philechat

ax:

Careful. They picked and chose scriptures to fit into modern perceptions, while abandoning others that were outdated or irrational.

We always pick and choose informations we want to look at in books. Just think of how the philosophy of Nietzsche was interpreted to support Nazism...

And when we pointed out the other passages in the Bible, they would usually cry out how "we quote out of context" or "this passage is metaphorical". But again...how do they know (Did God tell them? Modern science?)...quite similar to the case of Nietzsche isn't it?

I need to go the the hospital now because my jaws just disconnected from laughter. People certainly twist scriptures around don't they?

[ June 27, 2002: Message edited by: philechat ]</p>

Mad Kally

A summation of the Christian belief system in a nutshell:

Q: How do we know that God exists?
A: The Bible tells us so.
Q: Why do we believe the Bible?
A: We believe it because it is the Word of God.
Q: How do we know that it is the Word of God?
A: The Bible itself says so.

It's circular reasoning brought to a high art. The snag is, when you're going in circles you don't get anywhere.

ax

The scary thing is, I've put that to other xians and they say " yea, so what?, thats right!.."
......yelling at a deaf person....

HelenM

Originally posted by ax:

I just can't seem to do the whole "xianity" thing anymore

ax if you can't, you can't.

How can that be your fault?

, I want to believe God exists, I pray and cry my eyes out every night for a sign-but nothing happens!

It sounds like a rough ride

I hope that this is just a transition time for you and you'll reach a point of being more settled into whatever beliefs or lack thereof, you're headed towards.

I have big problems with things like "original sin" and stuff, and all the xians that I talk to about it cannot understand it!! It's weird, they just cannot comprehend what's going on!! It seems all my futile attempts to explain these things to them is simmilar to yelling at a deaf person (I think I heard that saying here somewhere).

*sigh*

I have been misunderstood a lot, myself and I have to keep telling myself that it's not that they are deliberately misunderstanding - they evidently really can't understand. So, yeah, like a deaf person can't hear no matter how loud you shout - that would be a good analogy, in fact. But please bear in mind that the deaf person simply can't hear. He or she didn't stick ear plugs in just because you showed up. It's not a personal thing that they can't understand. Although it might seem that way if they try to imply that you're at fault in some way

It's good to know that there are other people out there who have experienced what I'm going through.

I'm glad you're finding them.

It's hard enough to have difficult questions/experiences without on top of it, having no-one to talk to about them, who understands.

love
Helen

Tercel

Well Ax, you said you wanted stories from xians as well as non-xians, so here it is:

The story of my life. (At least so far as it pertains to religion anyway)
Firstly, I don't like in America but New Zealand (just east of Australia), so I suppose I see the world a bit differently to some of you guys.
I was brought up in a Baptist Church, and all my family is Christian. However that said, I don't think my parents are fundamentalists - we never really discussed religion much at home. I actually have no real idea of the exact beliefs of my parents. My Mum I have heard being critical of "God healed me" testimonies, and Dad I have heard be quite open about Evolution. So despite going to a rather evangelical Church, I rather suspect my parents are quite liberal. But it's their business and I haven't asked them about it. Anyway this is just all background information - my parents have not played any significant role in my faith.

