Rational Ag

Howdy,

I posted this earlier today at ChristianForums, so I thought I would post it here as well for all of you heathens.

Why I am not a Christian

Feel free to read through it if you like. It's about 10 pages, so it's likely longer reading than most would enjoy on a message board (which is part of the reason I made a pdf file out of it and hosted it off-site). I would love any comments, thoughts, or suggestions any of you have about my ramblings.

It's nothing all of you haven't read before at one point or another. I just sat down one day and started writing/collecting ideas and ended up with a document.

Happy reading!

-Rational Ag

Ojuice5001

Regarding #26, the one about how spiritual experiences are supposedly invariable confirmations of what people already believe:

My first experience of the Roman goddess Postverta (goddess of the past) did not confirm either my culture's Christian beliefs or the beliefs I had had before. It was a great insight into my nature, but one that I had relatively little idea of before the experience.

The experience was one of a being who rules my life, and wants that which she rules to be characterized by tradition, personal conservatism, repetition, nostalgia, and returns to previous states of affairs. I have always admired these things more than other Americans, but before Postverta revealed herself, I never would have thought to base my self-paradigm on them.

Postulating this kind of goddess of the past explains plenty of oddities and differences in my life, and that's a major reason I accept it. But the other side of the coin is that this kind of thought played a minor role in my self-image before 1999, the year of my first experience of Postverta. Before then, I was content to regard any personal oddity as just that, and think of myself as a guy with a lot of oddities. That now seems like an empty explanation, compared to understanding that I'm different because I have been ruled by the Roman goddess Postverta.

The point I'm making is that my spiritual experience explains much, and that it was a cause rather than an effect of an intellectual understanding of who I am. And of course my experience was not the same as that of my culture. I was raised Christian, grew up with an uncritical idea that the Roman gods were fictions, and in fact didn't come to the idea of Postverta being a Roman goddess for two years after I first knew her.

So this means that my polytheistic experiences, and those of other people, have explanatory value and thus should be accepted.

Rational Ag

Surely you would accept that you are not unique in having a different religious ideology than those in your particular culture. Although it's normative to have the same ideology as the particular culture you live in, there are MANY people who end up otherwise. I don't see how that somehow makes those experiences any more valid than any other.

I'm an atheist in a predominantly Christian culture. Because I see the world differently than the cultural norm doesn't make my viewpoint any more valid.

-Rational Ag

lpetrich

Nice article, though it could use some clarification in spots.

Homer's Iliad tells the story of an important episode in the Trojan War, one that featured intervention by the deities of Mt. Olympus. It also features bronze armor and boar's-tusk helmets, which had existed in Mycenaean times, 1500-1200 BCE, but which had gone out of style when the Iliad was written down, around 700 BCE.

And many of the cities of Greek mythology; Troy, Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Knossos, etc.; have turned out to be real Mycenaean-era cities. In particular, Knossos turned out to have a mazy palace, the original Labyrinth, with bull-riding practiced in its central courtyard.

Homer's Odyssey is the story of the Trojan war hero Odysseus, who tries to find his way home after the war. He runs into a variety of perils, including:

The Cyclopes, one-eyed giant cannibals.
The Laestrygonians, more "normal" cannibals that live in a long rocky bay with steep cliffs and perpetual daylight.
Scylla, a multi-long-necked, multi-headed dragon who likes to pluck men out of ships and eat them.
Charybdis, a sea monster who sucks in water and spits it out again, three times a day
The Sirens, women who sing irresistably seductive songs
Circe, who turns some of his men into pigs, and not just in a behavioral sense.

Some of these may be "real" history, after a fashion. The Cyclopes could easily have been inspired by elephant skulls. The Laestrygonians look like they live in a Scandinavian fjord, complete with 24-hour daylight during the summer, the best time for sailing. Scylla may have been inspired by an observation tower for spotting fish, and Charybdis by some treacherous currents near some other rocks.

BTW, I'm using "Homer" as a convenient label for the anonymous authors of those epics, which were transmitted orally long before they were written down. And people from several cities claimed that Homer had come from their city(!)

Back to the main subject, there is at least as much evidence for the historicity of Greek mythology as there is for the historicity of the early parts of the Bible -- and likely more.

Looks like I'll have to add this to my case-for-Hellenic-paganism document.

lpetrich

I think that what Rational Ag and I are suggesting is an inverse of an apologetic put forth by the early Xtian theologian Origen, best known for having followed Matthew 19:12 to the letter.

He asked that if one believes the stories of the siege of Troy, Romulus and Remus, and so forth, that why believe those and not those of the Bible?

The usual freethinker position is a precise inverse of Origen's, that if one disbelieves the story that Romulus and Remus were sons of a god and a virgin, that one ought to also disbelieve the story that Jesus Christ was the son of a god and a virgin.

Turning to religious experience, people have had visions and other experiences of a variety of deities and other such beings. Back in the early Roman Empire, the philosopher Lucretius had been aware of this, and he attempted to account for the visions of deities that many people would have. And Lucretius was a follower of Epicurus and a philosophical predecessor of many of us Internet Infidels.

