-Jay-

OK. Hang on. The way you've worded this calls to mind an image of some sort of Apologist Headquarters that passes out special missions to individuals. (Hey, Josh - go trash that Documentary Hypothesis....) As entertaining an image as that is, I'm guessing that's not exactly what you mean. In the interest of clarity, are you referring to the capital "A" Apologists, i.e. McDowell, who have published books on the market, or to the lowercase "a" apologists - the Campus Crusade For Christ kids who have never really bothered to question their beliefs and are content to do whatever an authority figure claims? (clarification - I know I'm reducing shades of gray to black and white here, but I'm trying to get a handle on where Martian Astronomer is coming from. Great handle, by the way...)

Again, your words point towards a centralization of apologetic effort that you might not intend. I know there are broad subjects - evolution, inerrancy, secularization of what many conservative Christians perceive as a Christian nation - that come up frequently in apologetic efforts. I have no doubt that at the level of the McDowells and Strobels (and Dembskis and Behes on the evolution side) that there is at least an informal agenda. But what about the guy who's writing letters to the editor of his local paper? I'd suspect he's getting his talking points somewhat indirectly, maybe from his pastor during Sunday sermon. Are you suggesting something more deliberate?

So it gets the chicks. I shouldn't be surprised.

Thanks for the comments. I look forward to any additional insight you might have. And welcome to the forums!

regards,

NinJay

Martian Astronomer

Okay, I guess that I did sort of make it sound like the whole field of apologetics was centralized; this was certainly not really my intention. Like you said, though, there are certain positions a typical fundamentalist might endorse. If an Apologist (capital 'A') like McDowell or Strobel endorses a doctrinal viewpoint, any amateur apologists (small 'a') belonging to a church or campus group holds that holds a similar position will feel that they must accept the arguments in favor of that position.

I don't think, though, that you can always make a dichotomy between big 'A' and small 'a' apologists when talking about how social pressures influence doctrine. I'm fully aware that some people experience doctrinal shifts as they study up on theology and apologetics, but if a person is "saved" in college and decides to go to seminary, it might make perfect sense for him to go to a seminary recommended by his campus pastor simply because it has similar doctrine. There are denominational systems in place to take a child in Sunday School and raise him up to be a PhD.-level Apologist without him ever straying from the denominational party line. The point is that whether he's Josh McDowell or the guy who writes to the local paper and presents Pascal's Wager like it's something new, he's getting his doctrine from someone.

Thanks, I was wondering if anyone would get the reference.

Thanks for the friendly reception. I think I'm going to like it here.

Keith&Co.

II Peter 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.


Um...have a hard time seeing that the natural world, all by itself, clearly indicates that an invisible being that is divorced from time exists, and (I assume, but he Einstein reference) that this is supported by relativity...

Ray Moscow

If you were ever whole-heartedly part of a religious group that takes a literal view of the Bible, you might understand the tremendous emotional pressure to take this sort of approach.

Eternity stretches before you, with either eternal bliss or everlasting torture for not only you, but everyone you know and care about and everyone you will ever know and care about -- plus billions more. And one's eternal fate, and the fate of everyone you influence, depends on holding to some proposition such as "Jesus is the Son of God", but which depends on the Bible being the accurate Word of God -- since that's the only way that one can be sure of this saving proposition.

No intellectual price is too high to maintain that fragile hold on "eternal bliss", or to risk "eternal torment" by doubting it.

This is not a recipe for intellectual honesty.

Ray

-Jay-

I'd like to use Ray's post as an opportunity to throw out a related question. To the former fundamentalists here, and those that may be wavering:

What happened that was significant enough to push you into a position of doubt? Was it a single event? A series of events? Going to college and interacting with people of different worldviews? Reading a book? I know the answers must be varied, and in many cases extremely personal, but if a few folks don't mind sharing, I'd appreciate it.

regards,

NinJay

Ray Moscow

For me it was a very gradual process, but the biggest shock was discovering errors in the Bible for which I never found a satisfactory explanation. The more I read and studied the good book, the more errors and problems I found, and the more lame the apologetic books came to seem.