Anyway I went to sunday-school at Church. We covered the stories in the Bible, and I learnt them all eagerly. I'm not sure it's true to say "I believed the stories". I think I was more interested in learning things - in simply knowing all - than in actually believing anything. However I did actually believe that God existed, and I spent a fair amount of time praying to Jesus etc. Ironically, my sunday-school education covered Bible stories as opposed to Christian Doctrine. Thus I finished it knowing all about David and Goliath etc, but knowing nothing on things like the Trinity and Church History. (When I once later went to another Church which used a litergy, and I saw the Nicene & Athanasian Creeds I thought it was pretty dodgy stuff to have Jesus as God.)
Perhaps the most noteable event at Sunday School (though at the time I thought nothing of it) was the one lesson I had by the Head Elder (who was a scientist) on Evolution - namely on why Theistic (God-guided) Evolution was perfectly okay to believe. Looking back at it, I could have sworn the Church was a Fundamentalist one and I have absolutely no idea how this guy managed to be an Elder and manage to teach a Sunday-School lesson like this. And that was my Sunday School education, by which time I was now 12 or so.
The other things that stands out from near that time was at Boys Bridage (I don't know whether you Americans will have heard of that, but it's like Scouts, Girl Guides etc). During one of the Christian Education lessons, we looked at the beginning of Acts - in which Judas dies by falling to his death in a field. This puzzled me, as being rather a know-it-all I remembered that Judas died by hanging. A bit of searching located the relevant passage in Matthew and confirmed my memory. So I went and asked the Boys Bridage captain (who did -and still has- my utmost respect, and is probably one of the most dedicated Christians I have ever met insofar as the time he spends on others in things like Boys Bridage) about it. I completely expected him to have an answer and probably expected to get a metaphorical pat on the head for being intelligent enough to find this, so I was suprised when his reply was to the effect that yes there were contradictions in the Bible and we had to have faith. As far as I was concerned that was an answer and I went away thinking no more about it...

I don't know what started it off, (It might have been by reading CS Lewis' books, now I think about it) but when I was about 15 or 16 I went through a stage of questioning. My strengths were maths, science, logic, computers etc and I wanted to know absolutely everything about those areas. (Which ensured I was pretty good at those things, and I aways got in the top 1% or won prizes in nationwide tests. Perhaps also worth noting is that my favourite part was Problem Solving - using logic and maths to prove various theorems and solve puzzles. By this stage I was in an advanced group outside school time with a retired university lecturer tutoring us. If nothing else, it taught me how to think logically, give sound proofs, and perhaps most useful since - to be able to spot flaws in other people's logical arguments at a distance of two miles.) Wanting to know everything I wanted to know how the Bible related to science. I wasn't quite sure how to go about finding books on this sort of thing, but I eventually discovered information on this subject could be found at the Christian Bookstore under the category of Apologetics, and even better my parents had a bookshelf at home full of such books from when they were younger.
You become what you read, I think. By the end of reading those rather biased books I had become a Creationist and an Inerrantist and I thought I knew it all. I knew all there was to know about interpreting Genesis 1 and how science agreed with Creationism and 1000 reasons why evolution was wrong. So I had done a 180 degree turn from an Evolution-isn't-an-issue Errantist to an Creationist Fundamentalist. (I don't recall ever seeing any Young-Earth material though). I'd also learnt about how the Gospels were written in 40AD, how archeology supported all parts of the Bible, how the evil Bible-Colleges were teaching otherwise etc.

After several months of intensive reading it was all so clear to me: Christianity was obviously 100% Authentic Truth. Over the next couple of years I kept up my reading. Eventually I realised that I knew a heck of a lot of stuff and there were these people out there called Atheists who didn't believe: I could use my new-found knowledge to convert them easily! I got my chance immediately. At a message board I had been posting to someone started a thread about religion - perfect. An atheist suggested the Bible had contradictions and gave a few. I explained them no trouble. I explained how evolution was absurd. Only it didn't seem to wash. Perhaps the driving force behind my problem with evolution is that in my own country it largely got taken for granted, and I was upset that no one was actually looking critically at it. However a combination of a religiously undecided biologist and the atheist managed to at least convince me that evolution had merit and that evolution was critically examined in America by those that taught it. As a result of that discussion I went back to my original "it doesn't matter" position on evolution.

A related Philosophy board got started up, and that served as a good platform to discuss religion -God being the ultimate philosophical question. I went for the logical arguments on this board, we argued the accuracy of Genesis 1 with science, the Cosmological Argument, the Ontological Argument, about whether there could be a God given the suffering in the world etc.
I had started university by this time (Doing a major in Computer Science, but also with as much Maths as possible and a bit of Physics, and I got direct entry to second year as I had averaged 90% in my last year of High-School), and I discovered the university had a library with a very large number of books on Christianity. Somewhere around this stage I lost my Inerrancy bent, I don't recall when or why, but I again realised that the Bible definately had errors and remembered what my Boys Brigade leader had said some years before.

