Glossolalia is off topic on this thread. Feel free to discuss in doctrinal or, from a skeptical perspective, on a thread in this forum where it is on topic.
Getting back to the topic of Deconversion: Letting go of ones religion, verses that claim God is light with no darkness in him at all or that he is righteous in all his ways and gracious in all his works causes people to overlook, deny or explain away all the many places which show he's the complete opposite.
Giving up critical thinking and avoiding cognitive dissonance do not make for a sound mind.
That idea is nowhere to be found in Gen 22. It is something that was permanently implanted into people’s minds thousands of years later.
It’s not unique or unusual for quite a number of things written in scripture to be more fully revealed or explained some hundreds of years later.
But, seems you have a better understanding and grasp on what happened some 4000 years ago and why it was written in scripture than the apostle Paul did, even though he was noted as being. a Pharisee of the Pharisees…
Opinions and interpretations arise at anytime and forever. Everyone has them, even Pharisees, especially Paul.
What does the text say, when it says it, how it says it, and where it says it? Read the text. Resurrection is not mentioned, nor is it implied.
Abraham's faith, trust, fidelity, obedience was tested. (His beleeeving was NOT tested.) Would he slaughter his beloved, precious son if he was commanded? Turns out he would.
And the commander couldn't be bothered to stop his obedient servant from going all the way. He had to send an angel instead.
Paul was a very skilled and knowledgeable interpreter of Old Testament scripture, which is probably why he was so good at converting Jews to Christianity...
Except of course he wasn't. He was dreadful at it. That's why he turned to the Gentiles. See, it's a lot easier to sell bizarre interpretations of the Old Testament to people who had no fundamental understanding of the scriptures than it is to sell them to people who actually knew what they were talking about.
I mean, it shouldn't strike anyone as odd that the demographic least likely to accept Paul's interpretation of Hebrew Scripture are the very people who most revere Hebrew Scripture.
Seems there are probably a lot of people who think (and call) themselves Christian (either currently, or perhaps in times past), but aren’t really “in Christ” nor are the actually a member in the body of Christ… because in their heart they never did truly and honestly believe that God really did raise Christ from the dead.
Seems to me we have addressed this claim before.
I would ask that we all be respectful of each other's journeys and not seek to second-guess what others believed at different points in their lives.
Frankly, it's rude.
If you can't handle the fact that a sincere Christian had a sincere change of heart, you should sincerely reconsider visiting a forum called Questioning Faith.
I apologize if I misunderstood your point and respectfully request clarification.
Because of the discussion here about Abraham and Jephthah, I'm watching a video called "Human Sacrifice In The Bible: What Apologist Won't Tell You," and the topic of Abraham's nonexistence has just come up. I did a quick Google search and a couple of sites say,
"Most scholars view the patriarchal age, along with the Exodus and the period of the biblical judges, as a late literary construct that does not relate to any particular historical era, and after a century of exhaustive archaeological investigation, no evidence has been found for a historical Abraham." (Abraham – Wikipedia)
"Unglauber shows that there is not a shred of independent evidence for the existence of Abraham, much less for any of the events recorded in Genesis." (Reformed Perspective article “Did Abraham Really Exist?)
This sounds pretty conclusive. I don't want to delve into it right now, but I'm wondering what the opinions of posters are concerning this.
Hi, Socks.Thank you for your post and your well wishes.I’ve always liked your twirling, dancing character.
I want to understand the gist of what you are saying, so I hope you don’t mind that I condensed it down to some main points. Feel free to correct any misunderstandings I may have arrived at.
Concerning your beliefs, personal events and experiences have enabled you to form your view of God, your life, your purpose and who you are.The bible also helps you with this but not necessarily in the sense of needing to commit to a prescribed set of beliefs.
In addition to these, a long history of "miraculous" events have shown you a growing and very wide horizon in which there is a godly presence and what you call "forces of nature" far greater and widespread than I can imagine.
One specific miraculous event became a defining moment in what you believe.There were outside forces involved which benefited your life in a special or particular way.
Over the years you have come to know that your “faith” is your own as it is founded on things you have found to be true and reliable, two of which are Jesus Christ and a redemptive purpose in your life.
Finally, you want to find the sources and instruction which will better make known to you a present reality of which we are all a part – a reality that helps us to best fulfill its purpose for our lives.