I did spend quite a few years as a liberal Christian with my "faith" gradually ebbing before I released that I just had none left.

Ray

Martian Astronomer

I'd probably say "all of the above."

Probably the biggest thing for me, though, was living in different evangelical subcultures for 19 years or so and seeing many, many people get 'burned.' I've known quite a few families that were hard-core fundamentalists for years but gradually got more liberal as they progressively learned that their position was untenable. I've watched groups take administrative action that they were sure was "guided by the Holy Spirit," only to have it collapse in utter failure. I've seen the way in which people who are happier and have more "spiritual abandon" become much more popular in church groups, while those who aren't always radiating the "Joy of the Lord" get marginalized. I watched several "on fire" people go through hard times and fall away, and seen how the believers shunned them. I've had good friends of mine go though horrible breakups that left them emotionally destroyed, only to have pastors complain about their lack of spiritual strength when they were not over it in two weeks. A couple of years ago, when my mother (who was one of the most faithful people that I've known) was dying of cancer, someone in her church took it upon himself to inform the pastor that the reason that she wasn't healed was because she didn't have enough faith. My father later got in a disagreement with the pastor, was accused of being "arrogant," and left the church.

There were other ways that reality did not line up with the worldview supported by evangelical Christianity. (I really started to see this after I went to college.) Not all non-christians were miserable. Not all atheists were hiding behind "smokescreens." The evidence for evolution was much stronger than I was taught, and the evidence for the veracity of scripture was much weaker. The components of a charismatic service became more and more obvious as showmanship, and despite all of the claims of people "feeling God's presence," there were no miracles, no real prophecies, and in general there was no real change in people's character.

It took a long time for all of this to click together, but it eventually the fact that reality and Christianity didn't line up made me start to dig deeper into apologetics, doctrine, and the history of Christianity, and to not just accept answers if I didn't think that they made sense. You can probably guess how that turned out.

[A note to Christians who might be reading this:

Reading the above, you might get the impression that I'm simply disillusioned with a particular church or campus group, and that that is the real reason that I don't believe. That's not entirely accurate. I had good times in my old groups, and I don't harbor animosity towards most of the members. I merely bring up my experiences because the way that the Church interacts is supposed to show that God is real, and when they fail to meet that standard, it makes one question whether or not God is working there in the first place.]

sky4it

Thanks Ninjay, it is appreciated. :wave:


I will be in and out, lots to do today, talk to you in a while.

peace

notta_skeptic

I decided to become a more faithful Christian and spend more time reading the bible. As I read, I started asking questions I had never asked before as a teenager and a young adult. I saw contradictions in the text (I was an inerrantist) that were not satisfactorily answered by my minister. So I decided to read some books about the bible, and found, to my amazement, that there was more than one version of the bible (Catholic & Protestant springs to mind), that many bible theologians considered that more than one person wrote the first five books of the bible, that the Apostles were not written by following Jesus around and writing down his every word, and there were numerous ideas about the authorship & age of biblical writings (and some books were written but not included in the bible) I had never heard of before. Since so much of what I had been told wasn't true, I started questioning whether any of it was true. When I studied other religions for the first time, I was struck by their similarities. This made me wonder why my religion was the true one and all others were false, when their proponents thought the same way. It was a painful journey (because I really was a true, faithful, born-again Christian for most of my life), and made me angry at organized religion - that it kept so many facts about religion in general and my religion in particular away from questioning adults - and I ended up an atheist. I lost my warm, fuzzy, cared-for picture of god looking out for me in every way in every day, but I gained a sense of being in charge of my own life.

The last straw for me came when my teenaged son attempted suicide. I was told that it was "god's will" for him to die that way if god choose it. I was so mad at the idea that god wanted my son to die that I started wondering what kind of god I worshiped if he killed off depressed teenagers for the hell of it.

ck1

notta,

thank you for sharing your story. Hope your son is doing well.