But what was it that made people be atheists, that puzzled me. One of the atheists had given me a link to an atheist site, and when I browsed around a bit I found a link to the forums at the Sec-Web. My primary reason for being there was to learn: What were the atheist's arguments. Especially at that time I was interested in the Bible and Archeology - so to the BC&A forum I went. I got a little bit of a shock as I realised quickly that some of the fundamentalist stuff I had been reading had been rather dishonest. But being extremely open minded and willing to change with the evidence it didn't take me long to drop most of the fundamentalist rubbish and recognise it for what it was. At the time the main posters were Nomad and Layman and to a lesser extent Bede and Metacrock on the side of the Christians vs Rodahi and Michael and to a lesser extent Toto, Iptrich and BobK on the side of the Atheists. I occasionally commented on something that was within my league. However for the most time I lurked. Reading debates is good because it very quickly gives you a feel of the way the land lies - what is accepted by both sides, where the points of difference are, what the evidence either way for those points is. It was soon clear that Nomad and Layman had about twice as much learning and thirty times more intelligence between them than their opponents. -I didn't know all the facts they were arguing, but it was certainly clear which side was capable of making sound logical arguments based on the evidence being discussed and drawing intelligent and well judged conclusions - as well as which side wasn't. To put it plainly: The atheists did not win.

After a few months I began to participate more in the discussions, and it became even more clear if possible, that being an atheist was just not something I was cut out to be if the ones on that board were anything to go by. Of course I kept reminding myself that I shouldn't judge atheism based on its adherants just as I wouldn't want anyone judging Christianity based on the fundamentalists. I think I managed to keep my mind sufficiently free of such bias, that I was capable of reasonably comparing the two systems based on the logical arguments alone.
Many of my beliefs were still not really formed, about the accuracy of the Bible, the afterlife, God etc. After a few more months I gradually moved over to the Existence of God board. Really it was Theological issues I was interested in debating. I now understood the issues about the Bible and Archeology, and it was up to me to go away and read the Scholars on the subject (the University library has proved helpful on that front) in my own time. My grasp of Theology was stunningly bad, given my complete lack of it in Sunday School and minimal reading on the subject. So I argued about Omniscience, Omnipotence are they possible, is God self-contradictory etc. (Since then I have realised that it doesn't really matter if God has exactly those attributes or not: All anyone means by "God" is something along the lines of "a powerful creator being sort of thing", which seems unlikely to be impossible)

After perhaps half a year to a year or so on the Existence of God board, plus an incredibly large amount of thinking and rethinking my position and the evidence etc as well as reading tons. I like to think I've developed at least a moderately consistent world-view and can substantially rationally defend my position with good arguments and accurate information. I think my current position is pretty stable and unlikely to change much in the future.
By default I have sort of become a Christian Apologist. However it seems to me that many professional Apologists give one side of the story and some very biased, misleading and even downright false information. This seems to be the case for both atheists and theists alike unfortunately. The truth has sometimes seemed pretty hard to pin down, and I've had to wade through a lot of lies from both sides, but I'm getting there.

So in the end I think my world-view for the rest of my life is almost sorted. I'm not sure what denomination fits me best. I'm a liberal and I think most of the OT is pretty much bunk, and that the most important thing about Christianity is it's love thy neighbour teachings and self-improvement. Yes I tend to "pick and choose" - I call it "being intelligent".
Of course I'm not decided on everything yet. I still don't really know what to believe about Hell - save I completely reject the fundamentalist idea that it is for people who don't believe the Gospel. Universalism sounds okay, save I think there needs to be a place for those who completely and utterly reject all love and everything that is good. And I rather think Hell will be inside those people's own heads, not some firey punishment.
I've discovered I've got a particular disliking for Calvinism, but Arminianism seems okay. I haven't quite figured out what planet the Catholics are on as regards Mary, the saints and Transubstantiation, and I don't really know enough about what the Orthodox believe to comment, save that what I've heard about them sounds all good.
So, I'm still learning, but more and more it's by reading scholarly books, the ancient Church Writers, boks on Church doctrine, and I'm beginning to wonder how much more I can get out of this message board.

Anyway, hope that helps understand me a bit better.
Tercel

Tercel

Keeping my previous post in mind, I hope you guys can see where I'm coming from and why I'm making the comments I am here.

