Ever have to deal with Christians thinking they know more about why you deconverted than you do? Here are five common things Christians say to rationalize the fact that they believe in an imaginary friend and you don’t, and some ready-made answers for you to actually rebut them and turn conversation back towards the evidence, experiences, and reasoning that are actually relevant.

1. You became an atheist because you were mad at God.

Ridiculous. Atheists aren’t mad at God, because they’re atheists, which, um, means they don’t believe God exists. However, as in the movie God’s Not Dead (reviewed well by Dan Fincke, so that you don’t have to watch the eyesore), Christians often portray atheists as angry at God despite that clearly not making any sense. I think there might be a couple reasons why.

First, they think that if they can portray you as mad at God, that would be proof of God’s existence. But this isn’t true, because you can be mad at something that doesn’t exist. For example, there are stories of people being catfished – or, in other words, falling in love with a made-up profile online. Later they find out it’s fake. Here, they may be angry at someone that they know does not exist for not existing. To say that this anger means that they think the fake profile is portraying a real person is ludicrous – in fact, the fact it DOESN’T portray a real person is the reason for their anger.

Second, there are many atheists who leave Christianity angry at the concept of God, and there are many who leave Christianity indifferent towards the concept of God. But, for the angry ones, it’s the CONCEPT they are angry at. God Himself doesn’t exist. So it’s not really relevant for you to conflate the two. In any case – quibbling over whether the person is angry at the concept of God doesn’t say anything about whether God exists or not. It’s a red herring.

Third, often people are angry at the things people do in the name of God. Here, the fact that they don’t believe in God fuels their anger at the actions of people who do. When Christians rail against, say, Gay Marriage or spout the conviction that if you don’t believe in God, you’re going to hell (thus besmirching your reputation), anger happens because of PEOPLE, not because of a belief in God.

2. You left Christianity because you wanted to sin

If God is the only one who determines what is sin (as is the case in most common Christian theology), then this statement doesn’t make sense, because I don’t believe in God. But when I say that, Christians tend to respond, “Yeah, but you’re still doing things that you wouldn’t be able to do if you followed the Bible — isn’t that convenient?” Which is clearly a ridiculous sentiment.

It’s as if I told you that the great and almighty Jack told you not to eat anymore, but Jack was clearly just my imaginary friend. Sure, you want to eat. And no, you don’t believe in Jack. But that doesn’t mean I can then come in while you’re downing a burger and say, “Aha! You’re eating the burger, so CLEARLY you like eating and aren’t willing to give it up – which proves that the only reason you don’t believe in Jack is because you want to eat.”

Ridiculous, isn’t it? But the analogy in real life doesn’t stop there, oftentimes.

Suppose I socially ostracized you for eating when Jack told you not to eat. I could tell you how much you let Jack and, by extension, your family and most of your friends down by eating when Jack told you not to eat. And I could associate all the guilt and the shame from this ostracization and people I say you’re hurting with the word “sin” until, under the pressure of the psychological game (if I’m good at it) I get you to beg me for forgiveness – and, by extension, beg Jack for forgiveness. And then you can be in our good graces…as long as you try really, really, really hard not to eat.

And meanwhile, I’m eating a bit myself, here and there, and when you ask me why I eat and you can’t, I say, “Yeah, I know eating is wrong. I feel really bad about it. But then I ask Jack for forgiveness, and He forgives me! So that makes everything OK and means I don’t have to feel bad anymore. But because my imaginary friend Jack hasn’t been accepted into your heart, you can’t do that, and you deserve to burn in hell forever every time you bite into a burger — or bite into anything else, for that matter.”

That’s no way to treat a friend, is it? Wouldn’t the more relevant thing, rather than social and guilt-infused manipulation, be to actually PROVE that Jack exists and admit there wasn’t good evidence that he existed if there wasn’t? So – replace “eating” with “sin” and “Jack” with “God,” and you have the picture here.

3. You didn’t read enough apologetics — so you gave up on Christianity too easily.

You don’t have to read all the literature of a viewpoint (yes, even the one-sided atrocity The Case For Christ — which has been recommended to me around a zillion times) to know that it is wrong. Think about the other religions. Christians, have you read the apologetics available for EVERY religion in the world? No? I’ll guess why: Perhaps you want to investigate further the route that has the most success. Well, that desire to keep investigating what seems the best path doesn’t stop after you find that the best path isn’t Christianity. It keeps going – and you keep researching and reading in the general directions that seem to provide the best results, given your relatively short time on earth. If you’re going to convince us, defend your religion, with the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection and the Water turning into Wine and so on, in a rational manner instead of assuming you can find it somewhere. And then you can present it.

4. You had bad parents, and you left because they ruined your view of God.

This one has a bit of history — it originated with a guy named Paul Vitz in 1999, who claimed, based on his look at 20 famous atheists in history who had, according to his analysis, fathers who had abandoned him or who were “weak”, that atheists tended to be children of “weak” or absent parents. The glaring problem here is that he hand-picked 20 atheists. To say that this is not a representative sample of the millions of atheists is to make such an obvious statement that it’s almost embarrassing to state it.

And on top of that, even if it WERE true (which, in many cases, it is clearly not), it’s irrelevant. What if you believe in God simply because you have “good” parents (whatever that means)? Someone could easily say that, because you had such an awesome childhood, you can’t see a realistic picture of the world through your spoiled, rose-colored glasses. I mean, two can play at the game of accusing the other that they just believe what they happened to believe because of the way they were raised.

In short, this argument is clearly a meaningless waste of time, and should be skipped to get to a more honest, evidence-based discussion concerning whether or not God exists, not an attempt to use whatever was less than rosy in your childhood to manipulate you into believing in God.

5. You left because your church community didn’t love you enough.

First of all, the most loving thing the church could do, honestly, is do away with imaginary beings to leave even more room to indiscriminately care more about real, actual flesh and blood people. So if God is imaginary – do away with Him if He gets in the way of treating someone who has found out He doesn’t exist with dignity and respect if you really care about him.

Second – oftentimes, churches actually use kindness to get people in the church. If people’s kindness is a good reason for someone to come to church and worship God, then it seems clear that people’s rudeness might be a good reason for someone to stop coming to church and stop worshipping God – it’s important here to be consistent.

And third, this is not an argument about the existence of God. It does nothing to prove that God exists; it just, at the most, states that someone had an unpleasant experience at church. And besides, if Christianity is based on assumptions that aren’t true, wouldn’t it make sense for some people to have unpleasant experiences when they tried to live lives using these assumptions?

Honorable Mention: You were never a true Christian.

I didn’t include this one because, technically speaking, the person stating this is saying you were never a Christian to begin with, and thus did not deconvert. This is an example of the “No True Scotsman” argument. The simple fact is that, by itself, this does not explain anything. Why was the person not a true Christian? To answer this question, we need something we can examine. We cannot examine someone’s “soul” or “heart.” Give me tangible evidence.

Usually Christians respond in one or more of the five ways already discussed. They’ll say you did not have the right relationship with God (correlates with the “mad at God” part), that you wanted to sin (correlates with the next reason), that you were lacking in knowledge (didn’t read enough apologetics), that you were taught the “wrong” Christianity when younger (bad parents), or that you were more focused on the church than on God (correlates with leaving because the church community didn’t love you enough). So…yeah. This frequently seems little more than a hub that, once you scratch the surface, takes you to one of the five other reasons.

Thanks for reading!