Here are some questions I have. Are the forces of nature related to or because of God’s active presence in your life or are the two separate from each other?Do you believe it's always been God or the forces of nature (or both) behind the miraculous events over the years? Do you think Jesus Christ has proven to be true and reliable because you have remained aware of his redemptive work in your life? Is the reality you speak of a kind of benevolent relationship you have with someone or something?
What I seem to be seeing is a physical and spiritual life that is free of any authoritative forces or demands but instead is the result of a genuine thankfulness and a willingness to keep God and Jesus Christ in your life which in turn has allowed you live an authentic and progressive life. I'm interested in knowing about any challenges you've had along the way with your faith and how they were resolved if you are inclined to share them.
Thanks again Socks.
On 5/15/2024 at 8:25 PM, Charity said:
Hi, Socks.Thank you for your post and your well wishes.I’ve always liked your twirling, dancing character.
I want to understand the gist of what you are saying, so I hope you don’t mind that I condensed it down to some main points. Feel free to correct any misunderstandings I may have arrived at.
Concerning your beliefs, personal events and experiences have enabled you to form your view of God, your life, your purpose and who you are.The bible also helps you with this but not necessarily in the sense of needing to commit to a prescribed set of beliefs.
In addition to these, a long history of "miraculous" events have shown you a growing and very wide horizon in which there is a godly presence and what you call "forces of nature" far greater and widespread than I can imagine.
One specific miraculous event became a defining moment in what you believe.There were outside forces involved which benefited your life in a special or particular way.
Over the years you have come to know that your “faith” is your own as it is founded on things you have found to be true and reliable, two of which are Jesus Christ and a redemptive purpose in your life.
Finally, you want to find the sources and instruction which will better make known to you a present reality of which we are all a part – a reality that helps us to best fulfill its purpose for our lives.
Here are some questions I have. Are the forces of nature related to or because of God’s active presence in your life or are the two separate from each other?Do you believe it's always been God or the forces of nature (or both) behind the miraculous events over the years? Do you think Jesus Christ has proven to be true and reliable because you have remained aware of his redemptive work in your life? Is the reality you speak of a kind of benevolent relationship you have with someone or something?
What I seem to be seeing is a physical and spiritual life that is free of any authoritative forces or demands but instead is the result of a genuine thankfulness and a willingness to keep God and Jesus Christ in your life which in turn has allowed you live an authentic and progressive life. I'm interested in knowing about any challenges you've had along the way with your faith and how they were resolved if you are inclined to share them.
Thanks again Socks.
I tried to answer some of this but it didn't post so maybe I screwed it up or maybe it will later, or whatever. I see there's an array of notes about the thread, the direction, the this or that, something being locked, unlocked. I don't get it, and it's too tiresome for my old brain. If you'd like I can send a more detail response in email, message me here an address. I promise not to deluge you with ads for books, gadgets or health beverages. : p
One of the first things I realized pre-deconversion is that the story of Job was just a story and not history. It does not pretend to have actually taken place in history. It was a fable, no more historical than The Fox and the Grapes.
Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob... fictional characters in an origin story designed to unify a politically vulnerable people.
It took a little longer for Moses and Joshua to sink in.
I never assumed he was anything other than a literary figure.
5 hours ago, Raf said:
One of the first things I realized pre-deconversion is that the story of Job was just a story and not history. It does not pretend to have actually taken place in history. It was a fable, no more historical than The Fox and the Grapes.
Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob... fictional characters in an origin story designed to unify a politically vulnerable people.
It took a little longer for Moses and Joshua to sink in.
Thank you for your replies. Since I've already come to the conclusion that the bible was written by men, articles giving more evidence to this should not be surprising to me, and yet they still do have an element of shock to them. Go figure. I guess it's like putting another nail in the coffin while knowing there are many more nails out there that I don't know about yet.
However, in order to be reasonable, it's possible that a nail or two might be removed from the coffin some where along the line as well.
I've read somewhere that the accounts of god's involvement in the biblical wars were written by men for political reasons like you said Raf. The website below seems to give other reasons as well, so I guess I'm delving into this after all.
I'm sure it took time from beginning to end where you were became certain about things. How did you handle the "what-if-I'm-wrong" worries during that time, if you had any?
Re-reading the thread from the beginning and I don't recall answering this question.