<strong>Stardust's</strong> explanation of why she is an atheist intrigued me. It seemed to contain all the typical things I see in atheist testimonies: Family problems, bad experiences with the Church, an initial unwillingness to question the faith, a dependence on your own thought + prayer to solve difficulties and not reading to discover other people's answers etc. Seeing this so often in testimonies here makes me wonder to just what extent thes sort of emotional problems play a part over reason in people deconversion.
I'm by no means suggesting that they did in Stardust's case, and indeed reading what she wrote, she seems to me to be nothing other than a person who has honestly searched for truth.
I must say that I disagree with your final conclusion Stardust, but I respect your decision.

<strong>Ax</strong>, I would certainly agree that for many adults God acts much like Santa. Religion is the opiate for the masses etc. However, remember that this has no bearing on the question of whether God actually exists or whether religion is actually true. They are different questions entirely.
My advice is doubt all you like and keep examining the evidence. I agree with the Thomas Paine quote, question with boldness and God will approve. Don't forget to read Christian literature about your questions too. The Christian tradition is vast, and you are by no means the only one who has tried to think logically about your faith. Whatever the question you have, there will have been many books written on the subject. There are plenty of Christians out there who experienced what you're going through.
You said:
<strong>I want to believe God exsists, I pray and cry my eyes out every night for a sign-but nothing happens!</strong>
This worries me more than slightly. Why do you think God needs to give you a sign? Even in the Bible God's signs are pretty special things and are not doled out to everyone on demand. -And I don't believe half the supposed signs in the Bible actually happened. Why do you need a sign then? -To make you feel better? Isn't that just a bit selfish? I'm sorry but the message of Christianity is about love for others not getting God to do some magic to make you feel better about it all. The only prayers I think God always answers are ones asking him to show you some sin in your life so that you can improve yourself, and to help you have a more caring heart for other people.
<strong>I have big problems with things like "original sin" and stuff, and all the xians that I talk to about it cannot understand it!!</strong>
That's not surprising. I've discovered that lack of quality Christian teaching was not confined to my Sunday School but is world-wide, mores the pity. You really want to be reading books on the subject rather than asking people who don't know.
I'll try to help you, but I'm not exactly an expert on Christian theology either, although Original Sin is something I've covered recently. I don't claim to fully understand it. However it looks like the standard view of the Catholics, Protestants & Orthodox is that Original Sin relates to our corrupted human nature and separation from God. It is not supposed to be something we are guilty of (since we didn't do it), but nethertheless affects us - similar to a disease. Basically, we're human and we're not perfect. Some will relate this to a literal Fall, others find various metaphorical interpretations. (Most noteable is St Origen's doctrine of us sinning in a pre-existence.)
The Calvinists, I believe, go one step further and hold that we are <strong>guilty</strong> of original sin. Add one more to the list of Calvinist doctrines I don't like...
However the Catholics and the Orthodox don't seem to agree that they agree and the Orthodox seem to think the Catholics are like the Calvinists, while the Catholics seem to think that the Orthodox are like the non-Calvinist Protestants and that they both don't properly believe in Original Sin. It looks to me like everyone except the Calvinists are saying the same thing, but don't recognise that each group is using a slightly different terminology. They are all in violent agreement...

I'm not sure what we think about Original Sin really matters though: Paul makes it clear (see Romans 5:12 and onwards) that whatever effects our "union with Adam" might have on the human race, Christ has undone that and done far more.

I really recommend you find some actual books that discuss the subject. However if you want web-links.
The Catholic Encyclopedia rather complicated article on <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11312a.htm" target="_blank">Original Sin</a>
The Protestant Tektonics Apologetics site has <a href="http://www.tektonics.org/origsin.html" target="_blank">this article</a>, though I'm not sure I entirely approve of his treatment or explanation. (But you should be reading multiple opinions and coming to your own conclusion, not just believing me!)
And <a href="http://www.oca.org/pages/orth_chri/Q-and-A_OLD/St-Augustine-and-Original-Sin.html" target="_blank">this site</a> gives a Orthodox view of why the West (ie Prostants + Catholics) is wrong.

Hope that helps - though you didn't actually say what your problem with Original Sin was.

