In my last post I talked about how difficult it was to move from absolute belief not holding any belief and how, despite everything you know being turned on it’s head, that your experience can truly get better.

Today, I’d like to talk about the nature of knowledge. When I was a believer my understanding of knowledge was something entirely different from what it is today. I think it’s important that we rightly define it in order to understand what the word knowledge actually means. I know this probably sounds absolutely nuts to those of you that have never lived in the world of faith – but this was probably the most massive change in my psyche during my deconversion.

When I was a Christian, I knew without even a shadow of a doubt that God was real and that Jesus Christ was his son. This was never (up until the very end) even a matter that had to be questioned. It simply was and I knew it. These things were as true to me as gravity was. This “knowledge” eventually failed me as I slowly began to replace emotional experiences and feelings as my evidence with testable and repeatable empiricism.

I slowly began to recognize that all that I thought I knew had been built solely on a circular belief that a: the Bible was a reliable source of truth and b: my emotional experiences had confirmed what the Bible told me was true.  When my understanding became such that I realized that my emotional experiences were unreliable the word knowledge began to change as well.

Knowledge has become the thing I thirst for most, the place where quantifiable truths meet belief. This thirst for knowledge drives further discovery and understanding when before it simply solidified my assumed positions.  Knowledge is now something I’m glad to challenge and improve upon rather than something unquestionable and divinely inspired.

For you Ex-Christians (or ex-believers of some other flavor) – do you remember the point when the word Knowledge lost it’s previous definition?