Wow, this is an exemplary explanation. Being clear with several levels of cultural knowledge as well as the emotional load behind several meanings and juxtapositions, and still comes across with the humor unscathed.
I dream to one day attain such mastery.
Thank you for the clarification.
I'd say the semantics arguments come from countering religions' manipulative perversion of language.
Many religions use tricky language to confuse, conflate and abuse. One such example is that Christian apologists have conflated atheist with heretic for the better part of two millennia. Which is of course absurd, as most Christians are atheist towards Hindu gods, and are thus definitionally more atheist than Hindus.
Yet atheist/heretic/apostate remains as a dirty label, and includes judgement of character, and in many parts of the world persecution or lesser worth.
Reclaiming the word serves in part to actually give it usefulness beyond a boogeyman, to allow for discussions on fundamentals of belief, epistemology, and the contrast of belief vs reasons vs knowableness.
It also helps bridge some of the damage religion has done. When religious people get some nuance to the boogeyman term, they typically are more open to seeing the human cost of stereotyping and shunning people because of that label.
Other perverted terms common to religious trauma are gnosticism (ofc), but also love, grief, acceptance, morality and righteousness.
Things that us having to break free from religion all had to relearn the hard way, and typically while hiding from our still religious close ones.
Thank you for your generous answer.
Your perspective on what your religion views as up for question is very interesting, although it gives rise to many follow up questions (how does proclamation work when obviously contradicted by lower clergy? Who gets to question which parts of the dogma? If everything is up for question, what is the commonality of the religion?) I'm afraid we'll have to leave for another time if we're to get anywhere on the primary topic.
You cite Collins:
"If someone converts you, they persuade you to change your religious or political beliefs. You can also say that someone converts to a different religion."
I'll give you that it's the weakest of the lot, but I read "converts to a different religion" as having you leave the first to then adhere to another.
As we previously established atheism isn't a religion I find it hard to see that you could have been converted.
If we look at the usage for beliefs, Collins isn't very clear if the definition includes "into another belief", luckily the other three are and include the new belief in their descriptions.
So, I seem to find that the lexical definition for conversion does indeed include another positive end belief, in contrast to what you claimed the dictionary people were about. I was curious if there were subtle differences in world view behind this, but currently I understand this more as a difference in how we understand definitions rather than how we view questioning.
According to the first page of my search the Cambridge, Merriam Webster, Dictionary.com, Collins dictionaries all imply conversion needs also adopting a new belief/opinion/religion.
I feel it's a commonly propagated lie within certain religions that atheism is a belief, which of course it's not (it's the lack of belief, like most people have about fairies, flat Earth or the Mayan end of the world). I don't know if your mention of this statement is that you agree or not, but if you do - how do you arrive at the position that questioning is being the same as (lexical) conversion?
I get that a large part of Abrahamitic religions in particular is to obey and not question, as well as theism being necessary to be accepted in the religion (and not a heretic); is it that the questioning positions you outside of the religion and thus deconverts? Is that how you arrive at the "change"?
I apologise for the clumsy phrasing, but if we're reading the same text and coming to different conclusions, I must assume we're using words differently and would need to backtrack to find our last point of common understanding.
At 19 years it's high time to be curious about nsfw stuff. For most people it starts way earlier than that (from 7 typically), but it takes a while to figure out what it means and what it's safe to do about, even more so in a high-strung environment (which religious people often create).
Consuming porn is entirely normal, and an avenue of exploring sexuality. It's not a very realistic depiction: it's based in reality but about as accurate as getting career guidance from movies. That still leaves plenty to learn about what goes where, explore fantasy, different expressions of pleasure/lust/sexuality, besides the option of choosing material that is more real and/or educational.
If the material isn't appealing to you, feel free to change what you consume. Some porn and some expression might not be for you at this time; some will be from shame or ideas from your upbringing, some will just be from you and your sexuality. Try other topics, other creators, other styles, etc. Maybe it's the amount of penis, or botox, or the impersonality, or the body type, or the lighting, or anything really.
Consider trying different media formats, like video clips, movies, images, but also literature (stories, captions, books), anime/manga, erogames, chat, audio recordings (asmr, audiobooks, dramatisations, recordings), etc. I highly recommend using your own mind as well, daydreaming and/or even more actively exploring fantasy.
Of course also explore your body and responses. It's also a lovely thing to do together with people, and much easier if you can feel relaxed and safe enough with eachother to just explore/try stuff. Use barriers, learn about safer practices, and take care of yourself and eachother as you adventure together.
Same for unregulated systems, only without transparency, limits or recourse
That is precisely the point, well spotted.
Your description was clear, our experiences seem to differ.
In case you're worried we have different frames of reference: The way you're trying to implicate Islam in denigrating terms is not respectful. In analogous phrasing, the Christian denominations are based around glorifying human sacrifice.
My experience is the opposite, it's always Christians bringing it up, often by judging others' actions out loud.
Never had any of the other Abrahamitic denominations try to convert me, although I was approached by a Hare Krishna recruiter once.
A close gene, ftfy; homonyms can be tricky