God Bless,
Tercel

Tercel

I can't remember where I heard the following sentiment ("Yes Minister" maybe?), but I've found it works:
People put in the title what they need to tell you.
If something's obviously true and is completely self-evident, then the readers don't need to be told it. The less self-evident it is, the more it needs to be implied, to the point where if it's lacking completely it needs to be explicitly stated. Hence they put in the title what they want you to think but which is complete bolax.

Hence, we get things like politicians telling us how modern and new their policies are when they're the same tired old ones (If they were new we wouldn't need to be told), the "people's republic" of China, groups like the Jesus Seminar writing "The Scholar's Version" (a translation so crap -it really is, that the reader needs to be told it's good) etc.

I think this Emma Goldman quote fits right into the same category. It's not at all obvious that atheism affirms these things (Namely since it doesn't IMO), and hence we need to be explicitly told it does...

But just look at what it's saying:
"To disbelieve in the gods, is at the same time to affirm life..."
How on earth do you affirm "life"? Is that utterly meaningless crap or what?

"...purpose..."
To dis-believe in the gods is to affirm purpose? How does that follow? To dis-believe in the gods is generally to affirm that the world exists for no reason other than chance and when we die we won't exist any more. How is to affirm that we are here for no purpose, and that it will one day (in a few billion years) be as if we've never existed at all, to affirm purpose? Surely the writer meant "affirm meaninglessness?"

"...and beauty."
I'm at a loss here. How does belief or otherwise in the gods affect our perception of beauty?

[ June 27, 2002: Message edited by: Tercel ]

[ June 27, 2002: Message edited by: Tercel ]</p>

Tercel

Ax, my thoughts on your link:
<a href="http://www.bibletruths.org/wordgod.html" target="_blank">http://www.bibletruths.org/wordgod.html</a>

Not off to a good start are they?
Generally no. For the most part the Bible uses the science of the day and hence gets it wrong.
Their examples of hygiene and circumcision are true though, as far as I am aware.

As far as Prophecy goes, it's not a subject I've studied. The atheists here will probably give you a few links to arguments which will argue that either the prophecy was vague, wrong, or written after the event. They're probably worth a read. Remember that they'll be biased though, so take them with two grains of salt. Seeing one writer argue that since a prophecy was too accurate so must have been written after the event, and the other arguing that the same prophesy was so vague that any event would fit is good for a laugh.
My general view towards the OT makes me think most of the prophesy in it is probably crap. However, as I said, I haven't done any serious study of the issue.

Prophesies about Jesus I am a bit more sympathetic towards, although remember that these prophesies were known about before hand and some of these things were what was expected of a messiah, others are not clear prophesies and could have been read into Jesus' life later.
However the Suffering Servant passages in Isaiah are somewhat impressive (especially the last: 52:13 - 53:12), as is Jeremiah's New Covenant (31:31-34).
I'm not saying that these are or aren't prophesies, what I'm saying that as far as evidence for Christianity goes, prophesy is not particularly brilliant as it can be explained away relatively easily.

I don't think much of this section of the page.

Overall, I think their arguments are pretty bad and they assume most of what they're trying to prove.

God Bless,
Tercel

Rev. Joshua

Several things helped me move through a time of (essentially) agnosticism back into one of faith:

- reading Christian authors who did not settle for easy answers and who rejected simple biblicism (Frederick Buechner was perhaps chief among these, but Will Campbell deserves a mention)

- meeting/studying with/praying with/observing people of authentic, life-changing faith

- hitting a couple of points in my life where I realized that there had to be more to the world than our senses and brains could process - and realizing that there was a vacuum in my life without faith

- understanding the role of Scripture as pointing us toward God rather than having been produced by God

Many of my friends, even some who went through seminary, came out of similar experiences and ended up atheists or at best pantheists. I was wired differently.

Joshua

Mad Kally

We have this curious spectacle: daily the trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of ironies, which he has acquired at second-hand and adopted without examination, to a trained congregation which accepts them without examination, and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at himself. It does seem as if we ought to be humble when we are at a bench-show, and not put on airs of intellectual superiority there.

Mark Twain, Thoughts of God