, my pain, my sadness.

There were all these emotions that I was trying to protect with my anger.

And so instead of you know just being angry, I got more curious about where this was coming from and why I felt this way.

And I've talked about this in other videos, when you are introspective, when you become curious about your feelings and about yourself, it becomes easier to extend that empathy and that curiosity to other people.

And so instead of being so angry about people's blind faith and blind belief and lack of critical thinking, I decided to get curious.

And I think that's a really important key in this conversation is being curious about why people believe what they believe.

Why do people have faith?

Belief is a really complex thing.

What you believe, you don't necessarily choose.

Belief is not a choice.

It's not a switch you can turn on and off.

It is the result of becoming convinced of something.

You, through a process, become convinced of a thing and then you hold the belief.

And that's not always just a clear-cut journey.

What you believe is heavily influenced by your environment, your brain chemistry, your parents, you know, how you were raised.

There are so many factors that contribute to a belief.

Sometimes it's fear.

Sometimes people are just so afraid of the consequences of not believing that they just kind of hold on to that belief because of that.

And so I think it's really important to remember that people don't, just like people don't really choose to be an atheist or choose to be a non-believer.

I didn't.

I didn't seek out to become an atheist.

It's just kind of the natural result of realizing I don't believe in God.

In the same way, people don't choose to believe in Christianity or choose to believe in really anything.

You can control the information that you expose yourself to.

You can take actions to learn and explore and all of these things, but not everybody has the same opportunities to learn and explore and be curious about their beliefs.

We live in a very complex world and everyone is different.

Everybody's living in a very different situation.

And so there are people who were raised to believe these things.

They were taught by people they love and trust like their parents and their pastor.

They have been fed fear-based tactics and they feel comfortable there.

They might, you know, find a lot of peace and hope and praying to God.

And they might have really never known any different and don't have a reason to look but a result of a process, then I also have to show that same respect to other people who do believe and understand that their belief is not a choice but a result of a process.

And so we're both coming from the same place.

We might not be coming to the same conclusions, but we're coming from the same place where we believe or disbelieve something based on becoming convinced or unconvinced of something.

And what convinces you, that can change drastically from person to person.

And so when we get curious rather than being judgmental, I think it opens the doors for us to find more middle ground and for us to have more productive conversations.

I think we should encourage critical thinking.

I think we should encourage people to think about what they believe.

That's why I ask a lot of questions here.

You'll see, like, I love to ask questions because instead of just telling people what I think, if I ask them more about what they think, it's going to naturally encourage them to go through that process themselves.

Empathy and trying to understand where people are coming from, why they're coming from that place, will kind of will get us a lot further than just automatically dismissing people and being judgmental.

And I know this because I've been there.

Like, I have been through so many walks on this journey over the last 15 years, and I've just really concluded that being angry and judgmental and dismissive, it's not really going to get us anywhere.

I had to sit down and I had to ask myself, what is my end goal?

Like, what do I want to accomplish?

Do I just want to be right?

Do I just want to feel superior?

Or do I want to make positive change?

And if I want to make positive change, I have to take a different approach.

I can't just be dismissive of people who I think might hold bad beliefs or hold beliefs for bad reasons.

I have to meet them where they are, and I have to be curious and empathetic to their position if I ever want to get into a place where I could encourage them to think more critically about what they believe.

If your end goal is to have people really question what they believe, well, be curious about them.

Meet them where they are.

Ask them a lot of questions.

You know, kind of get them to a place where they are thinking.

They're going through that process that you once went through.

If I were to have a conversation with someone who was questioning what I think or my lack of belief, I would be happy to talk about it.

I think it's interesting.

It's fascinating.

I like to talk.

I'm a talker.

I wouldn't have a YouTube channel where all I do is talk if I didn't like to talk, and so I enjoy having these conversations.

I don't enjoy being dismissed.

I don't enjoy when people make assumptions about me, assumptions about my intentions when I'm having these one-on-one conversations.

I think we should meet people where they are.

We should listen to why they believe what they believe and try to find some middle ground, and then they might be more receptive, and you might be more receptive to really thinking more critically about what you believe in.