I don't think I ever had those worries. Maybe the route of my journey was a detour around that location. See, I WAS right. There is a God and his son is Christ and I'm born again and I'm going to heaven and the Bible is God's Word and and and...
And whenever I encountered a piece that didn't fit [why don't we know Noah's wife's name when she like Eve is the mother of all living? How did so many civilizations survive the Biblical flood without interruption? If the Exodus took place as described, why didn't they name the Pharoah?] I put that piece aside.
After a few years, I noticed that the pieces I put aside not only outnumbered the pieces that were positive or constructive, but the pieces set aside, for the reasons set aside, actually fit together like a shoe in a sock.
So by the time I was in a position to consider the "consequences" of atheism, I had already rejected Christianity as inconsistent with reality. Fearing hell would mean accepting as truth something I was increasingly recognizing as a lie.
By now you'll have heard of Pascal's Wager, which was presented in a simplified form in PFAL.
Briefly summarized, it says: "You might as well believe. If you're wrong, you lose nothing, but if you're right, you gain everything. Unbelief gives you nothing to gain if you're right and everything to lose if you're wrong."
Pascal's Wager is not only stupid: it posits a stupid God who can't tell a sincere believer from a poser afraid of punishment. It also presumes only two choices: unbelief or Christianity. There are THOUSANDS of other choices. Heck, there are thousands of options in Christianity alone.
A God who has to threaten hell to gain worship is not a God worth worshipping.
True, not all Christianities teach a literal hell, but so what? Many do. And those that don't have other issues.
So to answer the question concisely: never worried about being wrong.
Respectfully, what is the standard that we may agree on in this thread: the bible is fiction? or the bible happened but some refuse to believe it? or something else?
That the Bible says something is proof that the Bible says it. It is sufficient evidence to base a doctrine on. It proves that somewhere along the line, believers accepted this as a fact.
It does NOT prove they were correct in doing so, or that the incidents relayed ever really took place.
You can say "I believe this happened because the Bible says so."
You cannot say, "Because the Bible says this happened, it therefore did, and how do you respond to it?"
I mean, you can SAY that. But the answer might come in the form of giggles.
Re-reading the thread from the beginning and I don't recall answering this question.
I don't think I ever had those worries. Maybe the route of my journey was a detour around that location. See, I WAS right. There is a God and his son is Christ and I'm born again and I'm going to heaven and the Bible is God's Word and and and...
And whenever I encountered a piece that didn't fit [why don't we know Noah's wife's name when she like Eve is the mother of all living? How did so many civilizations survive the Biblical flood without interruption? If the Exodus took place as described, why didn't they name the Pharoah?] I put that piece aside.
After a few years, I noticed that the pieces I put aside not only outnumbered the pieces that were positive or constructive, but the pieces set aside, for the reasons set aside, actually fit together like a shoe in a sock.
So by the time I was in a position to consider the "consequences" of atheism, I had already rejected Christianity as inconsistent with reality. Fearing hell would mean accepting as truth something I was increasingly recognizing as a lie.
By now you'll have heard of Pascal's Wager, which was presented in a simplified form in PFAL.
Briefly summarized, it says: "You might as well believe. If you're wrong, you lose nothing, but if you're right, you gain everything. Unbelief gives you nothing to gain if you're right and everything to lose if you're wrong."
Pascal's Wager is not only stupid: it posits a stupid God who can't tell a sincere believer from a poser afraid of punishment. It also presumes only two choices: unbelief or Christianity. There are THOUSANDS of other choices. Heck, there are thousands of options in Christianity alone.
A God who has to threaten hell to gain worship is not a God worth worshipping.
True, not all Christianities teach a literal hell, but so what? Many do. And those that don't have other issues.
So to answer the question concisely: never worried about being wrong.
Thanks Raf for answering an older question. I'd define your experience as being an "evolution" where it took time for the result to become obvious - a reality. Mine has been more like a "flood" in that I have taken on so much information in a short period of time from books and the internet.
A big reason behind this flood is simply due to my personality type - a mixture of perfectionism and OCD. My intellectual binging for the past few weeks has taken up at least 75% of my life. This is a lot considering I'm retired .