Ojuice5001

Lucretius was in a worse position than modern atheists. The religions he was against were true, but modern atheists concentrate their efforts on Christianity, which is not only false but a particularly easy target. That's why he was so much less successful than someone like Voltaire.

And Rational Ag, in my first post, "different from my own culture" wasn't my only point. My main point was that the experience of Postverta caused a major improvement in my understanding of myself. Before, my self-concept was a more adolescent one that said merely, "I have a lot of habits that most people don't." Believing that I'm in contact with a goddess of the past gives me actual insights into myself. The experience could have been anything, and yet it turned out to be useful for self-comprehension. That's my main point; a formatting imperfection must be what gave you the idea that something else was.

And I, of course, believe a third variant on the relation of Jesus and Romulus and Remus. I think that if someone believes that Jesus was the son of a god and a virgin, they should believe that Romulus and Remus were the sons of a god and a virgin. Really, is it that incredible that such a thing happened twice? I don't think so.

Tercel

~sigh~ If I ever find out who was responsible for abusing the word "faith" in this way, I'll have to build a time machine and hunt them down and shoot them. "Faith" as it's used in the Bible variously means:
1. Trust.
2. A state of being in union with God whereby you share in His nature of Love.

The idea of "having faith" as meaning trying to force yourself to believe without evidence is an absurd modern fundamentalist excuse for them knowing no decent logical arguments.

Rational Ag

Tercel,

There are actually quite a few modern uses of the word "Faith".

Faith can mean:

Expectation based on previous experience, such as faith that my car will start the next time I try, or that the sun will come up tomorrow morning. For each of these events, I have different amounts of "faith", or expectation, that they will actually happen.

However, faith (or expectation), can be placed in a person or event that doesn't deserve such faith. I can have faith that my office-mates will bring breakfast tomorrow. Since one of them brought kolaches last year, I could have faith that they would bring them tomorrow. I would be placing my faith on someone that likely wouldn't come through, based on the history of the situation.

Faith can be placed in just about anything. The real question is: is it rational to place faith (or expectation) in something that isn't trustworthy?

-Rational Ag

Ruy Lopez

Rational ag;

I haven't read what seems to be your splendid article. I intend to. The article reminds me Bertrand Russel's of the same title: "Why I am not a Christian"

http://www.geocities.com/lmc2124/russell_whynot.html

Will be back. Regards.

Radorth

I could have written Bertrands "article" myself, it contains so few arguments which are not from the 19th century. He's a real yawn. His dependence on negative Catholic church history and dogma, while basically ignoring Protestant reformations and the original words of Jesus tells me he keeps his own head buried in the sand.

If we are going to use examples of behavior and oppressive dogma, let us compare both the good and the evil ones on both sides. What has Marx' atheist dogma brought to the world? Almost nothing but suffering and oppression. One can find examples of bad and useless atheist dogma of much later origin than that the Catholic church. Since St Bertrand's preaching ended not so long ago, we have seen few examples of change in ANYBODY's behavior because of it.

Virtually all skeptics end such articles with a call to apply reason and willpower to our problems, to overcome our weaknesses by conscious effort. There's nothing new here, though Russell preaches ad nauseum as though it were. It's all been tried before, and we can find examples of Christians taking enormous responsibility, not only for themselves, but whole classes of people. Finney is a prime example. At one time, his benevolent organizations' budgets together exceeded the federal budget.

That said, wouldn't it be nice if we could find the best examples of atheist or Christian goodness, and follow them? One of the reasons I am a Christian is that the examples of "taking personal responsibility" shown by the early Quakers, the Methodists, the Christian Commission and its leaders, (whose names are written in heaven but which elude me)Beecher, Finney, Seymour, King, etc. Christians were the first to publish the poems of slaves, and graduate black women from college, while Ingersoll preached the value of "reason" and whined he would have been president but for the "progressive" works in his library. Atheists and deists did many good things, but the deists did more IMO, for they did believe in a coming judgement- a greater motivator than any atheist "self-motivator" dogma or philosophy apparently.

These generalizations about Christians sitting around waiting to go to heaven, and not taking personal responsibility are simple false, and getting rather old by now, especially when the preaching of Russell, Wells and a thousand others have had no notable effect in fifty years. At least Wells found in Jesus' Gospel an extraordinary social impetus, but he seems one of the few atheists wise and honest enough to make any distinction between Jesus' example and that of less spiritual followers.

I also believe nothing really changes until someone repents. Atheists sit around claiming people moved to acknowlege their weaknesses have no self-respect, but I suspect it is impossible to have any self respect, or really change and grow until we do. Pride and self-righteousness are the real banes of mankind, and another reason I am a Christian is that I do not think anybody but Jesus can free us completely from them. That is what makes nascent Christianity unique. It alone makes both absolutely unecessary.

Rad