{"id":428,"date":"2010-09-07T12:16:54","date_gmt":"2010-09-07T02:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=428"},"modified":"2010-09-07T12:25:08","modified_gmt":"2010-09-07T02:25:08","slug":"faith-or-mid-life-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=428","title":{"rendered":"Faith or mid-life crisis?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question from Asylum:<\/strong>
\nI’ve notice a theme among atheists: many, including myself, start to question faith\/reaffirm faith as they approach thirty. Is it more likely for a person to begin to reaffirm their faith and after thirty deconvert?
\n
\nAnswer:<\/strong>
\nI have no idea.
\n
\nMy basic position hasn’t changed since I was 26, and I turn thirty in a week and a half. I’ll let you know if I have a religious experience before then, but otherwise I’m evidence that what you’re describing isn’t a hard and fast rule.
\n
\nIf there is some kind of trend towards late-twenties reaffirmation, it’s too subtle to show up in hard statistics. For instance, ReligiousTolerance.org reports<\/a> that only 6% of self-proclaimed “born-again” Christians say they had their “again” part after the age of eighteen.
\n
\nI can see why some people might return to their faiths as they approach thirty, though. If they’ve deconverted as teenagers or young adults, in college\/university or just after leaving home, and the deconversion was influenced as much by rebellion, peer pressure, would-be intellectualism and\/or contrarianism as by actual reason, the age of thirty might well be when those other factors are no longer as important as whatever had them believing in the first place.
\n
\nYou’ve apparently got several people in mind who follow this “theme” of yours. Want to carry out some research? Go and ask<\/em> them why they believe again, and let us know.
\n
\n– SmartLX<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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