This morning, I remembered that the number one reason I stopped believing in god a while back ago was because of his undeniably deplorable character (as shown in Revelation) and his habit of going on vacation when I truly needed him. Learning how the bible contains myths, fictional stories, contradictions, etc. has been fascinating but largely academic to this.
So today I am putting on some CD's and tackling my long to-do list.
I'd define your experience as being an "evolution" where it took time for the result to become obvious - a reality. Mine has been more like a "flood" in that I have taken on so much information in a short period of time from books and the internet.
Our experiences are not mutually exclusive. The recognition that one has lost face does indeed open a floodgate that forces you to re-evaluate EVERYTHING. And that did happen to me. Some of it, I worked out by myself. Some of it, I followed the footsteps of people who walked the path long before I did.
But I found that a lot of it was retracing my steps and realizing it was there all along, that I was suppressing doubts instead of recognizing their role as protectors of my conscience against self-deception.
Even as a Christian, I knew the story of Job could not be true. Seen in its most pro-faith light, it makes God out to be a gigantic anus. A friend of mine once got angry because his cat died, and someone else in the family replaced him with an identical looking cat. Now, that family member wasn't actually responsible, directly or indirectly, for the first cat dying. But still, the palliative for a dead cat is empathy, not a new cat to replace the old one.
But we're supposed to believe God did right by Job because he gave him a new wife and kids!?!?!?!?
And there was a LOT of that.
Only if it didn't happen and real people didn't die horrific, unnecessary deaths so that God could win a BET he KNEW he would win in the first place is such a morally bankrupt story even remotely justifiable.
And this has NOTHING to do with how VPW butchered this story.
I'd define your experience as being an "evolution" where it took time for the result to become obvious - a reality. Mine has been more like a "flood" in that I have taken on so much information in a short period of time from books and the internet.
Our experiences are not mutually exclusive. The recognition that one has lost face does indeed open a floodgate that forces you to re-evaluate EVERYTHING. And that did happen to me. Some of it, I worked out by myself. Some of it, I followed the footsteps of people who walked the path long before I did.
But I found that a lot of it was retracing my steps and realizing it was there all along, that I was suppressing doubts instead of recognizing their role as protectors of my conscience against self-deception.
Even as a Christian, I knew the story of Job could not be true. Seen in its most pro-faith light, it makes God out to be a gigantic anus. A friend of mine once got angry because his cat died, and someone else in the family replaced him with an identical looking cat. Now, that family member wasn't actually responsible, directly or indirectly, for the first cat dying. But still, the palliative for a dead cat is empathy, not a new cat to replace the old one.
But we're supposed to believe God did right by Job because he gave him a new wife and kids!?!?!?!?
Only if it didn't happen and real people didn't die horrific, unnecessary deaths so that God could win a BET he KNEW he would win in the first place is such a morally bankrupt story even remotely justifiable.
And this has NOTHING to do with how VPW butchered this story.
Our experiences are not mutually exclusive. The recognition that one has lost face does indeed open a floodgate that forces you to re-evaluate EVERYTHING. And that did happen to me. Some of it, I worked out by myself. Some of it, I followed the footsteps of people who walked the path long before I did.
But I found that a lot of it was retracing my steps and realizing it was there all along, that I was suppressing doubts instead of recognizing their role as protectors of my conscience against self-deception.
When I came onboard GSC, learning about the "Absent Christ" doctrine and practice that I had grown up spiritually with while in twi changed my life. That was in late 2022. For months, I experienced a new closeness with God and Christ and during that time, I rested in trusting that God would help my grandson to gradually become verbal. I wasn't doing the Law of Believing crap but simply keeping my eyes on God's goodness, love and grace. There was steady improvement in his development in other areas of his life and I was so thankful for this. During that time, I also spent a lot of time in the Word and was repeatedly "blessed" by what I was seeing.
Then, the seizures began. I kept asking God for revelation as to what I should do so that He could heal my grandson. Whatever I thought He was showing me and whatever I knew from the word didn't work, and the seizures became more frequent and of a kind that caused him to injure himself. He was missing a lot of school and we didn't feel it was safe to take him swimming anymore. After one horrible experience when my daughter and I took him to the ER because he had been crying for most of the day, I prayed about every obstacle we faced and for God to please calm him of the terror he had of being there and having the tests done. I knew by the time we left 6 hours later that I no longer believed god was real.