It goes both ways.

I think a part of this common, like this finding common ground is understanding that even when people do harmful things or use their beliefs to enact harmful policies or treat others with unkindness or what we perceive to be unkindness, that they are also doing so from a place of fear or perhaps pain or, you know, feeling threatened because I can understand that if my anger and my dismissiveness from my unbelief or from my departure from Christianity, if I can understand that that emotion was masking the fear and the harm because of their beliefs, that they are also protecting those emotions underneath.

They have a fear of hell, and they have a fear of you going to hell.

They have an existential threat, or at least they feel like it is, to their being, to their religion.

They think that there is this threat to their religious freedom, and so they act from that place.

And so it's really interesting to just from different places, and then we use the anger and the dismissiveness to kind of protect that.

But if we can see past that, if we can kind of get past the anger and get past the harm that is being done and see through to what's underneath, see through to people's humanity, well then we're going to find common ground, and we'll be able to have more productive conversations with them.

I understand that sometimes I can be a little snarky here.

People do tell me that a lot, and I am snarky because I am talking about something that has harmed me, and I think I have earned that right, and I think ex-Christians have earned that right.

I think people who have never been Christians and who live in a society where their livelihood, their bodily autonomy, their right to exist, their right to marry who they love, when that is being threatened, I think at minimum they have the right to be snarky and to be frustrated and to do something about it.

I think that that is warranted.

But at the same time, I do want to be more empathetic and compassionate.

I want to have more productive conversations.

I want to encourage people to think more critically about what they believe and why they believe it, and to work within themselves that critical thinking process to find reason and rationality through our conversations, because we'll never be able to have that if we're just being judgmental and dismissive, and I'm not saying I don't, I'm not judgmental.

I'm not saying that at all, and I'm not saying that I don't ever, you know, that I always get it right because I don't.

I'm talking about myself as much as I'm talking to you here.

This is not a lecture.

I have been having these conversations for a long time.

I have lost relationships with a lot of my family members because of this.

This is a very important and big part of my life.

This, you know, this departure from Christianity and what I've been through, what I've experienced because of it, it has shaped me as a person, and so I will never be able to escape it, and so I like having these conversations, and I think it's important to try to take what we've been through, if we can, if we are in a place where we, you know, have found healing and peace, not in a place of anger, if we can get to a point where we can try to have more productive conversations, meet people where they are, be curious about why they believe what they believe, I think we'll get a lot further, and I think that the goal should not be to encourage people to not have faith.

I don't think faith is a bad thing.

I don't think believing in something that might not be true is necessarily a bad thing.

I think it's what follows.

This person talks about astrology or other kinds of beliefs.

It opens up the door.

Well, it does, but it's not my job to be the faith police.

You know, I'm not here to tell people don't have faith.

It's when it becomes a bad behavior or a behavior that hurts other people, that's when I take issue.

I'm sure faith can be a very kind of driving force in a person's life, can bring them a lot of happiness and peace and joy.

For me, I don't feel like I need faith in a god in order to find those things, but that's me personally, and I can't assume that for other people.

It's funny because I really do believe in the golden rule.

Thank you, Jesus, even though Jesus was not the one to come up with it, and it existed long before Jesus did.

Jesus said, treat others as you want to be treated, and I agree with that, and I would actually take it a step further, treat others as they want to be treated, because we're not all the same, and we all have different boundaries, and so I think it's really important to consider the other person rather than just yourself and what you think and what you feel, because it just boils down to how do I want to be treated?

Do I want people to respect my position as a non-believer?

Do I want Christians to treat me with kindness and empathy and compassion, even though I don't believe in their religion?

And if so, well, then I have to show them that same respect.

I really do just want to make a positive difference and to encourage people to more critically about what they believe so they can protect themselves from the harm that comes from, you know, accepting beliefs that aren't true and the harm that comes to them and to others through their behaviors because of those beliefs.

At the end of the day, yes, I do think it's okay to have faith.

I do think it's okay to have beliefs that might not be true.

I think it's okay to believe in astrology.