But I did go back to the word to study what it had to say about prayer. I shared about this at the beginning of this thread. What it boiled down to, apparently, is that it's all according to God's will and timing which he conveniently keeps to himself. Some called that needing to have faith, but I called it a f*cking guessing game and I didn't want to play anymore.
You wrote, "I followed the footsteps of people who walked the path long before I did." That's why I came on this forum because I knew you were an atheist. I also began learning from others as well through the internet.
The god I thought was real in my first paragraph is not the god I see in the bible anymore because I stopped ignoring the passages I had always found difficult to accept. Doing this opened the floodgate.
I try to discourage turning against God for emotional reasons, as much as I sympathize. A faith that is lost in emotion can be regained in emotion.
That's not to invalidate your journey. And I'm proud of you for thinking it through instead of just being angry at or disappointed in God. When it came to my autistic son, I realized "it's not God's fault." God is not to blame for my son's autism, my sister's ALS, my brother's lethal drug abuse, my other sister's cancer. And he's not going to heal or deliver them for the same reason. Non-existent people tend not to accomplish much.
My wife and I foster kids in need. Last year we adopted one. She's a delight.
People keep telling us we're doing God's work. My response is always the same: Who else is going to do it?
It's an inside joke based on something Penn Jillette once said: We have to do God's work, because God knows He won't.
I'm honored to have helped you realize you're not alone.
One of the first things I realized pre-deconversion is that the story of Job was just a story and not history. It does not pretend to have actually taken place in history. It was a fable, no more historical than The Fox and the Grapes.
Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob... fictional characters in an origin story designed to unify a politically vulnerable people.
It took a little longer for Moses and Joshua to sink in.
I try to discourage turning against God for emotional reasons, as much as I sympathize. A faith that is lost in emotion can be regained in emotion.
That's not to invalidate your journey. And I'm proud of you for thinking it through instead of just being angry at or disappointed in God. When it came to my autistic son, I realized "it's not God's fault." God is not to blame for my son's autism, my sister's ALS, my brother's lethal drug abuse, my other sister's cancer. And he's not going to heal or deliver them for the same reason. Non-existent people tend not to accomplish much.
My wife and I foster kids in need. Last year we adopted one. She's a delight.
People keep telling us we're doing God's work. My response is always the same: Who else is going to do it?
It's an inside joke based on something Penn Jillette once said: We have to do God's work, because God knows He won't.
I'm honored to have helped you realize you're not alone.
An atheist who does Gods work. Ok.
With your lack of blame towards God for relatives sickness and realization there is no instantaneous healing on the way that is no different than how I view the world.
I had a relative die of MS. Just saw his widow. He was supposedly healed of MS by someone praying years ago. Did that happen? Or did it just go into remission for 20 years? I don’t know. I don’t know why I never thought to blame God or pray for miracles. I’m mostly conditioned I guess to pray but keep your own gunpowder dry and your gun clean.
I can't say I knew what motivated you to do so, but I respect the end result of your thought process in forming the reply to chockful.
[Moderator's note: this post originally quoted another post that is being hidden for moderator's review. The hidden post violated no rules but responds to another hidden post that did. The remainder of THIS post is of independent value].
Also, I've read at least one book by author Sebastian Junger and respect his insight on life individually and with other humans.
I watched this (non-comedic) interview this evening and thought it might appropriately fit in this thread.
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I don't know if they accept the science or not, but I suspect it doesn't matter to them either way because of the new earth. If anything, I could see them pointing to climate change as evidence of the
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Charity
Getting back to the topic of Deconversion: Letting go of ones religion, verses that claim God is light with no darkness in him at all or that he is righteous in all his ways and gracious in all his works causes people to overlook, deny or explain away all the many places which show he's the complete opposite.
Giving up critical thinking and avoiding cognitive dissonance do not make for a sound mind.
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Raf
The discussion here so far assumes Tongues are genuine and questions whether it proves anything. That is off topic on THIS thread.
Examining SIT as part of the "deconversion" process is fair game but not what was happening.
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TLC
It’s not unique or unusual for quite a number of things written in scripture to be more fully revealed or explained some hundreds of years later.
But, seems you have a better understanding and grasp on what happened some 4000 years ago and why it was written in scripture than the apostle Paul did, even though he was noted as being. a Pharisee of the Pharisees…
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Nathan_Jr
Opinions and interpretations arise at anytime and forever. Everyone has them, even Pharisees, especially Paul.
What does the text say, when it says it, how it says it, and where it says it? Read the text. Resurrection is not mentioned, nor is it implied.
Abraham's faith, trust, fidelity, obedience was tested. (His beleeeving was NOT tested.) Would he slaughter his beloved, precious son if he was commanded? Turns out he would.
And the commander couldn't be bothered to stop his obedient servant from going all the way. He had to send an angel instead.
Edited by Nathan_JrGlove
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Raf
Paul was a very skilled and knowledgeable interpreter of Old Testament scripture, which is probably why he was so good at converting Jews to Christianity...
Except of course he wasn't. He was dreadful at it. That's why he turned to the Gentiles. See, it's a lot easier to sell bizarre interpretations of the Old Testament to people who had no fundamental understanding of the scriptures than it is to sell them to people who actually knew what they were talking about.
I mean, it shouldn't strike anyone as odd that the demographic least likely to accept Paul's interpretation of Hebrew Scripture are the very people who most revere Hebrew Scripture.
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Nathan_Jr
Mmmph
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Raf
Seems to me we have addressed this claim before.
I would ask that we all be respectful of each other's journeys and not seek to second-guess what others believed at different points in their lives.
Frankly, it's rude.
If you can't handle the fact that a sincere Christian had a sincere change of heart, you should sincerely reconsider visiting a forum called Questioning Faith.
I apologize if I misunderstood your point and respectfully request clarification.
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Charity
Because of the discussion here about Abraham and Jephthah, I'm watching a video called "Human Sacrifice In The Bible: What Apologist Won't Tell You," and the topic of Abraham's nonexistence has just come up. I did a quick Google search and a couple of sites say,
"Most scholars view the patriarchal age, along with the Exodus and the period of the biblical judges, as a late literary construct that does not relate to any particular historical era, and after a century of exhaustive archaeological investigation, no evidence has been found for a historical Abraham." (Abraham – Wikipedia)
"Unglauber shows that there is not a shred of independent evidence for the existence of Abraham, much less for any of the events recorded in Genesis." (Reformed Perspective article “Did Abraham Really Exist?)
This sounds pretty conclusive. I don't want to delve into it right now, but I'm wondering what the opinions of posters are concerning this.
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Nathan_Jr
I never assumed he was anything other than a literary figure.
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socks
I tried to answer some of this but it didn't post so maybe I screwed it up or maybe it will later, or whatever. I see there's an array of notes about the thread, the direction, the this or that, something being locked, unlocked. I don't get it, and it's too tiresome for my old brain. If you'd like I can send a more detail response in email, message me here an address. I promise not to deluge you with ads for books, gadgets or health beverages. : p
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Raf
One of the first things I realized pre-deconversion is that the story of Job was just a story and not history. It does not pretend to have actually taken place in history. It was a fable, no more historical than The Fox and the Grapes.
Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob... fictional characters in an origin story designed to unify a politically vulnerable people.
It took a little longer for Moses and Joshua to sink in.
Edited by RafLink to comment
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Charity
Thank you for your replies. Since I've already come to the conclusion that the bible was written by men, articles giving more evidence to this should not be surprising to me, and yet they still do have an element of shock to them. Go figure. I guess it's like putting another nail in the coffin while knowing there are many more nails out there that I don't know about yet.
However, in order to be reasonable, it's possible that a nail or two might be removed from the coffin some where along the line as well.
I've read somewhere that the accounts of god's involvement in the biblical wars were written by men for political reasons like you said Raf. The website below seems to give other reasons as well, so I guess I'm delving into this after all.
https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-history/history-bible-origins-who-wrote-when-how-reliable-historical-record/
Edited by CharityAdded second paragraph
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Raf
Re-reading the thread from the beginning and I don't recall answering this question.
I don't think I ever had those worries. Maybe the route of my journey was a detour around that location. See, I WAS right. There is a God and his son is Christ and I'm born again and I'm going to heaven and the Bible is God's Word and and and...
And whenever I encountered a piece that didn't fit [why don't we know Noah's wife's name when she like Eve is the mother of all living? How did so many civilizations survive the Biblical flood without interruption? If the Exodus took place as described, why didn't they name the Pharoah?] I put that piece aside.
After a few years, I noticed that the pieces I put aside not only outnumbered the pieces that were positive or constructive, but the pieces set aside, for the reasons set aside, actually fit together like a shoe in a sock.
So by the time I was in a position to consider the "consequences" of atheism, I had already rejected Christianity as inconsistent with reality. Fearing hell would mean accepting as truth something I was increasingly recognizing as a lie.
By now you'll have heard of Pascal's Wager, which was presented in a simplified form in PFAL.
Briefly summarized, it says: "You might as well believe. If you're wrong, you lose nothing, but if you're right, you gain everything. Unbelief gives you nothing to gain if you're right and everything to lose if you're wrong."
Pascal's Wager is not only stupid: it posits a stupid God who can't tell a sincere believer from a poser afraid of punishment. It also presumes only two choices: unbelief or Christianity. There are THOUSANDS of other choices. Heck, there are thousands of options in Christianity alone.
A God who has to threaten hell to gain worship is not a God worth worshipping.
True, not all Christianities teach a literal hell, but so what? Many do. And those that don't have other issues.
So to answer the question concisely: never worried about being wrong.
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Raf
That the Bible says something is proof that the Bible says it. It is sufficient evidence to base a doctrine on. It proves that somewhere along the line, believers accepted this as a fact.
It does NOT prove they were correct in doing so, or that the incidents relayed ever really took place.
You can say "I believe this happened because the Bible says so."
You cannot say, "Because the Bible says this happened, it therefore did, and how do you respond to it?"
I mean, you can SAY that. But the answer might come in the form of giggles.
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Charity
Thanks Raf for answering an older question. I'd define your experience as being an "evolution" where it took time for the result to become obvious - a reality. Mine has been more like a "flood" in that I have taken on so much information in a short period of time from books and the internet.
A big reason behind this flood is simply due to my personality type - a mixture of perfectionism and OCD. My intellectual binging for the past few weeks has taken up at least 75% of my life. This is a lot considering I'm retired
.
This morning, I remembered that the number one reason I stopped believing in god a while back ago was because of his undeniably deplorable character (as shown in Revelation) and his habit of going on vacation when I truly needed him. Learning how the bible contains myths, fictional stories, contradictions, etc. has been fascinating but largely academic to this.
So today I am putting on some CD's and tackling my long to-do list.
Edited by CharityAdded (as shown...)
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Raf
Our experiences are not mutually exclusive. The recognition that one has lost face does indeed open a floodgate that forces you to re-evaluate EVERYTHING. And that did happen to me. Some of it, I worked out by myself. Some of it, I followed the footsteps of people who walked the path long before I did.
But I found that a lot of it was retracing my steps and realizing it was there all along, that I was suppressing doubts instead of recognizing their role as protectors of my conscience against self-deception.
Even as a Christian, I knew the story of Job could not be true. Seen in its most pro-faith light, it makes God out to be a gigantic anus. A friend of mine once got angry because his cat died, and someone else in the family replaced him with an identical looking cat. Now, that family member wasn't actually responsible, directly or indirectly, for the first cat dying. But still, the palliative for a dead cat is empathy, not a new cat to replace the old one.
But we're supposed to believe God did right by Job because he gave him a new wife and kids!?!?!?!?
And there was a LOT of that.
Only if it didn't happen and real people didn't die horrific, unnecessary deaths so that God could win a BET he KNEW he would win in the first place is such a morally bankrupt story even remotely justifiable.
And this has NOTHING to do with how VPW butchered this story.
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Raf
Our experiences are not mutually exclusive. The recognition that one has lost face does indeed open a floodgate that forces you to re-evaluate EVERYTHING. And that did happen to me. Some of it, I worked out by myself. Some of it, I followed the footsteps of people who walked the path long before I did.
But I found that a lot of it was retracing my steps and realizing it was there all along, that I was suppressing doubts instead of recognizing their role as protectors of my conscience against self-deception.
Even as a Christian, I knew the story of Job could not be true. Seen in its most pro-faith light, it makes God out to be a gigantic anus. A friend of mine once got angry because his cat died, and someone else in the family replaced him with an identical looking cat. Now, that family member wasn't actually responsible, directly or indirectly, for the first cat dying. But still, the palliative for a dead cat is empathy, not a new cat to replace the old one.
But we're supposed to believe God did right by Job because he gave him a new wife and kids!?!?!?!?
Only if it didn't happen and real people didn't die horrific, unnecessary deaths so that God could win a BET he KNEW he would win in the first place is such a morally bankrupt story even remotely justifiable.
And this has NOTHING to do with how VPW butchered this story.
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Charity
When I came onboard GSC, learning about the "Absent Christ" doctrine and practice that I had grown up spiritually with while in twi changed my life. That was in late 2022. For months, I experienced a new closeness with God and Christ and during that time, I rested in trusting that God would help my grandson to gradually become verbal. I wasn't doing the Law of Believing crap but simply keeping my eyes on God's goodness, love and grace. There was steady improvement in his development in other areas of his life and I was so thankful for this. During that time, I also spent a lot of time in the Word and was repeatedly "blessed" by what I was seeing.
Then, the seizures began. I kept asking God for revelation as to what I should do so that He could heal my grandson. Whatever I thought He was showing me and whatever I knew from the word didn't work, and the seizures became more frequent and of a kind that caused him to injure himself. He was missing a lot of school and we didn't feel it was safe to take him swimming anymore. After one horrible experience when my daughter and I took him to the ER because he had been crying for most of the day, I prayed about every obstacle we faced and for God to please calm him of the terror he had of being there and having the tests done. I knew by the time we left 6 hours later that I no longer believed god was real.
But I did go back to the word to study what it had to say about prayer. I shared about this at the beginning of this thread. What it boiled down to, apparently, is that it's all according to God's will and timing which he conveniently keeps to himself. Some called that needing to have faith, but I called it a f*cking guessing game and I didn't want to play anymore.
You wrote, "I followed the footsteps of people who walked the path long before I did." That's why I came on this forum because I knew you were an atheist. I also began learning from others as well through the internet.
The god I thought was real in my first paragraph is not the god I see in the bible anymore because I stopped ignoring the passages I had always found difficult to accept. Doing this opened the floodgate.
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Raf
I try to discourage turning against God for emotional reasons, as much as I sympathize. A faith that is lost in emotion can be regained in emotion.
That's not to invalidate your journey. And I'm proud of you for thinking it through instead of just being angry at or disappointed in God. When it came to my autistic son, I realized "it's not God's fault." God is not to blame for my son's autism, my sister's ALS, my brother's lethal drug abuse, my other sister's cancer. And he's not going to heal or deliver them for the same reason. Non-existent people tend not to accomplish much.
My wife and I foster kids in need. Last year we adopted one. She's a delight.
People keep telling us we're doing God's work. My response is always the same: Who else is going to do it?
It's an inside joke based on something Penn Jillette once said: We have to do God's work, because God knows He won't.
I'm honored to have helped you realize you're not alone.
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Raf
P.S.
I was not GSC's first atheist, or best. George Aar and Sudo beat me by more than a decade.
I may be the noisiest.
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Rocky
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chockfull
An atheist who does Gods work. Ok.
With your lack of blame towards God for relatives sickness and realization there is no instantaneous healing on the way that is no different than how I view the world.
I had a relative die of MS. Just saw his widow. He was supposedly healed of MS by someone praying years ago. Did that happen? Or did it just go into remission for 20 years? I don’t know. I don’t know why I never thought to blame God or pray for miracles. I’m mostly conditioned I guess to pray but keep your own gunpowder dry and your gun clean.
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Rocky
I can't say I knew what motivated you to do so, but I respect the end result of your thought process in forming the reply to chockful.
[Moderator's note: this post originally quoted another post that is being hidden for moderator's review. The hidden post violated no rules but responds to another hidden post that did. The remainder of THIS post is of independent value].
Also, I've read at least one book by author Sebastian Junger and respect his insight on life individually and with other humans.
I watched this (non-comedic) interview this evening and thought it might appropriately fit in this thread.
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modcat5
Please refrain from personal attacks.
If you can't address what a poster says without attacking his/her "ego," you are no longer addressing the topic but the poster.
The poster is not the topic.
Telling people to button their lip is bullying and won't be tolerated.
Posts flagged for moderator review and possible reinstatement. Hidden but not deleted until such review is complete.
[THIS post has been reported by me to trigger independent review].
[Update: The moderation was reviewed and upheld]
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